When I first entered the hobby, I was greatly taken by the
cross-section illustration of "Stone Mountain" (aka
Skull Mountain) presented in the
D&D Basic Set rulebook edited by Dr J. Eric Holmes. Indeed, it's not unreasonable to say that, for over three decades, Stone Mountain has been my mind's eye vision of what a "megadungeon" looks like. For those of you somehow unfamiliar with this illustration, here it is:
There's a similar, though, in my opinion, less interesting, cross-section in Tom Moldvay's 1981
Basic Rulebook that looks like this:
A much better cross-section appeared in another Tom Moldvay effort,
The Lost City, and it looked like this:
What I like about these cross-sections is the way they provide
context for a dungeon by showing how all the various levels interrelate with not just one another but also the surrounding environment. I think that's key to presenting a compelling
tent pole dungeon for long-term campaign use.
Much as like these cross-sections, they do have one problem:
they're very stylized. That is, they're more art than map. That's fine for helping one to visualize the dungeon as a whole but it doesn't provide the nitty gritty details that are vital to ensuring that all the dungeon's pieces fit together properly. That's why I had
Tim Hartin put together several images where all the levels of Dwimmermount were piled on top of each other to show how they connected. Here's one that shows seven different levels (1, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 4, and 5):
Here's another that shows four different levels (5, 6A, 6B, and 7):
Doing this was
incredibly helpful, since it revealed a couple of minor errors in the cartography -- places where the connections between levels didn't quite work out as they were intended to. While easily fixed and relatively minor in nature, neither of us would have noticed the errors if we hadn't undertaken this exercise. More than that, I got a different perspective on ten dungeon levels than a cross-sectional illustration might provide. I still think cross-sections are useful tools for referees and players alike, but they do have limitations, no matter how attractive and inspirational they may be.
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