As anyone that’s ever run a tabletop role-playing game like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder or anything like those two can attest, making maps can be a pain. That’s not always the case, and some games are better than others, but the thought of, “I need to make the entire world up from scratch,” can be a bit overwhelming. Thankfully, there are any number of online tools out there to help with that creative process, but one relatively new tool — One Page Dungeon — is particularly handy to keep around.
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One Page Dungeon, made by Oleg Dolya, does exactly what it sounds like: it makes one-page dungeons based on a traditional square grid. Because of how fundamental these are, nothing is specific to any tabletop game and can be used in whatever. These are procedurally generated, and come in a variety of different permutations. In addition to simply creating a dungeon map, the tool also helpfully assigns from generated flavor text to the whole thing. In one instance, my procedurally generated dungeons was referred to as “Den of the Zombie Emperor,” and some flavor text directly below the name of the area indicated that it had been thought lost until having recently been rediscovered by pirates.
In addition to simply creating flavor text for the overall dungeon, One Page Dungeon also generates specific little plot hooks for certain rooms. For example, my Den of the Zombie Emperor included a room with the remains of human killed by cultists with an arrow-shaped key in their hand as well as a room with a rapier hidden in a crack of the wall. You can toggle shading, different kinds of grids, hide secret rooms, and more. For being a web tool to make one-page dungeons, it’s fairly expansive, all things considered.
What do you think of One Page Dungeon? Do you see yourself using it in your own games? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!
One Page Dungeon is available over at itch.io for free. You can check out all of our previous coverage of tabletop gaming right here.
