D&D General Red Wavy Lines

[GM Lent]

Man, seeing those descriptions compared to the map it is almost like a totally random map that happened to contain the right number of rooms was selected to go with the module, no matter whether the descriptions fit or not.

Cheers

This approach was encouraged for publications on Dungeon Masters Guild some years back; that is, writing material to fit art/maps you found instead of trying to find art/maps that match your adventure idea. Seems funky that it would occur in an official publicaiton (even AL) but it certainly isn't impossible.

 

[jasper]

It's an Adventurers' League module. This kind of discrepancy is par for the course.


Are you color-blind by any chance? The wavy lines look pinkish-red to me, while the numbers are closer to orange.

If you looking at print version, it could be printed in black and white only.

 

[darjr]

This approach was encouraged for publications on Dungeon Masters Guild some years back; that is, writing material to fit art/maps you found instead of trying to find art/maps that match your adventure idea. Seems funky that it would occur in an official publicaiton (even AL) but it certainly isn't impossible.

I'm almost certain that map was drawn for that adventure specifically.

And no I don't think it's as bad as some random map.

for example

Spoiler

the secret door is mentioned a couple of times, once outside of the description of the room it's in as a possible route for an ambush

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This approach was encouraged for publications on Dungeon Masters Guild some years back; that is, writing material to fit art/maps you found instead of trying to find art/maps that match your adventure idea. Seems funky that it would occur in an official publicaiton (even AL) but it certainly isn't impossible.

I don't think that's terrible advice.

When I grab one of @Dyson Logos' maps to use in an adventure, I look for general parameters for what I know is in the adventure, but then I look at it, see what elements he's included, and work those in.

In my Shadowdark campaign, I knew I wanted yet another wizard's tower with a small dungeon underneath -- those are a staple of my sandbox, which is the site of a former wizard war -- but there were also a bunch of things on the map that looked like aborted mining or fossils embedded in the walls, so I decided that the tower had a bunch of fossilized demons stuck in the walls that the former wizard owner had excavated. That then led me to telling the players that the dungeon was getting warmer as they descended further, which in turn eventually made them say "nope, we're good" and leave.

The collaboration between DM and cartographer produced an adventure that I don't think either of us would have come up with on our own.