Recaps & Roundups part 61: Dungeons Geomorphs Set Three: Lower Dungeons

The exciting cover of Dungeon Geomorphs: Set Three

I origjnally had this product placed chronologically later in the year, but it's listed as being for sale in Judges Guild Journal M, so I've moved it back to June of 1977.  Set One was said to be available by the time Judges Guild put their first products out, which was in August 1976.  That leaves the question of when Set Two was first on sale.  It wasn't listed in the products for sale in Judges Guild Journal L, but it's there alongside Set Three in Journal M.  That leads me to conclude that Set Two and Three came out at the same time, but it's pretty weak evidence.  Weak evidence is better than no evidence, but I'm still not certain about it.  (ADDENDUM: I just discovered that Set Two was advertised in The Dragon #6, so it would have been available by April 1977.)

Dungeon Geomorphs Set Three: Lower Dungeons features - like its predecessors - example dungeon layouts that can be mixed and matched on the fly to create dungeon levels.  Set One featured simple dungeon layouts, and Set Two featured caves.  Set Three returns to the dungeons, but with slightly more complex designs, with more slanting passages and oddly-shaped rooms.

The instruction page for putting the geomorphs together is the same as in the first two installments (and can be read about here and here if you want more..  The sample level at the back is as follows;

The sample dungeon layout.

Every one of these sample dungeons uses the longer strip sections as well as the squares, and it really offends my design sense.  I'd prefer to see them laid out in such a way that they're still square or rectangular, which is boringly symmetrical but more aesthetically pleasing to me.

I'll reproduce the map key (presumably written by Gary) below.

7A. One huge Black Pudding, H.P.: 50. This monster is always very hungry, and it will pursue relentlessly as long as the party is in the room complex. Amidst the mass of junk in its lair is a bag of devouring with 7,000 gold pieces therein which it uses to attract prey.

7B. The Altar of the demon Sha-Hec'urah, set with fifty base 100 GP gems. There is a pit trap (10' deep, with six poisoned spikes) before it, with the cover trip mechanism to lock, unlock, or spring it hidden in a recess in a wall at the spot marked X. Touching the altar automatically alters 7C (below).

7C. An evil lama and curate (H.P.: 26, 21; A.C.: 0, 2; S.A.: Lama has snake staff and normal mace, curate has +1 mace) who serve the altar. With them is the "Arm of Sha-Hec'urah," a creature which appears to be a troll, but which strikes as a nine-die monster and causes only a loss of strength at 1 point per hit. Strength loss lasts for 2-12 turns, except on a roll of 20, in which case the loss is permanent unless a cure disease spell is cast upon the victim within 24 hours of the hit. The "Arm" wears an amulet which gives him this weakening ability. If he is slain the amulet may be worn by any player character, and his scoring a hit by touch will enable the strength loss to take place; the wearer loses 5 points permanently from charisma and will become more and more chaotically evil until becoming the new "Arm." The "Arm of Sha-Hec'urah": H.P.: 43; A.C.: -2 (due to the amulet). The "Arm" will call if below 20 H.P., and if the demon is thus summoned, there is a 10% chance it will come.

7D. 6 GNOLLS, H.P.: 13, 11, 11, 10, 9, 7. These are the guards for 7E, and as soon as they see any trespasser enter their area two will run for help, three will attempt to hold off the enemy for a moment, and the last will slip to the alcove in the passage leading out. As he hears his three rear-guards shouting, he will pull the chain which opens the bars of the cages set high in the walls of the chamber they are deserting, freeing 2 GARGOYLES (H.P.: 20, 17). In the far corner of the chamber are 3 magic arrows (+1) and 670 GP belonging to the gnolls.

7E. 2 STONE GIANTS. H.P.: 44, 36. These two are quite clever for their kind, having amassed treasure of 10,400 CP, 4,500 SP, 1,980 EP, and 625 GP stored in two large chests with no locks or protection.  They have hidden a potion of hill giant strength in a bucket of water on their table. The "water" in their bucket is actually a powerful delusive agent, and if it is touched it will cause delusions that the bucket has disappeared. There are ten base 100 GP gems hidden in the larger giant's club handle.

I'll use this sample dungeon level, combining it with the levels from the other geomorph sets to make a complete geomorph dungeon.  The only curious thing in the room description above is the note in room 7B that touching the altar will alter 7C.  It doesn't say how 7C will be "altered", so I'm taking this as a typo that should say that it will "alert" 7C.

