If These Stones Could Scream: Region Map

Victor is normally tasked with taking my crude line drawing and making them into something that you can understand without patience and a magnifying glass, but since he has been busy I thought I would take a stab at it and see what I could do.

This is the region map for If These Stones Could Scream another Dungeon World adventure I am working on:

Not quite satisfied with how the mountains blend, and I’ll need to texture the grassy areas some more, but otherwise it is almost done. Then I will try my hand at polishing up Khajra (city map), and then the Serpent Ziggurat (dungeon map).

If These Stones Could Scream: Khajra Map Take 2

My second stab at Khajra, the primary adventure site for our upcoming adventure If These Stones Could Scream. I made the area with the actual town a bit smaller and added an arena, while the snakeman pyramid is quite a bit larger and circular (at Josh’s request). 

The town started out as a dig site for explorers investigating and/or looting the snakeman pyramid, but due to all the water after it was cleaned out it became a kind of resting stop for caravans crossing the desert. Eventually a would-be noble set up shop (and walls) and began charging people to stay and purchase water.

D&D Next: Epiro Map

A map that Victor whipped up for my Epiro campaign. Nothing too elaborate, but definitely nicer than my sketches.

D&D Next: The Horned Hold Map

And here is the final map for the Horned Hold, from my D&D Next conversion of Thunderspire Labyrinth.

Thunderspire Labyrinth: The Horned Hold Rough

Sorry that this has taken so long, but between the latest D&D Next packet, 13th Age, Dungeon World, and a very recent Numenera playtest I have been pretty swamped with reading. That and I consider myself to be very bad at mapping. I tend to fret a lot on layout, always wondering if the denizens would really put what room where. I think this is like, the sixth sheet of graph paper I have gone through (after hours of poring over other maps).

Thunderspire Labyrinth: Seven-Pillared Hall Rough

Here is my take on the Seven-Pillared Hall from H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth. As with H1: Keep on the Shadowfell, I am redoing almost all of this adventure for a D&D Next conversion.

Thunderspire Labyrinth: Chamber of Eyes

Victor and I rebuilt the Chamber of Eyes from H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth. All in all, I think he helped me convey the tone really well.

It is not a happy place.

I did this once before, largely using the original map. I figured I would try and think what an actual temple dedicated to Torog might look like. There are rooms for torturing and/or binding victims–as well as alcoves to chaining up the survivors until they die–pits for sacrificing some, and a big stone table for eating the rest.

D&D Next: Shadowfell Keep Map Complete

Here is the polished version of the map, courtesy of Victor (aka, The Planewalker).

Awesome.

D&D Next: Shadowfell Keep Map

Here is the map of Shadowfell Keep I drew up for part two of my D&D Next conversion. I like the idea of the characters being able to explore the keep in some detail before going dungeon crawling. As with my 4th Edition update I kept Sir Keegan is in the chapel, which is hallowed ground (giving them a place to rest).

DDN Blog: Goblins Only Care About Your Axe

As I said in a previous blog post, sometimes a fight is just not worth the effort of stopping the game to draw out a tactical map. I cannot imagine the amount of time I have spend drawing maps and juggling Dungeon Tiles, whether it was for a hunting party of kobolds in the forest south of Winterhaven, a handful of undead lurking within the catacombs under Shadowfell Keep, or for the final confrontation against Kalarel, his undead guardians, and a life-sapping portal.

Out of those, the only time a map really made things cooler was the showdown with Kalarel, and given my experiences running A Sundered World—fighting clockwork horrors in Shom, fleeing from a gith-mounted red dragon and bladeling raiding party, and taking on a possessed Autocthon while riding an ancient blue dragon—I am fairly certain it would have still been really awesome without it.

I am not sure how I buy into the player mentality of “its on the map, kill it”. When running Age of Worms in 3rd Edition, this was not a problem, even though I would draw the map as they explored the dungeon. Really if there was a map, I used it, and they never complained. Maybe it is because there were not a lot of things to interact with, and the fights were over a lot quicker? Most of what I recall from the first was just walls and maybe some furniture. Occasionally there was difficult terrain or something that they did not want to step in, like brown mold.

The point is that drawing maps “back in the day” seemed to have been a lot easier than it is now, and given that they never really went off the map it probably did not feel like an investment that they were passing up. I keep mentioning to them that I would like to run the through Age of Worms using 3rd Edition, just to see what they like and do not like. I would be curious to see how they handle exploration-based mapping.

Anyway I have hundreds of minis and a lot of Dungeon Tiles, and given that my issues were more centered around the expenditure of time (how much have I wasted drawing maps and pondering terrain features and effects for trivial things?), I am glad that they are considering methods to reduce the time shifting between both “modes”, as well as defining abilities to work with either.