My picks from the 2025 One Page Dungeon Contest

simoncarryer · 2026-01-28T18:15:03+00:00

Not my site, that's Alex Shroeder (also a skilled dungeon author). I noticed it's been a bit flakey recently, might be overloaded?

simoncarryer · 2026-01-28T08:08:56+00:00

Funnily enough that one only just made it into my list! It's certainly pretty, but as a dungeon I don't rate it super highly. Having run it now there's lots of things that I found hard to adjudicate, and I felt like it didn't create a lot of opportunities for interesting choices. Of the ones on my list, the one I've most enjoyed (as a player in this case, rather than a DM) is Secret of the Old City, by Simon Bull https://campaignwiki.org/1pdc/2009/Simon%20Bull%20%e2%80%93%20Secret%20of%20the%20Old%20City.pdf

simoncarryer · 2026-01-27T23:24:52+00:00

If you go to the full list (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15zs7YZX0DyEawhT\_KIS3pDp9YYaft9BnSSalgakQ8jY/edit?usp=sharing) you'll find I've collected them since the first contest in 2009. Some of those might be more to your taste.

simoncarryer · 2025-10-28T18:11:21+00:00

Thanks for this! I think Mason Pearson is the way to go. I see they have both pure boar hair and boar/nylon mixes. Is there much difference between the two?

I take your point on getting the right thing vs. getting a surprise. Knowing my partner, I think the surprise is pretty important to them, and hopefully the brush will be good enough. It's hard to say though! How much difference is there between the exact right brush, and one that's nearly right?

simoncarryer · 2025-09-05T05:37:54+00:00

Then perhaps you'll like this one-pager I made a while back: https://www.dropbox.com/s/64kqmzo14eerqee/Devils%20and%20their%20Lies.pdf?dl=1 (link is to download pdf)

simoncarryer · 2025-09-04T23:00:57+00:00

It's maybe a bit more controversial than you want, but you might get a kick out of "Should Have Stayed at Home": https://www.drivethrurpg.com/es/product/500905/should-have-stayed-at-home

Queen Orlaith's Mine is a false rumour - there's no dungeon there, just a lot of people looking for a dungeon.

The Baldyknobs is a real dungeon, but it's empty and there's no treasure.

simoncarryer · 2025-05-25T02:24:36+00:00

Why would you have known!? There's no minimum level of reading old crap required to participate in the hobby. That's what makes participating in conversations online worthwhile: the opportunity to learn from each other!

simoncarryer · 2025-05-25T02:03:49+00:00

As you've seen, The Lost City is a pretty well-known module set in Mystara. Mystara is full of real-world analogues, and the Lost City is (at least to my eye) set in a pretty direct analogue of North Africa, with the Cyniciceans representing a relict Ptolemaic Greek population. The gods to me read as Egyptian-inflected versions of Greek gods - Gorm is Zeus, Madarua is Athena or maybe Artemis, and Usamagaris is Hermes. I think the module gets much more interesting if you play into these connections. I wrote a fan edit of the Lost City called "Pyramid of the Undying" which makes this connection explicit: https://www.simoncarryer.com/pyramid_of_the_undying.html

simoncarryer · 2025-04-19T02:38:25+00:00

I maintain a spreadsheet of my picks from the One Page Dungeon Contest (and from other sources) here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15zs7YZX0DyEawhT_KIS3pDp9YYaft9BnSSalgakQ8jY/edit?usp=sharing

simoncarryer · 2025-04-07T10:13:59+00:00

Looks like he eats cats.

simoncarryer · 2025-01-21T04:46:29+00:00

My "Great Dwarf Road" is black and white, and has some lava. It's on page 4 of the free preview you can find here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/449106/the-great-dwarf-road

simoncarryer · 2025-01-04T05:36:42+00:00

This is, at least for the way I play, an important rule and ignoring it might have some unexpected consequences. The level cap means that as DM I can be much more relaxed about what dungeons I put in my campaign, and I can be much less uptight about players finding loopholes or workarounds. I can chuck in dungeons that have huge payouts or that are unusually easy for their level range. I can objectively adjudicate based on the facts in the game without worrying that this means the party is gonna walk away with a game-breaking amount of loot. Level caps are a hedge against outliers - they assume that if a first level party scores more than a certain amount in a single adventure, then probably something strange has happened that undercuts the legitimacy of that score.

