Colossal Cave Adventure Module Template

The following map and location template are for you to use to develop your own cavern-exploration adventures. I’ve never found anything more evocative of caving than William Crowther’s descriptions of the Bedquilt section of Mammoth Cave. He wrote an accurate simulation of that section of the cave for his seminal FORTRAN game, Adventure. I love how the descriptions indicate the upward and downward movement within the caverns, in a way that few dungeon or cave maps emulate well.

In prep, I initially used the full map and description from his final program (the version without the later more fantastical contributions of Don Woods). However, I found in play that the map was too big, that the dead-ends as separate rooms were too tedious (as were the maze locations), and that there were too few three-way junctions. I moved the action immediately into the cavern, removing the overland locations. I combined some areas that were split into separate rooms for ease of programming; I now flag dead-ends with an asterisk, so they can be described quickly rather than having to be explored. This dropped the number of rooms from 79 to 30, still plenty for a few sessions of play.

To customize this map, add your own monsters, puzzles, and treasures.

Locations

Exits: North, South, East, West, Up, Down, eXplore to discover

#	Level	Exits	Description
10	3	W11	You are crawling over cobbles in a low east/west passage. There is a dim light to the east, where you entered.
11	3	E10, UW13, XDW69	You are in a debris room filled with stuff washed in from the surface. A low wide passage with cobbles becomes plugged with mud and debris here, but an extremely narrow canyon leads upward and west.
13	5	DE11, W14	You are in a splendid chamber ten meters high. The walls are frozen rivers of orange stone. A narrow canyon and a good passage exit from east and west sides of the chamber.
14	5	E13, D15, W42	At your feet is a small pit breathing traces of white mist. An east passage ends here except for a small crack leading on. A crack to the west is almost too small for you to follow. Rough stones lead into the pit.
15	4	UE14, W17, S*, DN19	You are at one end of an enormous hall stretching forward out of sight to the west. There are openings to either side. The hall is filled with wisps of white mist swaying to and fro almost as if alive. Nearby, a wide stony path leads downward. A cold wind blows up the path. There is a passage at the top of a dome behind you.
17	5	E*, ?27	You are on the east bank of a fissure slicing clear across the hall. The mist is quite thick here. The fissure is too wide to jump.
19	3	UE15, N33, S*, UW62	You are in a hall fit for a mountain king, with passages off in all directions.
27	5	N40, W41, ?17	You are on the west side of the fissure in the Hall of Mists.
33	3	S19, UE15, W35	You are in a large room, with a passage to the south, a passage to the west, and a wall of broken rock to the east. There is a large unknown symbol on a rock in the room’s center.
35	3	E33	You are at a window on a huge pit, which goes up and down out of sight. A floor is indistinctly visible over 16 meters below. Directly opposite you and 8 meters away there is a similar window.
36	2	E37, U33, W39	You are in a dirty broken passage. To the east is a crawl. To the west is a large passage. Above you is a hole to another passage.
37	2	W36, D38	You are on the brink of a small clean climbable pit. A crawl leads west.
38	1	U37	You are in the bottom of a small pit with a little stream, which enters and exits through tiny slits in the stone.
39	2	E36, D64, S71	You are in a large room full of dusty rocks. There is a big hole in the floor. There are cracks everywhere, and a passage leading east.
40	6	DE27, W41	You are crawling through a very low wide passage parallel to and north of the Hall of Mists.
41	5	US42, E27, N27, W60	You are at the west end of the Hall of Mists. A low wide crawl continues west and another goes north. To the south is a little passage two meters off the floor.
42	5	N42, S42, E42, W42, U57, D42	You are in a jumble of twisty tiny crevices, all alike.
57	6	N*, DS42, E42, W40	You are on the brink of a ten meter pit with a massive orange column down one wall. You could climb down here but you could not get back up. The jumble continues at this level.
60	4	UE41, W*, DN62	You are at the east end of a very long hall apparently without side chambers. To the east a low wide crawl slants up. To the north a round one meter hole slants down.
62	4.5	W60, N*, E19, S15	You are at a crossover of a high N/S passage and a low E/W one.
64	1	U39, W65	You are at a complex junction. A low hands and knees passage from the north joins a higher crawl from the east to make a walking passage going west. There is also a large room above. The air is damp here.
65	1	E64, W65, S68, D66, U39, N71	You are in a long east/west passage with holes everywhere.
66	1	N*, E66, N71, NE65, NW*, W67	You are in a room whose walls resemble swiss cheese. Obvious passages go west, east, northeast, and northwest. Part of the room is occupied by a large bedrock block.
67	1	E66, NE72	You are in a room with two pits. The floor here is littered with thin rock slabs, which make it easy to descend the pits. There is a path here bypassing the pits to connect passages from east and west. There are holes all over, but the only big one is on the wall directly over the east pit where you can’t get to it.
68	1	S66, UN69	You are in a large low circular chamber whose floor is an immense slab fallen from the ceiling. East and west there once were large passages, but they are now filled with boulders. Low small passages go north and south, and the south one quickly bends west around the boulders.
69	2	D68, S74	You are in a secret N/S canyon above a large room.
71	1	UN39, SE65, S*	You are in a canyon at a junction of three canyons, bearing north, south, and southeast. The north one is as tall as the other two combined.
72	1	SW67, N*, SE*	You are in a large low room. Crawls lead north, southeast, and southwest.
74	2	E19, W69, D77	You are in a secret canyon which here runs E/W. It crosses over a very tight canyon 5 meters below. If you go down you may not be able to get back up.
77	1	E74, W*, N66	You are in a tall E/W canyon. A low tight crawl goes a meter north and seems to open up.

The FORTRAN code was placed in the public domain by Will Crowther and Don Woods. This post is placed in the public domain by me.

Photo credit: Giant canyon passage (Main Cave, Mammoth Cave), by James St. John, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.