I've been challenging myself to draw, scan and post a map every week in order to work on my mapping skills as well as to 'force' myself to start preserving the elements of the various adventures I've run over the last 30 years.
I'll be posting my maps to this thread, one a week. Often I've been also making a full adventure to go with the map (sometimes statted for the edition I play most often which is Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert - but most often just indicating what critters are there without stats so you can grab whatever edition of the game you play to get the stats) - but I'll be focusing on the maps themselves here instead of the adventures.
Fort Tenras
The maps I posted this week are of an old fortress that sits neglected and half-destroyed overlooking a mountain pass that I used recently as a side quest for a game. (more details on my blog)
NICE MAPS!!! I wish I could draw like that.
Goblin Gully
A Deadly One Page Dungeon
This is last week's map. I love doing side-view maps of the dungeons I detail, but generally they are used to help you figure out how the dungeon maps connect to each other and are navigated. In this case, the entire dungeon is mapped out in side view instead of overhead. One of the benefits of this is that it works better for 4e games than many of my other maps because you can decide on how big the rooms will be to suit the style of your game.
Just because it is in a level one module doesn’t mean you can deal with it.
That is the theme of the Goblin Gully adventure I wrote. This level 1 quick dungeon crawl should either leave the player characters running scared, dead, or cleverly locking the door behind them and trying to figure out how to make sure no one else opens the door once they’ve left.
You can read about it and download the one-page adventure PDF on my blog.
NICE MAPS!!! I wish I could draw like that.
Thanks!
All the maps I'm posting are drawn using a black gel pen on either plain white paper or on graph paper (in a variety of sizes and formats - I carry a small gridded notebook with me everywhere I go as well as drawing on whatever is close at hand), and are then scanned, contrast-enhanced, and posted (well, some get text added for keying the locations).
My ex-girlfriend's apartment is littered with little maps here and there. I even draw them on post-it-notes.
I was inspired to try my hand at making nicer maps than I used to because of one of the new players in my 3e game. He has a really nice collection of hand-drawn maps that inspired me to work harder on my own mapping and to finally start scanning and saving my maps instead of letting them get destroyed by time and old boxes of books.
Overlooking the Desert of the Gods, and the primary location of most of our “Desert of the Gods” campaign that we launched into our long love-affair with third edition D&D with, is Powell’s Folly.
To those approaching the Desert of the Gods, Powell’s Folly is the last refuge before entering the desert proper. A dwarven citadel perched atop the crater wall that surrounds the whole desert, the lookout on the citadel is the only civilized stopping place from where the plateau in the desert can be seen.
But it is only just civilized anymore.
Powell’s Folly was founded towards the end of a long ago B/X campaign by none other than Powell, a mighty Dwarven Lord. All would have been fine, but Powell wasn’t exactly sane. Years before he had been placed under a permanent charm person effect by a race of hideous mud-creatures from deep under the earth. These same creatures were all slain before they had time to order Powell in any way, and he has mourned their loss since.
When he founded Powell’s Folly, he managed to bring in two clans of dwarves to help dig it out and build the fortress itself. They in turn were brought here by the sapphires Powell had found in the cliff face below the uppermost facing edge of the crater. A series of small mines were dug, and the mighty cliff tower and accompanying keep constructed. Soon the gems ran out, and Powell continued excavations. He paid well for the dwarves to keep digging and mining, but many of the clan members felt betrayed by the lack of gems or valuable metals being pulled from the stone despite all their efforts.
The depths under the fortress continued to be expanded, and other pre-existing constructions were discovered and incorporated as best they could be into the sprawling labyrinth of passages, mines and shafts. Peace was negotiated with a flock of harpies who then moved into caves in the cliff face below the tower itself. Rumours also persist of an ancient temple of the four armed desert raiders having been annexed in the depths of the earth.
Today the citadel is nearly empty. Only the top two levels of the tower are still maintained, the lower levels and the dungeon depths barricaded and nearly forgotten. The remnants of the two dwarven clans are too busy dealing with goblin raiders from the caves downhill from the keep to actively work on patrolling or reclaiming the depths – assuming they could be convinced there is any reason to do so.
The only reason the clans haven’t left entirely is that some feel that the place must live on, that Powell be remembered, and that the lookout over the desert to see the plateau be maintained. It has almost become a sacred duty to them.
The hall of challenges appeared in my campaign when a magic user applied to join the Hill Islands sorcerer’s guild. The whole point of having the character go there for the challenge was to introduce the location so I could then use it again a week later when everything went pear-shaped in the guild.
On one of the Hill Islands, inside the city limits there is a cavern in a hillside attached to the guild grounds. The hewn cave within is both a trial by fire for new guild members as well as a hall commemorating some of the greatest wizards of the guild’s long history and to remind them of their link to the Kale.
