The dwarven hall map generator draws the heart of a dwarven hold, carved into the mountain on five-foot squares. The great gate opens from the bottom of the sheet: two huge iron-bound doors, guard alcoves either side and a pair of pillars inside. A passage climbs from the gatehall into the great hall, a long chamber lined with two rows of massive square pillars, with two feasting tables down its length and a red runner between them. At the far end the thane's throne stands on a stepped dais between two braziers. Four side halls open off the great hall, two on each side, drawn from a forge with its channel of lava, anvils and quenching barrel, a brewery of vats and casks, a rune vault of chests and gold inside a warded circle, the barracks, and a shrine to the ancestors. A mine passage runs out of the top of the hall with rails and an ore cart, heading for the deep workings. Every hall is numbered and keyed.
How the hold is carved
The plan is cut out of solid rock, and the walls are traced wherever carved floor meets stone, so the whole hold reads as one excavation rather than a set of boxes. The great hall sits in the middle and everything hangs off it: the gate below, the mine above and the side halls either side, each joined by its own short passage through the rock. Dwarves build for defence, and the generator keeps to that. There's only one way in from outside, it's long and narrow, and it ends in the hall where the whole hold can see who arrived.
Running the hold
A dwarven hold suits several kinds of adventure. As a friendly stop, the party feasts in the great hall, trades at the forge and petitions the thane. As a dungeon, the hold has fallen and something else lives in it now, and the side halls are where it nests. As a heist, the rune vault is the prize, and the brewery and the barracks are where the guards are. The mine passage leads deeper, to whatever the miners broke into, which is often why the hold fell in the first place.
Free SVG and PNG downloads
Both formats are free for your games, streams and published adventures. The PNG is a 1920-pixel render ready for Roll20, Foundry or Owlbear Rodeo, and the Print button gives you a black-and-white sheet for the table. The SVG is the vector original: open it in Inkscape, Affinity or Figma to add a second gate, collapse the mine or put goblins on the throne. Everything on the map is drawn by our own code, so there's no attribution to carry and no asset licence to read.
What it won't do
It draws the central halls of one hold. It doesn't draw the mines below, the living quarters or the mountain outside. For the mine, roll a mine map; for the pass up to the gate, a mountain map; for the ruined version, a dungeon or ruins map.
Name the hold and its thane
The dwarf name generator and the D&D dwarf name generator name the thane and the clan, the mountain name generator names the peak the hold is carved into, and the weapon name generator names what comes out of the forge.