Post by SebastianDM on Jan 19, 2020 9:48:18 GMT -6
Thank you for the information Zenopus! And wow.. It is weird how you can miss something entirely until they are pointed out. I totally saw the diagonal lines as artefacts of light since the reflections above goes in about the same direction. I worked the things from your posts into the map and it is kind of interesting that you recognize the word on top as Vaults (I do too. The "VAU" and "T" were very obvious after you mentioned it.) I read from Grodog's presentation that the first level of the castle was in fact named "Vaults" in 2000.
Your references to the play reports gave me a lot of information that made me view several parts of the map in a new light. I haven't read through all of it yet, but I will try to gather as much information I can about it so I can make the map as close as I can. At the moment I have found information from the play reports of Per Rhuvein, Guy Fullerton, The ENworld mods and Gary's home game from '04-05. I also found Europa magazine, issue 6-8 and Dragon Annual #2 to be of some help. The maps from Rob Kuntz's expanded castle is also worth seeing since he seems to have done them in the same style and using the same symbols and colors as this map. He even uses green rooms labeled "transporter". But if you know any other sources of information on this I would be happy to know of them.
I updated the link in my original post with the newest version of the .svg (it can be viewed even without Inkscape in a browser) but will probably make a lot of small changes as I work myself through the play reports and similar material I find.
Last Edit: Jan 19, 2020 9:49:51 GMT -6 by SebastianDM
...Gygax seem to have used red on some specific doors. I assume this is to signify that the door is trapped.
Yeah, after looking through again, I noticed lots of colors used, and a lot of places where those images I shared deviate from the official map and from the player-made maps.
Red walls/doors definitely reflect some kind of tricks/traps going on...I see a few in places where there are no walls/doors in the player maps...so I wonder if it's a "moving walls" situation, or something similar. It's really hard to tell without having Gary's inside info, so I think a lot of these maps are just going to have to be down to DM interpretation, unless a miracle ever happens and something official is ever released...
Red lines as doors were originally secret doors. There's some info about this in the introduction and Map Errata, Addenda, and Guides notes in Bottle City.
Something else is going on too, though. For example, on the player map, there's a room labelled "candles, man, skulls, bowl" which is completely open, but on Gary's map there's a red wall:
I recall seeing similar discrepancies, but it's been a little while since I poured over this. One or two spots looked like mapping errors, but others looked more intentional.
Of course, it could all be updates to the map that Gary made in his head, but not on paper. Or just a spurr-of-the-moment "our time is almost up, I'll just put this monk right here for them to play with before they leave".
Maybe once the door opens it disappears? It seems a Gary thing - or it's one way and (since that bit isn't finished) they didn't realize when they broke for the night that they could get in, but not out. This stuff is so frikkin interesting though.
I have been researching this map for ages. Sometime ago I found this picture.
I have no idea where this was or who any other these people are. What's amazing to me is that the map appears to be binder clipped to the DM screen and the encounter list appears to be the folded paper on the table to the left. I can only imagine what it would mean to the community to have our hands on the original.
One of the things I am most interested in is what did the original DMs do with all of those empty rooms? What did they describe? How much time did the players spend here. I would love an actual transcript/example of play for a dungeon level like this. I am preparing A zoom group and I would love to have seen this dungeon in action.
Last Edit: Mar 14, 2021 14:28:49 GMT -6 by JasperAK
That photo (which I believe was taken by grodog) is from Gary Con in 2014, at one of the game sessions that Paul Stormberg (stormberg) ran at the Gygax's old house (330 Center Street in Lake Geneva). It's from the 3/29/14 game as Jon Peterson (increment) and stratochamp (Acaeum member) are among the players.
What's amazing to me is that the map appears to be binder clipped to the DM screen and the encounter list appears to be the folded paper on the table to the left. I can only imagine what it would mean to the community to have our hands on the original.
From the linked thread:
Summary: Paul found a "What is D&D" type-handout from the '70s, probably from Origins, that includes a portion of the first level of Castle Greyhawk, including both a map & key. Paul ran several sessions with this dungeon at Gary's old house at Gary Con 2014. I was able to match several player maps from Paul's game with Gary's binder map of Castle Greyhawk Level One that he used for running OD&D convention games in the '00s.
So there are two versions of this map. One that Paul has that came with a handout given at Origins, and one that Gary had in his binder that he ran at conventions in the '00s. Portions of the dungeon map match up, but they are not necessarily identical throughout, as Gary may have changed details at various times. The key for the one that Paul ran has not been made available; we only know of encounters from player reports of the games he ran. The key for Gary's binder map was photo'd at one of his games and has been deciphered by grodog and myself, see the first page of this thread for a transcript.
Jasper AK wrote:
One of the things I am most interested in is what did the original DMs do with all of those empty rooms? What did they describe? How much time did the players spend here. I would love an actual transcript/example of play for a dungeon level like this. I am preparing A zoom group and I would love to have seen this dungeon in action.
I could take a stab at it, if there was a (free) program to make it easier. Especially if it allowed sharing source files, so we could collaborate.
Apologies to whoever made these, I can't find the source, but they got pretty far into it:
I think the room numbers were added for their own reference, and don't reflect Gary's key.
I am fairly sure that these maps were made by Gene Weigel. Comparing them side-by-side, rooms 181 and 182 and two sets of stairs show up and that matches this post of his.
What's amazing to me is that the map appears to be binder clipped to the DM screen and the encounter list appears to be the folded paper on the table to the left.
Good catch! You can almost make out some of the bits near the NE corner, where Gary's photos have reflections obscuring them.
I have to say that I'm sad that we know this 5-page thing exists, yet it is not out in the wild.
Yeah, I know. It's crazy that only one copy has surfaced, and zero scans. I guess a lot of people just threw it away, unaware of its historical importance?? Real shame.
What's amazing to me is that the map appears to be binder clipped to the DM screen and the encounter list appears to be the folded paper on the table to the left.
Good catch! You can almost make out some of the bits near the NE corner, where Gary's photos have reflections obscuring them.
Jon's player map from this game matches a section of Gary's binder map (as posted here on K&KA in 2015), so it is not surprising that the map that Paul was using to run the game is also a match. It's the reason we've known for years that these two maps are highly similar.
Here's an annotated image of the binder map showing the areas of similarity. Jon's player's map from Paul's 2014 game is outlined. The red areas/rooms are encounter locations from an Enworld convention game where Gary was using the binder map.
That said, I don't think what Paul was using during the game was an original as it appears to be in pencil on graph paper; my guess is he re-drew it based on the original source.
Last Edit: Mar 15, 2021 17:06:07 GMT -6 by Zenopus
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Jon's player map from this game matches a section of Gary's binder map (as posted here on K&KA in 2015), so it is not surprising that the map that Paul was using to run the game is also a match. It's the reason we've known for years that these two maps are highly similar.
Yeah, I've seen all of the player maps posted in different threads, but this is my first time seeing any photos of the actual game session itself.
This stuff is so frikkin interesting though.
