D&D General Maps, Maps, Maps! Dungeons, Ruins, Caverns, Temples, and more... aka Where Dyson Dumps His Maps.

[Dyson Logos]

I draw and release 10 maps a month outside of my commissioned work. I'll be posting them here again, because it has been a long time since I routinely showed off my work here.

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Gascon’s Pit

Gascon’s Pit is a shaft in the centre of some old ruins. The pit was once under a roof, but the structure above the pit and associated understructures has long fallen into ruin – leaving the pit open to the elements. The ruins are at the end of a dwarven bridge over the Deepspike Ravine – the bridge having significantly better longevity than the structures that were definitely built after it.

Stairs lead down into the pit – and then end at a mezzanine that looks down over the pit proper. There used to be a bridge across the pit at this level that leads to a sealed door set under the stairs that in turn leads into a crypt. A wide set of stairs deeper in level 1 leads down to level 2, and there’s also four shafts in the west end of the level that reach down to the lowest chamber on level 3.

Access from level 2 to level 3 is via stairs set into the walls of the pit again (without descending into the pit, mind you, these parallel the pit and then open up to an area west of the pit proper – the same chamber the shafts on level 1 lead down to). The bottom of the pit is sunken below the floor level of level 3, and is full of debris and water from above.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 10,800 pixels (36 squares) wide. To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the traditional 10′ squares) – so resizing the image to either 2,520 pixels wide or 5,040 pixels wide, respectively.

Gascon’s Pit

Gascon’s Pit is a shaft in the centre of some old ruins. The pit was once under a roof, but the structure above the pit and associated understructures has long fallen into ruin – leavin…

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[overgeeked]

Thank you for your maps. They’re fantastic. It’s amazing that you release some for others to use commercially. Wonderful stuff all around.

 

[Lanefan]

Nice maps!

Two requests, however, not just to you but to all makers of dungeon maps:

1. For every set of stairs, clearly indicate which way goes up and which way goes down. On the maps above there's indicators for some of the stairs if the viewer looks closely, but several of the shorter stairs don't show which way goes up or down. Failing that, put elevation markers on the floors; for example on the Level 1 map if 0' is set as the floor at the bottom of the stairs down from the surface, a simple +3' or -3' indicator in the long room on the right edge would show whether one climbs or descends the short curved stairs to get in there.

1a. For those stairs where the whole staircase isn't shown (usually the ones that go between levels), somehow indicate how long they are and-or the vertical drop. The side view helps some here but doesn't have a scale.

2. For every door, indicate somehow which way it opens.

 

[Von Corellon]

Your work is legendary!
Curiously, I modified the first map (Gascon’s Pit, first image) here for The Queen with Burning Eyes and, of course, credited you!
Rock on!

 

[Dyson Logos]

Nice maps!

Two requests, however, not just to you but to all makers of dungeon maps:

1. For every set of stairs, clearly indicate which way goes up and which way goes down.

Zoom in.
Every step is marked in a very specific manner.

On the left we have steps that go down from left to right, and on the right we have steps that go down from right to left.

The lip of the step is marked with thinner lines to show the edge, and a shadow is added on that edge to make it clear which direction they go.

Shadows are always on the down side.

2. For every door, indicate somehow which way it opens.

I tried doing this, but the general reaction to using architectural door markers instead of traditional D&D door markers was negative and combining the two together was very cluttering.

 

[Dyson Logos]

Your work is legendary!
Curiously, I modified the first map (Gascon’s Pit, first image) here for The Queen with Burning Eyes and, of course, credited you!
Rock on!

Could I wrangle a promo copy?

dyson.logos@gmail.com is my OneBookShelf acccount.

 

[Lanefan]

Zoom in.
Every step is marked in a very specific manner.

View attachment 287846

On the left we have steps that go down from left to right, and on the right we have steps that go down from right to left.

The lip of the step is marked with thinner lines to show the edge, and a shadow is added on that edge to make it clear which direction they go.

