Vikhelm and his kin were not welcomed to the land. Instead they fought for every inch of land they settled, building small fortresses and defensible homes to watch over their farmland and made sure to include gardens within their walls to be able to feed them at least minimally should the farmlands be taken.
The most visi...
Carved from a cliff face of soft matte green stone, the Jade Catacombs are well-known to sages and adventurers, and rightly feared.
The magics of this place have transformed the resident trio of medusas into something ever so slightly different. They are green, semi-transluscent, and even their touch is deadly poison. For...
A little early for September, here's the latest Backstage Pass. Last month's pass didn't quite reach to the end of August so this pass includes two maps that are being posted in August plus the majority of the maps that will be posted in September.
Missing from this pass is the next installment of My Private Jakalla whic...
2016-08-26 21:22:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Last week I posted the first map of a massive undercity project I am taking on. The goal is to produce a large set of maps that interconnect to produce something akin to, but very much different in style from, the original Jakallan Underworld map that M.A.R. Barker used in his Empire of the Petal Throne games.
While the f...
Whoa! It is somehow nearly the end of August!In the next few days I'll be putting up the next Backstage Pass (since the last one didn't quite cover all of August's releases). In the meantime, we need to decide which of the back catalog maps needs to go out under the free commercial license.
So, get your voting trousers on, if ...
2016-08-25 17:12:26 +0000 UTC View Post
We hadn't seen the Queen of Isthen for seven days and seven nights, and thus we finally braved her ire and broke down the doors to her quarters. They were disorderly and bloodied and the mahogany bookshelf holding her most prized codexes and scrolls was pulled away from the wall exposing a passage down beneath the main chambers ...
2016-08-23 13:22:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Thanks to YOU, I've had a huge breakthrough. For the first time, my work is gracing the pages of an official Dungeons & Dragons book. A publisher in Europe contacted me in the spring about using some of my commercially-licensed maps in an adult colouring book they would be releasing. We talked about attribution and comm...
2016-08-22 19:06:42 +0000 UTC View Post
In the classic Empire of the Petal Throne setting, the original author and man behind the DM Screen (Professor Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker) ran a huge megadungeon under the main city of the setting (Jakalla). The Jakallan underworld was a massive structure that took up a desk-pad-sized sheet of 10 square per inch graph paper.<...
2016-08-19 17:01:17 +0000 UTC View Post
This map is a companion to the map of the Octagonal Station that I posted back in May. The Octagonal Station at first feels like an old temple of some kind, but at the back of the structure is an old elevator that goes deep underground. For most adventurers this will mean nothing, as the elevator is ancient and the technolog...
The Ascent of the Scarlet Queen looks out over the west shore of Green Shallows Lake. The red stone cliff face has obviously been roughly worked by ancient hands leaving an ascending path along the face of the cliff, past a set of arrow slits and to a pair of brass doors decorated in the likeness of the Scarlet Queen barring the...
2016-08-12 15:09:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Your votes have been counted and this month's release under the RELEASE THE KRAKEN initiative is the Three Tombs of Acker from way back in 2013.I've released the original version that I posted in 2013, as well as an updated version that includes a grid.
Grab them both from the blog post at 2016-08-12 01:51:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Deep growls and grinding noises come from these stairs leading down beneath the old watch tower a few leagues down along the shore of Green Shallows Lake. A constant draft brings the smell of stone, earth, and a hint of rot.
Within the chambers there are uncountable signs of violence – broken and rusted weapons and armo...
While the city of Coruvon is best known for its arena and as a staging area for explorations of the Black Mire and the dwarven citadel of Kuln, it is also home to the Grand Library of Coruvon, a 30 foot tall structure of white stone containing the collected works rescued from Kuln during that city’s fall.
While the ...
We razed the Temple of Three Dragons little over forty years ago. Our villages have been free of the depredations of the fell monks and clerics of the order as well as their three masters or pets since. And now you come to this place seeking the treasures of the order, actually hoping to find evidence that one or more of the Thr...
