If you’re a fan of Dungeons & Dragons, there’s a good chance that you have seen the walk-through poster maps that Wizards of the Coast has made for a variety of classic and recent D&D adventures. You may not know much about Jason Thompson, the artist who creates these walk-throughs. A gamer and comic creator, Thompson’s experiences in those areas were able to cross over and come together in the poster maps that he has created.
In the 90s, after college, Thompson was hired on at VIZ Media as an editor, and edited a number of titles for that publisher, including the first several issues of the American edition of SHONEN JUMP magazine. He also self-published a comic based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (and was involved in the production of the animated version of that story put out by Guerilla Production). After leaving VIZ, he wrote Manga: The Complete Guide, and has worked on webcomics like King of RPGs and well as self-publishing print comics. He also write about manga for a variety of websites. Thompson also successfully Kickstarted a card game about creating manga called Mangaka: The Fast & Furious Game of Drawing Comics.
I first encountered Thompson on Twitter, when I was myself writing for another website, and we talked from time to time about comics and gaming. As happens with these things, I was slow in putting two and two together and coming up with the result of him being the artist on the walk-through posters. Eventually enough time was staked out that we were able to discuss his work via email.
How did you get starting in gaming? What was your first game?
The first tabletop roleplaying game I ever saw was the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, the version with Erol Otus cover art, around 1982. This was when the initial D&D craze was at its height, the rulebooks were available in general toy stores, and even eight-year-olds like me (whose only experience with RPGs was a few Apple II and Commodore 64 games) had heard about it and wanted to try it out. When I actually got my hands on the D&D Basic Set it was a little over my head and I didn’t understand it, but my parents convinced a friend’s teenage son to DM me and one of my classmates in “The Keep on the Borderlands.” From that point on I was obsessed and I played D&D with my friends throughout elementary school and junior high. Later, in high school and college, I discovered other RPGs I liked: Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, the World of Darkness games, GURPS, Amber, KULT…and later Dying Earth, Trail of Cthulhu, Carcosa, Maid RPG, Golden Sky Stories, etc.…
What are you playing now?
I’m running Wrath of the Dragon Queen/The Rise of Tiamat in D&D 5th edition with my wife and some friends. I’m using a modified setting: instead of the Forgotten Realms the campaign is set in a fantasy version of Ancient Sumeria where everyone uses bronze weapons and there’s a more sword-and-sorcery feel. Also, some of the players wanted a pirate-themed game, so I changed the initial setting to a pirate port in the Persian Gulf and the party spent several sessions in a ship pursuing the Tiamat cultists from port to port. Basically I love pseudohistorical, Ancient World settings, and half the fun of running a prewritten game is reskinning things and mixing it up.
Walk us through the process of starting a walk-through poster. Do you suggest a module, or does WotC?
It depends. Sometimes I suggest a module, other times it’s my editor’s idea. The first adventures I drew were S1-S4, for the Dungeons of Dread classics reprint book. Before that, I had been drawing a webcomic for the WotC site called The Keep at 16th and Valencia, but my editor at the time wanted something S1-related, so I proposed drawing Tomb of Horrors as a cartoon map modeled on those old Family Circus strips where Billy’s mom sends him to go buy milk and instead he wanders all over the neighborhood. Tomb got a really good reaction, so it ended up being the first in a series.
The complete list of D&D walkthroughs (so far) is:
1. Tomb of Horrors
2. White Plume Mountain
3. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
4. The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
5. Slave Pits of the Undercity
6. The Isle of Dread
7. Ravenloft
8. Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
9. Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl
10. The Village of Hommlet
11. Out of the Abyss
12. [redacted]
Prints of walk through maps are also available at my webstore.
I also drew a map for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure The God That Crawls.
What media do you use to create these posters?
Basically, I draw everything in pencil & pen on Bristol Board, then scan it in and do the coloring in Photoshop. However, I also do the basic perspective by taking the original flat maps from the module, turning them into 3D postcards in Photoshop, and then rotating them till I get the perspective I like. Then I print out the rotated cards and use a light table to get the basic skeleton of the room locations before I draw the creatures and details. I like the maps to be as accurate to the original adventure as possible, but sometimes I have to move things around by hand to make it look better, such as making crowded rooms bigger so there’s more space to draw all the figures.
When making a poster, which are more fun for you as a gamer, the classic or the newer modules?
