Caves of the Marvelous Gate
A pamphlet adventure for your choice of Dungeon Game
I finished up Caves of the Marvelous Gate last night (go grab the free PDF). I enjoyed
’s The Dungeon Shuffle process of creating the dungeon, and working with my wife to turn it into a nice little trifold pamphlet. I appreciate the spot art from . Like his art, my map and the text of the adventure are published under the CC-BY-4.0 license, so you’re free to re-use them.
If you’d like a copy of the map, with or without grid or hexes, let me know in the comments.
I also tried to use this as a chance to show some of the tools I’ve been pulling into my dungeon games from Carved from Brindlewood games.
You can see some Paint the Scene Questions on the screenshot. Asking these of you players as they interact with the room helps pull them into the scene, it prompts them to ask questions, and it gives you little story handholds you can incorporate.
The inside flap has a half-dozen Moments. These are like random encounters, but you choose when and how to use them. None of them have a mechanical weight to the game, but you can build from them as appropriate. For example, “Bats, disturbed by your light, stream over you in a cacophony of shrill voices and fluttering wings.” These bats could extinguish lights, cause damage as a swarm, hinder spell-casting, pass on disease, etc.
Are you using The Dungeon Shuffle? Are you finding tools in other systems? I’d love to hear what you’re learning, thinking and doing!
The kindness of all the creators (like you) who routinely share these little gems in Substack is astonishing. It pushes me to find a way to contribute, too. Thanks for sharing both your creativity and hard work!
I love the little open questions. This kind of dungeon would be great for a solo dungeon crawl.