Gygaxian Democracy: 100+ more reasons the guild has a partial map

I posted my blog post, 10 Reasons Why the Guild has a Partial Map, on Prismatic Wisdom's Discord (as is my wont). Then I went to go get a hair cut. When I got back, the channel had indulged in spontaneous Gygaxian democracy and had written over 100 other reasons the guild's map is serviceable but incomplete. 

I catalog them here, dutifully. A few of them have been editorialized or expanded for the sake of usability. 

Many are jokes. Some are genius. Some are both.

11. (Mothership) You scanned the ship/station. Your scanner isn't great.

12. CIA Stargate project - map provided by men who stare at goats (partially redacted)

13. The dungeons sends dreams of its layout, as a way to bait more adventurers in.

14. DIVINE REVELATION

15. The cosmic weaver is an abundant pest, but every spider knows what the others of the brood have seen. Keep it in a jar and feed it a golden fly, and within five minutes it'll spin a web-map of the location.

16. Woke up from a carousing bender with a portion of a map tattooed on your arm, you're not sure who gave you the tattoo.

17. (Modern day) You got it from a dark web leak.

18. (Fantasy day) You got it from a wizard.

19. It follows the same template as a number of other local dungeons, all built by the same property developer

20. Super-LIDAR has given you an imperfect view of the layout. See also, reason 11. 

21. Map is on a famous oil painting. It's one of those huge canvases. Hard to read from the angle it's painted. (I like this one a lot.)

22. You have access to the scale model in the Well of Souls.

23. Agaricus Cartographica: Eat a handful of these dried mushrooms outside the dungeon, go on an astral trip and come back with vague spatial reasoning of the dungeon.

24. You and your siblings each inherited parts of a map. But you are not on speaking terms.

25. Your hireling knows the layout by memory or so they confidently think.

26. The spirits of adventurers who died here will give you a map for a nickel. 

27. Haunted by the ghost of a goblin you slayed who remembers the area.

28. Parts of the map only accessible under moonlight while other parts only under direct sunlight. 

29. Your smart-orb can render the map but the connection to the Source is patchy at best in the dungeon.

30. The dungeon is described in detailed in a multi part series of kitchen sink crime investigation books. The last one is not yet released. 

31. You just HAVE IT, okay!?!?!? Jesus Christ its a game you freaks. (This is the official His Majesty the Worm answer.)

32. The fey folk like to play music foretelling certain events. Write it down on sheet music to get the dungeon layout.

33. You traded your memories to a faerie for the map. As you go to each room, you recover the memories you lost, yet the map fades.

34. (Cyberpunk) You can get access to plans of the house as the owners have a DNG account but you need an Ultimate account to see all the details. 

35. (Cyberpunk) You have an NFT of the dungeon. 

36. (Modern) The dungeon has a Zillow listing.

37. You printed the map but the printer jammed halfway in the process. 

38. It was drawn with invisible ink on a paper someone threw in the tavern fire. 

39. Map is a children's story that changes depending in what region you are. 

40. The cartographer rushed the map and didn't have time to rub out all their pretty doodles.

41. The map was found in a storage unit auction, partially ruined.

42. CENSORED. 

43. The map is the board of a niche board game that takes ages to fold out.

44. (Star Wars) The map is from the Legends canon.

45. A portion of the map is inscribed within the skull of any who die within the dungeon; the cartographer's guild contains a huge ossuary (I love this one). 

46. You got this dungeon tile board game. The dungeon manifests as you play it.

47. Got hungry, ate half. 

48. The map is inscribed upon the lunar surface. Details are speculated to be on the dark side. 

49. The map is for a different dungeon but it has to be rotated around.

50. Your father put secrets to defeat the dungeon in his old fiction novels. Unfortunately he was a shit writer. (See also, 30.)

51. Your map is from the future of a not yet build section of the dungeon. 

52. No map is ever complete. All maps are partial as the universe expands faster than cartographers can keep up. 

53. Male pattern baldness in this region manifests as a dungeon map.

54. The birds migrate in a pattern that lines up with the walls of the dungeon.

55. The map is a talking artifact a lá Dora the Explora but recently suffered a stroke leading to it being unable to render the left side of its display. 

56. The map manifested in your grits this morning, but you were really hungry. 

57. The dungeon lies partly in a DMZ and google doesn't display it. 

58. Part of the landmass depicted on the map resembled, by coincidence, the outline of a sensuous nude figure, and the map was censored by [if fantasy: religious zealots] [if sci fi: payment processor companies]. 

