Category: DM Notes – For Patrons

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Secret Room: Prison

So here’s a secret room which I suspect will be pretty useful, since a lot of adventures involve rescuing captives and a lot of maps don’t really have a great place to keep them.

I tried to make the place look as dank as possible. Not “dank” in the positive way, but in the traditional sense. Dark, wet, kind of nasty. So you’ve got some piles of refuse, bloodstains on the floor and a few buckets for… well, I’m sure you can work out what the buckets are for.

Anyway, I’ve got another secret room almost finished– a cult shrine– and I’ll get that posted tomorrow. Hopefully you think these things are useful, but in any case, I’ll be back to making the usual gigantic maps very shortly.

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The Two Palms Tavern

Well, I decided to draw a palm tree on the map and call it the “Two Palms Tavern” after all. I’m not proud of having drawn a dad joke into the map, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time. I won’t make a habit of it, I promise.

The vote for the second civilization of Tir Thelandira is still open and I wanted to give patrons another chance to cast a vote before I end it in a few days, so if you haven’t cast a vote, please do! Once it’s decided, I’ll write some lore for the winner and start getting to work on the maps.

Next, I’m going to draw a few maps based on an idea I’ve been sitting on for a long time. The maps will be secret rooms. Not maps with secret rooms, just secret rooms connected to nothing. They’re meant to be used along with some other map that you wish had a secret room, but doesn’t. I’ll make versions with different entrances so you can have it behind a wall or under a trap door in the floor.

These will be small maps with 1-2 rooms and they should only take 2-3 days each. I’ve got three secret rooms in mind: a hidden prison, a psycho killer murder cellar, and a cultists’ shrine/summoning circle. Those seem like they’d be fairly useful, but if you’ve got any better ideas, let me know. I might draw more later depending on what you all think of these.

Anyway, that’s it for now. If you’re celebrating a holiday soon, I hope you have a great one! Relevant holiday greetings to one and all!

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The Barre Sinister: A Spelljammer Pirate Tavern

I’ve made some fairly strange maps, but we might have a new champion today. The Barre Sinister is a tavern built on a giant, stone hand… in space. I also made a version with just the hand, which is arguably weirder. I suspect at least one of you has a use for that.

If you don’t play Spelljammer and you’re wondering how this place could possibly exist, allow me to explain the first rule of Spelljammer: Never ask questions about how things work. They just do. That’s a very important rule. No one’s trying to play Spelljammer with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Of course, not everyone is running a campaign in which the players can escape the gravitational influence of their planet, so I’m going to make an island version of this map next. That shouldn’t take long, since I mostly just need to change the background and draw a bit of land around the hand. Maybe I’ll throw a palm tree on there, who knows. Wait… would that constitute a pun in this situation? Maybe I’d better not.

Anyway, I’m gonna get to work on that and I’ll be back with it in a day or two. By the way, if you’re the person who actually has a use for the empty space hand, I’d love to hear what you plan to do with it!

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The George and Dragon Inn – A 17th-Century Coaching Inn in Southwark, London

This map is based on a historic inn in Southwark, London. The establishment’s original name was The George and Dragon, although it’s known today as The George Inn. Personally, if it was up to me to abbreviate the name, I’d have kept the Dragon part and sent George packing, but I suppose that’s not the way the owners decided to go with it. They did keep the dragon on the sign, at least.

The George and Dragon was originally a coaching inn, which is an inn designed to accommodate stagecoach travelers, with large stables and space for carriages. Not many coaching inns survived the transition from stagecoaches to train travel, but The George was fortunate enough to be close to London’s railroad, which enabled it to stay in business. Lucky guy, that George.

I’ve gotten quite a few comments and messages with ideas about Tir Thelandira and the second civilization that will be living on the island. Tomorrow, I’ll start working your ideas into 3 or 4 different proposals, which I’ll put up for patrons to vote on.

Each of the proposals will be inspired by things you suggested and will probably contain suggestions put forth by several people. I won’t be able to work everything in, but I do appreciate all of your contributions. Some ideas, like an aquatic civilization, won’t make it onto the ballot, but I do absolutely want to include those in this world eventually.

