Category: DM Notes – For Patrons

Posted on

Cladwater Lift Lock: The Ramparts

Here’s the upper level of Cladwater Lift Lock, as promised. And for patrons, I made a night version as well.

With that done, I’ll be getting back to the Vatican City megaproject, where I’ll be drawing St. Peter’s Basilica. Because the place is gargantuan and the floor is extremely elaborate, I’m not sure how long it’ll take, but I’ll post some work-in-progress pics along the way to show you how it’s going.

The basilica is an incredible work of art and I’m going to try to capture as much of that as I can in the map. But, ultimately, there’s only so much I can do. I’m going to show you two photos. Okay? This is Notre Dame in Paris. A world-famous masterpiece of architecture, no question. And this is St. Peter’s Basilica. I mean, like… that’s just bananas. My point is that I’ll do what I can, but I can only do so much in the face of that.

All right, I’m going in. Wish me luck.

Posted on

Cladwater Lift Lock

So the idea for this map is that it’s an outpost with a lock that lets riverboats cross a waterfall. If you’ve never seen one, boat elevators are a real thing. Here’s a Canadian one. And here’s Scotland’s super deluxe fancy one. I’m not sure if there are any that go over waterfalls, but it seems possible.

These things don’t go too far back in history, but Germany had one in 1789, so you should be able to get away with it in a fantasy setting. If you need an excuse, the phrase “dwarven engineering” has been letting DMs get away with putting sci-fi stuff in the middle ages for years. There’s a little pro tip for you.

As you may have noticed, this place does have stairs and there is an upper level to draw. It’s nothing fancy, just some ramparts, but I’ll draw that next. It should only take a day, two at most. After that, we’re back to Vatican City, where I’ll be getting started on St. Peter’s Basilica and its perfectly reasonable floor.

All right, I’ll be back with that soon! If you’ve got any questions or thoughts about the map, let me know.

Posted on

Lyndorne Falls

In the seven years that I’ve been making maps for a living, I’ve drawn exactly six city maps. When I say a “city map,” I mean not a battlemap. So stuff like Vayl’s Firth doesn’t count. Here’s the list, from oldest to newest, along with my opinions on them:

  1. Irredeemable garbage
  2. Crap, but crap with a few merits. The lore may have saved it.
  3. Somehow, I think this is worse than the previous one.
  4. This one might have been okay if I hadn’t decided to color the buildings pink for some reason.
  5. This map is what Rogue One is to Star Wars sequels. Not incredible, but much better than all the other garbage.
  6. This map. I think it might be kind of good. I don’t know how or why this happened.

The basic idea for this place is that Lyndorne Falls is a unique kind of trade city. Goods come in on riverboats at the top of the waterfall and they’re moved down to the bottom on cargo lifts, where they get sold on to seafaring traders. Enabling goods from upriver to reach the sea makes this place a big deal, especially if there are a lot of towns out there. Also, the cliffs and the surrounding jungle serve as natural walls to protect the city. On the whole, I’d say it’s a fairly unique town that wouldn’t be hard to find a place for in most settings.

Next, I’m gonna get started on the Vatican megaproject. I’ll be drawing this one piece at a time and I’ll alternate between Vatican maps and other maps, but I’ll start with the famous stuff. First, I’ll be drawing St. Peter’s Square, which looks like this. It’s not the most interesting part of Vatican City, but it is the biggest and it should help me to calibrate the size properly so that all the pieces fit together in the end.

All right, I’m gonna go transubstantiate some paper into a map. Our journey begins.

Posted on

Hackett’s Pass Blockhouse

This map is a good place for an on-the-road encounter. It probably starts with the party traveling through the mountains and finding themselves in front of the gates here. Then, somebody tells them they need to pay a toll if they want to pass.

Now, in real life, people would see two options in this scenario: pay the toll or turn around and leave. But in D&D, nobody ever even considers the second option. The choices are to pay the toll or to kill every single one of these punks. And, unless the toll is very reasonable, I’d usually bet on option 2. Killing a few dozen people in order to avoid forking over a hundred bucks is just another day at the office in the Forgotten Realms. In any case, it’s a fun encounter to throw at your players in the middle of a long journey. And once in a while they do surprise you.

Next, I’ll be drawing a map of a multi-level waterfall city in the jungle that extends from the top of the falls, across multiple cliff outcrops and down to the bottom. This will be a city map (like this, for example), not a battlemap like Vayl’s Firth. I’m way outside my comfort zone with this– which I like– but it makes me a bit nervous going into it. So let me grab a pencil and see if I can figure out how to draw this place.

