Category: Small Maps

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The Impossible Vault

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:

  • There are golems that release poisonous gas from vents in the walls behind them when they attack. So you have to fight golems in a room that’s quickly being filled with poison gas.
  • There’s a trap room that… look, it’s hard to explain. Read about it here at number 2. It’s pretty devious.
  • There’s a puzzle room that doesn’t do anything. You can move stuff around all you like and it won’t open a door.
  • The vault at the end is a decoy. The real vault is hidden by a secret door, which is behind the poison gas vents. Which the party will probably try to cover up as soon as they’re done fighting the golems.

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!

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The Ruins of the Torre Scola – Dehumidified Version

As promised, here’s the alternate version of the Torre Scola. It’s occurred to me that I draw quite a lot of islands and that I should probably draw non-island versions of those maps as well for those DMs whose campaigns involve ungulate-based travel.

So, the voting has ended and the final map for Tir Thelandira will be a valley of wizards. This will be a small community of 3-5 wizards, each with their own tower. I’ll probably make a map of the whole valley as well as individual maps of the towers for anyone who wants to use them separately.

After that, I’ll get started on the giant ship megaproject that I talked about in this post. I’ve been champing at the bit to start on that for a while now and I’m really looking forward to it. Anyway, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think of the map!

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The Ruins of the Torre Scola

The Torre Scola (“Scola Tower”) is a ruined tower off the coast of La Spezia, Italy. Built in the 1600s, it was heavily damaged during the Napoleonic Wars, then later used for target practice by the Italian Navy in the early 1900s.

Personally, I think the historical value of this place should’ve been enough to keep people from pounding it with naval guns. But even if we ignore that– even if we say, “It’s fine, there’s no shortage of old stuff in Italy and it’s not like this is the Colosseum,” there’s still one more important thing to consider: THIS THING IS ONLY 200 METERS OFF THE COAST. So, you know, try not to miss. No pressure.

Anyway, I’m going to make a non-island version of this map as well, which should be done later tonight. So I’ll be back with that in a bit and we’ll talk about what’s next.

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Secret Room: Vault

Here’s the last of the secret rooms. Hopefully you’ll find them useful, but I think this is all the one-room maps I can draw before I bore myself to death.

Next up, we’ve got a desert village built inside a sinkhole, with an oasis at the bottom. I haven’t planned it out yet, but I suspect the layout will be a bit like Ollin’s Borehole.

After that, I’m going to get started on the island of Tir Thelandira. The vote on the second civilization has ended and the Dhasran Colony has won! With that decided, I’m ready to start drawing maps of the place. I think I’m going to start with Oakenhold, the big tree fortress at the center of the wild elven kingdom. I expect that to be a pretty enormous map.

Well, this being New Year’s, I’d better leave it at that. If you’re going out, have fun! And if you’re not, don’t feel bad. Neither am I. But have a good night either way!

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Secret Room: Cult Shrine

Here’s the cult shrine secret room. You’ve got a big, demonic head, a sinister-looking glyph on the floor and some nice scented candles to freshen the place up a little.

I said this was going to be the last secret room, but people seem to like these, so I’m going to do one more: a vault. That’s a common type of secret room that’s missing from these, so I’m going to draw one. It won’t take long. In and out. Quick, one-day map. I’ll have that for you tomorrow and then I’ll be drawing something much, much bigger.

Sound like a plan?

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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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Secret Room: Psycho Murder Basement

This is the first of three secret rooms I’m drawing. It’s meant to be used with another map that you’d like to add a secret room to. For example, maybe you want to run an adventure in the glorious French castle of Chateau de Chenonceau. But your adventure requires a brutal axe-murder dungeon and, inconveniently, the Chateau de Chenonceau doesn’t have one of those. This map is meant to solve that problem, with two different versions so you can have the secret entrance either behind a wall or under a trapdoor in the floor.

Next, I’m going to draw another secret room map: a hidden prison. This is for situations where you need to hide some hostages or sacrifices or something. You know the adventures where the party has to go somewhere and rescue people? It’s for those.

It shouldn’t take long to draw. I actually got this one done in two days, but I decided to hold off on posting it since it’s probably the most grisly map I’ve ever drawn and Christmas felt like a slightly awkward time to put it out there. I mean, what do you even write in the post? “Have a great holidays everybody, here’s some dismembered corpses!” I don’t even know.

Anyway, hopefully you find the idea of the secret rooms useful! I’m not going to be spending a ton of time on them, but I want to draw a few and see what everybody thinks. If you’ve got any thoughts about these or how to make them more useful, by all means let me know!

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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 Black Loch: Caves and Tunnels

I’m fully prepared to admit that these are some of the most uninteresting maps I’ve ever made, but that’s basically the point. There are plenty of interesting maps in the Black Loch, but sometimes that’s not what you need. Sometimes you just need a cave or a tunnel without anything special in it, because it’s random encounter time and the party will be fighting *rolls dice* …giant bats.

That’s what these are for. They’re not specific locations marked on the regional map, they’re for the places in between.

Of course, the Black Loch is a sea, so there will be plenty happening along the coast as well. For those encounters, there’s the Black Loch naval battlemap. While I originally made it as a backdrop for ship battles, I think it’s just as good for encounters on land as well. And it’s plain enough to be fairly reusable.

There’s only one thing to do before I get started on the last map in the Black Loch: draw tokens. I’m going to make tokens for all the various creatures mentioned in the lore, as well as the notable characters. I already made tokens for some, so I just need to knock out the rest.

Anyway, I won’t ask what you think of the maps because, let’s be honest, they might be the most boring maps I’ve ever drawn. But I hope they’re useful.

Well, I’m gonna stop typing and start drawing. I’ll be back with some tokens in a few days!