Category: Annotated – Free

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Map Module for Foundry (and a note about Roll20)

Here’s the Foundry VTT pack I promised. Actually, it’s not the pack I promised, it’s a lot more than that. Here’s the story: I was getting a few maps ready to export from Roll20 to Foundry, using a campaign on my friend Luke’s Roll20 account. I export everything, expecting three maps to come out the other side. Instead, I get sixty maps. Huh?

Oh, these must be the archived maps. I look through them and they’re ALL set up for dynamic lighting. Manually, by Luke. There’s Skywatch. There’s Tortuga. There’s FINBARR’S MARSH.

So I send Luke an email that begins with “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD” and I ask if I can share these all with you. He says, “Of course.” Also, he apparently has more. He then proceeds to copy over a few more from his other campaigns. So there are around 70 maps in this module, including almost everything other than Brazenthrone and Mont-St-Michel. He even threw in the tokens, some DM notes and some pre-generated characters. This was not a small amount of work on his part.

All the maps in there are the free web versions. I give Luke access to my patron content, but he doesn’t use the VTT versions, so all the maps are free already. If you want to use the VTT versions, you should be able to just replace the map image with the 70px VTT map and the lighting should work the same.

So, after getting all this together, there’s one thing that’s been driving me nuts. I want to give this stuff to Roll20 users too, but… I can’t. This stuff was MADE on Roll20. Luke set up the walls, doors and lighting on Roll20. And I can export it from Roll20 to Foundry, but I can’t export it from Roll20 to Roll20?! Are you kidding me?

I’d love to be wrong about this and, if you know how I can share these, please let me know. I can’t export the wall lines like I did with the other maps recently because they have to be made in a specific way to do that. So, I apologize to Roll20 users who feel left out here. I really do want to give you this stuff and, should that become possible, I will do it in a heartbeat. But the tools to do it don’t currently exist.

Should you feel that having these pre-lit maps is very important to you, there is a nuclear option: The Converter. I used it to convert these maps from Roll20 to Foundry, but it does a lot more than that. I am not telling you that you should do this, but I feel like I should point out the existence of this piece of software for those who may be considering it already.

Anyway, I hope this is useful to you! If there’s anything I screwed up while making this compendium (and there’s no way there isn’t, haha) please let me know!

EDIT: I couldn’t get the Great Hall in there, but this should do it. Make a scene with a 70px grid, place the image, then right-click the scene and select import data. Import the text file. You may have to place the image as a tile, not as the background image for it to work. I’m not sure why, I’m still new to this.

EDIT 2: The Route Finder module may cause problems with this for reasons unknown. If you’ve got it installed and Foundry is bugging out, try deactivating it.

 

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Brazenthrone – Freeholders’ Hall – Everyone’s Edition

Here’s the non-annotated version for those of you who don’t like words and numbers all over your maps. Also, here are the DM notes.

You know what? This is the second-to-last chamber of Brazenthrone and I’m just going to give everyone the patron content for the rest of it. You can download it from Google Drive here or from this page on my patreon.

There’s not too much to say about Freeholders’ Hall. It’s where the mushroom farmers live. There’s a high clan that lives there, too. And there’s a statue of a naked man. You can read about it in the DM notes if you’re interested.

Yesterday, I wrote about how I found a way to include dynamic lighting with my maps for Roll20 users and I made commands to generate the walls for you with this map as well. They’re in there with the VTT files and there’s a file explaining how to do it.

For those of you running games on Foundry, Fantasy Grounds and other platforms, I need you to know this: I know you are out there, I appreciate your support and I am going to do everything I can to make this happen for you too.

So far, what I’ve learned is this: there was a script called SVG Loader that could import wall lines in Foundry, although it may no longer be compatible with recent updates. I’m going to try it out anyway and see if it works. If I can get it to work for me, I should be able to load up a map, import the walls and export the whole thing as a module file. If I can’t, maybe I can get an older version of Foundry that the script was compatible with? Who knows, I’m just spitballing, but I’ll get to work trying things out tomorrow. I can’t promise you I’ll be able to do this for every platform soon, but I can promise you that I’ll try.

The next map will be last month’s Cartographic Congress winner, a dwarven mining and smelting outpost built into a cliffside. After that, we’re knocking out the last part of Brazenthrone: the Old Palace. It’s a ruined palace adjacent to the Old Quarter and I think it’ll be pretty cool. I wanted to save it for last so hopefully the dwarven city of Brazenthrone finishes on a bang.
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Brazenthrone – The Iron Mines

 

First, here’s the non-annotated version. The grid size for VTT is in the filename. You knew that, right? Just checking.