59. A slot machine shows the map but you have to keep hitting those three specific symbols.

60. It replaced a few pages in your POD book. 

61. You found half of it in the basement, and you don't wanna go back there. 

62. You got a fully indexed map of the dungeon. Each part is just written in a different language. ("Le Grille? What the hell is Le Grille?")

63. You were halfway through eating a pizza before you realized that the toppings were placed in such a way as to perfectly depict the NYC subway system. 

64. The proper map is subject to copyright notice so the cartographer had to change enough to be legally sufficiently different.

65. The map is always the cheapest thing in the dungeon vending machine.

66. Someone drew the map on your face while you slept. You better not start sweating. 

67. The map is very nearly complete, it is just missing a “you are here” sticker and is therefore unusable to you, a doofus. 

68. The cartographer was tired, they don't want to finish it, it's so much effort. Do you even need the rest?

69. Nice.

70. It’s a pointcrawl map of a hexcrawl region. It covers the most important stuff and the routes you’ll probably take but [Yochai has censored the rest of this message]. 

71. The map is of the last patch, they've changed the mob placement since then. 

72. Completing the tantra unlocks a hidden chapter with the dungeon map outline. Completing that would get you the details, but we're just not there yet.

73. It's a screenshot of a Questing Beast video, but his hands are blocking a portion of the map. 

74. When you approach the dungeon, a third eye grows on a random member of the party. If they close their eyes and open the one on their forehead they see a map of the dungeon.

75. The map of a mountainous region that includes no marking indicating elevation and is thus of only partial usefulness. 

76. The dungeon map is indexed for a different tabletop roleplaying game.

77. The map likes being touched, to a degree that's kind of uncomfortable.

78. When you arrive at the X marked on the treasure map, you realize the real treasure was the friends you made along the way, and yet said friends are not demarcated on your map. 

79. The map is in hexes??? Who the fuck puts a dungeon in hexes????

80. The map is covered in glue and YOUR hands are now stuck to it and they're in the way. 

81. The map is half remembered from a dollhouse you had as a child. 

82. The map saved successfully vs breath and is only halfway burned. 

83. The map was supposed to be printed on a 22” x 34” sheet of paper but you printed it on printer paper, rendering the notation that “1 inch equals 10 feet” hard to use. 

84. The map is a small furry creature and it wants to go for a walk.

85. There is no dungeon! 

86. I was copying it from the one at your mum's house but your dad came home. 

87. Someone wrote a d100 list on it, obscuring several landmarks. 

88. Anytime you take a look at the map everything fades to black and you awake as a prisoner on the back of a cart on the way to your execution site.

89. You pirated the map but don't have the CD key. 

90. The map looks realistic but was hallucinated by AI. 

91. The map draws itself but the magical imp that does so hates you. 

92. In the prime universe, where the resolution mechanics are more favorable to the players, this dungeon has already been explored. Your benevolent and competent doubles are happy to slide you their copy, multiversal variance unaccounted for.

93. Play Pathfinder instead. 

94. The map is painted on your own back and you can't... quite... see it. 

95. The map is exactly the same size as the dungeon. 

96. (Witcher 2) The map is tattooed on your ass and no one wants to look at it. 

97. It's a map generator that just keeps regenerating and doesn't save it's state. 

98. The map was painted on someone but it's been like 10 years and the painter didn't account for skin stretch/sag/wrinkling.

99. Generating the map is your Stand ability. 500 Miles go!

100. It's a perfectly functional map.

101. The map just keeps fucking going...

102. The map is much smaller than the dungeon! You couldn't fit all that detail in if you tried! (See also 95.)

103. It's written in metal band logo font. 

104. The map is WAY larger than the dungeon. Good thing it’s a small dungeon, but even so, yikes. (See also 95.)

105. This map is one of arbitrarily many valid outputs of the known map-generating function that most closely approximates the one used to design this dungeon.

106. The map is a metaphor for man's inability to comprehend his mortality. 

107. You used a spell to generate the map, but didn't have basilisk blood on hand and substituted snake blood. (Good one!)

108. The map is a connect the dots but the dots haven’t been connected. 

109. Fuck you, Josh, I stole your dungeon map. 

110. Your hair clippings at your haircut have fallen into the perfect shape of a map, but the barber is starting to sweep up. 

111. A dungeon haiku? / Can't fit a lot into there. / Less information.

10 Reasons Why the Guild has a Partial Map

His Majesty the Worm advocates for the GM to give the players a copy of the dungeon map. In my opinion, this is all positives and practically no negatives. 

