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.
