Tell Me About The Famous Dungeons of D&D

[OchreJelly]

That's FA2 Nightmare Keep, a 2e Forgotten Realms adventure. Brutal. Nasty traps. Nasty monsters. Good stuff on the whole.

Thank you, and thank you again. That was bugging me ever since this thread got me thinking of old dungeons. I rememebered a pretty nasty trap near the beginning as well. It definitely had a Tomb of Horrors vibe.

As far as favorite old dungeons ToEE and Castle Ravenloft are up there for me. I have a soft spot for the Caves of Chaos featured in Keep on the Borderlands, since it was the first adventure I ever played.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Im in the process of homebrewing my setting at the moment and I really want to include all those great famous dungeons of the games colourful past for the players to look at on the world map and get excited about.

Didn't Wizards release a whole coffee table book on this not too long ago?

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

Tomb of Horrors, Temple of Elemental Evil are my favorites. I still have a soft spot for Keep on the Borderlands, not because it is a great module, but it is a fun dungeon crawl with little logic behind it... classic D&D at it's best.

 

[grodog]

The most famous, iconic dungeon in all of D&D-dom has, alas, never been (and very likely never will be) published in anything resembling the form in which it was actually played for about a dozen years in Lake Geneva, WI -- Gary Gygax's (later Gary Gygax & Rob Kuntz's) Greyhawk Castle.

Great post, Trent!

 

[grodog]

Close, but not quite. WG5 is levels from Rob Kuntz's "El Raja Key" dungeon, before he was brought in by Gary as co-DM for Greyhawk Castle. In the official World of Greyhawk setting, El Raja Key became Maure Castle (which had 4 more detailed levels, and many more hinted at, in Dungeon issues #112, 124, and 139, and on the Pied Piper Publishing website).

ERK was at least 10 levels down, with numerous side-/sub-levels as well. When Rob's materials were added to the original Castle, it was more than doubled in size, although both of Gary and Rob also created a lot of new material too, which further expanded from the original count of levels.

Other bits of trivia: the Greater Caverns map in module S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth was originally a level of El Raja Key -- Gary liked the map so he borrowed it for this module, but he completely re-keyed it.

FWIW, the map was also modified slightly from its original form in ERK, in order to remove a few rooms in the SE corner that were worked vs. cavernous in nature.

Elements of module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks apparently come from "The Machine Level" of Greyhawk Castle.

In addition to the machine elements, portions of Rob's Garden of PlantMaster (another Castle Greyhawk refugee) also appeared in the central garden of S3.

 

[thedungeondelver]

n/m

 

[grodog]

n/m

What'd I miss Bill?

 

[dnddays]

Castle Blackmoor from The First Fantasy Campaign (Judge's Guild) is one of the oldest if not the oldest dungeon I know of. It's interesting to read of how different the D&D game was, especially in light of the '4e is not D&D' threads. Also worth noting:

Sabre River: I ran that module back in '85 and my players freaked when they came to a passage with hundreds of carrion crawlers.

Labyrinth of Madness: A tough, fun and cool dungeon that slowly drives its inhabitants and explorers insane. Was released around the same time of The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga, also a fun little dungeon.

Pyramid of Shadows: A very fun dungeon crawl for 4e.