Shadows are always on the down side.

Ah. Too subtle for me. I'm used to the notation where the stairs visually narrow as they go down.

I tried doing this, but the general reaction to using architectural door markers instead of traditional D&D door markers was negative and combining the two together was very cluttering.

I just use a red line rather than the line-and-arc architectural marks. So what it ends up as is a box with an angled line coming out of one end of it pointing into one area or the other. Then again, I don't do anything in black and white; for black and white maps I'd probably just show the door in the partly-open position with a general note somewhere on the map saying "Doors may be open or closed when found - see area write-ups".

 

[Von Corellon]

Could I wrangle a promo copy?

dyson.logos@gmail.com is my OneBookShelf acccount.

Sure thing!
I sent you three adventures!

 

[Dyson Logos]

It Was Tuesday (Regional HexMap)

Zzarchov Kowolski of “A Thousand Dead Babies” and “Neoclassical Geek Revival” fame has written and released a pulp fantasy adventure novel titled “It Was Tuesday“. As part of his effort to make it a classic pulp fantasy novel, he had the cover art and interior map drawn by people completely unfamiliar with the book proper.

The full brief I received for this was “Fantasy regional map with something resembling fantasy Italy, fantasy France, and fantasy Bulgaria. Oh, and it has a desert.” So… I did the obvious thing and used a photograph of Vermin Supreme as the basic structure of fantasy Italy and went from there.

So here we have “Generic Fantasy Map # 17”. We have mountains, deserts, hills, strange mesas, odd standing stones, improbably large bridges, an island that looks like a unicorn’s head (at Vermin Supreme’s suggestion), towering monoliths, and so on. Everything a good fantasy locale needs. Everything except any relevance whatsoever to the book in question.

So, please, enjoy this map and make from it whatever you need for your games instead.

It Was Tuesday (Regional Map)

Zzarchov Kowolski of “A Thousand Dead Babies” and “Neoclassical Geek Revival” fame has written and released a pulp fantasy adventure novel titled “It Was Tuesday&#8221…

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[Dyson Logos]

The Debris Field & the Shrine of Drofannion

At the edge of the White Plains of Thaeral (a massive ice sheet that covers the land north of here) are the debris fields where the ice has retreated. Rough terrain covered in boulders and rocks – some worn smooth by the glacial action, others sharp and jagged, stones shattered by the relentless ice. Amid these stones and streams is the Shrine of Drofannion – a small tower erected out of a blue-black stone that is definitely not native to the area, or likely this world.

Drofannion built this shrine at the urging of their pact-bound master – the squat and heavy ground floor has a magical summoning sigil built into the floor and upstairs an ever-shifting blob of something dark and loathsome floats in the air, surrounded by eight smaller forms of the same material that travel counter-clockwise around the central mass.

Whatever it is, it attracts evil. Two tribes of demon-souled gnolls have taken up camps in the area and have gradually managed to work through their differences so they mostly get along now. They are lean and emaciated, fed somehow by the energies here but desperately wanting to find better food – especially humanoid. Every night they dance to wicked rhythms in the stone ring northwest of the shrine. With the right subterfuge, it wouldn’t take much to turn the tribes on each other once again.

I’ve also included a version of the map without any of the ground details, grass, streams, and grid (on the blog). When I was drawing it I thought it looked a lot like an asteroid field of some kind, and present it here as such – a shrine floating in a cloud of boulders somewhere in the phlogiston – the stone circle held together by its own strange gravity.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 13,200 pixels (44 squares) wide. To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to either 70 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 140 pixels (for the traditional 10′ squares) – so resizing the image to either 3,080 pixels wide or 6,160 pixels wide, respectively.

The Debris Field & the Shrine of Drofannion

The Debris Field & the Shrine of Drofannion (300 dpi promo) At the edge of the White Plains of Thaeral (a massive ice sheet that covers the land north of here) are the debris fields where the i…

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