Mistwyk Map

Some of you will recognize Owlbear Maps' new fishing village from its previous incarnation here on the blog as Nenlast. I redrew the buildings and some of the trees, added a grid, and put it up for sale here on RPGNow.com. Check it out!

Map Monday

Another toner cartridge killer, the lonely village of Nenlast on the Eastern Shores of Lake Nen. The values got away from me on this one, and it's not keyed, but it'll do for now.

Anyone watch Game of Thrones last night? The show itself was pretty good (although I wonder if anyone who hasn't read the books would follow it) but the titles were ass-kickingly great!

Lower City Burns

Goblins got into the lower city and made a huge mess.

Map Monday

A quick and dirty hex map of all the non-hidden places along the Road to Fallcrest, as per Oliver's suggestion.

Whuppin' out this map has got me thinking about the role of the map. It occurs to me there are three map types in D&D: the DM's map -- the one with the goodies only the DM will see -- the players' map -- the one they're putatively drawing while trudging along -- and the prop -- an actual map on actual paper handed to actual people in order to spice up the game.

Having had that thought, I had another map-related thought; none of these blog maps are useful as D&D maps. I mean, clearly they ain't player maps so rule that out. Neither are they props; a prop, imho, is something more archaic, like a pirate's treasure map. Inky. Frayed at the edges. X-marks-the-spot kind of thing. Can any of them be considered DM maps? Mmmmaybe. I mean, quite a few of them have 'eyes only' info, but that's not sufficient for a DM map, really. A DM map needs also to be on a grid/hex in order to convey information to the players in a measurable, standardized way in addition to reavealing all the hidden goodies.

If anything, these maps are akin to development art for movies or video games. Art used for insipiration, but not meant to be actually used in the telling of the story. Which is fine, but I'd also like to make some useful stuff. Maybe blueprint-like DM maps presented along with the corresponding papyrus scroll or message tied to an arrow, that sort of thing. If you, dear reader, have any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

The Road to Fallcrest II

DM's version. No peeking!

The Road to Fallcrest

DM's version.
Player's version.

The little sign on the right says "Thunderspire". End to end, this section of the King's Road would be about a day's walk.

How Big is the Nentir?

As a Public Service

Headin' Down South

I've found three little bits of copy regarding the larger world and the Nentir Vale's place in it:

• "A broad borderland region."
  
• "The Nentir Vale is a northern land..." and
  
• "(Harken Forest) separates the Nentir Vale from the more populous coastal towns of the south."
  

Sticking the Vale up along the northern border of the kingdom takes care of the first two points. Making the rest of this Nerath Empire remnant into a bastardization of southern England satisfies the third point as well a my current preoccupation with Bernard Cornwell's King Arthur books.

But please let me know if you've any better published sources for expanding the map, won't you? I'm working entirely from the DMG and H1.

Update: Misspelled "capital". D'oh!

Latest update: I got to thinking about Colmarr's comment that the Hammerfast trade route needed somewhere to go. It occurred to me if the Vale were on one side of a hellaciously vast mountain range, it would explain why people on the other side would refer to the mountains as something else beside "Dawnforge". Plus, a safe route through such rugged terrain really would be an asset worth guarding with a fortress. Thanks Colmarr! =)

Fallcrest Map

Herewith two versions of Fallcrest; one for players, one for dm's.

Fallcrest Composite Rough

Not that anyone's clamoring for this, but since it'll take me a while to clean up this drawing I thought I'd post it just in case someone wanted to run a party through in the meantime.

As I pull together the various elements of this Fallcrest drawing, a few thoughts occur:

• Who the hell is going to climb up and down a flight of stairs 15 stories high just to get their groceries? In the rain? No one, that's who. So I put in an elevator for the Porter's Guild to run.