Well, that’s about it for now. If you’ve got any thoughts or questions, by all means let me know!

Posted on

The Necropolis of Khamos

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!

Posted on

The Kernsridge Barrows

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!

Posted on

The Lost Library

Personally, I’m of the opinion that, in fantasy RPGs, a ruined, abandoned library is much better than a regular library. Hear me out. So, either one can be a place the players go to find information, but in a ruined library, much more interesting things can happen. There might be monsters. There might be traps. There might be some crazy old guy that’s been living in there for the past 20 years. Maybe one of the bookshelves is a mimic. There are lots of possibilities.

But what’s really going to happen at a regular library? The party might get told to keep it down? Most RPGs don’t really have “library mechanics,” where you roll to see if you can effectively navigate the complexities of the dewey decimal system. Plus, it feels kind of weird when the arcane lore the party needs in order to defeat the ancient lich god turns out to be publicly available information. “Oh, so lots of people know that you need a mithril hammer engraved with dwarven runes to destroy his phylactery.” Maybe it’s just me, but that feels a little awkward.

Next up, I’ll be drawing an orcish/barbarian burial ground. I’m imagining a number of small crypts and barrow mounds, plus maybe one larger one. I think it should be a pretty useful map, since nearly all D&D parties do a bit of grave robbing now and again. And, hey, barbarian tombs are worth looting too. They may have been poorly educated and unhygienic, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t buried with some good stuff. It’s worth a look, anyway.

Posted on

I’m back! Vayl’s Firth is Finished!

  

You can download all these maps here.

It’s been over a month since I posted for non-patrons, but, as promised, here’s the complete city map and the upper levels.

If you want to become a patron, there are individual maps of all the islands, plus unfurnished versions, annotated maps, DM notes, a Foundry module and various other stuff. There’s a lot. It took me three hours to upload all the patrons’ edition maps. Admittedly, I’m on a trash-tier internet connection at the moment, but still.

For anyone who can’t afford that, every part of the map is here for you to use and I hope you enjoy it.

With Vayl’s Firth finished, I’m going to get caught up on all the Cartographic Congress maps that have been chosen since I started drawing this. And then, at some point, I’ll get to work on the next megaproject: The Vatican.

Well, that’s about it. So, what do you think of Vayl’s Firth? I hope it lived up to your expectations. In any case, let me know what you think!

Posted on

The Dragon’s Lair in Devil’s Chimney

This is the volcanic lair of a red dragon and its minions. Since this isn’t a particularly safe place to live for anything that isn’t immune to fire, those minions are probably something like:

  • Fire giants
  • Efreet
  • Salamanders
  • Firenewts

I could also see this being the home of any of the above without the dragon, since these races would all probably be big fans of volcanofront property.

As promised, I’ll be starting on the river delta city megaproject next. From my experience in drawing very large maps, I’ve learned that planning a project in detail saves time in the long run, so I’m going to start off by laying out the whole city in advance. I’ll plan out the islands, what’s on each, where the bridges, roads and buildings are, etc. Once I’ve got that sketched out, I’ll get started on drawing everything piece-by-piece, putting it all together and getting it colored.

I expect this to take around 2 months, but it could be a bit more or less. I’ll keep you updated with regular work-in-progress posts along the way so you can see how it’s coming and so I can get your feedback as I go. Well, it’s time to stop talking about it and start sketching this thing out. I’ll be back with some sketches once I’ve got a layout I like. Until then!

Posted on

Temple of the Elements

The Temple of the Elements is dedicated to the four elemental forces. Did you ever see a show called Captain Planet? And did you ever wonder where Captain Planet was when the kids hadn’t summoned him? I don’t know either, but I feel like it might’ve been someplace like this.

So, I just moved and I now live in a small village in the country. This is my first time living in a rural area and it’s a little different from what I’m used to. My house has three different methods of heating. The internet speed is… not good. And my yard contains 15 junk cars, a busted tractor and three shipping containers (not a joke). Also, there is one store in the village and it’s a post office that sells milk, eggs and butane canisters. This isn’t going to affect the maps in any way, but I wanted to ask if anyone else is living in a more country situation than me. Because this really feels like getting thrown straight into the deep end. And any country living pro tips would be greatly appreciated.

Anyway, next up is a dragon’s lair carved into a volcano with buildings for its efreet/fire giant minions. Thanks to the patrons that broke the tie on that vote, by the way. After that, I’ll get started on the river city megaproject.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m gonna see if I can figure out how to switch my stove from heating the house to cooking food. Wish me luck!