dysonlogos

The Velvet Hood - A Svirneblin Fortress

Looking almost like an upside down castle embedded in a bridge, The Velvet Hood was initially a nameless toll fortress along the passages of the underdark. But the fortress was ransacked on two occasions, and it was only on the second that the svirfneblin discovered that whatever had ransacked it had carried off all within, but left behind the tolls (the first time the svirfneblin weren’t the first to find the empty fortress, and the toll chests had likely been sacked by opportunists).

...

Griffinwatch Ruins

Griffinwatch is an old waterside fortress that was built on a hill that legends say was home to a nest of griffons prior to its construction. Once a watch fort on the border between elven and human lands, Griffinwatch became redundant as the wars pushed back the elven empire and when many fortresses were moved primarily underground to defend against dragon strikes and elvish sorcery.

The fortress was later badly damaged when a team of elven and stone giant mercenaries assaulted it searchi...

Backstage Pass - Season 3 # 4

Today is that day that comes around every month where I spend most of the day walking back and forth between the scanner and the computer, scanning and fiddling with my monthly output of maps.

On the upside, this means that I have all of April's maps ready to go! So, backstage pass holders, here it is! 

Alright Patrons, RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

First of all, my apologies, I have pre-emptively released a back-catalog map under the aegis of the Release the Kraken initiative without giving you a say in which map it would be. But this is an extra map, above and beyond the maps that will be released here with your input. 

You can read more about today's back-catalog release on the blog here: https://rpgcharacters.wordpr...

The Turning Tower

The Turning Tower is a stout three-tiered tower on the Plains of Dross. An ugly black blight upon the landscape, highlighted by brass doors; every hour or three the three rings of the tower rotate to a different configuration, changing the internal structure of the tower. No matter the configuration, however, if one can breach the massive brass front doors of the structure, it leads into a great hall directly to the centre of the structure (through a number of other brass doors, some of which ar...

Release the Back Catalog!

On March 15th we broke through the second-last of the Dodecahedron Patreon milestones. I held off on announcing it right away because we see a fair amount of churn throughout the month, but here we are in the last days of the month and we're not showing any signs of dipping back under the $400 line, but instead are $17 over the line. 

So it is time... to RELEASE THE BACK CATALOG! (I am very sad - the Patreon interface doesn't allow the use of the strikethrough code so I can't put KRAK...

The Sahuagin Mound

While we devotin’

Full time to floatin’

Under the sea

Wayne of Wayne’s Books (an awesome salesman of old and out of print RPG material – where I scored a few uber rare titles from Space Opera for a friend) requested a Sahuagin lair when I put out my latest call for requests on Patreon.

In the end, the three-dimensional blobby structures end up appearing to be the upper GI tract of some bizarre fantasy creature.

But at the same time, it makes sense. A...

Temple of the Four Gods

A massive and mostly open stone structure, this temple is dedicated to the four creative forces of the universe and the personas that embody them in this world. The temple itself is nearly symmetrical, but each of the four quadrants has been modified and built up in it’s own ways to make them feel unique to the aspect in question.

Originally a request from last year on my Patreon page, I’ve had this request sitting on a post-it note beside my monitor since June and finally put it toget...

The Lost Ossuary

This complicated little map started with a simple request from Christian Klauser over here on Patreon who asked for a "Map that is intended to be folded into a cube (warped space)."

The Lost Ossuary is a small dimensional rift beneath the Lobachevsky Church. Cut out of the stone beneath the church as a set of crypts and ossuaries, the Lost Ossuary displays bizarre geometries to those who would try to map it out. Routings through the Ossuary make little sense, with paths connecting with far...

Cinolth Citadel

Cinolth Citadel started as a lone spire on a barren chunk of rock overlooking the Ironflow river as it headed out to sea. To the tower, others were attached and then a hall between them forming the basis of the heart of the citadel. Over decades extended walls were built producing a large bailey that was later split into halves by the construction of a church in the midst by Patriarch Barayin when he was the lord of Cinolth.

The citadel sits on a chunk of generally unprofitable land surrou...

