Category: Cartographic Congress

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The Vale of Pentandra

The Vale of Pentandra was a map chosen by the Cartographic Congress. Ben, who proposed it, wanted an elven city in the rainforest with a magical portal in the center, surrounded by two huge trees arching overhead.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I like the portal. Sometimes, as a DM, you want your players to be somewhere really far away. And you don’t want to say, “You get on your horses, clap the coconuts for two months and you’re there,” but you also might not want to do three sessions of “stuff happens while you’re on the road.” Having a way to avoid either of those things in a way that feels natural can be nice. Ready to stop doing Chult stuff and start doing Waterdeep stuff? This might be a nice place for the party to hear a rumor about.

I apologize for this taking so long, but I wanted to get it looking right and that required a lot of changing things around this time. Also– feel free to laugh at me– I got everything done an hour ago, was ready to post this, and realized I forgot to put a scale on it. I managed to forget about that for the entire week and a half it took me to plan, draw and color this. YEP THAT’S ME PROFESSIONAL FANTASY CARTOGRAPHER RIGHT HERE.

Anyway, I’ll be getting to work on the Black Loch next. I’m going to draw the inn on the left side of the map. I know there are a million maps of inns out there, but this one is going to be a little unusual, because this place is owned and operated by a clan of ogres. And it features only the finest ogre furnishings. Ogre-crafted tables. Ogre-crafted bar. Ogre-crafted doors and walls. Starting to get the picture? Your players think they’ve stayed at a crappy dump of an inn before. They have no idea.

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The Pyramid of Sobek

If you’re looking for a slightly more classic pyramid, here’s the alternate “cool but can you dial that back just a bit” version.

Sobek is the Egyptian god of the Nile and is depicted here a few times. Fun fact: Sobek was history’s first dragonborn. A lot of people thought Wizards of the Coast came up with them in 4th ed. D&D, but the truth is, the Egyptians came up with them around 2500BC. True story, look it up.

The bottom level of the pyramid was inspired by Tutankhamun’s tomb, the red stone sarcophagus being a good example of that. Some of the upper levels, on the other hand, get a little less historical and a little more this guy. That may not be quite what everybody’s looking for, but that’s why I made the alternate version.

I spent some time looking at the insides of actual pyramids while drawing this. Not because I was trying to make it historically accurate, but because I wanted it to have a similar sort of feel. One of the pyramids I looked at quite a bit was the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the pyramids of Giza. I briefly considered designing this map around that, but that wasn’t going to work. I do still want to draw it, though, and I’ve decided I’m going to do that next.

Let me explain why. It’s not a perfect place for an RPG map, but it has some things going for it:

  1. It feels authentic, because it is. I think that counts for a lot.
  2. I want to draw it as it was before it was looted. This lets you give your players the experience of being the first people to break into the Great Pyramid and I think that would be pretty awesome.
  3. Breaking in without boring a hole through the side (which is what happened) would involve this: smashing a stone seal over the entrance, heading into a tunnel that leads deep underground, finding the entrance to a narrow passage concealed behind a wall, then climbing 150′ (50m) up that nearly vertical passage, which runs through a small, natural cave. There’s more, but are you intrigued yet?

I don’t know if this sounds as interesting to anyone else as it does to me, but I really think this could be an amazing experience and I’ve got a powerful urge to draw the place. In any case, it shouldn’t take that long.

Well, I’m gonna get started. I hope I didn’t talk up the next pyramid so much that people lost interest in this one. In any case, let me know what you think!

There’s an annotated version of this map and DM notes available to patrons.

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A Dark Place

 

This is the most grim, surreal place I could come up with. While it’s meant to be an estate on the Plane of Shadow, I think it could be good for a nightmare or someplace in hell.

People always depict hell with fire and lava and, you know what? That’s just not scary. When I send my players to hell, I want them to be soaking their pants. Will a statue of an eyeless, obese man vomiting blackish liquid into a basin accomplish that? I don’t know, but I’d say it’ll make them more uncomfortable than molten rock.

I don’t have much of an explanation for the strange things in this map and I don’t think there needs to be one. This stuff doesn’t necessarily need to be interactable, it can just be decor. Personally, I wouldn’t give my players an explanation of anything here. This is a place you send your players when you want them to be scared and people are more scared when they don’t understand what’s going on. Whose head is this? You don’t know. What’s this dark liquid? You don’t know. What do these symbols represent? You don’t know.

And then there’s the top floor. I meant for it to look like reality was falling apart, but there are plenty of other things that might be going on there. I think having the party fight a giant, writhing mass of eyes and teeth would be a nice way to cap things off.

Anyway, next up is 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. I’m not sure how big this will be, but it’ll probably be close to what I’d call a megaproject. I’ll be posting it level by level, so you’ll get it one piece at a time until it’s finished. Once I’ve got it planned out a little more, I’ll have more details for you.

One last thing: before I got started on this map, I said that if it didn’t make Warhammer 40K look like My Little Pony, it would be a failure. That might’ve been setting the bar a bit high, but, well, how’d I do?

There’s an annotated version of this map, DM notes and other stuff available to patrons.

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Mind Flayer Dreadnought Spelljammer

You’ve gotta love Spelljammer. Want to travel into space? Just duct tape a spelljamming helm to the deck of a stolen fishing boat and you’re off to explore the stars.

