The Culture: The Real Games Have Procedures That Encourage Abductive Reasoning

For what I am running over at The Clubhouse I am at last challenged to put down a dungeon map.

It's been a while, but I had plenty of graph paper on hand. I grabbed my AD&D1e DMG, turned to Appendix A, and reached for my dice. Then I put on a livestream and went to work. From a central starting point, and taking (in total, spread over a couple of days) a long evening's rolling and drawing, I came up with the bizzare dungeon maps I remembered from back in the day.

The only time I made a judgement call was when I explicit got asked to do so by rolling through the tables or, near the end of the level map, I began to run out of space. Plenty of rooms were empty, and of those occupied there were plenty of the early level regulars to be had, but three things stood out as a result from letting the dice design the map:

• This layout would never have been chosen had I drawn it entirely as I would have had it. You get the idea that this was cobbled together over time, and that there is already something unreal about this underground place.
• I had to bust out the compass to draw a big circular chamber with a pool in it that is also a monster lair.
• There are TWO ways to lower levels. One goes one level down, one goes two levels down. Again, I would never have done that for this sort of place.

I'm still taking all of this in as a series of prompts to piece together a reasonable explanation for it because this dungeon level and the next two are guaranteed to get breached and cleared in short order due to the delvers seeking something in much lower levels than this.

Level 2 and Level 3 should be just as weird, wondrous, and whimsical- and you can judge competitors by the presence or lack of such tools and procedures in their products. (Yes, Uncle Kevin, I am looking at you.)