Geomorphs & Map Bitz

TSR introduced Dungeon Geomorphs when I was a kid. They were parts of maps that could be interchangeably assembled to make dungeons. Neat concept, would have made for a fast map.

When I was running D&D, mapping a dungeon was a big part of the game. But, sitting there trying to tell someone else what to draw on a bit of graph paper was time consuming and annoying.

I couldn't afford the printed Geomorphs. By accident, I discovered that a certain pad of purple graph paper I owned reacted interestingly with Crayola markers: the purple grid repelled the black marker. Thus, I could draw a dungeon on the graph paper and the purple grid still stood out.

I loved this! I began making dungeon rooms, cut them out and reassembled them into new and different dungeons. I pinned the individual rooms to a piece of cardboard. Thus, the players got to see the dungeon unveiled room by room. It worked very well and only cost me a few dollars.


A few years back, I decided to do a web site - silly me, I keep thinking there's a way to make money on the internet! Anyway, I thought it would be cool to recreate my Geomorphs. I thought I'd publish a few geomorphs a week, maybe a few maps, give DMs a reason to come back every week. Where I fell apart was trying to recreate the geomorphs I made as a kid. I wanted my "clients" to be able to take what I published and easily manipulate them for their own use. I started off making with Photoshop. It was a bad idea - how many people own Photoshop?


The key was to use a simpler program ... and thus I had to lose some features and use a simpler file format. Files in .BMP and .GIF format are about as simple as it gets for the average user. Every PC out there has software that can use those file formats: Microsoft Paint. Most Macs could find something that would work - I figured I'd link to some freeware and shareware from the site.

I worked up the attached pictures. Simple, squared off rooms, the essential bits of a dungeon. I figured I'd keep building with them, creating new and more complex ones. I never did.


Why not? The idea was, unusual for me, too simple. The color scheme worked great when making square rooms, fell right apart when doing anything beyond a square. Making simple caverns shows this off immediately. I experimented with making the grid a third color and I wasn't happy with the results. I also began finding freeware mapping tools that did a better job. The idea seemed to die in my hands, as hundreds have done before.

Attached is a sample of the rooms, a black background just to make it easy for you and a full map. I used the map in the post-Gygax game I ran last year. Feel free to use anything here in your own games.