Scaligero Castle – Sirmione, Italy

So, there are eight buildings called Scaligero Castle in Italy. They were built by the Scaliger family, who ruled over Verona and were not very creative at naming castles. I mean, being fond of your own last name is fine, but maybe mix it up a little.

This is the Scaligero Castle in Sirmione, which has a very unusual feature: a fortified port. The port once held a fleet which the Scaligers used to control Lake Garda and its waterways. It’s mostly a fortification rather than a noble residence, so it’s fairly utilitarian in design, with most of the castle being defensive structures. The only two buildings inside are a barracks and a tower.

If you’re looking for a way to use this map in your game, allow me to suggest pirates. That’s what I’d use it for and something tells me I’m not alone there.

Next, I’ll be drawing a map I’ve been looking forward to making for a while now: the Château de Brézé. This is a French castle that looks like it was made for RPGs. There isn’t one photo that can explain this place, so let me walk you through it:

  • This is the Château from above. Note the dry moat surrounding it.
  • At the bottom of the dry moat, the walls of the moat are lined with tunnels and caverns. Here’s a photo of these. Here’s another.
  • Some of these lead to very long tunnels. A lot of them are interconnected. And a lot of them predate the castle, having been dug as an underground settlement in the 1100s.
  • So, to recap: people dug tunnels, creating an underground settlement. 400 years later, someone built a castle over that settlement. Then, they dug more tunnels. This place is unbelievably fascinating.

So, that’s the place I’m going to draw for you. I’ve been wanting to draw the Château de Brézé for years and it is time. Wish me luck.

New Giltwater – A Gold Mining Colony

Here’s a version without the mines.

New Giltwater is a gold mining colony in Tir Thelandira. After the last colony was burned to the ground by the island’s native wood elves, the colonists have taken a few more precautions this time around, building a palisade and keeping a few companies of mercenaries close by.

There are only three more maps to draw before Tir Thelandira is finished. After that, I’ve got a few ideas on what to start on next and I’ll probably let patrons vote on which one you want to see first. Here’s what I’m thinking about:

  1. Dhasra. An incredibly wealthy city built across a river delta. The main location on the island would be the White City of Dhasra and I’d draw an overview of the city, then detailed maps of different locations within the city. There might be a couple other locations on the island as well.
  2. A very bleak island whose noble families all became vampires long ago. The peasants are little more than livestock for the nobles, who have established an upper caste of commoners to keep the rest in line. The nobles live in lavish palaces with fountains of blood, while the serfs live as prisoners in their own lands. A few groups of wanderers roam the forests, living free from the predation of the nobility. Deep in the shadows, there is talk of an uprising.
  3. A new version of Tortuga. I’ll redesign it and it’ll probably be a bit smaller, but the same basic idea. Since I’m drawing a world full of islands, it seems like an interesting way to travel between them. It lets the party stay on the move, while also having a community of people they know around them.

By the way, the runoff vote for the next location in Tir Thelandira is open, so if you’re a patron, go over there and participate in democracy. It’s really close right now, so your vote very well might change the outcome.

Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts on those three ideas. What you like, what you don’t or what might make them better. I really want to draw all three, but I’d like to hear your opinions first.

Ponte di Palladio

Ponte di Palladio means “Bridge of Palladio.” I hope. Apologies to the Italians out there if I screwed it up, but can I promise you that, as we speak, there are dozens of people at Google Translate working hard to improve my fluency.

This bridge was Andrea Palladio’s design for what later became the Rialto Bridge in Venice, Italy. They ended up going with a different, single-arch design, in part because they wanted more space for boats to pass under it. It’s genuinely tragic when practical concerns get in the way of doing something awesome, but I suppose that’s life.

Anyway, having drawn two Venetian-inspired maps in the last month, I think it’s time to take a break from Italy for a moment (although the Castel Sant’Angelo has been calling out to me, so we may be heading back before long).

Next, I’ll be drawing a keep that’s largely designed as an adventurers’ base. It’ll be the kind of place a party might buy once they get to the point where they’re dragging around an ox-cart with 100,000gp piled onto it and one of them starts wondering if this is a financially responsible course of action.

So this place will have all the things a party would want, like a laboratory for the wizard, a kennel for the ranger, and a dungeon for whoever the party has kidnapped recently (for good reasons, I’m sure). I’ll also put in a secret chamber because literally 100% of players will want one. There will also be space for various services the party might need, such as a blacksmith to do repairs and a trading post so they can turn all the jade statuettes and ruby earrings they find into cash. I’ll also include 3-4 empty rooms for the players to use how they want, since every party has their own particular needs.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think of the map (and my Italian).

The Silver Dragon Inn

A lot of inns have fanciful names, like “The Dancing Fox.” But you walk in, look around… no dancing fox. Not even a non-dancing fox. Deep down, you knew there wouldn’t be a fox, but you had a little hope and it was still a bit disappointing.

The Silver Dragon Inn doesn’t have that problem. This place delivers on the promise of its name, with an actual silver dragon lairing just underneath it. The original idea behind the map was that the innkeeper is secretly the dragon in human form, but there are a lot of different things you could do with it.

