Building DelveKit in the Open

Today I’d like to introduce something I am calling DelveKit, which I envision as a browser-first toolkit for tabletop referees of classic D&D and OSR games. The first tool in that toolkit is a dungeon mapper designed for player mapping during play.

A 2026 Side Project

I have been building the DelveKit project since start of this year, squeezing it alongside my day job and other parts of my life.

I’ve hit road blocks, refactored the code, and brainstormed a long list of future features. But only two other people know anything about it.

There are undoubtedly others out there that would want to use what I’m creating for their table, and would have some useful feedback to help me improve DelveKit besides.

So, it is time to stop building in isolation and start sharing instead.

This post and the stub website that goes up with it will be public home to talk about DelveKit, show progress, and invite feedback. In the near future, I hope to invite a few interested folks to try it.

The DelveKit Project So Far

My first focus has been on a dungeon mapper optimized for player and DM live mapping as exploration is happening at the table.

The mapper currently has tools to draw rooms, corridors, and walls. I have rudimentary functionality for areas, doors, stairs, and text. In other words, you can draw a classic basic dungeon.

Where I have been putting effort is making it simple to draw that basic dungeon during play. That means a DM narrating what the party sees, and a designated player mapping based on that description.

To make live-play mapping viable, I made the DelveKit mapper as simple to use as I could. And I used a vector-based approach that allows on-the-fly corrections without erasing. I wanted the mapper to be able to resize and reshape rooms and corridors with ease. My goal was to allow users to pull apart and snap together portions of what they draw as they explore.

For example, say the party goes in one dungeon entrance and starts mapping. In a later session, they find another dungeon entrance and they start mapping that area. At some point, they discover that the two areas connect. I wanted it to be dead simple for the mapper to snap together they two sections like Lego blocks and keep exploring.

What’s Next

DelveKit is basically a prototype at this stage. The features above are just the minimum for basic mapping. I have a lot more ambitions for the project before I consider it ready for my table.

In upcoming posts and videos, I will share progress and sneak peeks.

I would love to get input and ideas from other old school gamers to improve DelveKit.

That is how they did in the 1970s and 1980s, and I how I prefer to do it with my games.

Player mapping is doable in person with a good old pad of graph paper. Mapping by the DM is achievable with a play mat and erasable markers.

But there really aren’t great tools for online

My first focus has been on a dungeon mapper optimized for player and DM live mapping as exploration is happening at the table. That is how they did in the 1970s and 1980s, and I how I prefer to do it with my games.

Player mapping is doable in person with a good old pad of graph paper. Mapping by the DM is achievable with a play mat and erasable markers.

But there really aren’t great tools for online

This post and the stub website that goes up with it takes the side-project I have been working on since the start of the year .

DelveKit is a browser-first toolkit for tabletop referees, beginning with a dungeon mapper.

This journal will follow the project as it develops. Some entries will show visible progress; others will examine design decisions, experiments, and ideas that did not work.

Why keep a development diary?

Building in the open provides a record of how the project changes. It also creates room to discuss the reasoning behind the tools rather than showing only finished screenshots.