Let's Play a Game . . .

Here's the game. In the map above that I'm going to be using for my next adventure there are quite a few things different about it from the traditional maps of the region but if you're familiar with the area at all you should be able to tell where it is and roughly when it takes place. So the question is: In what nation is the adventure being set? Bonus points if you can tell me why it's set there.

• First correct answer receives 50 meaningless Dyvers points and an imaginary pony named Carl that never gets tired.
• Second correct answer receives 25 meaningless Dyvers points and an imaginary pony named Bill. Careful, he bites.
• The third correct answer gets an imaginary sandwich made of sand, liverwurst, and hate on Pumpernickel - the bread that hates you as much as you hate it.

Good luck!

Those Low Down Mapping Blues

I love maps. 

I've loved drawing my own imaginary worlds since I was eight years old and started taping pieces of graph paper together so that I could build these massive territory maps and act out my favorite imaginary wars across their surfaces. I would color each sheet of graph paper with crayons, filling in the blocks with specific colors that represented everything from woods and rivers to castles and enemy forces. 

Normally I don't have any troubles designing my own maps but last night was something odd because I drew someone else's map. 

You see for the last couple of months I've been working on a version of the Great Kingdom Map that the Castle and Crusaders used for my own games. I've probably redrawn this map twenty times since I started with each attempt a little bit smoother and cleaner looking than the last.

Great Kingdom Map from Playing at the World

Apparently as I was reworking my version of the Great Kingdom I was training myself to follow their old lines because when I put my pencil down on the page I drew it without thinking about it. So I erased the page and started drawing, doing my best to concentrate on not repeating the Great Kingdom's lines, and drew Oerth instead.

World of Greyhawk Map from Dungeon Magazine

One of my favorite worlds but not what I wanted to draw. I wanted to draw something that was original to me and not just another rehash of an established world. It was incredibly frustrating as I've never had trouble designing my own world map before.  

I kept working, trying to sculpt my own world's lines on the page, without much luck. It wasn't until I decided  to start drawing a map based loosely on my area that things started to loosen up and I was able to get something new on the page. Yesterday was really just a frustrating day all the way around.

The Caraway Bar

The Caraway Bar was opened five years ago by Skortec Gnollkiller, but from the looks of the place it may as well have been a thousand. The siding is cracked and in many places you can actually look in where the chalking has already worn away. The tables are made from genuine imitation teak and the stage is made of balsa wood. Which is fine since the only person to take the stage in the last year has been Weird Eyed Millie, whose eyes never want to look at the same thing at the same time, as she lumbers her quarter ton posterior across the creaking timbers announcing to the world that she is the last surviving member of Custer's Follies and holds the bar hostage by refusing to put her clothes back on. 

What few bar maids work in the Caraway Bar do so only because open prostitution in Collegedale is punishable by the removal of a limb and they're all down to three as it stands. The food isn't of much account as the cook, a dwarf who only answers to the name Meatshield, refuses to use ingredients without mold. He claims it makes a body healthy and that those who die weren't really meant for this life anyway. Meanwhile the bar itself runs along the majority of the main wall and is maned by Skortec's three nephews: Crawford, Clay, and Jackson. The trio manages to get most drink orders right so long as no one asks for anything fancy, like a whiskey and water.

There's a private room in the southwest corner of the bar where the local mofia - no one's willing to tell them that it's actually pronounced mAfia - likes to congregate. At any time you're likely to find between five and ten local toughs slouched around the tables as they plot their nights nefarious deeds. 

The Troglodyte Caves

I was thinking about Troglodytes last night and started researching these little devils. Unfortunately I found that the Third Edition Troglodytes are basically unusable in my eyes. They're too big, too powerful, and far too lizardman-esque. After all if they're nothing more than a bestial version of the lizardman than there is absolutely no reason to ever use them in your campaign. So instead I went back to the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual and used that version.

