Tell me of your first dungeon (and look at mine)

[Turanil]

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Title edited in hope of getting more interest...
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Today, while I was doing some cleaning, I found the two maps below. These are my first dungeon maps ever! I created them for my first dungeon as a DM, 20 years ago! I have lost the other maps (that of the three underground levels) as well as the description of the dungeon and adventure. Here is all that I remember of the adventure:

It was back in AD&D 1e... PCs were around 5th level, as I remember a player casting a fireball in the lowest level. There wasn't any real story, it was more of the "open the door, bash, kill, and take stuff" dungeon crawling. Anyway, the only things I remember about this adventure was that the castle was inhabited by orcs (or goblins?). The adventurers entered through the ruined tower (#10) killing a couple of orcs/goblins who were sleeping there. There was a giant lizard tied to a rope in room #6. I can't remember if they went to the level below through the trapdoor in room #5, or if they used the central staircase. I don't remember what happened in the levels below except the last (level #4). There, was a maze (that bored players to death), then a cavern where lived Dagoth! I had seen the Conan the Destroyer movie a few weeks before, and had to put it somewhere!! I remember that the monster (homebrewed) happened to be too powerful for the PCs (I wonder if he hadn't 15 HD). However Dagoth was slow to move. So he chased the PCs around, who killed him very slowly, striking (spells and arrows) from a distance then running.


So, do you remember the first dungeon you either ran or play in?

 

[demiurge1138]

My first dungeon was the reason I became my group's DM. The current DM, whose game was a ripoff of the old Lucasarts game Indiana Jones and the Secret of Atlantis, was sick of running it, and asked if I would take over, as I was busy developing a module for fun (I had a very odd sense of fun).

The game? Return to Kastle Kojark. Not that they had ever been to Kastle Kojark. That they could remember. The plot (such as it was) pertained that the players had stolen the Book of Ee-vil from Kojark, a powerful kobold warlord, and one who seriously holds a grudge. Kojark lured them to his kastle and told them that they had to climb to the top story and present to him the book, on his throne, as grovellingly as possible, if he was to ever let them free.

The first level was a fairly standard dungeon, with kobolds riding undead construct archery platforms (from CCI), a Beast of Malar and a girdle of masculinity/femininity. The second level was a swamp, paradoxically enough, complete with giant carnivorous hamsters, dinosaurs, a homebrewed shoggoth, and a Legion of One (CCII). The third floor was the museum of constructs, all of whom were very violent. A secret passage led to the basement, where they met an insane sentient raptor, mage-hunting hounds, and a destrachan. They got out through a portal to the Plane of Mirrors, where they fought themselves and a couple of gehreleths. Out of the Mirror Realm, they fought an assassin, a few Shadowlands oni, and eventually Kojark, possessed by a demon, on the top of his tower, jagged with blades, in a hurricane.

Not that any of this made a lick of sense.

But still, it was jolly good fun, the PCs killed a lot of things and took their stuff, and they hated Kojark and all of his tricks, traps and monsters with a passion, even going so far as to devise great and elaborate ways to torture him on their arrival at his throne room. Sadly, when I tried bringing Kojark back as an NPC, I found I was no longer capable of his signature, Kefka-esque laugh. Damn puberty.

Demiurge out.

 

[Turanil]

Well, in order to gather more interest in this thread, tell us of your first dungeon, either as a DM (whether you wrote the module or not) or player...

 

[der_kluge]

Turanil, that is one awesome dungeon! Kudos!

I have some *old* dungeons that I wrote up. My printer/scanner thing died week before last (I think the power in my apt. building is flaky, and seems to wreak havoc on computer equipment). So, until I get the new one up and running, I can't scan them in. IIRC, it was sort of an aztec-inspired pyramid (what's the word I'm looking for there??) filled with Yuan-ti, and a vampire at the top.

