Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Experiences Re-Drawing Adventure Maps?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 8478824" data-attributes="member: 11"><p><em>Note: Possible spoilers for Ghosts of Saltmarsh and the classic U1-U3 series.</em></p><p></p><p>I don't know about you, but I often find myself redrawing maps for pre-published adventures. This may be because of my tendency to run 1E modules and 1e/2e adventures from Dungeon (for whatever the current edition I am running - currently 5th). I am currently prepping U3 - The Final Enemy out of Ghosts of Saltmarsh (I lost track of my copies of the original modules, unfortunately) and was really annoyed to find that the maps are still presented with one square equaling 10 feet rather than have them re-scaled to be 5 feet per box for easy representation on the grid. So that is the first thing I usually do ahead of time so that I don't mess up trying to do it on the fly on the battlemat during play and waste time (some areas I pre-draw entirely using 1 inch box graph paper). </p><p></p><p>The other thing I am doing is just making the levels (especially the top level) just smaller overall. These maps are just too big and logistically speaking would take too many sessions to get through (Heck, I made the maps of the swamp lair in N1 - Against the Cult of the Reptile God significantly smaller and it still took my group four sessions to get through - not including a session of travel to get there). Furthermore, as written, the PCs are expected to go here twice, stretching out the time even further.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, while some individual areas need to be as big as they are drawn because they are meant to hold 60 sahaugin at a time or whatever and it is meant to be a huge fortress, other areas are needlessly huge and spread out, so I try to redraw the whole thing to fit on a two page spread on my graph paper journal. This means removing some rooms entirely (since the fortress is still under construction, I just make some tunnels/rooms - like area #3 - end in rubble or incomplete walls) and making some rooms smaller. (For example, I see no reason why the Spartan-like sahuagin would need roomy quarters - even a champion does not need a 30' x 30' room, when a 15' x 15' cell is <em>still </em>bigger than the average American college dorm room). This also means moving some rooms (for example, I put area 13 - the slave pens - halfway between levels 1 and 2 by looping a hallway and adding a sloped passage). However, it also means carefully considering what that means for sound carrying and the opportunity and speed with which reinforcements can arrive if the PCs make too much noise.</p><p></p><p>I just cut the hall with the guest rooms (areas 14 and 15) on the top level because sahuagin don't seem like the type to have "guests."</p><p></p><p>Lastly, sometimes these modules have unusually shaped corridors and layouts for no good reason (in this case I think the reason is to keep sound from traveling too easy around the place, but that actually makes little sense given that it is a fortress mean to go on alert on a moment's notice). So, while I try to keep a little of the idiosyncratic shape, I also straighten a lot of it out. It is one thing if the map is of natural caverns being put to use as a lair, but a designed and engineered place presumably is designed towards its uses.</p><p></p><p>Levels two and three are even bigger and I am considering trying to combine them into one - but that may be too much work and undercut the sense that there are enough enemies in here to be considered an army that threatens multiple communities, so we'll see. . .</p><p></p><p>All this said, this is not a complaint (well, it is partially a complaint - the 10' squares thing is annoying), since I find drawing/re-drawing maps to be fun and sometimes a challenge (like I have said many time before drawing and crafting to me is as much a part of the hobby as encounter design or what have you). I was mostly wondering if other people run into this issue and how they handle it.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, below is the original map from Ghosts of Saltmarsh (1 square = 10') and my (still not inked) quick re-do of it (1 square = 5') .</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]147984[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]147983[/ATTACH]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="el-remmen, post: 8478824, member: 11"] [I]Note: Possible spoilers for Ghosts of Saltmarsh and the classic U1-U3 series.[/I] I don't know about you, but I often find myself redrawing maps for pre-published adventures. This may be because of my tendency to run 1E modules and 1e/2e adventures from Dungeon (for whatever the current edition I am running - currently 5th). I am currently prepping U3 - The Final Enemy out of Ghosts of Saltmarsh (I lost track of my copies of the original modules, unfortunately) and was really annoyed to find that the maps are still presented with one square equaling 10 feet rather than have them re-scaled to be 5 feet per box for easy representation on the grid. So that is the first thing I usually do ahead of time so that I don't mess up trying to do it on the fly on the battlemat during play and waste time (some areas I pre-draw entirely using 1 inch box graph paper). The other thing I am doing is just making the levels (especially the top level) just smaller overall. These maps are just too big and logistically speaking would take too many sessions to get through (Heck, I made the maps of the swamp lair in N1 - Against the Cult of the Reptile God significantly smaller and it still took my group four sessions to get through - not including a session of travel to get there). Furthermore, as written, the PCs are expected to go here twice, stretching out the time even further. Anyway, while some individual areas need to be as big as they are drawn because they are meant to hold 60 sahaugin at a time or whatever and it is meant to be a huge fortress, other areas are needlessly huge and spread out, so I try to redraw the whole thing to fit on a two page spread on my graph paper journal. This means removing some rooms entirely (since the fortress is still under construction, I just make some tunnels/rooms - like area #3 - end in rubble or incomplete walls) and making some rooms smaller. (For example, I see no reason why the Spartan-like sahuagin would need roomy quarters - even a champion does not need a 30' x 30' room, when a 15' x 15' cell is [I]still [/I]bigger than the average American college dorm room). This also means moving some rooms (for example, I put area 13 - the slave pens - halfway between levels 1 and 2 by looping a hallway and adding a sloped passage). However, it also means carefully considering what that means for sound carrying and the opportunity and speed with which reinforcements can arrive if the PCs make too much noise. I just cut the hall with the guest rooms (areas 14 and 15) on the top level because sahuagin don't seem like the type to have "guests." Lastly, sometimes these modules have unusually shaped corridors and layouts for no good reason (in this case I think the reason is to keep sound from traveling too easy around the place, but that actually makes little sense given that it is a fortress mean to go on alert on a moment's notice). So, while I try to keep a little of the idiosyncratic shape, I also straighten a lot of it out. It is one thing if the map is of natural caverns being put to use as a lair, but a designed and engineered place presumably is designed towards its uses. Levels two and three are even bigger and I am considering trying to combine them into one - but that may be too much work and undercut the sense that there are enough enemies in here to be considered an army that threatens multiple communities, so we'll see. . . All this said, this is not a complaint (well, it is partially a complaint - the 10' squares thing is annoying), since I find drawing/re-drawing maps to be fun and sometimes a challenge (like I have said many time before drawing and crafting to me is as much a part of the hobby as encounter design or what have you). I was mostly wondering if other people run into this issue and how they handle it. Anyway, below is the original map from Ghosts of Saltmarsh (1 square = 10') and my (still not inked) quick re-do of it (1 square = 5') . [ATTACH type="full" width="435px" alt="263987273_634052588029830_4970957769845310515_n.jpg"]147984[/ATTACH][ATTACH type="full" width="434px" alt="263589834_1352107551869368_8615410927010676802_n.jpg"]147983[/ATTACH] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Experiences Re-Drawing Adventure Maps?
Top