Anyway, I’ll get those ideas fleshed out and post a vote in the next day or two. After that, I’ll be drawing the Barre Sinister, which is a Spelljammer-themed map that isn’t actually a spelljammer. It’s a tavern floating on a giant, stone hand that floats through space. So that should be a little something different. For those of you whose parties aren’t capable of generating enough Delta-V to reach a place like that, I’ll be making a sea version of the map as well.

All right, hope that sounds good. Let me know what you think of the map!

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Frog’s Haven Crannog

In the last post, I talked about my plans for the first island of the as-yet-unnamed big project. There will be two civilizations living on the island, one of which will be a kingdom of wild elves.

Over the past century, the wild elves have been shifting from a tribal, nomadic society to a settled one. While the elves have become better at building large structures of timber and stone, their skills at architecture are still well behind those of other civilizations. To reflect this, many of the wild elves’ settlements will be inspired by Iron Age Celtic buildings from Ireland and Scotland. Here’s a breakdown of what I have in mind:

Crannog – A crannog is a man-made island with one or more houses on it. The island was often surrounded by a wooden palisade and had either a narrow causeway or a path of stepping stones leading to the shore. Crannogs were most common in Ireland and Scotland. Frog’s Haven will probably be the only one.

Broch – A broch is an old style of Scottish towerhouse, which looks like this. I think I’d draw this fairly similar to the one pictured, perhaps with some farmland around the walls. I’d also give it a slightly more elven, tribal look.

Motte and Bailey (or something similar) – A motte and bailey is an old style of wooden castle, which looks like this. I’d probably use a more elaborate version of the design and I’d make it more of a walled village rather than a fort. Again, it’d have an elven style to it as well.

Oakenhold – This is one of the first maps I ever posted. I’ve never redrawn a map, but I want to redraw this one and I want it to be the seat of power for this wild elven civilization. I’ll change plenty about it, but it’ll be the same basic design. This is where the king or queen lives.

That’s the plan so far. There will probably be other locations as well, but I want to get your opinions on these ideas first. If the response is largely negative, I’ll come up with something else. If it’s positive, I’ll get started on a map of the island and we can start figuring out where things are and who the elves are sharing the island with.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the Celtic wild elves. Positive or negative, I really want to hear your opinions!

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Murud-Janjira: An Island Fortress in Maharashtra, India

I made an annotated version of this map, which was only possible with the help of Aditya, who translated the only labeled map of this fort I was able to find, which was in Hindi. I’m very grateful for the help and the least I can do is pay it forward and give the annotated version away to everyone.

Murud-Janjira was built in the 1400s and was only taken by force once. The Maratha Empire assaulted it about a dozen times. They climbed the walls, they tried to dig their way in, they even built a fort nearby called Padmadurg to use as a staging ground for an attack. None of this succeeded. The Virgin Padmadurg was no match for the Chad Murud-Janjira.

So how was it taken? With booze. Let me explain. The fort was built by Ram Patil, the Admiral of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate. Once it was finished, Patil and the Sultan had a little falling out, Patil stopped taking the Sultan’s orders and they unfriended each other on facebook. The Sultan appointed a new admiral named Piram Khan and ordered him to take back the fort.

So Khan dresses up as a merchant and sails to the fort. He says he’d like to leave some crates of silks and wine inside for safekeeping. You know, temporarily. “Sure,” says Ram Patil, “You can leave your booze and loot with us. We’ll be happy to hang onto it for you. You know, temporarily.”

So they start bringing in the crates and Khan decides to throw a little party for Patil and his men for doing him this favor. At this point, you have to imagine that Ram Patil thinks he’s talking to the dumbest man alive. Still, Khan cracks open a few casks of wine and everyone spends the evening getting drunk. Later that night, once Patil and his men are completely hammered, Khan goes back to those crates they brought in earlier and starts opening them up to let out the soldiers hiding inside.

You can probably guess where it goes from here. They attack the drunken garrison and take back the fort. The moral of the story is that sometimes thinking outside the box means literally getting into a box.

Anyway, I’m gonna go to bed. I hope you like the map!

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Akshardham Temple: The Interior

Several months ago, a patron said that India was underrepresented in fantasy settings and I agreed. Take the Forgotten Realms, for example. Faerun is inspired by Europe, of course. Then you’ve got Zakhara, the Arabian part of the world. And then there’s Kara-Tur, which is East Asia, and Maztica, which is Mesoamerica. Technically, there’s an Africa, but almost nothing is written about it, so that doesn’t really count. But there’s no India.

