I draw the occasional D&D map

[dave2008]

Generally speaking, almost nothing is pre-planned.

That is pretty amazing. You have developed quite a skill there.

 

[Imaculata]

Up in the hills is a small crater-like depression with a mostly smooth floor and a pair of heavy metal doors that lead to some place in the hillsides.

The doors open twice every 6-9 months. Once to allow the Blue Golem into the crater to begin its wandering, and once again exactly 10 days later when the Blue Golem returns.

The Blue Golem walks the lands nearby seemingly at random for those ten days – usually just walking from one place to another and then moving on to the next. On rare occasion the golem stops to collect something small and place it in a box build into its shoulder. Usually this is a plant or a small animal, but of course tales include it kidnapping children or seeming to want specific body parts from those that come too near.

Lovely work. Not enough DM's create round dungeons, or include round elements in their mazes, so props to you sir. I also like how part of the dungeon has collapsed, thus breaking the symmetry that is so common in lots of D&D maps.

Can one of your next maps perhaps include lots of height differences? Balconies, bridges and the like? I think those types of dungeon designs we also don't see enough of around here.

 

[Dyson Logos]

Can one of your next maps perhaps include lots of height differences? Balconies, bridges and the like? I think those types of dungeon designs we also don't see enough of around here.

That's actually something that I'm generally well known for - while most people think of my maps because of the hatching, I use a lot of elevation changes to make them feel more 3D.

If you've seen the maps in Dragon Heist you can see what I mean.

 

[Dyson Logos]

I’m often asked about the scale of the maps I post. In truth, I don’t include a scale on my maps because either it is pretty obvious (when drawing houses and similar structures – where a square is 3 to 5 feet), or more likely because I want the end user to pick a scale that works best for them. In the inner workings of my head, you can assume that I’m thinking at a scale of 10′ per square when drawing most of my maps as that is the traditional scale for D&D maps which is where I cut my teeth.

But for the Temple of the Mad Titan, 10 feet per square just isn’t going to cut it. Let’s crank this one up to 20 or maybe even 50 feet. A structure of Brobdingnagian proportions, the temple is made of almost inconceivably large blocks of stone and rests atop a massive cloud. At the heart of this immense structure is the throne of the mad titan.

But he is rarely found there – but always nearby. He is bound to the throne by magical chains that give him some freedom of movement within the structure, but not quite enough to get to the massive entrance and thus he is trapped here with freedom always just in sight. Some days he stands in the great hall in front of the heart chamber and raves against his captors and the world. On bad days he will hide behind the throne or in one of the nearby alcoves, hiding from the light of day and the fresh air.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/16/temple-of-the-mad-titan/

 

[Dyson Logos]

I’m playing in an awesome Neoclassical Geek Revival RPG campaign right now called “Age of Myth” where we are one of two PC groups competing to achieve the “victory conditions” of the game setting – in this case to form a kingdom by first uniting three iron age clans into a tribe, and then uniting three of these tribes into a kingdom. (The last campaign we played was also competitive, and while our group was the first to discover the location of the end-point of the campaign, we were beat to actually recovering the Eye of Set by the other group.)

The game takes place in Cromspoint, pictured here. I BELIEVE that Zzarchov is creating the hexmaps for these campaigns using a random map generator, and adjusting it to his taste. This is my interpretation of the campaign map as it stood in year 11 of the campaign (we are just starting year 13 next session – we have one session per season, 4 sessions per year).

I won’t add much more detail about the campaign, and what we are doing in it, as at least one member of the other group will be reading this.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/18/adventures-in-cromspoint/

 

[Dyson Logos]

From 2008 through to 2013, Sabre Lake was the centre of a number of campaigns that I ran – using B/X D&D, Advanced Labyrinth Lord, and D&D3e. Each campaign focused on different elements of the region – although two of them shared the same intro arc starting with Goblin Gully and then dealing with the horrible thing that was inadvertently released while exploring that site.

The namesake city of this map is a cheap crib of Sanctuary from the Thieves’ World novels – down to it being on a contested border and fairly recently having changed hands from independent to the Satrapy and then to the Allied Empires. It is the last northern city in the civilized lands. Beyond Sabre Lake there are other cities but they are weeks of travel away and remain independent of the various political factions that rule this portion of the land.

The people of Sabre Lake do their best to continue going on as if things hadn’t changed, but the lawless ways of an independent border town don’t mesh that well with the views and laws of the new management. And thus there is strife and friction between the various cults, the Imperial garrisons, the puppet government, and the few remaining citizens with money and clout from the old regime. Throw in the classic feeling of Thieves World to make it a wonderfully crapsack city that you would only love if you were stuck here.

The only element that recurs in every campaign I’ve run here is the Seer. I’ve even had two other campaigns come to Sabre lake over the years to find the Seer of Sabre Lake. To visit the seer, one first visits her shrine in the Citadel, where her acolytes will fill you in on what is needed for you to be granted an audience. Generally it involves renting a nice boat (often from a friend or family member of one of the acolytes), getting it loaded up with expensive or weird things that are useless to you (a samite sail, really? let me guess, your sister weaves samite?) (thirty four feathers from seventeen different swans?), and sailing across the lake to visit.