Recaps & Roundups part 56: Dungeon Geomorphs Set Two: Caves & Caverns

Also advertised in The Dragon #6 was the second set of dungeon geomorphs.  Like the first set, Dungeon Geomorphs Set Two: Caves & Caverns is a set of sheets with sample dungeon layouts that can be cut out and arranged to make quick dungeon levels.  Set One's layouts were simple dungeon rooms and corridors, while Set Two - like it says in the name - provides layouts for cavernous dungeon areas.

There's a sample level provided, that used geomorphs B II, D IV, E III and I II.  The letter indicates which geomorph to use, and the roman numeral shows which side of the geomorph should be facing up.  I've put them together below as an example.

It's a serviceable dungeon level, though as usual with geomorphs there are some tunnels that don't connect up, and others that go nowhere and need to be closed off.  I'm not the biggest fan of the lower right section jutting out like that, but I suppose it does get away from the dungeon design problem where every level just happens to be shaped in the dimensions of an A4 sheet of paper.  I wouldn't use geomorphs for dungeons that I'm designing, but they're certainly a handy tool for when you need to improvise.

As with the first set, there are some encounter key examples that are presumably written by Gary Gygax.  I'll reproduce them below.

ENCOUNTER KEY EXAMPLE

13A. The Crystal Cavern -- an area where stalagmites, stalactites, and other such subterranean formations are in profusion. Some of them will glisten and glimmer, showing themselves to be made of precious materials worth thousands of gold pieces (18-2,000 gold piece value crystal of precious quartz stalagtites). Humans are not the only ones who are dazzled by such wealth and beauty, for ropers consider it to be their gem garden. There will always be 2-5 ropers around admiring it. Also, 1-4 additional ropers will come to it in 1-6 melee rounds if they happen to hear fighting.

13B. A party of thieves (levels: 8, 6, 4; HP: 25, 18, 12) waiting to fleece adventurers. They will attempt to hide in shadows and steal valuables from players as they pass. They will only initiate combat if the adventurers appear to be damaged and treasure-laden. The leader has a +2 neutral "Charm Person" sword (3 intelligence, 12 ego) and 1-8 gems (worth 500 gold pieces each). The sixth level thief has a +1 dagger and 100 platinum pieces. The fourth level flunky has 50 gold pieces on his person.

13C. The Mirror Pool -- a glimmering 6' by 3' mirror pool, contained within a sunken crystal basin. Adventurers may step into the pool and suddenly find themselves in a 60' by 60' room with an enraged efreet. They may step back out as easily as they open doors. The efreet wears four pieces of jewelry worth only 50 gold pieces each. Once encountered, the efreet will fight until defeated (37 HP) or until the basin is broken (to do so, a +2 or better weapon must be used). When the basin is broken, check on a six-sided die for the reaction of the efreet: 1--Efreet is insane from being cooped up so long, and will attack until killed; 2--Efreet rushes off to avenge himself, leaving his rescuers behind; 3 and 4--Efreet thanks group, gives them his jewelry, and then leaves; 5--Efreet will aid adventurers on 1-4 adventures (secret determination of time) and then vanish; 6--Efreet is so thankful that he will serve his rescuer for 1001 days.

13D. The Pile of Gold. Upon entering the area, the party will notice that there has been a fight. First, they will see a dragon skeleton and human remains. Then they will notice that there is still a large pile of gold left by whomever looted the room. As they approach the pile it comes to life, surprising them all, and attacks! It is a metal creature (the Aurotyugh) and so has some surprising abilities. It takes 18 hit dice (88 HP) and is Armor Class 3. It does 3-18 HP every time it hits, and its special attack ability is that it softens hard things. Every time it hits, its opponent goes down one Armor Class (so +2 armor becomes +1, or a Wyvern with Armor Class 3 goes to 4). This creature is worth 25,000 GP--the teeth are made of diamonds and if carefully and time-consumingly taken out are worth 30,000 gold pieces (but only 5,000 gold pieces if hastily pulled).

Interesting to see Gary adding a brand new monster here.  Whether it has any relation to the otyugh is unclear, and especially odd considering that the otyugh hasn't even debuted yet; it first appears in the upcoming Monster Manual.  I'm going to assume that this aurotyugh is a unique creation that takes the shape of an otyugh when it attacks, but is otherwise unrelated,

Recaps & Roundups part 34: Dungeon Geomorphs Set One: Basic Dungeons

While I was reading up on the origins of Judges Guild, I saw a quote in a few places that the TSR only had one game aid available for D&D at the time that Bill Owen and Bob Bledsaw came calling: that product was Dungeon Geomorphs Set One: Basic Dungeon. I had no date for it, except that it was available at some point in 1976. Judges Guild was formed in July of that year, so we know for sure that the geomorphs were available by then (as long as that quote is true, I guess). So now is as good a time as any to take a look.

