What does your greatest dungeon map look like?
What does your greatest dungeon map look like? Marc Majcher/CC BY-SA 2.0

You may not be surprised to learn that many of us here at Atlas Obscura enjoy the occasional game of Dungeons & Dragons. A crucial element of any well-crafted D&D adventure are the homemade maps that players and dungeon masters create to help them navigate their fantastic worlds. Not unlike the maps found in many fantasy novels, DIY D&D maps act as blueprints to imaginary spaces. Usually, once a campaign is complete, these maps get tossed out or put up on a shelf somewhere, but it doesn’t have to be this way! We want to help share your dungeon maps with the world.

My own favorite dungeon maps tend to have a few key features in common. They almost always have multiple branching paths that allow adventurers to choose their own doom. There’s also usually a variety of challenges and surprises, whether it’s a room full of hidden acid traps, an irresistible piece of totally cursed treasure, or some weird demons that just shouldn’t be found on this plane of existence. And finally, there’s plenty of fantastical proper names, to give the whole map a sense of import and specificity—names like, “Tomb of the Broken Gods,” “Iceclaw’s Seat,” or “The Ooze Fields.” These are just some of my own examples, but whatever your D&D map looks like, we want to see it!

Whether you’ve diagrammed it out on graph paper, or jotted it down freehand; whether it’s a network of underground stone passages or a guide to the only path through a haunted swampland; whether it has a detailed key and spot illustrations or it’s just a bunch of lines, we want to see your original D&D adventure maps. If you’ve ever drawn a dungeon map in the past, send us a picture, and if you haven’t, now’s the time to dream one up. Use your imagination, be detailed, and have fun!

Fill out the form below to tell us a little about your map, and then email a picture of the map to eric@atlasobscura.com, with the subject line, “Greatest Adventure Maps.” We’ll share some of our favorites in an upcoming article. Bring to life some of that grand adventure in your head, and show us the way through!

If you have a DnD map of your own to share, head over to our community forums and tell us about it!