Well, I can’t make a whole Indian setting, but I can draw a map of something Indian and I decided to go with Akshardham Temple. I’m going to draw another map of a historical place in India next, but for a different reason. The island fortress of Murud-Janjira won last month’s Cartographic Congress, so we’re going to have a subcontinental doubleheader.

For a few reasons, I’m going to draw the place in ruins as it is today. The first is that I think it’s more interesting that way. And it doesn’t prevent it from being used as a fort, since, in FRPGs, ruins tend to be occupied by pirates, goblins, ogres, cultists, etc.

The second reason is that, after an hour of searching, the only labeled floor plan I’ve found of this place is in Hindi. Or possibly a different Indian language. In any case, my keyboard doesn’t have those buttons on it, so I can’t use Google Translate to find out what everything is. But if it’s in ruins, that’s not really a problem *taps forehead*.

Anyway, I’m gonna grab some coffee and get started on that. Let me know what you think of the map!

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Great Bombard: Spelljammer goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt

The Great Bombard isn’t a ship, it’s a gun. A really big gun. This gun does has a ship attached to it, though. This accessory, mounted under the barrel, allows a crew to move the gun through space and blow things up in a variety of interesting and exotic locations.

If you allow your party to acquire a Great Bombard, I don’t think that’s unreasonable. But you do need to keep it in mind when planning adventures from that point on. Ask yourself, “Can my players solve this problem using nothing but their big gun?” If so, you may want to make a few adjustments so the party has to put a little more work in. That said, you’ve got to let them blow something up every once in a while. That’s half the fun of having a ship like this, after all.

Since the new Spelljammer was recently released, I’ll probably draw another spelljammer map sometime in the next two months. I’ll hold a vote to let patrons decide which one you’d like to see.

But first, I’ll be drawing India’s Akshardham Temple. Then, I’ll be drawing the map chosen by last month’s Cartographic Congress: the Indian island fortress of Murud-Janjira. I’ll be drawing it about how it is in this photo: overgrown and in ruins. Personally, I think that’s much more interesting (and it also gets around the problem that the only labeled floor plans I’ve been able to find are in Hindi).

Well, I hope you like the Great Bombard. I’m gonna get started on this Indian double-feature. Let me know what you think!

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The Generalife: A Palace of the Alhambra

I visited the Alhambra a few years ago and, before I went, I was considering drawing a map of the place. When I got there, I realized how completely insane a task that would be. Here’s the entire Alhambra complex. This map– the Generalife– is the little thing in the top right. I’ve drawn a four-level map of Mont-St-Michel and I’m pretty sure the Alhambra would take longer than that did.

To give you an idea of how big this place is, there are six other palaces in the Alhambra. And if that sounds crazy, there used to be two more. If you plan to be in Spain, I highly recommend going to see it. There are a lot of castles in the world, but only a few of them will make your head literally, physically explode and this is one of them.

Next up, I’ll be drawing the Great Bombard spelljammer I promised a few months back. It’s basically an enormous cannon with a ship wrapped around it. You could call it the A-10 Warthog of spelljammers. I’ll make a seafaring version as well for those running monoplanetary campaigns.

After that, I’ll be drawing Akshardham Temple, a Hindu temple in New Delhi. When someone builds something that looks this good from the top down, I basically have to make a map of it.

Okay, that’s it for now. I hope you like the map! Let me know what you think.

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The Chronomancer’s Tower

There are a lot of possibilities for this map, but I feel like the most interesting would be for this thing to be a time machine. You turn a few wheels, set some dials and you’re off to the future. Or the past. This could allow the party to get some ancient, lost artifact or talk to that one guy who knew that thing the party wants to know but has been dead for 2000 years.

Alternatively, you could just completely jump the shark and send the players to Stephen Hawking’s dinner party for time travelers. That idea might not be for everyone, but I thought I’d throw it out there. It’d be pretty funny if you’ve got a group that would get the joke.

Next, I’ll be finishing up a few things for the Black Loch. I made a list of everything left to do in this post, but I’m going to start by making the final version of the Black Loch region map, replacing the generic place names with the proper names.

Then, I’ll be tackling everything else on the list, which means I should be posting something here almost every day for the next week or so. After that, I’ll get started on the last Black Loch map. All right, I hope that sounds good. I’m gonna get some sleep and get started in the morning!