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Lady White's Ruins

https://rpgcharacters.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/lady-whites-ruins-grid.jpg?w=529&h=652

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/tuesday-map-lady-whites-ruins/

I often feel that dungeons should be damp, deserted, half-...

R-AN (NorthCott) Sociological Research Domes

Inspired by Billy Longino’s recent postings and drawings for his Metamorphosis Alpha game, my own love of Gamma World, and a recent playthrough of the Old World Blues DLC for Fallout New Vegas, I present the R-AN (NorthCott) Sociological Research Domes.

I picture using this map as the starting point for a classic Gamma World campaign - where the players roll up level 1 characters with medieval level technology and equipment. But instead of the usual "coming of age" adventure... 2015-07-24 13:46:01 +0000 UTC View Post

The Mad Warlock’s Dome & Tower

This month really feels like it was the month of getting to know my compass. Today’s map is again very circular in flavour, even the extra details like the arcane glyphs in the experimental dome are circular.

This map was 100% inspired by playing Fallout: New Vegas again. I wanted an experimental area with an office that oversees what’s going on in it. So this map is of a largish dome structure where the eponymous Mad Warlock conducts (or conducted) hir arcane experiments...

Valley of the Mounds

For this map I felt like channeling a bit of the Caves of Chaos, combined with a few classic tombs.

This stream-fed box canyon has been used as a sacred burial site of the Coalfoot Troglodyte clan for as long as they have recorded their history on their clay tablets. At the narrowest point before reaching the pool at the end of the canyon (at the south edge of the map), troglodyte mystics and young warriors are tasked with maintaining a number of small totems to ward off intruders a...

Chateau d'Aubergine

Because Castle Amber was taken, this one is … purple.

A small and lightly fortified castle, Chateau d’Aubergine is home of Madame d’Aubergine and her children – a clan of noble sorcerers of ancient elven blood. The matron of the family dominates all affairs at the Chateau, with her offspring rarely seen (and never heard) in the background.

A small number of servants maintain the grounds and the hedge maze garden, but are only seen outdoors at night as...

Backstage Pass - Season 2, #6

Here's the latest backstage pass! 

Not a lot of dungeons coming up in the next bit, but I definitely became better friends with my compass and went crazy with circles and arcs.

Mapper's Challenge II - The Deep Halls

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/friday-map-mappers-challenge-ii-the-deep-halls/

Built by priests of Amon-Gorloth, this dungeon was constructed and adapted from existing caverns following their dreams channeled from Amon-Gorloth itself – making them a twisted and nightmarish version of the convoluted mausoleums under the desert sands ...

The Dellorfano Protocols Dungeon #1

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/tuesday-map-the-dellorfano-protocols-map-1/

About a month ago, Stacy Dellorfano of ConTessa (who also happens to be one of my very generous Patreon supporters) posted a set of random dungeon generation procedures that I went on to dub “The Dellorfano Protocols”.

1. Start somewhere on the...

Hamel's Well

Many parts of the city are built up over the ruins of civilizations that claimed these lands in ages past. While some forget the roots of the city, others are forced to confront them on a daily basis.

Forty feet below street level in one of the poorer districts of the city, the stairs to Hamel’s Well open up to an underground stream and pool bordered by ancient rooms made of fine stonework. Both doors out of the well room are locked at almost all times, but the southern doo...

6 Mile Hex #3 - The Badlands of Slate

A final map in my trilogy of experiments using the Squarehex mega hex mapping paper (as I write this again, I realize I have no idea what the actual name of this paper is…)

The badlands lurch up above the river, and show the signs of having once been lush forest and river lands themselves. Now dry and shattered, they are known to be home to a few minor tribes of goblinoids who generally war among themselves instead of bringing their trouble to Baraloba and the area. Few know that ...

The Honeyed Forest

Today’s six mile hex connects to Tuesday’s map of Baraloba – sitting to the northwest of the Baraloba map. Again drawn as an “experiment” using the Squarehex big hex mapping paper.

On a standard hex this would just be a forest hex, maybe with the road showing through it, but almost certainly not showing the smaller village here.

