I’m having fun working in three dimensions with areas that are not easily accessible to the average adventurer, thus explaining why extraordinary adventurers are required as well as why these areas have not yet been plundered.
In the case of “Imp Tower”, a decrepit stone tower sits over a hole that leads down to a cave, definitely home to something nasty with wings that the locals don’t have the skills, manpower and bravado to take care of. Sure, someone could climb down the shaft expos...
2014-07-16 14:55:01 +0000 UTC
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Gruthren the Excessive (also known as Gruthren Lord of All That Shines and is Burried, Gruthren the Obsessed, Gruthren Master of All Things Great and Small, Gruthren The Builder, Gruthren the Immense and Gruthren Of Too Many Titles) had this great hall constructed on level 3 of a local dungeon that he had cleared out by a team of mercenary adventurers. Purely so he would have something this insanely big for others to discover. Once the reconstruction of the level was complete, he abandoned the s...
2014-07-11 12:11:57 +0000 UTC
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Today's map is actually two maps I drew on index cards for my Dungeon Crawl Classics game, expanding upon and totally twisting the Mad Hermit encounter from the classic D&D adventure module "The Keep on the Borderlands".
2014-07-08 13:43:46 +0000 UTC
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This map just wouldn't play nice for me. It refused to stay on one page. Heck, in the end it refused to stay on two.
To see a photo of the map as it looks pre-scanning (with all three pieces of paper), check out the blog entry.
http://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/friday-map-beneath-the-ruined-palace/
2014-07-04 13:17:07 +0000 UTC
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This map was inspired by Minoan ruins courtesy of Wayne Rossi (the host of the Semper Initiative Unum blog, and author of the Dungeon Crawl ‘zine for which I drew a map in issue 3). He was looking for a set of ruins based on the Palace of Zakros. It was a lot of fun to take the Zakros floorplan and just go nuts with it to produce this confusing ruined monstrosity.
The layout has multiple elevations within the buildings, making the main courtyard and the areas around it about 4-8 feet higher t...
2014-07-01 14:03:50 +0000 UTC
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Far too many of my dungeons are easy to access. So why have they lain unplundered all these ages? The Sunken Maw is a bit trickier to get into than most. A nearly straight vertical drop leads to underground stone construction just above the water table. Rope and climbing gear will be the order of the day for lower-level groups, whereas the entry will be a lot easier (and thus less frightening) to those who come equipped with the magic of levitation or means of flight.
To complicate the matter, ...
2014-06-27 12:09:18 +0000 UTC
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I drew this town after reading the adventure "A Thousand Dead Babies" by Zzarchov Kowolski which distinctly influenced the design. It's a small town built on a chalk hill overlooking wheat and turnip fields.
The centre of the town is a stone church with a tall spire, presumably built over an older place of worship.
2014-06-24 14:38:34 +0000 UTC
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There are times when you want a dungeon that feels like it could really exist, that it was naturally occurring, or that someone took natural caves and “enhanced” them to make a dungeon. There are other times, however, where you just want over-the-top fantasy architecture.
Serzen’s Seven Stairs is on the fantasy side of that spectrum – from the massive dragon-headed entrance into the dungeon proper to the central chamber complete with massive tree (or it might be a massive set of cracks ...
2014-06-20 13:26:35 +0000 UTC
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I occasionally ask my epic patrons what they want to see in the way of maps on the Dodecahedron. I don’t promise that their requests will ever make it to an actual map, but I put the ideas I get onto a piece of paper and reference it whenever I’m about to start drawing and don’t have a solid plan as to what I want besides “a map”. Recently one of the suggestions was a town or city with an ornate castle or palace overlooking the whole thing from a rocky spire.
Thus I bring you Dolem’...
2014-06-17 12:12:55 +0000 UTC
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This dungeon is an attempt to mix natural cavern features and man-made dungeons in a manner that feels like it makes some sense - in this case the goblin-made features are all expansions on pre-existing caverns, and in some areas the caverns have been left untouched.
2014-06-13 12:06:36 +0000 UTC
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And I'm finally back on the internet. I'm moved into my new digs (rent paid for courtesy of all you awesome Dodecahedron patrons!) and am back to work producing maps of all kinds.
Today we have a detail map to go with last Friday's map of Greater Briar Keep. This four-level map of the keep building itself was drawn on 5 square-per-inch graph paper over an afternoon of tea and quiet. The goal was to have an alternate for "the Keep on the Borderlands" for games set on a different kind of border ...
2014-06-10 13:14:08 +0000 UTC
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I'm still dealing with the whole moving thing (no internet until Sunday so I'm posting this from my tablet at a local cafe) - thus, with very few words, I present to you the map of Briar Keep. Next week I'll post up a detail map of the for levels of the main structure of the keep.
Thank you so much for three support!
2014-06-06 13:27:55 +0000 UTC
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I'm posting this map from a tablet at a cafe. The move is done, but internet doesn't get connected until Friday.
This is the upper level of the two buildings of the For Javelins coaching inn that I posted on Friday. There are two versions up on the blog - with and without notations as to the purpose of each room.
2014-06-03 12:43:47 +0000 UTC
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Inns make a regular appearance in my games, but floorplans for them seem to be few and far between in my personal collection. So I decided to rectify the situation with the Four Javelins Coaching Inn.