Free Awesomeness from Raging Swan Press

(This is a patron-only post)

Raging Swan Press has been one of several companies benefiting from your incredible generosity. Thanks to your support, we've been releasing maps under a royalty-free commercial license for over a year now - maps that have made their way into a number of really cool projects and products.

As a thank you for your generosity in this, Creighton Broadhurst of Raging Swan Press is giving all the patrons of my campaign a free product from his extensi...

The City of Letath

In a recent session of my 5e D&D campaign I found myself grabbing cities from other people’s products to fill in places in my game world. And of course, that couldn’t last. So when I got home I pulled out a pad of paper and worked on replacing these cities.

The first of these cities to get finished is Letath, a small coastal city that the party travelled to and then left within 20 minutes of game play. Basically enough time for me to throw down the map on the table and then fast fo...

Seven Year Itch

Today we celebrate the seventh anniversary of Dyson's Dodecahedron. The above celebration map is courtesy of Rodger Thorm (and is quite frankly 124% awesome).

To join in the celebrations, I've put together a set of coupons for you so you can grab the various PDFs I have on RPGnow for only $4 each. These coupons are only valid until March 13th, so use them now if they interest you. These coupons are exclusively for patrons of this Patreon campaign as a personal thank you for making t...

The Ashen Castle

In a run-down end of town is a squat and ugly ruin. The Ashen Castle was once a prison – when the city had more law and order and the means to maintain a prison and prison population. But that was two centuries ago – now prisoners are kept in the dungeons or the pillory, and most crimes that would see someone sent to the Ashen Castle for years now results in either death or exile from the city walls.

Two centuries of wear and tear without maintenance has left portions of the castle (pa...

Ruined Pyramid Complex

A massive temple, three ancient pyramids and some old ruins lie in the narrow zone between desert and jungle. A classic scene for any adventure. Sure, jungle / desert interfaces are a pretty fantastic setting to begin with – but all the more reason to explore them as perhaps some magic here is what keeps the jungle alive even as the sands encroach.

Every now and then I ask all my patrons at the $2.50 level and up (at the Dodecahedron Patreon Campaign) for ideas that they would like to se...

Backstage Pass - Season 3 - Issue 3

Thanks for the patience and the support everyone!

Here is the backstage pass for March 2016. This includes one map that was included in the February backstage pass (the city of Letath) that ended up getting bumped out of the rotation by the last-minute entry of the Valentine's Day map that I drew in its place. 

This month includes a lot of maps that were drawn based on requests from the patrons at the $2.50 level and up, and includes:

 - The House of Se...

The House of Seven Wines

Welcome to the noble House of Seven Wines.

The house itself is a dark ochre in colour and attempts to make it look like a refined garden home, tucked in among the willow trees, ornamental bridges and carefully manicured lawn all fail to address the fact that it is squat, oddly shaped, and seems to be sinking into the ground slightly towards the northeast corner.

While ostensibly the centre of activities for the Ho Tua clan of slug people, the house is typically busy with the wor...

The Ziggurat in the Sand - Part 2

Continuing the delve that was started with Tuesday’s “The Ziggurat in the Sand” maps, we head inside the ziggurat today with the middle and lower levels of the structure (in two different maps, so head over to the blog post to see them both).

As much of the ziggurat is buried under the desert sands, many of the entrances to it are not only blocked off, but whole sections of the interior have been filled with sand where it has encroached within the structure, poured down stairs and ev...

Zigurat in the Sands (part 1)

This post has a lot more drawings than usual (3 exterior shots and 2 versions of the first level of the map), so I recommend heading on over to the blog to get a view of them all - https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/the-ziggurat-in-the-sand-part-1/

Over the years I’ve tried to pass off a few stepped pyramids as ziggurats. So I figured it was finally t...

Gladecrest Village

It is no secret that I've been playing in an awesome Empire of the Petal Throne campaign through 2015 and into 2016 (next session is today!). So when I started working on a Christmas present for a close friend I looked at his neighbourhood and realized that while the structures looked a bit off for a traditional medieval village, they fit in very well for what I had come to imagine a Tsolyánu village would look like.