I’ve never lost my enthusiasm for drawing Brazenthrone, but I am looking forward to the next big project, which makes me somewhat glad to be wrapping it up soon. Also, when Brazenthrone is done, I get to take this map and make it about 60% bigger. Because apparently I drew all that and it wasn’t enough, so I drew a whole lot more, haha.

So what’s the next big project? It’ll be a map of an entire setting. That setting will be a sea in the Underdark called the Black Loch. I’ll talk more about it soon, but you can read about it in this post.

Before I get started on that, I’ll also be finishing the Great Vote maps. The ones left to draw are:

  1. Fortified Oasis – The middle of the desert. The only water for days. And someone built a stone fortress around it. This will be a middle-eastern design.
  2. The Fallen Tower – A large, broken tower. Part of it remains standing, the rest lies on the ground in several large segments.
  3. Aarakocra Village – Aarakocra are avian humanoids. This will be a cliffside or mountain community of them, featuring various things unique to a community of people who can all fly.
  4. Floating Market – This is a real thing. I’ll make a map of one.
  5. The Deepspire – A fortress city in the seas of the Underdark, carved into the sides of a massive column of rock stretching from the sea floor to the roof of the cavern.

In fact, I’ll be drawing the Fallen Tower next. After that, I’ll be doing the second-to-last chamber of Brazenthrone, Freeholders’ Hall (27 on this map). If you’ve got any questions about the Black Loch or my plans for the post-Brazenthrone world (or anything else), just ask!

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The Leviathan of Tyria – Everyone’s Edition

I’m making all the patron content for this map free for everyone. I’m pretty proud of this absolute monstrosity of a ship. I made a ton of stuff for it and I want you all to have it. You can download everything from my Google Drive here.

So, let’s talk about this gigantic boat. The Leviathan of Tyria is a catamaran (two-hulled) warship which is powered by both rowers and sails. Armed with rams, artillery and a complement of marines, it is dangerous both up close and at range. In addition, the Leviathan carries four gunboats on board which it can deploy in battle to surround and distract enemies.

I made three versions of this ship to help it fit into everyone’s game. The first is armed with gunpowder weapons, the second is armed with ballistas and the third has neither, allowing you to customize the ship’s weapon loadout as you see fit. There are artillery tokens included to customize it on VTTs, as well as copy-and-paste-able artillery to modify the print versions of the map.

The pre-armed versions have around 25 guns/ballistas each. You can add more if needed, but before you turn the Leviathan into a 120-gun ship-of-the-line, let me suggest that you count how many D20s you own. I’m not saying you shouldn’t arm it to the teeth, just shop around for a dice rolling app before you have to start making hit rolls.

Here are the DM notes and the annotated version of the gunpowder Leviathan. Everything else is in the link above. Have fun with it!

There’s one more thing I wanted to mention: my wife is raising money for a charity called LauraLynn Children’s Hospice and I told her I’d post a link on my site in case anyone wanted to donate. I know this has been a tough year for most people and children’s hospices are kind of a super depressing thing to bring up, but they do important work and, if 2020 has been merciful enough that you can afford to donate, I’m sure they’d appreciate it.

I can’t think of a way to transition from that back to maps without it being awkward, so let’s just do it. Next up is Greenstone Hall, one of the four remaining chambers of Brazenthrone. It’s a small residential district which shouldn’t take long. After that, I’ll be drawing draw last month’s Cartographic Congress winner, a hanging wizard’s tower built into a stalactite. Or a stalagmite? The one that points down.

Anyway, hope you like the ship! If you’ve got any questions about it, just ask!

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Brazenthrone – The Mushroom Farms – Ground Level

Here’s the non-annotated version and here are the DM notes, which I’m giving out to everybody because there are some unintuitive things about the Mushroom Farms and I want everyone to understand why they are the way they are.

One of the buildings here is Meard’s Dwarven White Whiskey distillery. White whiskey is a thing I came up with while thinking about dwarven liquor. I thought, “Dwarves are known for drinking really strong ale, right? So what is their liquor like? How strong is that?” This was my answer.

I introduced white whiskey to my players at a tavern once. The bartender told them it’s too strong for anyone but dwarves, so, of course, everyone HAD to try it. He put a tiny metal cup in front of each of them, filled them up and backed away. When the players threw their drinks back, I told everyone who wasn’t a dwarf to make a CON save. Those who failed vomited immediately, violently and copiously.

Later, they came to find out what’s in white whiskey: alcohol. And nothing else. It’s just a bottle of ethyl alcohol. That’s dwarven liquor.

The second (and final) level of the Mushroom farms is close to being finished and I should have it up later tonight, tomorrow at the latest. It’s just roofs, but that’s part of the protocol.

After that, I’m drawing the floating fortress warship that was voted on as an honorary Great Vote winner several months back. It’s been a while since I’ve done a ship map and it’s about time for another one. Unless the half a ship in Whiskey Point counts, which it doesn’t. Okay, I’m gonna go finish up the mushroom farms!

