Category: DM Notes – For Patrons

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Windward Point Rookery: An Aarakocra Village

Windward Point is a place that isn’t meant to accommodate the non-flying. There are no stairs between levels and no paths to walk between them, which might make things interesting for your players. The rogue and the wizard will be fine. The rogue can climb reliably well and the wizard can fly from place to place. But the cleric? He’s gonna end up praying for his god to fix his broken legs by the time he’s done here. No athletics OR acrobatics? Best of luck, fella.

In case you’re unfamiliar with aarakocra, they’re a bird-like humanoid race that looks like this. Well, until fifth edition, when they apparently grew some arms. This leads me to a point I wanted to mention: the lore about aarakocra is REALLY inconsistent. At least one of you is looking at this and thinking, “Aarakocra would never live there, they’re too claustrophobic.” And you’re right, there are sources that say that. But there are other sources that say aarakocra used to live in cities carved into cliffs. So how do I decide which version to go with? I chose the version I thought was more interesting.

In any case, I think it’s reasonable to imagine that some tribes of aarakocra could be comfortable with lifestyles that others aren’t. Humans are certainly like that. You’ve seen those survivalist shows, right? They drop Bear Grylls or whoever into an arctic wasteland and he shows you how to build a fire, find food, get to safety. Remember that, somewhere, a few hundred kilometers to his north, is an Inuit village where people are just going about their day.

Anyway, next up is a dark, surreal estate on the plane of shadow. I’ve been looking forward to drawing this one and I have every intention of making it as grim and bizarre as humanly possible. If this thing doesn’t make Warhammer 40K look like My Little Pony, I will have failed.

There’s an annotated version of this map, DM notes and VTT and print versions 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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The Floating Market

Everybody having a good holidays? I hope so, but if not, remember that 2020 is almost over, which is a cause for celebration by itself. And, with tomorrow being New Year’s Eve, it’s completely acceptable to drink your way across the finish line.

This map kind of feels like something someone else drew. It’s a completely reasonable size, it’s almost all outdoors and the map takes up the entire image with no convenient place to put a title. I mean, I did draw this and I remember doing it, but… how do I put this? It’s like watching a movie with Liam Neeson in it and he doesn’t kill a single person the whole time. It’s not bad, necessarily, but it feels a bit strange.

By the way, floating markets aren’t a thing I made up. They used to be fairly common in Southeast Asia and there are still a few around today. It’s a very practical idea if you think about it. How do you get your stuff to the market? On a boat. Where do you sell it from once you get there? How about the boat? Then how do you get home? Throw the boat in reverse and you’re on your way.

I considered drawing a bridge across the river, but I decided against it. That might seem like a strange choice, but I think it’s actually better without one. If the players need to cross, they’ll have to figure out how. There are plenty of possibilities if they aren’t in a hurry, but if they are, they might have to do something crazy, like jump from boat to boat. It’s a recipe for chaos, and chaos makes for interesting encounters. That’s my thinking, but if you have any other thoughts about it, I’d love to hear them.

Anyway, next up is a mind flayer dreadnought, which is a spelljammer warship. After that, I’ll be drawing an aarakocra village. But, as I promised earlier, I’ll be taking a day to work on the dynamic lighting for Brazenthrone first. This has been going much more quickly than I thought and I suspect it’ll be done by the end of January.

Well, I’d better get started on that. Let me know what you think of the map!

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Wahat Al-Hasan Oasis

I did quite a bit of research for this map, particularly on Middle Eastern architecture and furnishings. It isn’t based on any real place, but it was inspired by the Masjid Wazir Khan in Pakistan and the Buland Darwaza in India.

As I was skimming through the various reference material I used here, I came across something largely unrelated, but ridiculously awesome: zamburaks. This is a small cannon mounted on a camel. Not pulled by a camel, mounted on the camel. It’s a camel with a cannon turret on its back and I swear to god it was a real thing that people did. My players are in the middle of a frozen wasteland at the moment and I want to stop everything and drag them out to a desert just so I can have them get shot at by a camel cannon.

I’ll resist the urge to do that, but maybe you don’t have to. See the stables in the map there? *Slaps roof* This bad boy can fit six zamburaks in it. I am just saying.

Next up is last month’s Cartographic Congress winner: a village for an amphibious people, located on a hill that is submerged during high tide. An inn at the top of the hill is the only structure permanently above water. I’ve got a lot of ideas churning around for this one and I think it’ll end up being pretty interesting. Anyway, let me know what you think of the map! Or zamburaks.

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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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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 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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Brazenthrone – Greenstone Hall

Greenstone Hall is a residential district of Brazenthrone with a large, green crystal formation embedded in the floor. Discovered when the chamber was excavated, not much is known about it other than the fact that it’s magical. Once seen as a cause for concern, it’s managed to blend into the background after eight centuries of not causing any apparent problems.

With this chamber finished, we’ve got three more parts of Brazenthrone left to do, the next of which will be the Iron Mines. But before that, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner, a hanging wizard’s tower built into a stalactite. It’s a concept that allows for some unusual design decisions compared to your standard tube of rocks poking out of the ground. I think it might lead to something pretty interesting when it’s finished. Well, I’ll be back with it in a bit and we’ll see!

There are DM notes for this map 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.