In the 1970s, dungeon exploration was the major focus of D&D, and the geomorphs are an aid for DMs looking to whip up a quick map. The product consists of five sheets, each with a different section of dungeon map. These sheets can be cut up into sections and arranged to make any number of map combinations. Here's an example sheet below:

That page above features three sections - two squares on the left, and a long rectangle on the right. The exits all line up, so you can combine them however you want, and along with the sections on other pages there are a lot of combinations available.

Gygax designed this product, so this is actually one of the earliest examples we have of what his dungeon levels might have looked like. It also features for the first time the classic blue and white map style that TSR would use for quite some time into the 1980s.

There's a written section that explains how the geomorphs are supposed to be used, which is followed by an example. Each of the sections is labelled with a letter, and each side of the section has a roman numeral. The layout example is given below:

So in the upper left, you'd use geomorph B, arranged with numeral II at the top. To the right of that would be geomorph D with numeral IV at the top, and so on. I messed around with this in Paint and this is what the map would look like.

It's a little weird, because geomorph I is one of the long rectangular strips, and it has a large open section in the middle, so it's really two quarter-size geomorphs. I considered cropping the other part of it and bringing it across, but that's not how it would work if I was using the paper version, unless I wanted to cut the geomorphs even smaller. The result is a nicely functional dungeon layout, although I'd block up all of the passages that aren't connected to anything. There are also some areas with no doors or entrances marked; I'll either fill them in, add some doors, or leave them as secrets only accessible by magic.

Following this is an encounter key, with some sample rooms that Gygax has knocked up. I'm going to reproduce them in full below, because it's actually pretty hard to get a hold of the originals. I don't believe they're out there as PDFs, and the later set that collects the three original geomorph products doesn't have them. Buying the originals is pretty much the only way to see them, so here they are below.

ENCOUNTER KEY EXAMPLE

1. A rudely furnished room with an old holy man (lawful/good) who has sworn a vow of silence. He will not fight if attacked. He takes only 2 hit points. There is a pottery flask containing his drinking water in one corner; a small container near his near his pallet has a handful of lentils (all of his food); there are some rags hanging from a nail in the wall, and a wooden begging bowl on a rough wooded table near the door holds 1 silver piece and 3 coppers. If he is impolitely treated or his room is searched he will do nothing, but he will never aid the offenders. If so much as a single copper piece is dropped in his bowl, he will make a holy sign which will add 1 hit point permanently to all the party's members. After doing the latter, he will disappear when the party leaves, and he will be replaced by 1A.

1A. An insane fiend conforming generally to the description of 1. above. He will say nothing until a party is in his abode, but will then attack with two hidden daggers. He takes 12 hit points, with an armor class equal to 5 due to his 18 dexterity. He has no treasure to begin with...

2. A seemingly empty room which contains a gold tube worth 230 gold pieces. It is invisible. Inside the tube is a map to stairway #7, indicating that it leads directly to the 4th level down. If the room is searched, there is a cumulative chance of 2% per person per turn of general searching that it will be stumbled upon.

3. 4 LARGE SPIDERS, H.P.: 6, 5, 3, 2. They tend to lurk directly above the entryway and have a 50% chance of surprising any party entering. Only the largest has normal poison, and if the other 3 bite, the victim has a +4 on his saving throw. Bite damage is 1. If the room is searched, it will be noted that there are heavy cobwebs in the corners. In the SW corner they conceal a small space, and in that space is the skeleton of a man - including a suit of plate mail, a lantern, 2 flasks of oil, 4 vials of holy water, a dagger, a sword, and a mace. There are 167 silver pieces in a rotting leather bag at the far end of the space. All other possessions of the dead fighter have rotted.

4. Steps down to the 2nd level (geomorph E I, central portion).

5. False door which fires an arrow directly out when it is opened. The arrow is magical (+1), and if it fails to hit it will be usable. After the first magic arrow, it will fire only non-magical ones which will break whether or not they hit.