Mind flayers, however– former masters of the universe that they are– tend to be a bit more sophisticated about interstellar travel. Dreadnoughts are the capital ship of the illithid fleet and they weren’t built for catching seabass. In addition to carrying a variety of weapons on board, the dreadnought also holds a fleet of boreworms, small attack ships with a single crewman. Boreworms aren’t fighters, they’re actually boarding ships, designed to crash into the side of a ship, punch through the hull, then eject the illithid pilot into the enemy vessel.

If you find some things about this ship unusual, remember that mind flayers are a little different than the rest of us. As a brain-eating species, they don’t need a dining table or a kitchen. And illithids love pools. That might be their main motivation to rule the universe: more time in the bath.

As I promised, I’m going to spend the day doing the dynamic lighting for Brazenthrone. I think I can get the rest of it finished by tomorrow. I honestly thought this would take longer and I’ve never been happier to be wrong.

Next up is the aarakocra village, the second-to-last of the Great Vote maps. The last will be 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. This is going to be a part of the Black Loch and will be pretty huge, so I’m going to do the next Cartographic Congress map before I get started.

That map will be a dark, surreal estate on the plane of shadow. I hope you like weird, because that is going to be WEIRD. I’m going for “Salvador Dali plus MC Escher plus your worst childhood nightmare.” We’ll see how that goes.

There’s an annotated version of this map, DM notes and other stuff available to patrons.

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Drowning Hill – Roofs

Sorry, this took me a bit longer than expected because holiday stuff. Anyway, VTT versions of Drowning Hill with walls and doors are in the patrons’ Foundry module and the patrons’ EncounterPlus module.

If you downloaded the free module for Foundry or EncounterPlus more than 3-4 days ago, you should grab the new one (you can update the Foundry module). They’ve both been fixed up and all the maps and walls should be in good shape.

This is especially true with the EncounterPlus module, which required a little more attention. If you use EncounterPlus, you have Matt C. to thank for that, by the way. Since I don’t have a Mac and can’t run E+ myself, I was flying blind while trying to fix the errors and I wouldn’t have known what worked without his feedback over the last month or so. I’ve already said this quite a few times, but here’s one more: Thank you!

As I mentioned before, I’m going to spend one day between maps doing the VTT walls and lighting for Brazenthrone. After that, I’ll be starting on the floating market map. Until then, have a good holidays!

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Drowning Hill

Here’s the non-annotated version and the DM notes. This is pretty far from your run-of-the-mill village and I think I owe everyone an explanation of some of the things that are going on here.

Drowning Hill is a village meant for an amphibious race. The name is a fairly literal description of the place, since most of the village is submerged by high tides. With the place being underwater on a fairly regular basis, it’s not an ideal location for people who are particularly picky about whether they’re breathing a gas or a liquid.

I could talk more about the various races that might live here, but all my thoughts on that are in the DM notes. Also, it just recently occurred to me what a perfect aboleth lair this would be and now that’s the only thing I can see. A big, clairvoyant fish hiding under his cult of drooling lackeys.

You might be wondering about Nina’s Inn. Why Nina? Well, the idea for this map came from the Cartographic Congress, and the person who proposed it, James, asked if I’d name the inn after his wife, so I did. Although, in the DM notes, I may have… sort of implied that she’s a fish cultist. Let’s hope James married a woman with a good sense of humor.

I tried some new things with the color here and I’m pretty sure this is the best I’ve ever colored anything in my life. So I might keep doing that. If you’ve got any thoughts about it, let me know.

The next map won’t take long. I’m going to make another version of this with roofs on it. Everything’s already drawn and I might have it done by tonight. After that, I’ll be drawing a floating market, one of the last three maps from the Great Vote. Anyway, let me know what you think!

 

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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.

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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!
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The Tusk

Last month’s winning Cartographic Congress proposal was by Bryan, who suggested a hanging wizard’s tower. That idea became the Tusk.

There were a few different ways to go about this, but I decided to go with the weirdest. The path to the entrance spirals up a stalagmite, then over a bridge and up the bottom tip of the Tusk itself. After that, the stairs go inside, then later back outside again, ending at a wide stone platform covered in magical glyphs.

Is this a practical layout for a home? Not especially, but I think there are a few things that justify it. First, I envisioned this as the home of a powerful wizard, for whom time and space aren’t huge concerns. The ability to fly and teleport makes the stairs a lot more of a problem to guests than to the occupant.

Second, it makes it harder for people without those abilities to get in and get to the top. Which is a legitimate precaution, because that’s probably what your party is trying to do.

Third, it prevents your party from just taking the stairs straight to the top. I did consider a spiral staircase going all the way up, but… I mean, look: there are parties that will explore the place and run into the various encounters you’ve set out for them, and then and there are parties who will just go straight to the top. They know that’s where the wizard is. Fantasy roleplaying games have been around since 1974 and, in that time, not one DM has ever put the wizard on the ground floor of the tower. This layout makes the party open a few doors at least.

And fourth, I just think it’s cool. I think about practicality a lot when I draw maps, but I think I’m allowed to take a break from it every now and again.

Next up is Brazenthrone‘s Iron Mines, one of three chambers left to draw in the two-year-long megaproject. I’m not sure what my plans are for it, but maybe some inspirational music will help me envision something.

There’s an annotated version of this map and DM notes available to patrons.

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I’m an idiot. Here’s the actual alternate version of Whiskey Point.

The previous “alternate version” of Whiskey Point was identical to the regular version. I guess I saved the wrong file without noticing. Sorry about that. I especially apologize to anyone who was staring at the two files, trying to figure out what the difference was.

Anyway, I just noticed this, so I’m posting the actual alternate version. The difference is at the top floor of the lighthouse. If it still doesn’t look different, reload the page. You may have the old file cached.