As soon as I posted the basilica, I realized I had completely forgotten to make an annotated version, so here it is.
I only labeled the things I thought would be most relevant to people, but if you want to know more detailed information on every single altar and monument, let me direct you here. Also, hats off to whoever created that website, because this map would have been substantially less accurate without it.
St. Peter’s Basilica is finished. Well, provisionally finished. I really do hate posting the map without the background and surrounding buildings, but it’s necessary for now and I want to explain why.
Since I’m drawing all of Vatican City, I will eventually draw each building, but I need to draw them separately, because, in my experience, drawing part of a building is a good way to end up redrawing it later. And the map above includes not only the basilica, but part of the sacristy, the Apostolic Palace and a tiny bit of the Sistine Chapel. So I need to finish those first, then add them to this map, then draw in the background around them. In the long run, this is what gets Vatican City done faster and I hope everyone is okay with that.
Next up, I’ll be drawing a map of Mesa Verde, an ancient Native American settlement carved into a cliffside in the Rocky Mountains. I’ll try to draw it as it was when it was occupied, which I should be able to do, since archaeologists seem to have figured out what most of the buildings were for.
Anyway, I hope you like the basilica and I promise you that the surroundings will be drawn in eventually. I gave the map a lot of extra love and I hope you feel it was worth the time and effort. Either way, let me know what you think!
I won’t claim that this is a perfectly accurate depiction of Egyptian tombs, but I did do some research on the Valley of the Kings and other necropolises and I tried to capture the general spirit of the layout.
The middle tomb on the left is a good example. The stairs lead down from the entrance into a room with a deep pit. This is called a “well chamber” and most tombs in the Valley of the Kings had one. A little past that is a room with a ship in it. You might think no one would be buried with an entire ship. And you might be wrong about that. Keep in mind that these are the people that built the biggest thing in the world for a funeral.
The Egyptians took funerals seriously. These folks didn’t just order some flower arrangements and give speeches about all the nice things grandpa did back in the day. They built grandpa a temple, ornately painted the walls, filled the place with luxuries, then put him in four lavishly-decorated coffins, each a bit larger than the last. How many coffins are your relatives in? One? Pathetic.
Well, this is the second of two tomb maps in a row and it’s time to move on to other subject matter. Next, I’ll be drawing a large, indoor market on the side of a steep hill. It’ll be inspired by Seattle’s Pike Place Market, but in a middle ages kind of style. No Starbucks, no Sunglass Hut, no parking lot. I’ll try to make it a unique marketplace for a major city. A good place to do some shopping and get into a fight.
Well, that’s it for now. If you’re a patron and you’re thinking about using this map, check out the DM notes for a list of suggestions for traps to use here. And if you’ve got any questions or thoughts about the map, let me know!
These barrow mounds are a great place for your party to fight some undead and score a few “graveyard souvenirs.” Some of these tombs are meant to be the graves of common people, while a few are for leaders or nobility, and others are the graves of warriors.
The warriors’ graves contain the weapons wielded by the deceased, which were interred alongside them. That might seem like a strange choice, given that metal weapons were valuable and they were usually only found in the tombs of important people. But that’s one place where real life and fantasy settings diverge. Like, a lot.
In most fantasy settings, metal weapons aren’t rare at all. Take the Forgotten Realms, for example. Everyone who wants a sword has a sword. Goblins have swords. Kobolds have swords. Swords aren’t valuable, they’re trash. When your players kill bandits, do they even bother to take the weapons? And if they do, are they like, “Ho-lee hell boys, we’re rich!” Nah. Just more swords. A few axes. Leave ’em.
This isn’t true of all settings. In Dark Sun, finding a metal sword is like finding a magical sword. When you’ve been beating monsters to death with a rock tied to a stick for months, finding an actual blade is a big deal. But in most settings, a non-magical weapon is practically litter. Anyway, that was my thinking here.
I hope you like tombs, because next up is more tombs! I’ll be drawing an underground tomb complex in the style of Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, with hidden passages, animated statues, traps and places for undead guardians. After that, we’ll be moving back to the realm of the living.
Well, I’m gonna start doing some research on the Valley of the Kings. If you’ve got any interesting ideas for the map, let me know!
So this is about as evil a dungeon as I could come up with. Despite the name, it’s not literally impossible, but it is rough. The details are in the DM notes, but here are the main features:
It’s a small dungeon, but if you’re going to troll your party this hard, you’ve gotta keep it short. Anyway, if you run your party through this, let me know how it went. I feel like some really ridiculous stuff could end up happening here and I’d love to hear about it.
Next up, I’ll be drawing a Salamander Ironclad Warship. It’s a big, armored ship designed for the elemental plane of fire, but it’ll work just as well as a seafaring vessel. I’ll tell you up front: for most of you, this is probably the bad guy’s ship.
After that, I’ll be drawing a new spelljammer map. I’ll post a vote later today so patrons can decide which one you want to see. Anyway, that’s it for now. If you’ve got any thoughts on the Impossible Vault, by all means let me know!
This map was heavily inspired by the Great Ziggurat of Ur-Nammu in Iraq. If you’ve ever seen a picture of a ziggurat, that’s probably the ziggurat you saw. I designed this primarily as the headquarters of an evil organization, but it could be used as a temple, cult lair or just a dungeon in the desert.
I made a bunch of alternate versions of this place for patrons, one of which was unintentional. Here’s how that happened. I was trying to make a version where the ziggurat was floating through the astral plane and I figured I’d do it by changing the colors. I’d make the sand blue so it’d look like nebulous waves of… you know, astral stuff in the background. My thinking was, it wouldn’t look like sand anymore since sand isn’t blue. Then I got up, grabbed a cup of coffee and, when I sat back down, I realized I had just made a night version of the map.