The older modules are usually more suited for walkthroughs because they’re smaller and more location-oriented. Drawing a whole campaign, with multiple locations, is more of a challenge and requires more decisions about what to keep in and leave out, though it’s fun in its own way.
Have you had a chance to ever talk to the creators of any of the modules you’ve made posters for, or do you prefer to come at them from your perspective?
Actually, I never have, but now that you mention it I’d love to know what they think. I hope they like them! I know Gary Gygax’s sons have seen my Gary Gygax maps, and I know Lawrence Schick has seen the White Plume Mountain map.
How did your work in comics prepare you for the process of making these posters?
Comics and maps have a lot in common; when reading a map, like reading a comic, you’re following a progression of action through an imaginary space. For me, drawing the walkthrough maps is sort of like drawing the best parts of a comic: I draw the beginning and ending of the adventure but the rest of the action happens offscreen, leaving your imagination to fill in exactly what happens in the battle with the vegepygmies (or whatever). There’s also some in-jokes and continuing characters between the maps; basically my assumption is that they all take place within the same campaign world.
Landscapes and settings are some of my favorite things to draw, and I’m a fan of comic art styles that combine realistically rendered backgrounds with simple, iconic figures. I do also draw realistic human beings, but it’s more fun to draw the characters in the walkthrough maps as stick figures; it helps give the whole thing a sort of Lego diorama-like feel, and that playfulness also makes the blood and gore more palatable.
Are there non-D&D adventures that you would like to do walk-through posters for? I bet that some of the classic Call of Cthulhu adventures would be fun.
That’s a tough question…! I have to agree that Call of Cthulhu (the second RPG that I ever bought, after D&D) is a great game and has a lot of iconic adventures. Something like Masks of Nyarlathotep or Shadows of Yog-Sothoth would be incredibly fun to draw, although since it’s a ginormous campaign it’d really be several maps (or maybe a single world map), not just one. Or maybe the Pits of Bendal-Dolum or another old one I barely remember where you explore a Mi-Go cave complex…or a faux 1920s Europe map for Horror on the Orient Express…hmm…
What is the role-playing game that you would most like to see your art in?
I’m really into D&D right now, but I’d love to draw art for all kinds of games. Actually, I’m currently writing an indy RPG, “Dreamland,” which is inspired by HP Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany’s dream fiction. So I’ll definitely be drawing a lot of art for that!
In the 90s, after college, Thompson was hired on at VIZ Media as an editor, and edited a number of titles for that publisher, including the first several issues of the American edition of SHONEN JUMP magazine. He also self-published a comic based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (and was involved in the production of the animated version of that story put out by Guerilla Production). After leaving VIZ, he wrote Manga: The Complete Guide, and has worked on webcomics like King of RPGs and well as self-publishing print comics. He also write about manga for a variety of websites. Thompson also successfully Kickstarted a card game about creating manga called Mangaka: The Fast & Furious Game of Drawing Comics.
I first encountered Thompson on Twitter, when I was myself writing for another website, and we talked from time to time about comics and gaming. As happens with these things, I was slow in putting two and two together and coming up with the result of him being the artist on the walk-through posters. Eventually enough time was staked out that we were able to discuss his work via email.
How did you get starting in gaming? What was your first game?
The first tabletop roleplaying game I ever saw was the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, the version with Erol Otus cover art, around 1982. This was when the initial D&D craze was at its height, the rulebooks were available in general toy stores, and even eight-year-olds like me (whose only experience with RPGs was a few Apple II and Commodore 64 games) had heard about it and wanted to try it out. When I actually got my hands on the D&D Basic Set it was a little over my head and I didn’t understand it, but my parents convinced a friend’s teenage son to DM me and one of my classmates in “The Keep on the Borderlands.” From that point on I was obsessed and I played D&D with my friends throughout elementary school and junior high. Later, in high school and college, I discovered other RPGs I liked: Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, the World of Darkness games, GURPS, Amber, KULT…and later Dying Earth, Trail of Cthulhu, Carcosa, Maid RPG, Golden Sky Stories, etc.…
What are you playing now?