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Brazenthrone – The Hollows

Here’s the non-annotated version and the DM notes.

The Hollows are the closest thing Brazenthrone has to slums. They’re the poorest neighborhood in the city and, secretly, the home of the local Thieves’ Guild. They also have the lowest ceiling of any chamber in the city.

Rising only seven feet above the floor, the walls of the buildings here go from the ground to the chamber’s roof, making the streets more like winding tunnels. The second level is actually a separate chamber altogether, located directly above the first. Imagine going to work in the mines, then coming home to a place every bit as cramped. That’s life in the Hollows. There’s more information about the area– particularly the Thieves’ Guild– in the DM notes, if you’re interested.

There are five more parts of Brazenthrone to go and I think the next one will be the Mushroom Farms. There’s going to be a distillery there that makes something called “Dwarven White Whiskey,” which is a drink my players encountered once at a tavern. I’ll explain more about it when the map is done.

But before that, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner: an abandoned fortress with a lighthouse at the end of a peninsula, taken over by pirates and turned into a black market trading port. Well, I’m gonna start sketching that out! See you in a bit!

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The Red Towers II: Orcstralia

Here’s the alternate version of the Red Towers for those of you who prefer a drier greenskin lair. I was thinking of calling it “Stinky Uluru,” but I didn’t think anyone would get it except Australians and people who played Civilization 5.

I decided everyone should have the annotated version of this map. It seemed like some things might be a little confusing without it. Anyway, here’s some other stuff. Check the previous post if you’re not sure what the tokens are for:

Next up is another Brazenthrone map: the Hollows. This is the bad part of town, where your players can go to fence some stolen loot, join the thieves’ guild or just score drugs. This is the sixth-to-last chamber of Brazenthrone left to go! After two years of drawing, it’s nearly finished! Can you believe it?

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Brazenthrone – The Oreworks – Ground Level

First, here’s a few things:

This is the first of three levels of Brazenthrone‘s Oreworks. This took a bit of research to draw, since– like most people– I wasn’t all that familiar with the processes and equipment involved in pre-modern ore processing and steelmaking.

It took some reading, but I got the basic idea and there’s an explanation of all the equipment depicted here in the DM notes, which I’m giving out to everyone so you don’t have to spend half the day on Wikipedia just to understand this map. I’m not sure my explanation of this stuff is completely accurate, but it’s accurate enough for D&D purposes. If you’re a welder or a steelworker or someone else who actually knows about this stuff… I mean, I don’t think you’ll facepalm, but I also can’t guarantee you won’t facepalm.

There are a few different methods of steelmaking that I could’ve chosen for the dwarves of Brazenthrone, but I decided that they used a Bessemer Converter. Having been invented in the mid-1800s, this is somewhat advanced technology for a middle-ages setting, but dwarven steelmaking is meant to be advanced and, more importantly, I think it looks cool.

I’ve got the second and third levels of this mostly drawn and I’ll have them up in the next few days. After that, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner: a mountaintop airship port.

Well, I’ll be back with the rest of the Oreworks. There’s a lot going on in this map, so if you have any questions about it, just ask!

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Brazenthrone – The Old Quarter – Ground Level

Here’s the annotated version.

These are the ruins of Brazenthrone‘s Old Quarter. Known in its time as the “Temple Quarter,” it was once the heart of the city, much as the Great Hall is today. The Quarter’s downfall was brought about by a force more powerful than any other: geology. A tremendous earthquake, brought on by the shifting of magma deep underground, shattered one of the chamber’s support columns and brought down huge sections of the chamber’s ceiling.

After being declared irreparably unsafe by the Ministry of Engineering, the entire area, as well as the Old Palace to the north, were reluctantly abandoned and sealed off.

Today, the Old Quarter lies ruined, infested and partially flooded due to a leaking ventilation shaft. Going in there for any reason is a terrible idea, but your players will charge in headfirst because this is the kind of place where there’s cash and prizes to be found. And besides, making prudent decisions is the DM’s job.

I’m thinking this will be three levels in total. The to-do list for Brazenthrone is getting shorter and shorter! I can’t wait to get it all into the one image and see how it looks!

There are VTT and print versions of this map, as well as an expanded annotated version, available to patrons.

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Brazenthrone – Updated Overview Map

Sorry this is a little late, I had something come up last night before I could get it done. Anyway, here it is! I reserve the right to change 19 and 27 if I come up with a better idea for them, but I’ll update the map again if I do.

Here’s the non-annotated version. You can download the print and VTT versions for free from my patreon here. The VTT versions aren’t marked with dimensions, they’re just a smaller file size you can use as handouts.

All right, time to get started on the Old Quarter!