The village in question is Meadgrove – known for it’s apiaries and honey mead. Which should come as little surprise as th...

Baraloba and Environs

A few months ago I picked up “The Works” from Squarehex. It included a lot of cool mapping papers and the one that caught my imagination are the A5 sized “MegaHex” mapping pages. Each has a big ass hex at the top half of the page (subdivided into a lot of smaller hexes), and the lower half is lined paper to write stuff about the hex in question.

So I started experimenting with the format, deciding to use each megahex as a six mile hex, making each small hex 0.4 miles across....

Crypts & Tombs Beer Coaster Geomorphs

I’ve been drawing the geomorphs for the Geomorph Map Contest using the Gridded Beer Coasters that I bought from Peter Regan’s Squarehex store.

At the end of May I put together a set of six geomorphs in this way that work well together – a temple, a tomb, and a set of four catacombs & crypts geomorphs.

I've provided scans of the geomorphs that include the white grid of the original coasters, and cleaned up high resolution versions with the background remov...

Backstage Pass - Season 2 #5

Hey hey, time for another BackStage Pass upload! Here are the maps scheduled to go up on the blog from June 19th to July 10th - including the one that's been getting a lot of attention from the recent photo I posted of it nearly finished - titled the Deep Halls in these uploads.

Sparrow's Fort

Some of the most “classic” maps on the blog that really defined the “Dyson style” were fairly small dungeons spread over multiple levels with a side view map to indicate how they connected.

I realized recently that it has been quite a while since I’ve drawn such a map. So I sat down with my trusty 5 square per inch graph paper and my Sakura Microns and drew up a new one, straight to pen in my classic style (no pussyfooting around with pencil roughs and drafts – let’s make a ...

The Asymmetric Temple (Underground)

Part two of this week’s Asymmetric Temple map, these are the two underground levels of the temple where most of the actual service work of the temple takes place. At the bottom of the main ramp is the main service area on the left which is used for funerary rites and other obeisances to the death god (with the morgue just to the south of it, and the chief embalmer’s quarters on the lower left of the map just south of the temporary crypts). The right hand side of this level is mostly scribes ...

The Asymmetric Temple - Surface Levels

Since the beginning of March I’ve been playing in an Empire of the Petal Throne campaign using the classic 1975 rules set. At one point some drawings of temples were shown, and one player pointed out that the temples to one of the death gods of the setting are typically asymmetric.

Combined with the majority of the temple being underground in our adventures in Tekumel, I started drawing up this temple which I’m finally posting today.

This is the above-ground lev...

The Dungeons Under Ettin Manor

The overlord (now long deposed and deceased) of Ettin Manor kept his most precious of treasures down in the secret chambers underneath the manor. Further, he defended these treasure chambers with traps and intricate secret doors. While his defenses have never yet been entirely breached, some looters have broken into one treasure chamber and looted it before being stopped by a solid stone door with a lock beyond their skills. More disturbing is that one of the ancient treasures appears to have…...

The Ruins of Ettin Manor

I found that I had been drawing a lot of my recent maps (particularly commissioned pieces) by roughing them out in pencil and then going to ink afterwards. However that’s not really my style. Until 2014, I basically did all my maps directly in pen and I’ve been missing that organic feel of growth that I get when I lay something down that’s immediately permanent and I have to work from it instead of being able to go back and change it as the rest of the map progresses.

So I dec...

Landing Facility Lambda-Bravo

Through the early days of May, my social media stream was entirely taken over by May 4th Star Wars material and the release of White Star. I really can’t claim that my social media feed doesn’t impact my work, and to go along with the Space Tug UPF Terence Trent D’Arby that I posted earlier this month, I have a place for it to land.

Originally I was envisioning a small landing craft area for a WH40K Dark Heresy game, but I was also thinking (at least subconsciously at first) o...