But of all my good and time-tested advice, I've seen gamers balk at this frequently. "Why would the adventurers have a map and not know what's in it? How could the players possibly have a map and the dungeon not be conquered?"

As much as I beg on bended knee "Don't knock it till you try it," I wanted to give you some options for the flavor behind why the players start with a (mostly) complete map of the Underworld.

1. Legacy documentation

The map was made by the guild, but the original guild founders are no longer members. They died or retired, and the guild continues like a Ship of Theseus or an old band. The current members still have the legacy map, but don't have any descriptions of what each room contains (just a stale Jira ticket marked "Next sprint" from the original cartographer). And certainly, the original guild members didn't find every secret door or trap.

2. Watercooler talk

The map doesn't belong to any single adventuring guild, but is part of the collective learnings of each guild in the City. At the taverns, they swap stories about new sections uncovered, new passages that have recently opened, and everybody's maps are updated at the speed of rumor. A table in the back corner of the Tavern of Lost Loves has a map scratched into the wood, and serves as the single source of truth for each guild to update their maps.

3. Spell

There's a relatively simple spell called "Magic Map" that conjures a map of any building or underground level the sorcerer is currently in. Practically speaking, any sorcerer could get the reagent and cast it as they travel. But, luckily, this work has already been done for them for all discovered dungeon levels. It's easier to just trade the a few coins to get pre-conjured maps before descending.

4. Cartographer's guild

The hard work of mapping the Underworld is done primarily by the cartographer's guild. Buying their latest updates is just part of upkeep.

(Any of the other mapping technologies in this list might be employed by the cartographer's guild.)

5. Psychic snails

It's well known that psychic snails will chew patterns in moss resembling crude maps of their immediate environs. Guilds make maps using these trails.

6. Bat lore

The bats of the Underworld are acquainted with the nooks and crannies of each level, mapping them methodically using their sonar. They're willing to trade these impressions to (demi)humans in exchange for certain narcotic sounds, for meteoric iron, and for dream honey.

7. Ancient history

The Underworld is newly come to this iteration of the City, but it is by no means new. Each layer of the Underworld is a stolen civilization: a previous City pulled underground by His Majesty the Worm. There exists reliable records of these ancient Cities. Go to the library and read these maps. You can see their basic outlines reflected in the labyrinths below. 

8. Mall maps

The Underworld provides you with a map of itself, like a shopping mall does. "You are here" it reads, on certain obelisks and plinths throughout the Underworld. 

9. Daemonic revelations

The Tower Gnostic conjures and tasks genii (spirits of a place) with mapping the mausoleums, grottoes, and fountains that they call home. Such work is subsidized by the City. The maps are distributed to guilds upon the signing of their guild charter; it's the reason they pay taxes.

10. Earth elemental haruspexy

Earth elementals look like charming old men made of stone. However, the shape of its intestines are reflective of the caverns they call home. Take an earth elemental into the mouth of a cave and kill it. Disembowel it and study the pattern of its entrails. Make a map from the results.

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And if all of the above is unsatisfactory, maybe you'll get a kick out of making a scratch-off map.

Design thoughts sidebar

In the early iterations of Worm, I used the "Spell" explanation above. But there were problems with this: when the players went into a new section of the dungeon, preparing the "Magic Map" spell was a non-choice--they always did it. And once they had the map of that level, it was never a choice to prepare--they never did it. Making non-choices felt like bad game design. 

Then I realized: it didn't really matter why the players had a map, just that it was a standard operating procedure. Like the maps the characters had in Dungeon Meshi, never really explained and never really questioned. So we just said "You have a map." And it worked! Huge quality of life improvement.

Information Architecture in Non-RPG Books

Technical writing is a profession that is literally hundreds of years old at this point. Interestingly, the essential techniques and fundamental best practices haven't changed very much over the years, even as we have transitioned into digital-first media. 

Good information architecture tells the reader:

• Where they are
• What they'll learn here
• Where to go next if they want X, Y, and Z

I am a technical writer as my day job. On my weekends, I write RPG nonsense. 

This post is about good technical writing and information architecture that I draw on to write RPGs from sources that aren't games at all.

Show maps, list destinations

A table of contents is different from an index. When a person first opens a book, they use the table of contents as the "map" of the book: the different regions, short descriptions of what they might find there, the relative spacing of these regions within the text. They learn the lay of the land.