Anyway, I also made a proper astral version and another version without most of the interior (which is more accurate to the Ziggurat of Ur). Then there are unfurnished versions with and without the statues. Hopefully this fulfills all your ziggurat-related needs, whatever they may be.
Next, I’ll be drawing a ruined mage’s tower. I’ve got some ideas about how to make this place interesting, but let’s see how they look on paper. It’s definitely not going to be just a big cylinder, though. The world has plenty of maps like that. Once that’s done, I’ll get back to drawing more of the Stygian City.
All right, that’s it for now. Hope you like the map!
The 7th level of the pit is home to a clan of goblins, who get by on a healthy diet of giant bats, giant spiders and mushrooms (which are basically a vegetable). Below that, the 8th level is overrun with spiders and in dire need of a treatment that only Dr. Flamethrower can provide.
Then there’s the 9th level. Most of this floor is a giant temple to Ghanya (the deity of the people who built the pit). But there’s a smaller group of rooms that are disconnected from the rest. This was once a tomb, but is now the residence of a vampire named Khrani, who sleeps here during the day, then flies out with the bats at night. Compared to the rest of the pit, her rooms are pretty nice. Just because you live in a literal hole in the ground doesn’t mean you can’t live in a nice hole in the ground.
For patrons, I’ve updated the DM notes quite a bit. There are new entries for these three levels as well as a new section with suggested creatures to populate each level with. When this is finished, the DM notes are going to be… not quite a campaign, but as close as I’ve come to writing one for any of my maps. Have a look and let me know what you think so far.
Next, I’ll be drawing the Black Citadel. This is going to be a ziggurat that serves as the lair of an evil organization. Imagine the party is finally heading out to confront the National Association of Sinister Wizards and, after an arduous journey, they finally arrive and they see this. No need to double-check the address, that’s definitely the place. Even the word ‘ziggurat’ sounds sinister. Ziggurat.
Anyway, I’m gonna get started on that. Once it’s done, I’ll be getting back to the pit. Speaking of which, tell me what you think so far!
The next three levels of the Stygian City are finished! As promised, I updated the previous levels with the lower level windows. I also renamed all the previous levels. I’d originally named the first three floors 0, 1 and 2, but I realized that it would take less time to change them to 1, 2 and 3 than it would to answer questions about that for the next several years.
For patrons, I updated the DM notes with an overview of the history of the pit and how it came to be. I made a copy of this story for non-patrons as well, which you can find above. I’m very curious to know what everyone thinks about it. In any case, this whole place is designed to be very flexible, so if you’ve got a better idea of what to do with it, you can tell your story instead.
Next up is a drow academy of war, where drow males can go to become useful for something other than reproduction or being beaten for the entertainment of others. There’ll be an arena, training areas, maybe even a classroom where students come to study Drow Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. After that, I’ll probably draw another few levels of the pit.
Well, I hope you like how it’s coming so far! Check out the DM notes and let me know what you think of the story. And if you’re not a patron, check this post tomorrow and I’ll have a copy for you too.
The Forgotten Place is an ancient ruin unearthed from the sands. It’s the perfect place for your party to do some archaeology, or– perhaps– some “archaeology.” In case you’re not aware of the difference between those two words, let me explain: the one with the quotes means grave-robbing.
I’d probably go with the second option in a D&D game. Brushing the dust off of pot shards to learn about the customs of ancient peoples may be morally and academically superior to scoring fat sacks of loot from a dead guy, but, well, moral superiority doesn’t buy you full plate and a castle.
I also want to mention that some of you may have more use for half of this map than you do for the whole thing. Maybe you like the desert ruins, but you want them to lead down into a different dungeon. Or maybe you like the underground part, but you want to put it under an old cathedral. Either way, go for it. Mix and match. There are no rules in RPGs*.
Anyway, the next map will be the Goblin Queen’s Carriage. This is going to be a giant carriage/war wagon that a tribe of goblins use as a mobile raiding camp. If you picture it looking like something out of Warhammer Fantasy, then we are very much on the same page. I think it’ll be a map that offers a lot of fun possibilities. After that, I’ll be getting started on the giant pit megadungeon that I’ve been talking about.
Well, that should do it for now. If anyone’s got any ideas on what might be pulling the giant goblin carriage, let me know. I feel like horses would be boring, but a giant seems like a bit much. My best idea right now is yaks, so if you can top that, I’ll consider it.
*There are multiple books full of rules in almost all RPGs.
When I first started working on this map, I didn’t know much about the Castel Sant’Angelo. I knew that it was in Rome and once belonged to the pope, but I wasn’t aware that it was originally built as the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. When I read that, I had to pause for a second and process what I had just learned. So…wait, the pope used to live in a gay man’s tomb? Huh. That was my fun fact for the day and now it’s yours.
That also helps to explain why this place is so unusual. The long, circular ramp at the entrance and the long stairway up the center aren’t things you’d see in many castles, but they were a part of the original mausoleum and are still there after 1900 years of renovations.
There’s an alternate version of this map I want to make for patrons and it should only take a day. I think there are a lot of things this map could be used for if it was just a bit less of a castle, so I’m going to remove the outer walls and leave the keep in the center. At that point, it could be a temple, a monastery, a small village, an unusual wizard’s tower, etc. I think you’ll see what I mean.
Well, I’m gonna get to work on that and I should have it for you tomorrow. In the meantime, let me know what you think of the Castel Sant’Angelo. And if you’ve got any questions about the place, feel free to ask. It is genuinely a strange castle, it’s not just you. I promise.