I’d recommend doing whatever you think your players won’t expect. Here are a few ideas:

  • The innkeeper admits to being the dragon.
  • The innkeeper claims to be the dragon, but isn’t.
  • The innkeeper works for the dragon.
  • The innkeeper controls the dragon somehow.
  • There is no dragon, the innkeeper is making it all up.
  • The dragon, the inn and everything else in your campaign was all a dream and the PCs are a bunch of sleeping farmhands.

Next up is the spelljammer I promised a few months ago. I held a vote on which one to draw and the Whaleship was the winner. Designed as a passenger liner, it’s got plenty of space for crew and cargo and I think it’ll make a good reward for high-level parties that have paid their dues.

By the way, if you hadn’t heard, Spelljammer is coming back. Wizards of the Coast announced it on April Fool’s Day and everyone thought it was a joke, but apparently they were serious. After making several settings that everyone has already forgotten about, it looks like WotC is finally ready to throw in the towel and give the people what they want. Maybe if we’re lucky, Planescape will be next.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think!

The Town of Five Arches

Here’s the non-annotated version.

Five Arches might seem like a place you’d only find in the realms of fantasy, but you’d actually find something fairly similar in the realms of Italy– namely, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. And there’s another bridge like this in Germany called the Krämerbrücke, as well as one in England called Pulteney Bridge. This map was heavily inspired by all three.

I think Five Arches would make a pretty interesting location for a “please sir, take back our town from the green people” type of adventure. It’s not the most original premise, but I think a unique setting can make that kind of adventure much more interesting. And those kinds of classic scenarios are the bread and butter of a lot of FRPGs. Most of us can’t reinvent the wheel every week.

Next up, I’ll be drawing Scotland’s 28th most famous castle, Coxton Tower. It’s not huge or epic, but it’s an interesting place with some distinctive character and I think it would suit a lot of encounters nicely. “Useful but unique” is one of the main things I aim for with my maps and I think Coxton Tower fits that description very well.

By the way, I’ve decided that the next historical map will be from India. I don’t know specifically what I’ll be drawing, but I decided on India for two reasons:

  1. There are some incredibly cool places in India.
  2. It’s India’s turn. I mean, it’s been India’s turn. They built this, this, that, this place, one of these and this thing and they still can’t get a fantasy map? At this point, I think they’re due.

Anyway, I’ve been looking over my options, but if you have any suggestions, by all means let me know in the comments (if you’re not a patron, you can leave a comment on my website).

Well, Five Arches was a bigger project than I thought, but it turned out exactly how I’d imagined it and I hope you like it too. Let me know what you think!

Town on a Bridge (Work-in-Progress)

Inking all this took a little longer than I expected, but here’s the town on a bridge. There are two levels on top of the bridge deck and another one underneath. The town has a tavern, a livery, various shops, a few gardens and a few empty buildings so you can add in whatever you need that isn’t there.

I’ve got a little bit left to ink tonight and then I’ll start on the color tomorrow. Anyway, what do you think so far?

The Château de Chenonceau

God the French make some cool stuff. “Let’s just build it over the river.” Sure, why not, here’s money, let’s do it. Amazing.

While I was researching this place, I learned a bit about the castle’s most famous resident, Catherine de Medici. She was the queen of France in the mid-1500s, who later ruled the country as Queen Regent after her husband died. She was also a woman who liked to party and, by all accounts, she threw a GREAT one. There’s actually a wikipedia page specifically about her parties. Parties that happened 500 years ago. Let me go ahead and quote that for you:

Catherine arranged entertainments that lasted for several days, including fancy-dress jousting and chivalrous events in allegorical settings. On Mardi Gras, the day after the banquet in the meadow, knights dressed as Greeks and Trojans fought over scantily clad damsels trapped by a giant and a dwarf in a tower on an enchanted island. The fighting climaxed with the tower losing its magical properties and bursting into flames.

Sure, you know, typical Saturday for me too. She also put on the first fireworks display in France, as well as– at least once– a party where the food was served by topless women. Keep in mind that this was the 1500s. At a time when they would light you on fire if they thought you were a witch, this lady was running strip shows. Wild.

Anyway, I know a lot of people were looking forward to this map, so I hope it’s everything you were hoping for! I’m planning to do some more historical maps before too long, but next I’m going to return to the Black Loch. I’ll be drawing the myconid colony next, then I’ll be drawing the next Cartographic Congress map: the underwater ruins of the Benthic Academy, an ancient college of magic. After that, I’ll probably be getting back to the Black Loch again, since I want to make some more progress on that. In any case, I’ll be drawing more of the loch over the next couple months.

Well, I’m gonna start drawing some mushrooms. Let me know what you think of the Chateau!

An annotated version of this map and DM notes are available to patrons.

 

Kasan-Tir Mining Outpost – “I like it but I’m not into the tunnel thing” Edition

Here are the tunnels to go with this.

