Original D&D Discussion - DMing With No Map!

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May 22, 2013, 1:43pm

Original D&D Discussion :: Dungeons & Dragons (1971-1978) :: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (1974) :: DMing With No Map!

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Topic: DMing With No Map! (Read 2,100 times)

coffee
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Re: DMing With No Map!
« Reply #15 on Apr 7, 2009, 12:21pm »

"Is that a Dungeon in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

(Sorry, had to be done.)

This tracks with something I keep intending to do and haven't done yet. Dungeon in a box. Everything, dungeons, monsters, NPCs, etc. All on 3x5 cards in a file box.

Dungeon in a Box. I wish I'd patented it, or trademarked it, or something. But hey, now it's out there. Let's see what people do with it!

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noburo
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Re: DMing With No Map!
« Reply #16 on Apr 8, 2009, 12:28am »

Apr 7, 2009, 12:21pm, coffee wrote:

"Is that a Dungeon in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

I saw that coming...

I'm sorry I nicked your brainchild, but it's such a neat idea! You can expand it one card at a time (or better yet, sell booster packs!), it's easy to scale, and if you keep the cards generic enough, you can use it with any rules system or genre just by switching the monsters. Infinite replayability!

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sham
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Re: DMing With No Map!
« Reply #17 on Apr 11, 2009, 6:55am »

Apr 7, 2009, 12:21pm, coffee wrote:

I almost do this now with Ulin-Uthor, except there IS a map. The map is not populated with monsters or filled with treasure, though. The permanent features of the dungeon are detailed, but the temporary ones are all written on 3x5 cards.

Prior to play I fill certain important areas, then simply use my version of the OD&D stocking method for monsters and treasure. All of that goes on a card and into the box. Each individual magic item has its own card, so the player can hold it (even potions).

For Wandering Monsters I have a large stack of index cards from which to blindly pull when one is called for.

Index cards are a wonderful thing. I like Coffee's idea a lot, and I really like the direction of the dungeon without a map idea. As I mentioned before I've had an old project which is meant to be an episodic random table based game, and this thread has helped me formulate more plans for that idea.

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blissinfinite
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Re: DMing With No Map!
« Reply #18 on Jul 11, 2009, 12:01am »

Do any of you remember the SPI game called Deathmaze? You take your party through a random dungeon/maze by pulling chits out of a cup. Each chit was one of a number of corridors or various rooms and you placed them out 'mapping' the place as you go. All encounters, treasures, etc were randomly determined as you went along. It had lots of charts and you end up doing a lot of rolling and for the most part it was a one player game but did have some of the concepts mentioned in this post. You can probably translate a lot of it to index cards too.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3625

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parmstrong
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Re: DMing With No Map!
« Reply #19 on Jul 11, 2009, 6:33pm »

I use all sorts of things to generate maps at the table. Deathmaze, Citadel of Blood, Dungeoneer cards, random tables, etc.

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