Those who do not complete the tasks assigned find only a rocky shore and a shallow stony valley. Guests however will find a stony trail at the shore that leads to a much larger valley surrounded by ancient marble ruins. Sometimes there is a test at this point (beat the Seer’s mighty centaur champion at chess!). And then the Seer grants you the assistance of her knowledge and visions.

Or just tells you useless riddles.

High resolution copy of the map (and a version without tags) can be downloaded from https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/21/the-citadel-at-sabre-lake/

 

[Imaculata]

That is a gorgeous map!

 

[Dyson Logos]

View attachment WEB-Kraken-Portal-Towers-Grid.png

Ever want to just add a little something when hopping onto a teleportation circle or using some other sort of long distance (or interplanar) portal?

The Portal Nexus was just that for one of my games. A long standing moon gate portal had the destination point obstructed by a group of planetars, so when the PCs jumped through, instead of sending them straight to the destination, they were shunted off to the nearest "portal nexus".

In this case, a weird set of interconnected towers with a number of portals and teleporters throughout, and a small number of stranded extra-dimensional "tourists".

The Portal Nexus is a set of odd interlinked towers with no ground floor entry (but a few upper level doors that lead into the towers from walkways and balconies). Enterprising thieves and those with means of flight can access the nexus via these upper level entries, but the design of the structure assumed that all persons entering and leaving the nexus would be doing so via portals.

The top level (level 4) is two towers connected by a covered bridge. I picture a single portal right in the middle of the bridge, so you can’t actually use the bridge to get from tower to tower without crossing through the portal.

The next level down (level 3) is three towers, two of which are connected by an open-air bridge. The tower on the left I picture as having two portals, at the two dead-end regions of the c-shaped room.

The level just above the ground floor (level 2) is comprised of multiple towers, and also is home to the only open-air portal of the structure. There is a large pillar made of green stone sitting on the roof of one of the smaller towers and reached by a bridge – when activated it calls down a bolt of green lighting from the skies and is open for travel for ten minutes. The spike-sided tower to the left is also home to three more portals (and a balcony overlooking the stone circle on the main level), each embedded in the wall of it’s own chamber, framed in heavy obsidian blocks.

Finally, the ground floor is home to two portals and access to the upper levels.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/23/release-the-kraken-on-the-portal-nexus/

 

[Dyson Logos]

Originally a small fortification on a rocky outcrop, the Halls of Ghuldesh were magically formed out of the rock beneath the fortification by an order of druids. The old fortifications are but a few stones atop the hill now, but the druids’ work and standing stones remain.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/25/the-halls-of-ghuldesh/

 

[Dyson Logos]

A small settlement in the Thendrake Archipelago, Quellport sits on an unusual lagoon in a cluster of islands. Except for the Isle of Seven Bees (the elongated forested island to the upper left of the map), all the smaller islands are generally just referred to as Quellport or the Quell Islands.

There are a total of four settlements on the Quell Islands as well as a number of towers and smaller edifices –

Quellport itself is essentially in the centre of the map sitting on the gentle waters of the lagoon. With a population of about 1,400, Quellport has grown beyond being a fishing and farming community and supports several churches, guilds, and a “tower of arcane knowledge” where a number of wizards and a few clerics who make excursions out to the cube for research or spiritual reasons.

Quiet Cove on the north side of the same island as Quellport. A small fishing community built up around a couple of large manors established by well-off ex-adventurer types.

Sheep’s Cay on an eastern Quell island specializes in deep sea fishing and also maintains a friendly relationship with the cyclops living in the caves a few islands north of them. They deliver the occasional sheep and large fish to the cyclops, and the cyclops remains generally peaceful in return.

Greenshore is south of Quellport and is known for the excellent shipbuilders who set up their business here. They collect wood from the island across from them and build some of the hardiest fishing and merchant vessels in the region.

The Isle of Seven Bees is home to a strange and massive hive that sits atop a 300 foot amber tower. A number of giant bees (about 20 feet long) live within the hive and occasionally fly over nearby islands. At random intervals every few years or so, they collect upon the cube in the Quellport lagoon – and a local adventurer has regaled visitors and locals alike with tales of liquid gold and other treasures he found within the hive when all the bees were at the cube a few years back.

And finally the cube… In the middle of the Quellport lagoon is a massive cube, sitting at a slight angle in the waters. A deep blue in colour, it seems potentially related to the massive pillars of the “City of Blue”. Small bits of it have been mined and broken off, but those who work the cube itself for more than a few hours find themselves sickening and often dying within a week or two. It is said that whatever god who dropped their die here doesn’t like it when the locals try to break it apart.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2019/02/28/quellport-and-the-isle-of-seven-bees/