WotC's Irwin, Tanji, and Crawford on Tales from the Yawning Portal's Art Direction

The YouTube channel Dungeon Life has posted a video featuring WotC's Kate Irwin (senior art director), Emi Tanji (senior graphic designer), and Jeremy Crawford (managing editor). It talks about designing Tales from the Yawning Portal. One of the themes discussed it how the adventures in the book were kept the same at the core, updating the stats and wording to make them feel like 5th Edition - "What would you do if you redesigned the adventures to be more like a modern D&D design? And the answer is, we didn't. What we did is we took Tomb of Horrors, and it's still Tomb of Horrors that Gary Gygax wrote..." Tales from the Yawning Portal hits preferred game stores tomorrow (ask your local store!) and everywhere else 11 days later.

[video=youtube;6-rif5ag9bY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-rif5ag9bY[/video]

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[pukunui]

How does everyone else use the maps as they are?

For my groups, I just show them the maps on my computer or tablet. This allows me to more easily hide stuff, either by covering it up with layers or zooming in. I've got one of those wet erase mats for when I need to draw something out for miniatures play.

 

[CapnZapp]

The state of current-era WotC maps can be summarized as a heaven or hell kind of situation, or to be more exact, a schley or blando situation.

 

[CapnZapp]

I have some, but unfortunately not all, of those old modules. Still would be nice if they would put out printer friendly versions of maps. They could put them up at DM's Guild. I am tired of getting modern modules and getting dark colored or solid black background maps that are hard on my printer, and its a pain to have to redraw them by hand.

Sorry for speaking up, but asking for old school b/w maps is unrealistic. No modern publisher will want to not use all the advances in printing technology that has happened these past 40 years or so.

How does everyone else use the maps as they are?

I realize that with a username like that, you won't like my answer, but here goes anyway:

Put them up on your big-ass flat-screen, or hand out a tablet, or message everybody the map onto their phablets.

Plenty of solutions. None involve the stuff you call "paper"

 

[machineelf]

The state of current-era WotC maps can be summarized as a heaven or hell kind of situation, or to be more exact, a schley or blando situation.

I think both of them are amazing artists. Have you seen Blando's book on cartography and adventure maps? It's pretty great.

Having said that, I don't like the art style from either of them when it comes to D&D maps and dungeon layouts.

I loved the old Deasel maps. Schleys' maps are beautiful to look at, but I use maps as tools to help my players easily understand the area. All the swirls that Schley puts everywhere distract from things and make it difficult for new people to quickly find a location.

Diesel's maps were clean, simple, and useful, and I love them. If Mike got rid of all his swirls they would be many times better in my opinion.

The old blue dungeon maps were also great. Again I use them as a tool to help me DM. If you make them too pretty and intricate, it makes them a bit more clunky to use as a tool. Those old maps were clean and simple and easy too understand. Again, just one person's opinion.

 

[Queer Venger]

So awesome, just subscribed to Dungeon Life!!
Ive always wanted D&D to have its own promo channel.

 

[SkidAce]

How does everyone else use the maps as they are?

When playing in person, "I" use the map for info, and the players can draw one or not, their choice.

I will sketch out relative positioning for any battles, but thats about it.

 

[Queer Venger]

Do you DM's have your players map out the dungeon? I remember this from my 1e days.

 

[machineelf]

Do you DM's have your players map out the dungeon? I remember this from my 1e days.

I just draw individual rooms out on a big dry-erase grid battle map. I don't mind the idea of having the players draw their own map on grid paper to see how all the various rooms connect together and track the direction they have come from so far, though.

I don't show them any kind of poster map of a dungeon, since that would reveal too much information to them.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Do you DM's have your players map out the dungeon? I remember this from my 1e days.

Yes. If they really mess it up I will help correct it. But I have neither the budget or the inclination to print out and hand them what is effectively a game board.

 

[JohnnyZemo]

I'm super happy to have this book, but I'm extremely frustrated with WotC's stance that a readable map is not an essential part of an adventure. (Okay, they've never actually said that, but they are certainly practicing it.) Take a look at the map of the Doomvault (p.111) in Yawning Portal. I defy anyone to read that map without a magnifying glass. I swear the room numbers are in about a 3-point font.

Now, I have the original version of Dead in Thay as a PDF, so I can use that if I need to. But this practice of printing maps so tiny as to be unreadable needs to stop. I had a similar problem with a couple of the maps in Storm King's Thunder.