I also did up a bunch of maps of islands and some other locations around the world that I was going to use for a huge scavenger hunt game idea I had. The premise was that the players were going to go on a scavenger hunt, and there were other groups that were going to try to claim the items as well. It included water from the fountain of youth, and some other stuff that I can't even think of off-hand. In fact, that yuan-ti pyramid thing may have been part of that game, I can't remember. I never ran any of it (thank god!)

Those are the earliest I can think of.

 

[painandgreed]

Yours looks great. Mine was less so. It was a massive complex of rooms all drawn out on a 2'X3' sheet of newsprint. It began the way all our dungeons began in 7th grade "You're walking though a forest when you fall into a hole in the ground. You find youself at the bottom of a pit in a room with a door..." it was huge with hundreds of rooms all of which were the typical random monster or trap in each room so the PCs could clean it out one by one. There was a maze as well as a massive 20x20 complex of 10'X10' rooms that all had doors on every wall which was filled with canabalistic humanoids. There were also NPCs who were in there for PCs to find so they'd join up with the party.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

So, do you remember the first dungeon you either ran or play in?

Sure, the first dungeon I ran and played in was Keep on the Borderlands. As for the first dungeon I designed myself and ran, I still have the map, but not the adventure notes. If I can find it tonight, I'll scan it and post it (but no promises). It was set on a small island, which had a network of caves running through it. One end of the network was occupied by Crab Men from the 1e Fiend Folio, and in the other end there was a sunken cave with a pirates treasure buried in it. I don't remember much of the actual running of the adventure, but I know that there were a ton of sea zombies that were hidden in the mud at the bottom of the sunken cave, and when the party tried to pull the treasure out of the water, they came out of the mud and attacked. At the same time, the party was attacked from the back by the crabmen. Somehow, the crabmen and the zombies began fighting, and the party got away with a good portion of the treasure. There were some other things on the island as well, but I don't remember what they were off the top of my head.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

It began the way all our dungeons began in 7th grade "You're walking though a forest when you fall into a hole in the ground. You find youself at the bottom of a pit in a room with a door..."

I had a nasty DM kill a first lever magicuser of mine with something like that. I had one hitpoint, and he said "You trip over a tree root and fall, and the ground collapses under you and you fall through a pit into a dungeon. You take 7 points of damage. Oh, you died? Sorry, go roll up another character." He was smirking at me the whole time.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I have no maps, but I remember it was a Solo game for a dwarf with an intelligent Axe.
there was a bunch of monsters mabey 1 trap, and ended in a Brass dragons cavern. (which had a dragon sized exit!) The dwarf allied with the dragon and moved in to the dungeon. He traded the some of the dragons valubles for masses of coin (for bedding) and depositing all his extra coins into the horde.
The dwarf thought it was his money the dragon thought it was his, niether had any intention of spending it (although the dwarf did keep some gems as pocket money.)
It was about a page map and had less than 20 rooms.
It was a basic(dwarf)/expert(axe)/ 1stMM game. (brass dragon)

 

[Mr. Lobo]

So, do you remember the first dungeon you either ran or play in?

I wish I had more to contribute only because I would like to remember more details of the first (home made) dungeon I ran. It was first edition AD&D about 25 years ago.

I do remember some things:

1) I wrote out the module on notebook paper and glued them together to make a booklet. I thought that was kind of neat but it got lost.

2) The dungeon itself was a mirror image. As soon as one of the PC's figured this out he had the whole friggen thing mapped without going through it. Oh well live and learn...

3) It was called "Cleric Sellnor's Ruins".

I had a blast running that but we were all newbies...

By the way Turanil very nice job for a first dungeon. Mind if I hijack it?

 

[the Jester]

My first dungeon- wow, old skool. The first dungeon I played through was the Ghost Tower of Inverness, but the first one I designed... hmm... back in the 1e days, I don't recall much about it but the followup adventure involved burial mounds, lizard men and a saw-bladed sword.