(Last Updated: December 25th, 2010)
Dyson's Delve - Level 1
Dyson’s Delve was started as a bunch of small dungeon level maps in my Moleskine reporter’s pad style notebook. Then I started stocking it and posting the levels as one-page-dungeons to the blog.
In all, there are 11 levels to Dyson’s Delve, and it takes a group of 4-5 B/X or Labyrinth Lord characters from level 1 to level 6.
This page collects the links to the various levels of the delve, so you don’t have to root through the whole mess of a blog for them. All 11 levels are now complete and available for download.
Latest News:
The deluxe download is now available, thanks to Boric Glanduum. This PDF edition contains the full 11 levels as well as my blog-based commentary and an appendix with all the unkeyed maps at nearly full-page magnification. Download Dyson’s Delve Deluxe!
Courtesy of Breakdaddy, there’s also an all-in-one PDF with all 11 levels here:
Interested in reading the adventures of someone who has actually explored the delve?
- Check out Bugbears for Breakfast – who are playing through the adventure using the Pathfinder RPG.
- Over at The Mule Abides, James ran a happy little TPK using just the bottom two levels of the Delve, having the players arrive via the underground lake on level 11.
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this dungeon is great, using it for a mega dungeon im working on. saved me the trouble of drawing more floor plans!
hmm seems like i mixed this up with another dungeon on the site, and i cant delete comments, oh well!
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This is AMAZING. I will be running it. thank you for sharing, and for the inspiration.
Can’t believe I only just discovered Dyson’s Delve! Beautifully presented. I’ll make sure I drop you a note once I’ve taken the group through this adventure – hopefully some time later this year.
Greatly appreciated.
Awesome – hope you enjoy it!
I’ve had this printed out for a while and this past Sunday night my group finally got to try it. It’s been a long, convoluted path on how they got to the Delve, seeing as last night was session 11 and they had found the map to it in session 3 (coincidentally, they found the map to this in Goblin Gully).
It was a resounding success. We played for almost 8 hours and got through most of level 4. The wandering manticore almost killed the 4th level cleric, but when they found the stationary one with double the wandering’s hp, they killed it easily. The 3rd level fighter, Aaron, died to the goblin rat-catcher’s pet giant ferret on level 1, the group’s first death of a pc over lvl 1 in the campaign. Norso the soldier of fortune was eaten by fire beetles. Varley the thief with the 3 int and Vanelian, the gnome baker turned treasure/torch carrier after being chased out of his homeland by an invading goblin force were killed when zombies surprised the party from behind while examining the falling stone trap on level 3. A good time was had by all! Except the people that died. It wasn’t as fun for them.
My only concern is a bit too much treasure, but I have a small group (3-4 pcs most nights, sometimes 5) and they got a ton of xp Sunday night. I’ll probably go through and cut it in half in some places on the lower levels. That said, it was a nice break from Stonehell (which they’d been in for a couple of months) and they are dying to dig deeper into it this Friday (and it should be a full group).
Thanks again for putting stuff like this up. This and Goblin Gully have been key components in my campaign (and my group, lvl 2-5, is going to be finding Erdea Manor sometime soon I hope) and my weekly game is much better as the result.
That’s awesome to hear. I’ve had fun with Goblin Gully on multiple occasions, and have run two games through the Delve.
I have started my role-playing group out in the Delve–I’m putting up the play reports on my new blog, Dragon at the Dinner Table.
I think it would be really cool if you would do a vertical map showing how the levels interconnect! Of all your maps, I really love it when you have multiple levels and a vertical “key” that shows how they fit together. With this one especially, that would be an interesting visual.
(Of course, if it was up to me, you’d have that for all your multi-level maps. Because you make it look damn good.)
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This is a very cool thing module you have written. Scadgrad (the GM for our group) has been running us through this in his Swords and Wizardry White Box city based game and we are having a blast with it. In his game, the its called the Sikorsky delve and he has changed a few bits to fit the setting (Skaven etc.) but I have to say its been a lot of fun. I just posted a recap of our last session where we went through part of it over at Tales from the Tower if you want to give it a read: http://iguanaslair.blogspot.com/2011/08/entrance-to-hollowheim-and-demise-of.html
Salut Dyson.
Je viens souvent ici.
Vraiment, ce nouveau concept de mini-méga-donjon est sublime. On a tous les avantages du méga-donjon (dédale) sans avoir les inconvénients (trop grand et lassitude des joueurs). Je suis complètement emballé par ton système et je prédis qu’il aura beaucoup de fans dans la communauté old school.
Bravo encore Dyson et continue à nous régaler de tes idées.
Je vais faire jouer ton module à mon groupe de 14 joueurs, je suis sûr qu’on va se marrer.
A bientôt.
J.C.Deltruel
Here is a mini-map reference that fits on 2 pages, or can be put on 1 ledger size page. it shows the connections between levels, and with the outside world. This is to go along with the awesomeness of the original!
http://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/maptacular-monday-dysons-delve-mini-map-reference/
For all Italian fans of Dyson’s works, I’ve just uploaded the Italian translation of this great dungeon on my gaming blog!
Check it out at
http://terretormentate.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/il-sotterraneo-di-dyson-dysons-delve-in-italiano/
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Dyson:
I started running my kids through the Delve on New Year’s Eve. Nearly had a TPK, too. If you’re interested, http://thedwarvenstronghold.blogspot.com/2012/01/game-report-new-years-tpk-almost.html
Thanks again for the great work!
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Just wanted to say that I LOVE this dungeon. From the design of the maps themselves to the layout and stocking – it’s brilliant.
I volunteered to run some old-school D&D for some friends and i wanted a classic dungeon that had all the hallmark elements of the old adventures. I thought about dropping them into B2 but i wanted something where the difficulty escalation was more obvious and your deeper = more dangerous fits the bill perfectly. Thanks so much for this!
Our game is happening next month – I’ll post a write-up afterwards!
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Dyson, thank you for this and all your other wonderful projects. I ran a group through DD Deluxe by slotting it into The Keep on the Borderlands and my own Greyhawk campaign homebrew. It was wildly successful.
Best regards,
L
Just took a three hour road trip with a group of middle schoolers. My son and I rolled up some characters the night before. We used the first level and gave the blank map to the players The backstory was they were in a tavern and met an old man whom they bought drinks for, he gave them the map saying he was too old for adventuring anymore. Worked out great as the players came back to him for advice. My son was the DM (with help from me as I drove) and did a great job. Thanks for all your work. He said he really liked being the one that knew everything and quickly caught on that he needed to be creative while running the campaign.
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