There's no indication of where those encounters should be placed on the map, so I'll have to do it myself. I'd put the entry stairs right where the B is in the upper left. The holy man should live in one of the more interesting-shaped rooms; I'm thinking the triangular one marked E in the lower left. The invisible tube could be anywhere, but I'd prefer it to be somewhere that the PCs might actually think to search: maybe the secret room to the upper left of geomorph E; they're more likely to search a room that's hard to get to. The stairs down to level 4 should be similarly difficult to find, so I'd put them in the triangular secret room of geomorph D. The spiders need to live in a room with a SW corner. It should also probably have no doors, so that the spiders can get about. I'll go with the long,  wide east-west hallway at the top of geomorph D. The false door with the arrows can be the door heading north, right at the top of geomorph B. Finally, there are stairs down to the 2nd level: I'll put those in the cul-de-sac just north-west of the entry stairs: not too hard to find, because I like to make it easy for PCs to venture to lower, more dangerous levels.

I'd be tempted to place this level somewhere in Greyhawk Castle, given its Gygaxian pedigree, but Gygax has said that the encounter keys from the geomorphs weren't drawn from his home campaign, and were made up for the products. Besides, it doesn't match up with Castle Zagyg, which will be the basis for my version of that dungeon. I also considered the sample dungeon cross section from D&D Vol. 3: The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, but it doesn't match up: I need a dungeon with stairs from level 1 all the way down to level 4, and I am trying to fit all this stuff together as it appears in the original books. It's something that will need more thought.

Finally, Gygax recommends that about 75% of the dungeon rooms should be empty, with 25% containing monsters, treasures and other notable items. 1-in-5 of these occupied rooms should have a trap. He says that one or two slanting passages, teleport areas, or chutes per level is a good guideline. To me, that seems very sparsely populated, but I'm coming at it from a more modern perspective, having started playing in 1988. This is Gygax writing in 1976, with a solid five years of DMing under his belt, so presumably these numbers worked for him. They definitely suggest a far different, much less combat-oriented play style than what D&D would evolve into.

Dungeon Geomorphs

SET ONE: BASIC DUNGEON

This product is the first released by TSR that does not pertain to the rules directly. Instead it is a game aid intended to help DMs design their dungeons. What it consists of is a number of sample dungeon sections that can be combined together into various forms to make a complete dungeon level. This is another product that I have never toyed with myself. I can certainly see its usefulness for running games off the cuff, and the dungeon layouts look varied enough that exploration of them would be interesting.

(It should be noted at this point that I'm working from the compilation of Dungeon Geomorph Sets 1-3 here, rather than the original OD&D version. I'm not sure what differences there are in the maps between the two versions, but I do know that there are some minor variations in the text. The original text can be found here.)

The obvious way for me to incorporate this product into my campaign is by making a dungeon level out of the geomorphs. That leaves the question of where I should place this level, with the answer being the Sample Dungeon from OD&D Vol. 3, somewhere on level 1 or 2. It's open-ended enough that I know I won't be contradicting any D&D canon here, and Gygaxian enough in origin that I will feel justified in combining the two.

That leaves the sample encounters, all designed by Gary himself. I'll be leaving them where they are placed on the geomorph maps, and I don't feel the need to change anything here. With traps, holy men and giant spiders, they have the sort of D&D flavour that pleases me.

SET TWO: CAVES & CAVERNS

Given the shortness of these entries, I figure I'll tackle all three geomorph sets at once. Now for this one I do have the original. A cursory comparison of this to the later compilation shows that the maps are the same, which pleases me greatly given that I don't own the other two sets. This is basically the same product as Set One, except that the maps are primarily made up of natural caverns instead of straight dungeon corridors.

As with the first set, I'll be making a dungeon level out of the geomorphs to be included in the sample dungeon from OD&D Vol. 3. The 6th level is denoted as being 'Caverns', so that's where I'll place the geomorphs.

The sample encounters given here are a lot more deadly than those of Set One, and to my mind a bit more interesting. We even get a brand new monster, the Aurotyugh, a sort of living treasure pile. The similarity of the name to the more famous Otyugh monster may be coincidental, given the unlikelihood that the two are related. Or perhaps they both stem from the same language, with a similar meaning despite their differences?

SET THREE: LOWER DUNGEONS

It's back to dungeon rooms and corridors with Set Three. I'll be placing the level created with these geomorphs below the cavern level of the sample dungeon; a look at the cross-section will show that further levels are implied by the word ETC. and an arrow.

Again the sample encounters increase in deadliness, and they also start to take on some of the key Gygaxian tropes, most notably in the inclusion of an evil temple. This temple is dedicated to the demon Sha-Hec'urah. It's not a name I've encountered in other D&D books, which is not to say that it isn't out there somewhere. Barring further details, I will be making Sha-Hec'urah a minor Demon Prince, and this temple his major site of worship in the World of Greyhawk.

Next: The Dragon #5! Witches! The Anhkheg! And a big helping of Metamorphosis Alpha!