I’m running Wrath of the Dragon Queen/The Rise of Tiamat in D&D 5th edition with my wife and some friends. I’m using a modified setting: instead of the Forgotten Realms the campaign is set in a fantasy version of Ancient Sumeria where everyone uses bronze weapons and there’s a more sword-and-sorcery feel. Also, some of the players wanted a pirate-themed game, so I changed the initial setting to a pirate port in the Persian Gulf and the party spent several sessions in a ship pursuing the Tiamat cultists from port to port. Basically I love pseudohistorical, Ancient World settings, and half the fun of running a prewritten game is reskinning things and mixing it up.
Walk us through the process of starting a walk-through poster. Do you suggest a module, or does WotC?
It depends. Sometimes I suggest a module, other times it’s my editor’s idea. The first adventures I drew were S1-S4, for the Dungeons of Dread classics reprint book. Before that, I had been drawing a webcomic for the WotC site called The Keep at 16th and Valencia, but my editor at the time wanted something S1-related, so I proposed drawing Tomb of Horrors as a cartoon map modeled on those old Family Circus strips where Billy’s mom sends him to go buy milk and instead he wanders all over the neighborhood. Tomb got a really good reaction, so it ended up being the first in a series.
The complete list of D&D walkthroughs (so far) is:
1. Tomb of Horrors
2. White Plume Mountain
3. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
4. The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
5. Slave Pits of the Undercity
6. The Isle of Dread
7. Ravenloft
8. Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
9. Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl
10. The Village of Hommlet
11. Out of the Abyss
12. [redacted]
Prints of walk through maps are also available at my webstore.
I also drew a map for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure The God That Crawls.
What media do you use to create these posters?
Basically, I draw everything in pencil & pen on Bristol Board, then scan it in and do the coloring in Photoshop. However, I also do the basic perspective by taking the original flat maps from the module, turning them into 3D postcards in Photoshop, and then rotating them till I get the perspective I like. Then I print out the rotated cards and use a light table to get the basic skeleton of the room locations before I draw the creatures and details. I like the maps to be as accurate to the original adventure as possible, but sometimes I have to move things around by hand to make it look better, such as making crowded rooms bigger so there’s more space to draw all the figures.
When making a poster, which are more fun for you as a gamer, the classic or the newer modules?
The older modules are usually more suited for walkthroughs because they’re smaller and more location-oriented. Drawing a whole campaign, with multiple locations, is more of a challenge and requires more decisions about what to keep in and leave out, though it’s fun in its own way.
Have you had a chance to ever talk to the creators of any of the modules you’ve made posters for, or do you prefer to come at them from your perspective?
Actually, I never have, but now that you mention it I’d love to know what they think. I hope they like them! I know Gary Gygax’s sons have seen my Gary Gygax maps, and I know Lawrence Schick has seen the White Plume Mountain map.
How did your work in comics prepare you for the process of making these posters?
Comics and maps have a lot in common; when reading a map, like reading a comic, you’re following a progression of action through an imaginary space. For me, drawing the walkthrough maps is sort of like drawing the best parts of a comic: I draw the beginning and ending of the adventure but the rest of the action happens offscreen, leaving your imagination to fill in exactly what happens in the battle with the vegepygmies (or whatever). There’s also some in-jokes and continuing characters between the maps; basically my assumption is that they all take place within the same campaign world.
Landscapes and settings are some of my favorite things to draw, and I’m a fan of comic art styles that combine realistically rendered backgrounds with simple, iconic figures. I do also draw realistic human beings, but it’s more fun to draw the characters in the walkthrough maps as stick figures; it helps give the whole thing a sort of Lego diorama-like feel, and that playfulness also makes the blood and gore more palatable.
Are there non-D&D adventures that you would like to do walk-through posters for? I bet that some of the classic Call of Cthulhu adventures would be fun.
That’s a tough question…! I have to agree that Call of Cthulhu (the second RPG that I ever bought, after D&D) is a great game and has a lot of iconic adventures. Something like Masks of Nyarlathotep or Shadows of Yog-Sothoth would be incredibly fun to draw, although since it’s a ginormous campaign it’d really be several maps (or maybe a single world map), not just one. Or maybe the Pits of Bendal-Dolum or another old one I barely remember where you explore a Mi-Go cave complex…or a faux 1920s Europe map for Horror on the Orient Express…hmm…
What is the role-playing game that you would most like to see your art in?
I’m really into D&D right now, but I’d love to draw art for all kinds of games. Actually, I’m currently writing an indy RPG, “Dreamland,” which is inspired by HP Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany’s dream fiction. So I’ll definitely be drawing a lot of art for that!