• The original map has an awful lot of rubble and tumble-down walls. Now it's true that humans are lazy alcoholics, but it's been 110 years since the Bloodspears rumbled through! Don't you think someone might've organized a clean-up in the intervening decades? I do, so I patched the walls and cannibalized the rubble for more buildings.

• Marklehay having a personal forest within the confines of the city walls seems a bit odd. I've rerouted the approach to the Keep; the woods are smaller now and may end up just being ornamental.

Fallcrest -- the Lower City

Swimmin' pools, movie stars.

Fallcrest Rough

Here's a rough sketch of the Northeast neighborhood of Fallcrest. Big houses, lovely waterfall, mysterious caverns.

Postcard from Harkenwold

A map of the half-dozen villages that make up Harkenwold. It's about, oh, 7 miles from Devil's Bridge to Stockmer Keep along the the road. Beware goblins down 'round Pea Ridge!

Fallcrest Rough

It's map time! The northwest quad of Fallcrest, in rough form.

The Lonely Tower

Since the Lonely Tower has proven surprisingly popular, I thought I’d post the ideas I had while designing this dungeon.

Mechanically, the way the dungeon functions is this: everything starts off inanimate. Rooms 8 and 9 are hermetically sealed (and, should the players be skillful enough to notice, are the only rooms with airtight doors and no windows) and filled with a nefarious gas. If the party moves into the Chamber of Horrors (8) without shutting the doors behind them as they go, the gas will move into the rest of the prison, animating whatever various corpses and skeletons it comes across. I don’t think opening the Salon (9) would wreck as much havoc, since the gas is probably lighter than air and therefore couldn’t access the rest of the prison.

That’s about it, except to mention there’s a skeleton under the dock (11). This skeleton has a key which unlocks the ‘backdoor’ hatch (10).

The little story I made up about the place goes like this:

A while ago – after Fallcrest burned and/or after the fall of the Empire – there was a political purge, a not uncommon pattern. The lonely tower was where the Inquisition prisoners were incarcerated, tortured, and usually executed.

Eventually, some especially frisky ne’er-do-wells got into some dark stuff and set up a salon within the prison itself! With the aid of some magical runes and slapdash alchemy, they constructed an infernal device which would refine the agonies of the condemned into a recreational drug. Prisoners below would be tortured and the hedonists above would be able to toke off the distilled, etherized suffering of the condemned.

Everything was fine until everything went wrong and now, 90 years later or so, we have this chamber of horrors waiting for our heroes.

Fallcrest's own, dilapidated Gitmo. From a previous administration.

Mapping the Nentir Vale

I only know a few things about the Nentir Vale, geographically speaking.

• The Nentir Vale is a "northern land".
• The "Vale" is situated between two mountain ranges; the Stonemarch and the Dawnforge.
• The falls at Fallcrest indicate an elevation change.
• Don't order the "mutton" at the Fiveleague House.
• South of Fallcrest are the Witchlight Fens. We also know that the towns beyond the southern edge of the map are "coastal towns". To me, these are indications that South is "down".
  

I'm imagining the Vale as a "saddle" between the two mountain ranges with a major elevation drop clearly defined by the White River in the southeast.

So what can we conclude?

• Harkenwold isn't really in the "vale" proper.
  
• The Woodsinger Elves of the Harken Forest, being at a higher elevation, may have a tactical advantage over the Daggerburg Goblins.
  
• The Kingsroad must really be quite lovely, what with the view and all.
  
• Winterhaven is in the ass-end of nowhere.
  

Winterhaven take 4

Here is probably the final Winterhaven map. If you look closely, that's Valthrun smoking a pipe on his porch.

Thunderspire

Another fairly redundant map, this time of the Thunderspire neighborhood. Nothing you won't find in the DM guide. Not to scale, not to be used for navigation.

Winterhaven take 3

Here's the Winterhaven in-progress sketch. Still super-rough, but I've tried to make the density reflect the listed population, added 'suburbs' outside the walls, and reconnected Padraig's manor to the town proper.