In Tsolyánu, family clans are an essential part of the social structure...

The Request Line - Progress Shot 2

A few days back I opened up the request line for all patrons at the $2.50 level or higher to send me map ideas that they would like to see. 

This is the second map from the requests that have flowed in. Riley Vann asked for "An abandoned prison complex". Based in part on maps of debtor's prisons in the UK and single-structure asylums, this prison came into existence. In order to get the "abandoned" aspect I included some crumbling walls (almost all of the walls in question,...

The Request Line - Progress Shot 1

A couple of days ago I opened up the request line for all patrons at the $2.50 level or higher to send me map ideas that they would like to see. 

Here is a photo of the first resulting piece - Purple Duck Games (one of my most amazing patrons who has been a top tier supporter since I launched the campaign) asked for "Pyramids, jungle ruins, desert ruins, dungeon set on pillars, planar dungeons".

Sure, he didn't mean for me to jam it all into one map, but I tried. In the ...

The Eastern Shore

For all my love of maps, I'm a firm believer in starting a campaign without a large regional map - instead of definite locations the game is best mapped out by descriptions and ideas, not locked down into locations. In this manner, the game is more open to be expanded during play by incorporating new elements instead of having to adapt new elements to fit the structure that is already there.

Thus, it took a year of playing 5e before I found myself in the position of needing a map of the re...

The Valentine Dungeon / Temple of Love

Originally I had a different map planned to be posted today (and that I sent out as part of the Backstage Pass this month), but then the whole Valentine thing inspired me to draw something different yesterday and the options became to either pre-empt today’s map, or hold on to this for a whole bloody year.

And I don’t have that kind of patience.

I doubt I’ll ever actually use this in a game session, but I’m printing off a nice purple version to go as the cover of my Valen...

The Bridge Tower

I can’t remember exactly what triggered this map. I was probably planning to use it in my 5e D&D campaign, but for the life of me whatever the idea was it is long gone.

But the map remains. An octagonal tower guarding a bridge over a small ravine.

Access to the bridge requires going through the ground floor of the tower. Portculli (with winches controlled from the northwest side chamber on the ground floor) can seal off the passage, and both doors from the passage are incre...

The Roadside Fortress

Most borders remain generally undefended, with the occasional watch tower near primary points of interest. But there are always places where it just makes sense to set up a small fortification along major trade routes and roads leading in and out of your domain.

South of The Citadel at Sabre Lake is just such a place. A small escarpment along the main road used by merchants, farmers and the occasional military force provides a decent view of the area while also being able to interdict trav...

The Temple of Chag

Not all spider gods are the loathsome, jealous and backstabbing Lolth. This is a temple to Chag, a spider god with eight different aspects that are worshiped both separately and as a united whole. Chag and his children the chagmat (a race of spider-like humanoids) were introduced in a module in the pages of Dragon magazine number 63. (I also talked about the module on my blog during my first Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign in 2014).

But before the war against the chagmat that leads to ...

BackStage Pass - Season 3 - #2

Here we go! Another month of maps for the Dodecahedron. Thanks again everyone for the amazing show of support to keep these maps flowing.

2AM Edit: Now with the right maps! D'oh! 

All Four Levels of the Dungeon of Fuck You, That's Why

So, I posted that map that was giving people the finger called "the Dungeon of Fuck You, That's Why" and it kind of went viral on various social media. The joke wouldn’t die and now I’m writing up a full adventure called… well… The Dungeon of Fuck You, That’s Why. So I saved up all the maps for the module and posted them all at once, today. Mostly because I would be embarrassed to post any one of these on its own as a map of the day.

But as a set, I love them.

There are...

Tomb of the Smith

The Smith’s Reliquary was crafted from heavy blocks of stone banded together with huge bands of steel that wrap around the structure like the hoops on a barrel. These bindings have rusted through the two hundred years this reliquary has stood, discolouring the stone of the building as well as the walkway and the cobbled street that passes along it.

The central chamber within is the reliquary itself, with a massive anvil in the centre of the space, flanked by tools and half-complete weapo...