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The Occasional Dungeon: Overview


In order to get some more GURPS out there and play with some maps, I started toying with something. I've worked up a large map ("ground level" is below; I may need to poke around with image hosting to keep enough maps at the proper scales) of a dungeon complex. From time to time, I'll post magnified excerpts from the map with details in GURPS terms, with specific reference to Dungeon Fantasy (that is, mostly stocked with things from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables and the Dungeon Fantasy Monsters volumes, but occasional pointers elsewhere). They may prove useful to somebody somewhere under some odd set of circumstances.


This dungeon is set in a fairly steep, rocky hill. The natural caves underneath it have long been home to a variety of creatures, natural and otherwise, but pretty much all horrible. There's also a large natural cavern accessible through a very large opening at the top of the hill where the surface caved in. It has been home to a number of dragons over the years. At some point, a group of dwarves started to build an outpost into the hill, possibly to keep an eye on a notorious dragon lair, but the monsters from the lower levels broke through and killed them or drove them off. Some time later, members of a religious sect build a shrine into a cave-like recess on the hillside and converted some of the natural caves farther in into catacombs for their honored dead. The cult faded away, but the dead remained; the nearby cave monsters broke into their as well, but neither ventured far into the catacombs nor remained long; the opening where they broke in was sealed off. More recently, the shrine has become home to a group of bandits, who enjoy what looks to them like a comfortable, secure location, but they are entirely unaware of the vast underground complex nearby. And the stump of a long-ruined tower, its origins unknown, remain at the top of the hill.





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Kyle Norton said…
I'm excited to see where this goes.
March 3, 2018 at 9:39 PM
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