If you're looking for dessert recipes, you can see they start on page 120, and last about 10 pages. You understand that the last few pages of the book are dedicated to this space. 

Alison Roman, Nothing Fancy, 2019

Once you've flipped through the book once, you have a different understanding of the text. Now that you're familiar with the space, you might be looking for a specific location. Instead of looking for "desserts," you might be looking for the recipe of a trifle. 

An index is an easy way to find specific locations on the map. Whereas you can intuit desserts > trifle, the index places it directly under T, with a page reference. 

Sometimes, it makes sense to put an index in the front. Medicare & You: The Official U.S. Government Medicare Handbook is a guide to a complicated subject where users probably are coming to the text with specific questions. By putting the index in the front of the book, it serves its users well by making every topic easily accessible.

Medicare & You 2024

Provide reference materials first

Cookbooks understand that recipes (how-to guide) are different from learning how to cook (tutorials). Both are different from a glossary of terms (reference). 

Cookbooks tend to follow the successful pattern of putting tutorials and references in the front of the book. As readers explore the book space for the first time, they note their presence and realize they can come back to them as needed. 

For example, Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen begins with an explanation of the terms used in Cajun cooking (étouffée, courtbouillon, etc.) and then procedures for cooking techniques that are referenced in the recipes later in the book (how to create a roux). When a recipe says to create a roux, those instructions are not repeated later. The reader knows they can flip back to the initial reference materials for these procedures.

Paul Prudhomme, Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, 1984

Cross your references

You cannot control the way that a user moves through a book. They might have a specific question and use the table of contents or index to find it. They might just flip through it, hoping to find a likely-looking space to begin reading. Because of this, you must cross-reference the information throughout the book, without an expectation that a reader has read any section before or after that page.

Medicare & You uses bold, blue text when they have defined the term in the glossary at the beginning of the book. Whenever there is information on another page that is important to understand the topic being discussed, a bold page reference is provided.  

Speak the user's language

Medicare & You is a masterclass in a text that knows its audience. Its large font size is supportive of a population with likely accessibility needs. It aggregates new information into a "What's new & important" section, giving a high level view for people already used to the system before going deeper.

Medicare & You 2024

Information hierarchy

Alison Roman, Nothing Fancy, 2019

Information hierarchy is a way for the reader to make sense with their eyes (or assistive devices) of what should be read first, second, third. What is most important on the page. 

Tools like a page title (H1), explanatory text above the how-to guide, a sidebar for reference material, notes, page numbers, and a running footer help orient the user on every page. The reader can easily find the information they need when they need it because each section always has the same type of information in that space. 

In digital spaces, having clear information hierarchy with header levels is especially important, as assistive devices will use the header level (H1 -> H2 -> H3, etc.) to determine what to present to the user first. Don't skip header levels for aesthetic purposes. 

Semantically meaningful headers

Medicare & You 2024

It's important to orient readers to the content of the page. In Medicare & You, headers are either imperative or interrogative. 

• Imperative headers are active: Get help. Sign up. Learn about.
• Interrogative headers are questions that users want to know. Will I have to sign up? If I didn't get B, can I get C?

These headers help users understand the content of each page. Even if they don't need the answers to these questions yet, as they move through the text, they'll understand what exists and what doesn't. 

And above all, each section is centered on the user's experience. What they need to know. Compare the page above to a section called: "Services within scope of program." That section might contain the same basic information, but by making the header about the user (and not about the program, abstractly), the reader can better understand why they would read that section.

While I have you

Please vote for HIS MAJESTY THE WORM #1 for Best Rules and Best Game. Voting ends on July 20th!

Shrines of the Lower Ossuary - New Dungeon for His Majesty the Worm

Click the pic to get the dungeon!

Below the surface of the City is the Lower Ossuary—an underground temple that houses crypts and shrines to the four cardinal virtues: Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, and Wisdom. The temple is currently befouled as the City-dwellers have routed a sewer through it. 

If the adventurers can cleanse the four shrines, the encroaching Underworld might be driven back. However, something dwells at the center of the Lower Ossuary. Something wicked. Something that can’t stop laughing.

This dungeon is designed for His Majesty the Worm! It contains:

• A GM map and a player-facing map 
• A 30-room dungeon
• A complete Meatgrinder for the dungeon
• An alien-clown dungeon lord, the Clown Queen
• A procedure for making a hub, stocked with vendors and merchants, if the players successfully cleanse the evil

This dungeon was initially drafted as part of the (free) Designing Dungeons Course. Check it out if you're interested in making your own dungeons to connect to this one!

