Draft of Black Mire

This summer I posted the (contest-winning) Challenge of the Frog Idol. The majority of the adventure takes place in the Black Mire, a swamp traversed by old wooden causeways that has featured in my campaigns since I was 14 years old.

As I wrote up the Challenge of the Frog Idol, I drew a map of the Black Mire and keyed it up to the best of my memory from my games. But this week I dug up an older version of the map that I had started to draw up a couple of years ago. This version of the Black Mire is incomplete, but includes some elements that I didn’t include in the Frog Idol version that I wish I had – particularly the standing stones by the forest and the raised island in the middle of the mire with the strange stepped temple upon it.

I love the increased detail I gave this map. The style of Coruvon by the forest, the trees in the swamp, the cool standing stones, and so on.

Draft of the Black Mire

The Cinder Throne

Last week I was asked “How do you get your maps to look so “clean”? Are these maps scanned from your moleskine notepad? If so, what process do you use to produce such a nice map image?”

The majority of my posted maps are actually drawn on plain white paper, some are on graph paper (and most of those these days are drawn on my gridded moleskine). The clean look, however, comes from the tools I use and the scanning method I take.

This week’s map was drawn on yellow cardstock (I’ve mentioned in the past that I draw on just about everything – if you buy used fantasy and science fiction novels at the Book Markets around Ottawa, you may find a few with my maps drawn on the inside covers). Not the best material for scanning since it scans darkly, but what the hell. The actual drawing is all done using a black gel pen. In this case a 0.7mm pen from Staples, but I also use 0.5mm pens on occasion (but generally prefer the smoother flow of the 0.7).

Once I’m done drawing the map (for a tutorial on my drawing style, check out my tutorial dungeon), I reboot to Linux, slap the map down on my scanner and scan it into the gimp as a 300 dpi gray-scale image. It looks something like… this:

Cinder Throne - Raw Scan

Normally the paper doesn’t come across quite so dark, but as I said, this one was on yellow cardstock instead of white paper. So the next trick is to crank up the brightness and contrast. Typically I run with +20-30 Brightness and +40-60 Contrast. This one was at the higher end of both scales because of the darker background. For maps drawn on graph paper, this also removes the graph lines.

The end result is what you typically see on my blog:

The Cinder Throne

Challenge of the Frog Idol

In the four months I was gone from the interwebs (falling in love & getting surgery – pretty much in that order), hopefully you all finally downloaded and used / adapted / mangled The Challenge of the Frog Idol.

But I know you slackers are probably as lousy at following through on the awesome as I am, so I’m here to remind you of this adventure I wrote for JB’s Fat Frog Challenge. (It can’t all be bad, after all it won the challenge).

But not only JB and I think it is made of awesome. Check out this review I just spotted over on RPGGeek – it is epic and awesome and really highlights what I was going for when writing this thing out.

Oh, and the flavour text of the review is epic.

Black Leaf knew that something was terribly wrong the moment she set foot on the island. The muddy swamp soil that clung to her boots was the colour of greasy half-cooked sausage; the humid air was suddenly thick with the cloying odour of the charnel house; and most ominously of all, no birds were to be heard where only moments before the swamp had echoed with eerie birdsong.

It was only when the ground moved that Black Leaf realised that she wasn’t standing on an island of solid rock, but rather… a floating barge of impossible size where the dead were lashed to the dead with wicker and mud, a hellish vessel gravid with undead crocodiles who even now slithered forth from the foetid hold to drag the thief down, down, down…

But now it has become known that the signet ring of Count Moreland was among the treasures that the bandits stole and research has pointed to their excavations in Carver’s Cave as their home. Thus a hardy band of adventurers is required to find the cave and then find the fortress and the lost ring.

Cavern of the Hive

The fortress remains unexpored by the hive. But as soon as the residents of the hive detect the smell of the encroaching adventurers, they will track them to the fortress and attempt to repel them from the caves entirely. Even if the adventurers do keep these strange and massive insects at bay, they will discover sooner or later (through the diary of the commander of the bandits) that he stored his most valuable loot in the depths of the cave, where he felt it was safe from his own gang.

This map was drawn free hand using a 0.5mm gel pen on plain white paper (from the dollar store) in a single draft over roughly 90 minutes.

As usual for my maps, this map is the copyright of Dyson Logos but is released with a gentleman’s agreement for you to use this map in your own blog and stock it as you please in your choice of systems. You cannot use this in any other form of publication except for your own blog, and you must credit me for the map along with a link to my blog. Tell me about it, and I’ll try to pimp your reuse of my map here too.

I received an email from a relatively new DM asking how to use my maps in a game – or specifically how I use them.

I have been very inspired by your maps and I wanted to know if you could help me understand how you walk your players through on of your maps?

Do you just set your map down and say “You start here”. or do you talk them through it giving them some graph paper and exempting them to draw out what you reveal to them?

Overall, it depends on the situation.

Either I draw it out as I go, or I just describe the scene (especially for the smaller maps). As Neil Ellis over at DungeonMaster.com pointed out; “[you can re-]draw the map on the spot while laying out the narrative, something I personally always enjoy. It is almost like reading the narrative text in a video game while the next sequence loads. On rare occasion I just lay the map out on the table in full view of the players and run with it – but the element of exploration is such a core theme of classic Dungeons & Dragons that this is truly rare in my games.

Let’s take my most recent map (the Ziggurat of Rhissel the Morning Lord) – This is one I would likely not even draw at all. Just describe the scene as an old and abused 4-step stone pyramid showing the marks of the ages squat in the centre of the valley. There is a single entrance facing to the east seemingly cut into the top tier of the pyramid, like a single eye socket in a dead god’s skull.

Once inside it’s fairly easy to describe the areas.

The Ziggurat

A. The entrance to the ziggurat shows the signs of the ages and of lack of care. Debris blown in during storms litters the floor. Stone stairs lead down into the pyramid proper, overlooked by a dark alcove.

B. The stairs turn to the right and then to the right again after another dozen steps. At each landing there is a single stone door recessed into the heavy stone block walls. The litter on the floor is significantly reduced compared to upstairs.

C. The stairs end somewhere below the ground at an alcove at an archway into a much larger room with statues in each corner. One of the statues seems to guard an extension of the room where you can spy what appears to be a massive sarcophagus.

Now, for a low-level group or a group that is really into the exploration aspect of the game I might actually draw out the map as I go in addition to those descriptions, but in most cases the descriptions are all that are really needed – especially if you are running a more narrativist or story-oriented style of game.

The map itself was drawn during an episode of Grey’s Anatomy with a 0.5mm black gel pen on plain white paper. It follows my fairly typical design of a side-view and a few overhead views. It was drawn in a single draft this evening.

The Ziggurat of Rhissel the Morning Lord

As usual for my maps, this map is the copyright of Dyson Logos but is released with a gentleman’s agreement for you to use this map in your own blog and stock it as you please in your choice of systems. You cannot use this in any other form of publication except for your own blog, and you must credit me for the map along with a link to my blog. Tell me about it, and I’ll try to pimp your reuse of my map here too.

Perrol-on-the-Mount

As usual, feel free to use this in your games, and if you want to do something cool with it on your blog, let me know about it and I’ll promote it here too!