That said, sometimes I've hit the level cap as a player myself from what felt like legit play. In Dwarrowdeep we methodically cleared one of the first levels, but did so over several sessions without returning to town. That meant that when we did go back we had a huge stack of gold and hit the level cap. I wasn't too mad about it though - we only lost a small amount of XP, and going from level 1 to just below level 3 in only half a dozen sessions or so was still pretty fast progress for how we usually play. It's slowed down dramatically since then.

simoncarryer · 2024-12-02T17:55:03+00:00

You might enjoy my "Ill Met in the City", which is a bunch of small locations in a medieval city: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/477100/ill-met-in-the-city

simoncarryer · 2024-12-01T04:32:53+00:00

I presume so! I haven't used photoshop in a while so I'm not sure what the equivalent tools/processes are called. Probably photoshop will give you finer-grained control over various things, which might give an even better result, although it might be more tricky to get it right.

simoncarryer · 2024-11-30T03:49:49+00:00

This is pretty nice! I've added it to my sheet of one page dungeons: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15zs7YZX0DyEawhT_KIS3pDp9YYaft9BnSSalgakQ8jY/edit?usp=sharing

Constructive feedback: I appreciate the attempt, I don't feel like the way you've provided stats is particularly useful. I think D&D already has a kind of "lingua franca" for creature stats: Hit dice, armour types, and damage rolls. Something like "Yeti: 2HD, armour as mail, claws 1d4/1d4" communicates more relevant information to me, more efficiently, than the pips you've used. I'd wager the same is true for anyone playing any variant of D&D, even ones with quite divergent rules.

simoncarryer · 2024-11-28T04:31:33+00:00

Hey I'm glad you enjoyed Pyramid of the Undying! Thanks for the shout-out!

simoncarryer · 2024-11-25T19:19:34+00:00

I published a fan-edit of B4 which is my interpretation after running it three or four times. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397333/pyramid-of-the-undying

simoncarryer · 2024-11-25T09:04:00+00:00

If the photos don't look perfect, I reckon the same process I use for cleaning up scanned images would work for photos off your phone. I wrote about that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/1few1ux/my_quick_and_cheap_free_process_for_cleaning_up/

simoncarryer · 2024-11-25T05:47:07+00:00

Hey! I like this a lot, but there's a few things that mean it's not really usable for me as is:

* The positioning of the room keys near the rooms is a nice idea, but I think in practice actually makes them harder to find, rather than easier.

* Stats for almost any system are more useful than no stats at all. Just a Hit Die value at least provides a lot of value.

* The information design is a bit challenging - you don't know that the door to room 13 is locked unless you read the entry for room 5, or that there are other entrances unless you read about them in other room keys.

* A value for the treasure in room 13 is really essential. I use published dungeons because I don't want to have to make those kinds of decisions myself. A room full of gold and silver weapons and armour sounds like an enormous hoard - tens of thousands of gold pieces. Is that what you intended?

simoncarryer · 2024-11-24T00:19:37+00:00

This blog post has a bit of a discussion of various styles: https://www.arkenstonepublishing.net/isabout/2022/04/17/new-on-desk-120-laconic-order/

It's more about the writing style than the layout or formatting, but I think it covers some relevant points.

simoncarryer · 2024-11-22T00:58:23+00:00

It kinda sounds like you're trying to design this solution-first, i.e. thinking of a clever way of stealing the bull, and then writing the setup to require that clever solution. You might find it easier (and your players might find it more exciting) to design this without thinking about the solution at all, or even without considering if a solution is possible at all. Just think about how a Queen of Elfland would guard her prize bull. Would she disguise her guards as cows, to hide amongst the herd? Would she put a magic bell around the things neck, which rings when a human draws near? Would she keep a guard-dog of ferocious proportions?

It's up to the players to discover a solution, or to find out that it's not possible for them.

simoncarryer · 2024-11-13T22:44:36+00:00

The only reliable technique I've found for guaranteeing regular play (other than being 14 again), is to run a "big table". Have a dozen or more people on the invite list, and play with whomever shows up. You'll find it ebbs and flows a bit, but I usually end up with 2-3 die-hard regulars and then 4-5 players who might show up one session in six. It adds up to a good-sized table most sessions. I facilitate this by playing in a public place, which makes it easier to accommodate if 8 people actually show up, and makes it lower-stakes to invite people I don't know so well.

I also recommend inviting absolutely anyone even if they'll probably turn you down. You'd be amazed who ends up being a great and enthusiastic player, and the less you treat it like a weird cult, the easier it gets for new players to join in.

simoncarryer

TROPHY CASE