Content Warning: clowns, insects, rodents

Currently Itchfunding

This product is currently in its alpha state. It is being Itchfunded: all purchases help fund revisions and improvements. By purchasing it today while inexpensive, you are entitled to all future updates for free. 

Thank you for the ENNIES nomination!

This dungeon is temporarily pay-what-you-will as a way to thank Wormheads for their support during the ENNIES. It will become a paid title on July 21st.

Please vote for HIS MAJESTY THE WORM #1 for Best Rules and Best Game.

ENNIES Friends of the Worm

As you might know, ENNIES voting is currently ongoing. HIS MAJESTY THE WORM is up for both BEST GAME and BEST RULES.

In addition to voting for the Worm (please?), I wanted to highlight a few other projects that I really thought were cool by creators I really thought were interesting. Here's the Worm's Recommendations for Other Games to Endorse and Vote For (WRfOGtEaVF). 

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So, I had this blog post pre-typed up in preparation for the ENNIES voting window, and along comes Prismatic Wasteland who did a better job than me at talking about why you should vote for his friends and cohorts. So I endorse the Prismatic Wasteland Recommendations for Other Games to Endorse and Vote For as well 

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Best Adventure - Long Form

The Shrike, Silverarm Press, Leo Hunt

Best Adventure - Short Form

The Dream Shrine, Brad Kerr and Skullfungus

Best Art, Interior & Best Layout and Design

Mythic Bastionland, Alec Sorensen, Chris McDowall

(Mythic Bastionland is up for a few categories, and it's a no brainer in each one. Alec did some work for Worm too, he's a fantastic artist, and having him as a single consistent artist with illustrations on every page just makes Bastionland beautiful.)

Best Family Game / Product

Dungeon Cats, Tiger Wizard (Tiger Wizard rules)

Best Free Game / Product

TEETH: False Kingdom, Jim Rossignol, Marsh Davies

Best Cartography / Best Monster

Wonderland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting, Andrew Kolb

Best Production Values

Mothership: Deluxe Set, Tuesday Knight Games

Best Online Content

Playful Void, Idle Cartulary

Prismatic Wasteland Blog, Prismatic Wasteland

(I can't just have one pick here because I both get so much out of both Nova and Warren's blogs. Unfortunately, they're pitted against each other in this category.)

Best RPG Related Product

Prismatic Wisdom, WF Smith

Product of the Year

Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, Possum Creek Games

(Zeeb's is up for a few categories, honestly, but I'm giving it product of the year spot because I think it is such a special game.)

Obviously, let your heart guide you here. I haven't played or read all of the games that were nominated. But the picks above are games I have read and really enjoyed!

Voting runs from July 11th to July 20th. 

Vote here!

(And don't forget: Select #1 For His Majesty the Worm for Best Rules and Best Game!)

ENNIE nomination thank you!

I am flabbergasted (my ghast is flabbered) to have His Majesty the Worm nominated for a 2025 ENNIE award for both Best Rules and Best Game.

I can truly say that just being nominated is an honor. I want to say "Thank you" to everyone who bought the game, talked about the game online, wrote a review, and especially played the game. It means a lot. Thanks so much!

The ENNIES are a fan choice award, so whether or not the Worm goes on to win is based on voting. If you've gotten a kick out of the Worm or its companion project, the Designing Dungeons Course, would you give it a vote? 

Click the image to vote!

Voting runs from July 11th to July 20th. 

The Domesday Book: Josh reads the little brown books

The early history of D&D is pretty interesting. If you haven't yet, listen to When We Were Wizards. The dramas that play out in the "hobby with friends -> business -> multimillion dollar industry" are almost mythological in their parallelisms and ironic twists.

As I've been retreading some of this history reading Jon Peterson's Game Wizards, I grew interested in delving into the actual text of original D&D: the little brown books that came in the white box. 

Behold! The Domesday Book!

Click to read!

As a way to engage with the text, I began porting the text of OD&D into the Explorer's Template. In the margins, I scrawled my reactions to the text: things I wanted to highlight, things I think are weird, implications of certain passages, thoughts on the implied setting of the world.

The title of this project is taken from the newsletter of the Castle & Crusade Society, a medieval wargaming club that both Arneson and Gygax were members of.

This project is unfinished. I've only worked on 21 pages here of booklet 1: Men & Magic. As always, I couldn't do it if I didn't chunk the work. (But maybe I'll never finish it, who knows! Just following my passions.)