If you want a version of the map with all the rooms labelled, check out the blog posting at http://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/friday-map-the-four-ja...
2014-05-30 19:02:46 +0000 UTC
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I'm enjoying drawing multi-level structures right now (launched by the manor house I posted last month which in turn was inspired by the classic Tegel Manor). So today I present Dravid's Tower - a ruined four-level tower and associated sealed dungeon.
2014-05-27 17:36:08 +0000 UTC
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While drawing maps last month I felt the need to settle into a classic single-elevation dungeon map - and then I remembered that I need a few of these to finish off the Fedor's Pass megastructure. Thus I present to you, the first of the three Palace Sublevels from Fedor's Pass.
2014-05-23 13:48:22 +0000 UTC
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My default assumption for old school dungeons is that you’ve come across the ruins of something huge and underground – something like the ruined cities of the Elderlings buried in the swamps in the Rain Wilds stories by Robin Hobb. It’s the basis I use for all my “random dungeon” rolling.
Here is a small dungeon level set up exactly along those premises – the ruins under Axehead Mound have two entrances – one a collapsed wall section that leads into a chamber, the other a pair of ...
2014-05-20 14:43:37 +0000 UTC
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When I drew the ruins of Namurta's Halls it was intended as the launching point for rolling up random dungeons. However, inspired by a post on Google+, I also ended up drawing a set of caves and dungeons that fit under that map.
2014-05-16 16:09:21 +0000 UTC
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When using the random dungeon generator in the 1e DMG, I was always haunted by the statement that I should have the surface ruins already mapped - but the system didn't include a method of doing so and leaving it up to my imagination (at the time) just meant that the surface ruins consisted of a blank area with a set of stairs leading down into the unknown.
But no longer! I drew up this map so I would have surface ruins to start a random dungeon from.
2014-05-13 16:21:50 +0000 UTC
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Sometimes Friday just sneaks right up on you after a relaxed Thursday spent at home watching movies with the girlfriend (she's off work on Thursday, wouldn't you know).
So without commentary beyond "hey, it's a map!" here is the map of Haben's End, a small fortress and dungeon in a small box canyon.
2014-05-09 11:37:30 +0000 UTC
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This map is significantly larger in physical, real-world, real-estate than the others I've posted to the blog. At the request of one of you fine Patrons, I've put together an 11" x 14" map that covers a variety of encounter locations - from an abandoned keep, burned out village, a lake, bridge, rivers, circle of standing stones, and of course a natural cavern that has been expanded upon at some point.
2014-05-06 14:53:41 +0000 UTC
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On Tuesday I posted the sprawling and fortified structure known as Mad Fenrick's Manor. Inspired as it is by Tegel Manor, it needed a basement.
You know, because every manor needs a root cellar. Oh, and a family crypt. And a secret storage area. And so on.
2014-05-02 11:19:24 +0000 UTC
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Greeting patrons!
Thanks once again for your support and welcome back to the Backstage Pass!
Here are most of the maps that will be posted this month to the Dodecahedron, all at 300dpi:
http://rpgcharacters.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/mad-fenricks-basement-production.jpg
2014-05-02 11:15:20 +0000 UTC
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This map was totally not inspired by the classic Judges' Guild adventure "Tegel Manor".
Promise.
2014-04-29 12:08:25 +0000 UTC
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I haven't posted a side-view map in a long time. Thus, to break that spell I present to you one of the maps from the (potentially) upcoming release of "Secrets of the Frog Idol", a rewrite/expansion of my Challenge of the Frog Idol adventure module.
2014-04-25 12:56:15 +0000 UTC
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A small city map that for some reason I am not using in my current campaign... But I figure I'll end up using it in the next campaign.
Mainly because I want to have a scene or two take place on the walkway between the river and the retaining walls. It feels instantly seedy to me.
2014-04-22 13:47:46 +0000 UTC
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Totally set into flashback mode by Tuesday's redraw of the Castellan's Keep, I put pen to paper the next day trying to redraw a map from memory that I had used for a D&D Rules Cyclopedia campaign in University (the year the Cyclopedia had been released). In the end I could only remember a few concrete details about the keep, but the rest flowed nicely and the end result is one I'm happy with and looking forward to using in play again.
2014-04-18 14:04:01 +0000 UTC
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If you are backing me at a Backstage Pass level, you may have noted the lack of such a pass this month. While normally I scan up to a dozen maps at a time and post them all up to the blog with an automated schedule for release, this month has been a bit rougher for me than most and I've only been getting the maps posted the day they are being released (or occasionally the evening before).
As soon as my health and schedule are back on track, I'll post the next backstage pass. Mostly likely for t...
2014-04-17 20:03:22 +0000 UTC
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My irregular DCC game has arrived at the Castellan’s Keep, north of the settled lands… in an area that can only be described as “the borderlands”.
While this is a redraw of a map from a published source, it incorporates changes to make the keep bigger and the add in one of my own adventures (The Screams From Jedder's Hole).
Also, if you haven't run the Keep on the Borderlands any time recently, or want to throw a few wrenches into the adventure as written, you should check out the link...
2014-04-15 12:44:18 +0000 UTC
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