The hall was only seen in passing during the character’s trial (which was designed so he would pass easily – the point was to introduce him to the guild and the Hall, not to wipe him out or even to really challenge him – after all, a player character magic user who has traveled to the Hill Islands more than likely has more experience than most of the existing guild members). However, walking through it again when trying to find out what has happened to the guildmaster and some of the local politicians was creepier and more memorable to the players because they had been here before.
(a detailed key of the Hall of Challenges is available on my blog)
Excellent maps. What media do you use?
All the maps I'm posting are drawn using a black gel pen on either plain white paper or on graph paper (in a variety of sizes and formats - I carry a small gridded notebook with me everywhere I go as well as drawing on whatever is close at hand), and are then scanned, contrast-enhanced, and posted (well, some get text added for keying the locations).
In some cases I've also added room numbers and the name of the map using the Gimp, but never any digital enhancement beyond the contrast-enhancement.
Very cool. I love old school maps. Have you tried using a digital tablet? It's not as tactile as pen and paper, but you can get very similar effects (especially cross-hatching) with minimal effort.
Nope. I do none of my mapping digitally. My goal with my weekly maps is to challenge myself to draw better pen-and-paper maps for my game sessions. That and my computer budget is zero - I'm posting from a six year old laptop running an old version of Linux and using a free internet connection courtesy of one of my neighbours.
Superb! Free interwebs are the wave of the future.
This map was a lot of fun to draw – it contains a lot of additional details on the map proper that I normally don’t draw in (beds, tables, mushrooms, rocks, debris, ladders and so on). Further, this particular map I stocked and keyed and playtested before posting it. There’s a link on my blog to download the 7-page mini-module of the Charmed Grotto for characters levels 5 to 8.
This map is inspired by a lot of maps by one of the players in our B/X campaign who draws them with multiple elevations, twisting hallways and interesting terrain that becomes as interesting as the adventures and encounters that occur therein.
The module is a 7-page PDF (6 pages if you get rid of the cover) that involves a cavern complex with an underground river, all inhabited by bandits, bugbears and their goblin servants, an old nest of giant black widow spiders, and some real nasties who just moved in recently and who have changed the whole place around. There are rumours of dark god worship, a magic moss emerald, and a spider dragon within the depths of the old grotto. Download it here.
And if you don’t actually want to use all that, you can just use the unkeyed map, below.
beautiful work! there is amazing elegance in the fantastic simplicity of these drawings. well done! i'm diggin' this thread. keep it up!
Nice Maps Dyson! I've been struggling with drawing my own lately and this is inspiring. Thanks for sharing these.
Brilliant work Dyson! Can't wait for more!
Everyone in Travon knows that the sewers connect to a lot more than just the gutters. It’s a common urban legend that the thieves’ guilds use the sewers not just to move about, but as a smuggling centre and as a place where the various thieves’ guilds leaders can gather and discuss business in private. Many of the more expensive houses that would normally have basements have purposefully sealed off their subterranean levels for fear of having them exploited by the local burglars… or worse.
This week’s map is a re-imagining of a set of sewers where I was one of a group of adventurers in a recent campaign. We dealt with the thieves’ guilds of the city down here, and discovered that not only the thieves of the city were using these ancient tunnels and warrens of half-collapsed basements.
Except when noted otherwise, the sewers are all made of old, wet masonry. Because of the dampness, doors tend to stick and jam. The flow of sewage is not very fast, and you never know what you’ll find flowing along with it or under it. The maps of the sewers are not to scale – wherever there is an X indicated on the map is a location where a corridor has been shortened to make it fit on one page. Typically these corridors are 100 to 200 feet longer than shown.
Area 1 of the sewers of Travon is under the border between a slum neighborhood and an industrial part of town. It is a veritable nexus of tunnels, sewers, basements and connecting areas that saw a lot of use by the guilds and is still used as a meeting place when the guilds have to gather.
You can read more about this map on my blog, or even download the high resolution two page PDF of this map and descriptions.
Dyson you still around? I'm looking foreward to the next installment, and may have a proposition for you for a little piece of artwork...
Here for a little while longer...
Quite often in various games I’ve had reason to either adventure into the actual prison-style dungeon of a castle, or to suddenly find a character stuck there on a “temporary” basis.
So this week’s map, taking a break from the deadEarth insanity of the past three days, is of one such dungeon.
(you can get a full description of the dungeon, as well as a high resolution PDF download over at my blog)
Nice. Great work. Let me know if you're available, I may have a map I'd like you to try, that is, if you're willing to make time for a request.
Keep it up