While I often point to In Search of the Unknown as one of my favourite and ideal dungeon adventures (since it comes unstocked, even the “empty” rooms have a nice description), there is no denying that T1 Village of Hommlet is a near perfect module all the way through. While studying what makes it tick so well, I decided to spend a day focused entirely on the dungeon level and how it comes together. And there’s nothing that gives me a better feel for a dungeon than sitting down and drawing the map again and reading out each room as I draw it.

I was struck once again with the similarities between this dungeon and the much larger “Dungeon of the Fire Opal” from the AD&D1e DMG with the distinct zones between the undead and other residents, the weird geometry, and a lot more negative space than we saw in most of Gary’s previous designs (just look at his maps for Castle Greyhawk – almost zero negative space all told).

For this redraw, I went with 5′ squares instead of the traditional 10′ squares – but I drew it at my usual scale, so it comes to 150 pixels per square. Converting this to use with most VTTs would involve shrinking it to 70 pixels per square.

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