Final Forays into Castle Gargantua

And we come to the end of my adventures mapping out the interior of Castle Gargantua. From here I will have to leave it in your hands – once Kabuki Kaiser releases the Castle Gargantua book you will be able to explore and map the massive halls and enormous towers of the castle yourself. Remember that these maps were drawn at a potentially cartographically-boggling 60 feet to the square. The first map really shows the difference in scale we are dealing with in the castle, with the mix of tiny...

Further Explorations into Castle Gargantua

Last month I indicated that I was drawing maps for Kabuki Kaiser’s next book – Castle Gargantua. The trick about these maps is not only are they gridded, they represent areas where the squares are 60 feet across instead of the normal 10 feet per square for old school play or 5 foot squares for new school play. The harder part is getting that vibe across. For some of the maps that’s easy because they have a mix of giant-sized furniture (drawn as if the squares were 10′ squares) and human...

Backstage Pass - Season 2, #4

Here we are with the next installment of the Backstage Pass for all you patrons at the $1 and up patronage levels! Attached are all the maps that will appear on the Dodecahedron over the next four weeks. Thank you again for all your support, you make an enormous difference in my work and my life.

Space Tug UPF Terence Trent D’Arby

Space Tug UPF Terence Trent D’Arby Sometimes I ask my patrons what they want me to draw. Fred Hicks asked (ages ago) for something modern or sci-fi. So I’m finally giving you something. My drawing style doesn’t lend itself well to most sci-fi stuff, so this was a lot of experimenting. But here’s the deck plans for the Space Tug UPF Terence Trent D’Arby. The image above shows it pushing a pair of interstellar intermodal containers, which is about the lightest load you will find a tug ...

The Spiral Temple

Inspired by some recent dungeon designs and geomorphs by Nate McD over on Google+ along with some of the odd-shaped buildings on the original map from the AD&D1e Lankhmar supplement, I present the Spiral Temple. But that’s a pretty boring name. It’s probably the temple of Scrovet the Orange, the patron of quests, journeys and riverbeds. Or something like that. But from the outside it is recognizable due to the two intersecting domes that sit above the unusually shaped structure, and fro...

Kabus Retreat - The Monastery in the Mists

A couple of months ago a photoshopped image of the beautiful Phuktal Monastery in India with a waterfall added to it for ridiculous effect showed up on google+ with a challenge for the mappers present to take a try at it. Based on it I drew a simplification on my isometric mapping pad and from that isometric view I isolated the individual floors and drew a top-down view of each one. On the blog page proper you can get individual 300 dpi versions of the isometric view and the overhead view. 2015-05-12 13:25:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Still Grotto

Today’s map was inspired by this out-of-copyright piece from “Autour de la Méditerranée … Illustrations par A. Chapon, etc” published in 1892 (and visible on the blog post). From the picture I imagined a pirate boat heading into the grotto in order to unload secret treasure, a prisoner, or perhaps to pick something up. It could also make an interesting place to maroon someone who isn’t a strong swimmer. Fresh water coming in from nearby falls into the ocean water on the north side...

Chainspire Dungeons

We are beneath the castle […] What are they saying? They talk of a savage beast who prowls these catacombs – with teeth six inches long. Sorry. Sixteen inches long.Somewhere in Chainspire Fortress is a single secret trap door not marked on any map. Beneath that trap door are the old castle dungeons and interrogation rooms. Further there are rumoured to be deeper caves that lead down and eventually out. But these places are never sought out because of the ferocious beasts that live...

Chainspire Fortress

The map of Chainspire Fortress was inspired by an illustration from “Our Native Land: a picturesque ramble through the three kingdoms” which has long expired from copyright and was scanned and made available by the British Library. It’s actually a drawing of Castle Roche, but I didn’t use the actual castle as the basis for this map, just the one view of it that you can get over at the blog post. Chainspire Fortress was built nine hundred years ago by a tyrannical elven prince from which...

The Seven Secret Maps

A while back I put together a set of funky dungeon bits that I mailed off to an unsuspecting Badger (+Jason Paul McCartan). I've posted all seven maps to my blog now so you can see the seven maps yourself. For this one you will definitely have to come to the blog, as there are seven individual maps to view. https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/tuesday-maps-the-seven-...