Unfrozen Caveman Dice-Chucker: DMG Sample Dungeon

     

     I have a fondness for Sample Dungeons. Not just the Zenopus dungeon - all of them from various TSR products. So I enjoyed reading Timrod's new series at Unfrozen Caveman Dice-Chucker delving into the 1E AD&D DMG Sample Dungeon (by Gary Gygax). There are two entries so far:

     Part 1: Background

     Part 2: Down the Stairs

    As an aside, a redrawn version of the map for this dungeon appeared again as a sample dungeon in the 3.0E DMG, and then a finished 3.0E version of this dungeon by Jonathan Tweet appeared in Dungeon #84 (2001) under the title Dungeon of the Fire Opal (still available from Paizo as a pdf).

     By the way, the illustration in Timrod's blog banner is from the early versions of the Blue Book. It's by DCSIII and shows a party of three facing off against a purple worm. It was originally found below the Purple Worm monster entry but was deleted in the 2nd Edition (Nov 78) when the Monster List entries were reformatted. Not surprising as Timrod is yet another blogger who started with the Blue Book. See his 2010 post, Primordial D&D, discussing this in the wake of the passing of Holmes. 

Edit: Here's the Dragonsfoot version of the DMG Sample Dungeon. It's called The Monastery of the Order of the Crimson Monks, and is for levels 5-9:

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/php4/archive.php?sectioninit=FE&fileid=309&watchfile=0