History of the One Page Dungeon

One page dungeons existed long before they became a formal technique for laying out simple dungeons. One page dungeons may be as old as Role-Playing Games (RPGs) themselves. Countless game masters (GMs) scratched out one page adventure maps in pencil making notes of their ideas in the margins as early as the 1970s or even the 1960s.

One page dungeons as a formal concept finds its origins in a post from July 11, 2007. It started with the simple question, "How do you go about designing your MegaDungeon?"

The question appeared on the Proboards.com "odd74" OD&D Discussion board. The question spawned from the problem that when you create a massive Moria-sized dungeon that Table Top Role Playing Game (TTRPG) players can spend years exploring, documenting the dungeon becomes a nightmare that threatens to collapse in on itself from the tomes of game master notes needed for such a huge project.

The posters to the thread discussed different approaches to documenting mega-dungeons. The formal concept of the "one-page level" emerged. A poster going by "Sham aka Dave" wrote the following on December 21, 2008.

"The notion of a dungeon made up entirely of one-page levels is simply fabulous. Twenty or so maps, as you said with a 30x30 square map, and the key hand-written on the same sheet, could make one helluva megadungeon, with limitless creative space provided.

"I'd take my megalist of single phrase ideas for the rooms, and use that. If I forgot exactly how a particular room was supposed to work, I'd wing it and keep it fun and interesting. With the time off next week, maybe I can test this method out on a six-map dungeon and see if I like the results."

Within days, "Sham AKA Dave" posted on Sham's Grog & Blog under the link of "One Page Dungeons Idea" the article "The Dismal Depths". The Dismal Depths covered the concept of creating massive dungeons with localized maps and documentation on one page. Sham shows the process of creating a one page dungeon by going through the steps of creating one in the blog post. Each area or level of a dungeon gets its entire description and map condensed down to a single page for quick reference during gaming sessions.

From Sham's blog, "Now, in hindsight I don't think Dwayanu meant for his design process to result in anything more than a handy key on the map, but his words helped me form the approach for The Dismal Depths, a megadungeon with dungeon level maps, tables and room descriptions entirely on a single page.

"It sounded like a brilliant idea. We've all seen plenty of similar maps online or in print, but I hope to offer a megadungeon that requires no more than a few handwritten notes on the part of the referee to dive in and enjoy a full-blown dungeon crawl campaign."

He concluded the post, ... "With just simple text, a referee could invent details on the fly, and still have the basic text for future use in order to jog his memory on how he handled the room in the past."

A couple of days after Sham's blog post, ChicagoWiz's RPG Blog posted comments about Sham's blog post, and added the free release of "One Page Dungeon Level Templates" in Word and OpenOffice formats. He also released his own one page dungeon as an example.

By July 1, 2009, the first One Page Dungeon contest had completed with the following comments by Sham.

"As most are aware at this point, the highly successful One Page Dungeon Contest (OPDC) Winners have been announced. I'd first like to thank Chatty DM and Chgowiz who together took on the bulk of the effort here; announcing the contest, assembling a staggering array of prizes, accepting entries, and remaining flexible during the entire process. They also served as judges, and brought in myself and a few other innocent bystanders to help in that department, namely Alex Schroeder, Amityville Mike, and Dave the Game, for a total of one half dozen judges charged with reading and evauluating all 112 entries, and coming up with winners."