Category: Work-In-Progress

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Fort Bourtange – Second Update

This is the linework for Fort Bourtange finished and ready for coloring. I’m planning to crop this map to a few different sizes, since I don’t think most people will need this much space around the fort. This will be the largest size, however, and is intended for people who want to do something crazy with it, like have a full-on battle between two armies. I’m not gonna lie, the grid size on it is absurd.

I also wanted to mention that I’m not going to draw the upper levels of the buildings here. The best way to explain the reason is that I think including them makes the map worse. They’re all small– mostly attics and lofts– and there’s nothing interesting going on up there. If I include them, that means doubling the size of an already huge map, which means more to load on a VTT or more to print for the table. Mont-St-Michel had interesting stuff on the upper levels, but this place doesn’t and I think it’s better to just leave it at one floor. Hopefully, everybody’s cool with that.

Before I get to coloring this, I want to share a few things I’ve learned while doing research for this map:

  1. William the Silent, who ordered the construction of Fort Bourtange, looked like this. I have never seen a 500-year-old portrait of someone who looks anywhere near as badass as that. Everyone else is a ponce in a wig. But that dude? That dude is serious.
  2. Fort Bourtange has three drawbridges. One of them has a bathroom on it and it’s still in use. Don’t swim in the moat.
  3. This is unrelated to the fort, but super interesting: Grutte Pier was an early Renaissance Dutch man the size of Andre the Giant. A mercenary group called the Black Band raided his village and killed his wife, after which Pier started a peasant rebellion. Later, he became a pirate. This guy was the D&D character you created when you were 15, except he was real. This was his sword.
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Fort Bourtange – An Update

Here’s where things are at with Fort Bourtange. This is all of the fort’s structures, including about 40 buildings, 6 bridges, a few wells, some watch posts and a windmill. The next step is to scan all this, arrange everything and draw in the rest.

While I normally draw almost everything on paper, I’m going to be drawing the rest of this map on my pen tablet. That means the landscape, moats, trees, plants and so on. I don’t think you’ll notice any difference, I just want to let everyone know what the plan is.

Finally, after the lines are done, I’ll be coloring it, which will probably take a week or so. I’ve been hoping to get this done by the end of the month and I’d say things are on track for that so far.

On a side note, here’s something interesting I learned. There are about 50 residents of Fort Bourtange today. That seems like a pretty unusual place to live, right? Like, if you told someone you lived in a star fort surrounded by a moat in the Netherlands, you’d imagine that would narrow down the location quite a bit. That’d have to be here, right?

No. There are five places in the Netherlands that fit that description. Five. Fort Bourtange, Naarden, Heusden, Brielle and Willemstad. Apparently, there are thousands of Dutch people just casually living in star forts in the year 2021.

Man, I really have to go there one of these days.

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The Floating Tower (Work-In-Progress)

Here’s a sketch of the 13-story tower I’ve been working on. I wasn’t originally planning to draw something completely insane here, but then I came up with this design and now I am. Anyway, what do you think?

Also, just a heads-up: this map and the next map are both going to have windmills. Things are going to get pretty Dutch around here for a little while, I hope everyone’s prepared for that.

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I will send you instantaneous telegrams.

While I’m not generally a big fan of social media, I am a big fan of getting more feedback on my work, so I recently made an Instagram account.

I probably would’ve done this sooner, but I don’t actually own a smartphone. Yes, I know, I am the world’s youngest 90-year-old man. Still, if you want to see fantasy maps posted from a phone emulator on a desktop by a person who began using Instagram in late 2021, go ahead and follow me.

Also, I have one question for people who didn’t start using Instagram yesterday: is it okay to post pictures sideways, or do people hate that? Some maps only fit that way, but if it’s considered obnoxious, I’ll stop.

Okay, I’m gonna go color the thing in the picture.

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Gamblers’ Key is almost done.

This is the finished first level. I’ve been giving this map some extra love, but the rest is almost done too. I’ve gotta finish up a few more details, draw a sideview, and write the DM notes, but I should have it all done in about two days. Also, I hope you like that water, because that is probably the best-looking water I’ve ever drawn.

Okay, back to work.

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Gamblers’ Key (Work-in-Progress)

These are the lower two levels of the pirate fortress/gambling hall I’m working on. All this is underground. There’s a third level above this showing the top of the island and the buildings above ground, but I ran out of room on my desk.

On the bottom floor, you’ve got storage, sleeping quarters and facilities for receiving stolen goods. Then, on the left side of the floor above, you’ve got the gambling hall. And on both levels, there are a variety of places to fire cannons from in case the cops show up.

Anyway, I’m gonna get back to coloring this. Hope you like it so far!

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Château de Chenonceau (Work-in-Progress)

These are the lower two levels of the Château de Chenonceau. The two floors above these are also finished and the whole thing is ready to be colored.

When I draw real places, I do a lot of research and I think it pays off. One of the most interesting things about this place wasn’t in any of the floor plans I found, old or new. I actually discovered it from an instagram video I stumbled across. Apparently, there are stairs leading from the basement kitchens down into the water below the castle. In addition to just being really cool, it gives the place a semi-secret entrance to enter or leave by, which is always a nice option to give a party, should they make the effort to look for it.

I’d normally expect this to take about three days to color and finish up, but I’m going to be going camping for a couple days, so it’ll be a little longer than that. I wanted to let you all know in case anyone needs to send me any messages in that time. It’s completely fine if you do, it just might take a few days before I can get back to you.

Anyway, I’ll be leaving tomorrow, but I’m going to try to get as much work done on this as I can before then!

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The Cobalt Flotilla (Work-In-Progress)

These are the upper decks of the flotilla. The three levels below this are pretty close to finished as well, so I should only need another couple days to get it done. I hope no one was expecting this to be a reasonable-sized map, because it definitely will not be.

Okay, I’ve gotta go to sleep.

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I made a slight miscalculation.

The other day, I said I’d be coloring and releasing these ships one at a time. At some point, it occurred to me that that’s insane and that it’d be much faster to color them all together and post the separate maps afterwards. So I put all the decks of all the ships into one image to do that and… well, this is what that looks like.

The main thing I’m trying to say is that this might take a little longer than I’d originally expected. That’s 17 ships and boats, with a combined 35 decks. Which is kind of a lot. Anyway, I may need a couple more days on this, so I wanted to let everyone know. Well, I’m gonna dive back in! I’ll be back when I’ve got them done.

By the way, that raft in the bottom right is the Kon-Tiki. Okay, back to work.