There were two experimental things I did with this map and one of them seems to have gone over well, while the other didn’t. A few patrons let me know, which I appreciate, since it helps me make decisions about stuff like this in the future.

Anyway, I made an alternate version without the tunnels for the patrons’ edition maps in case anyone really didn’t like the original one and I figured I should give it out to non-patrons as well. My patrons seem to prefer this one and, in general, I assume that my patrons and non-patrons are likely to have similar opinions about my work. I’m not big on gating off content and I want everyone to have a version of this map they can use.

The other thing included here is the tunnels. These are a VTT token, but they’re printable too. The idea was that they could be placed in a hidden layer– either under the path or off to the side– then revealed when the players get in and make their way down into them.  Or, if you’re printing the map, you could cut them out as an overlay or keep them as a separate page.

Anyway, I hope this is more useful to you! I’m gonna try to get all those things I talked about in the last post done today, so I’d better get to it.

Kasan-Tir Mining Outpost

This took a while to draw because I spent two days laying it out, then I decided it was crap and started over from scratch. Sorry for the wait, but it really was irredeemable garbage.

There’s some unusual stuff going on here and I’m wondering how you’re going to feel about it. First, you’ve got multiple levels overlaid on top of each other. There’s the winding path with arrow slits above, then the tunnels on the other side of those arrow slits below.

Mainly, this keeps the map a bit more compact. I try not to bloat the size of my maps too much because it’s always more of a hassle for people using them. If you’re printing it, there’s more to print and if you’re using VTT, the file size is bigger. And I don’t think this is giving anything away. The PCs can see the arrow slits and, I mean, what else would be on the other side?

The second unusual thing is the perspective shift. To me, this feels like the part that might be controversial. You’ve got a slightly angled view of things right up to the door. Then, once you enter the mountainside, it’s a fully overhead view.

This does a few things for this map. It makes the path seem more upward, it shows the arrow slits and it gives a nice view of the chasm. But, once we’re inside, it’s not doing anything for us anymore, so it changes to top-down. I’m curious what you all think about it. Let me know if you like it and definitely let me know if you hate it. We don’t have to do this again.

By the way, this is handled a few different ways in the patrons’ edition versions. In the 1-inch grid print version, the tunnels are a separate overlay, which seemed more practical for print. And in the VTT version, there’s something similar (the tunnels are a token/tile, basically). There’s also a VTT version like the image above. This map was a gamble, so I thought I’d hedge my bets.

There are a few more things. LIST MODE, ON MY MARK. ENGAGE.

  • There’s an explanation of the equipment on the upper floor in the DM notes. Non-patrons can refer to the DM notes for the Oreworks, which describes all the equipment here: a casting pit, converter crucible, puddling furnace and stamp mill.
  • The VTT versions of this map include a Foundry VTT module for the first time, which is kind of perfect, because there is literally a foundry in this map.
  • I’m going to try to get the patrons’ edition Foundry module hosted online so you don’t have to manually install it. Hopefully today.
  • I promised to get the dynamic lighting maps working for more platforms. EncounterPlus is next. I found a converter and I’m going to try it out.
  • I’m making some Brazenthrone assets. Nothing fancy, but they should make it easier to modify or create new chambers, because I’m only drawing one more.
  • Speaking of which, the next map will be Brazenthrone’s Old Palace (1 on this map). This is the final chamber of the city and I’ll do something cool with it.
  • Is that everything? I think so. Let me know what you think of the outpost!

Thorren’s Cross: A Mountain Outpost – Everyone’s Edition

 

So, look, a lot of people are stuck indoors for a while and getting bored out of their minds. There’s not much I can do about that, but what little I can do, I want to. So I’m giving away all the patron content for this map for free and I’m doing the same for every map I make next month as well. I may keep doing it for longer, I don’t know. I just decided to do this five minutes ago and a month seems like as much as I should commit to on the spur of the moment. Anyway, hopefully it helps some people stay occupied for a bit. You can download everything from my patreon page or from my Google Drive.

So, the map: Thorren’s Cross is a small outpost in the mountains guarding a stone bridge. It could be garrisoned by soldiers or it could be a ranger outpost. I sort of had both in mind when I drew it.

The little caves on the bottom left are secret rooms. Instead of indicating them the normal way, I decided to leave them detached from the wall a bit in order to make them a little easier for DMs to hide.

Speaking of which: I made some alternate versions for you. Since not everyone will need the secret rooms, there’s a version without them. There’s also a version with the drawbridge raised. And if you don’t want the secret rooms but you do want the drawbridge raised? Well that’s too bad.

I’m kidding, I made one of those too.

Thanks to Senator Adrian, who proposed this map to the Cartographic Congress. I’ve got two more Cartographic Congress maps to draw before I’m all caught up from the backlog created by Mont-St-Michel. After that, we’re doing a big, fat chunk of Brazenthrone. Next up is a drow city on the edge of an underdark lake with a giant hole in the roof of the cavern that creates a huge waterfall from the surface sea above. Not many drow cities are coastal and accessible by airship. This one’s a little different.