I am looking for... a plan of a medieval mine

[Jürgen Hubert]

For an upcoming adventure, I need a plan of what a medieval mine looks like. And since the adventure takes place in a fairly gritty world, I need that mine to be a fairly "realistic" one (no magic used in excavating it, for example).

Please note that I have no time to search for any print products before the adventure, so please don't make any suggestions in that direction.

 

[Turanil]

I have seen such a kind of mine in Bolivia (I mean: on TV ), and it's a mess of small caverns, tunnels in every directions, many rubble, cave-ins, and places where you must succeed Balance, Jump, or Climb checks or fall and break a leg or worse. Frankly, you could easily do the map by yourself.

 

[Turjan]

Medieval mines were often built into mountains, this means without large vertical elements. Why don't you just look around at home ?

Here is a rough draft of a medieval silver mine in the Black Forest. There are a few pics on the Hella-Glück-Stollen page. Here are some nice images of the mine in Rammelsberg/Harz, and here are a few links to several mines (just scroll a bit down).

 

[Deadguy]

Those shots of the tunnels of the Rammelsberg mine are rather nice - useful for DMs wanting to show what tunnels might be like.

And as has been mentioned, Jurgen, old mines are essentially horizontal, dug striaight into the side of a hill, following an outcropping of ore. I grew up in a village that had been used for mining since the mediaeval period, and though they had all now collapsed, you could see the dimples in the sides of the nearby hill where they had tunnelled in.

 

[OurManMute]

I visited the medieval silver mine in Kutna Hora a couple of years ago. As you can see from the link, the corridors are VERY narrow and at some places the ceiling is quite low (especially if you're 2 metres tall). The other thing to keep in mind is that it's really, really dark down there. Don't expect a torch carried by the person behind you to do you much good. originally the miners wore white robes so they could see eachother in the darkness; I would suggest that everyone not clad in pristine white gets concealment, unless you have a very bright light source.