Lair of the Troglodyte by Charles Akins

Okay, now in the map I used the box hatching around the caves and alternated it with a bit more of the classical crosshatching. I don't think that the box hatching was as successful next to the cave as it tended to lose the line. Next time I'll use the box hatching further away from the line of the dungeon.

The cavern entrance is partially submerged and the cavern hall leading in is only two feet wide causing any creature above small size to fight at a -2 modifier. The river entrance is populated by four trained and hungry alligators who begin attacking once the players enter into the cramped entrance. There is an alarm just north of the entrance with a group of troglodytes camping in the cave just above and to the right. The idea is for them to begin attacking the invading players while the alarm alerts the tribe.

For this dungeon I set up three secret caverns. The first one is the treasure cavern where the troglodytes have been stashing all of the goods and gear they've collected from raiding the nearby trade route. The troglodytes have trapped this room with two mimics. Each of them are further in the cavern rather than being near the entrance. The idea is that the players will get greedy and let their guard down when the mimics finally attack.

The second secret area in the southeast is where the troglodytes are hiding their 'god,' a slumbering Linnorm (you can find them in the 3.5 Monster Manual II, pg. 140). The Linnorm is essentially a flightless dragon that is incredibly old, incredibly powerful, and just loves the idea of eating player charterers. The idea behind this sort of huge danger in what should be an easy encounter for these players is to set up a series of future encounters with the Linnorm as a major reoccurring villain - something I've been wanting to do for quite some time.

The third secret area in the north of the map is where the troglodyte women and their eggs are located, hidden away from the possibility of discovery by wondering adventurers and a hungry Linnorm. If the players manage to find this secret area then the troglodyte women will fight with everything they have and at a +1 challenge rating.

Lair of the Troglodytes by Charles Akins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A Map of a Post or Some Such Thing

The Dungeon that Never Was, But May Someday Be

I noticed a while back that Wil Wheaton had posted his map from the introduction of Tabletop under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. I tend to think that's pretty groovy of him as he could have just kept the map for himself and never shared it with the world.

As you can see from the map to the right Will's dungeon is fairly bare bones. In that way the map is fantastic. It allows for anyone who comes across it to quickly create their own little world and story-lines without having to work out all the details that Will squirreled away in his map.

For me, however, I wanted to take Will's original idea and expand on it by making his map my own. In this way I could create small visual cues that will quickly relate all the information about the dungeon that I need so that my game will run smoothly.

When I began recreating the map I added rubble in the southeast corner of the large room, in the trapped room in the center of the map, and in the store room in the lower center of the map as evidence of seismic activity in the area. I also allowed flowing water to run across the right wall in the room to the lower right of the map as a way of emphasizing that the dungeon isn't being properly maintained. These sort of clues will allow me emphasize areas of the dungeon that are currently in use and those that are being left to rot.

I added a series of islands in the underground lake so that I can test out some Troglodytes. I've rarely used these creatures over the last ten years and I would like to begin using them in my games so that I can throw new challenges at my players and keep the game from being stale.

In the secret cave system I added a second layer to the top cavern so that I could create a Grell lair. I love Grell - especially since they tend to be rarely used by other dungeon masters - so I try to fit them into my campaigns at memorable points. Using an illusion to cover the entrance into their caverns provides me with several opportunities to make this a memorable encounter and keep the Grell, a large predator, logically consistent in the underground environment.

I also added some webs in the large room. These didn't really turn out as well as I would have liked, but they're a great visual cue to remind me that I've populated that section of the room with Giant Spiders.

Finally I turned all the shelves in the store room vertical as opposed to horizontal. Vertical shelving is the norm in professional storage situations and presents a subtle reinforcement of the idea that the people you're encountering in this dungeon aren't just a bunch of amateurs who got together and started committing acts of evil.

Evil is their profession and they've got their shit together.

The Dungeon that Never Was, But May Someday Be Redux

My map is being shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you'd like to learn more about that, click on the links below.



Tabletop Map by Charles Akins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://wilwheaton.net/2012/12/a-map-of-a-dungeon-that-never-was-but-may-someday-be/.