Sneak Peek At Ghosts of Saltmarsh Maps

Huh, it wasn't as hard as I thought. The Saltmarsh map puts north to the left (boo, you are BAD people who do this. North is the top of the page!!!) which means there's a pretty little river right between Fireshear and Luskan near the Ten Towns that would fit perfectly.

Hussar said:

Huh. That is an interesting question. If you wanted to place this in the Sword Coast, where would you?

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North west of Luskan, or on the bay south of Candlekeep, or on one of the islands, such as Mintarn.

You could always cross out the "N" and change the orientation though.

Hussar said:

Huh. That is an interesting question. If you wanted to place this in the Sword Coast, where would you?

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I renamed it and use it as Leilon.

As to FR placement: Keep in mind, most of the campaign map rivers are a fair size. There are undoubtedly others and the one in the Saltmarsh map doesn't look huge.

As to colour maps: Sorry, not in favour. I like clean references. Even if I'm on a VTT, but doubly so if I'm laying the thing on the table.

The real issue with many premade dungeon cardstock products (photopaper) is that artists need to put extra flourishes on every last little tile or photo map.... skeletons, broken swords or carts, little magical or lighting flourishes... all of which may be entirely out of place for where I want to use them.

I have a lot of Paizo, WotC and other tilesets of various sorts and a good 20% of them are contaminated with extraneous junk. A lot of the time, my groups are off in the deep woods, mountains, or the like. Finding giant skeletons, strange moai statues or odd magical lighting is just something that guts engagement when that isn't part of the product.

So, still in favour of information dense, black and white battle map presentation. If it is photo-real, there shouldn't be any little arty flourishes.

And while I'm at it, some sort of loo is likely a requirement in castles and some inns. Some inns and many churches might have an outhouse, but castles likely require facilities as do some inns. Yet you rarely see any facilities (sometimes not een a kitchen) as designers are too busy sticking in all manner of other things while ignoring baseline requirements.

That all said, U1 to U3 I've run and it formed a great part of a 20 year D&D campaign (20 real life years). One of the two brothers who help out the party (customs guys?) survived to become an adventurer in his own right (the other died). Great series for new or veteran players.

Someone made u1 to 3 in neverwinter the online game using the foundry. No idea if they are still there and playable. I did play through some of it but it was a long time ago.

I find the black and white location maps, nice and clean without art textures under and all that jazz, to be far more useful in play myself. Or blue maps. For a dungeon map I don't need a lot of art on it that just clutters it, makes it harder to make notes, and add little to the game. Honestly I don't like any of the maps in any of the AP for 5e that I've bought for that reason. When you copy them they can get messier as well. For the larger maps like the town itself the artsy maps are OK, but even then it would be sweet if the modules had a nice clean b&w map as well.

Dyson Logos is a fine artist, but is anyone else upset because we're paying $50 for BLACK and WHITE maps? WotC needs to tighten it up in my estimation.

Rob Twohy said:

Dyson Logos is a fine artist, but is anyone else upset because we're paying $50 for BLACK and WHITE maps? WotC needs to tighten it up in my estimation.

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Not upset at all.

I'm paying $50 for a lot of other content, and the color/style of the maps is immaterial as long as they are usable.

I think the only way to make everyone happy is to include both black and white and colour versions of each map.

Demetrios1453 said:

Not upset at all.

I'm paying $50 for a lot of other content, and the color/style of the maps is immaterial as long as they are usable.

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Ugh. The fact that people AREN'T upset by this is UPSETTING! I will say I'm kind of bias tho... I do all my playing on the Fantasy Grounds VTT and having black and white maps just seems wrong. But I buy the books ($50) and I also buy the FG modules ($25) and the DnD Beyond version, so I'm in for $100 each time they release a book. I only really need the Fantasy Grounds version but I'm a freak and have to have it all, I just wish the maps were color.