2016-08-03 16:54:00 +0000 UTC View Post
I just finished uploading most of the maps for this month's releases to the blog (I'll have to fill in a few holes as the month progresses - I got a bit busy with other work last month).
I've broken the pass into three zip files.
Those of you at the $1 and up level may have noticed that the material posted to the blog last month didn't exactly match the Backstage Pass in July. Things happened that resulted in a quick shuffle of the maps to be posted so I could release the maps from Adventure Most Fowl at roughly the same time as the release of the advent...
2016-08-02 02:40:58 +0000 UTC View Post
The stony plains of Hesten are pierced here and there with deep near-vertical holes that reach down up to a few hundred feet and are almost all partially filled with stagnant water. Tales of antiquity tell us that these holes were created by drops of acidic blood sprayed from the near-mortal wounding of the godling Askull...
2016-07-29 15:03:03 +0000 UTC View Post
I occasionally draw maps of structures that are small enough that I feel awkward posting them as maps to the blog (mainly because I don’t want to feel like I’m short changing my patrons). So here are TWO small maps that I’ve drawn recently that are ready for your game.
The watch tower hasn’t been maintained...
Many celebrated the death of the Warlord of Atun. Many others feared that he would not remain interred for long and sought to destroy and desecrate his remains. Eventually (after a series of adventures involving the theft, bisecting, separating and eventual rejoining of his corpse) those faithful to his vision, aided by t...
2016-07-22 19:16:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Ok, 69 commercial maps are now available from the blog, so let's get the voting started on what map will become #70!
As with previous months, head on over to the link here (you'll need to be logged in via google) and pick one of the eight selected maps to become the next map retroactively released under the commer...
2016-07-20 01:55:48 +0000 UTC View Post
Village maps are eternally useful – they seem to be the standard for beginning adventures, providing a place of refuge, commerce, and intrigue without overloading the players with thousands of NPCs to interact with.
The Village of Kith is exactly that kind of village. A small collection of homes built up along a ...
Running a bit late like last month, I've released the map that won the voting for last month's Kraken release by a landslide (gathering more votes than the other 7 maps combined).
So we have released the Temple Complex Ruins under the free commercial license, bringing the total number of maps released to 69!
... 2016-07-19 06:51:51 +0000 UTC View Post
I definitely don’t draw enough hexmaps – this is something I realize as soon as I do draw one. Especially at the six-mile-hex scale like this one.
I printed the basic hexes off myself from incompetech's hex paper so I would have a base hex that works for me, and to make the 6 mile hex really work right, I us...
2016-07-15 15:37:24 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's a quick time-lapse video I made recently of me "hard at work" on another map.
This video was basically a test to see how my webcam handles the job... I've got to work on my setup for better lighting and play with the settings on my camera to improve video quality, but while I was messing around...
2016-07-13 18:13:09 +0000 UTC View Post
A couple of weeks ago I sat down in a Google Hangout with a couple of beers and a bottle of blended Irish whiskey (2Gingers – I heartily DO NOT recommend it). I aimed my camera at a blank piece of graph paper and started to draw straight to ink with no pencil work first.
And I drank. Quite a bit.
Twisted things grow under the dome of the copper sun...
Illuminated by the eternal glow of the copper sun embedded in the ceiling of the dome, foul things have taken root. The glade seems healthy and abundant, although the orange lighting makes everything look a little brassy. The trees are healthy, the grass lush, and bir...
2016-07-09 17:19:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Obscenities have taken over where noble men once battled against the oppression of the Kale empire. Something is said to have entered into Emberpike Hold’s water supply, hidden deep within Emberpike Hall, and the once-noble Fellen clan have abandoned their fiefs and the old hold structures outside the hall were put to t...
2016-07-05 15:00:25 +0000 UTC View Post
The Paladin Vansho may have been an oathbreaker and fallen from the path of his noble benefactor, but none can claim he wasn't blessed by some entity that gave him the might and motivation to strike down several lords of other worlds in his quest to break free from the bonds of outsiders. After his death, split asunder by...
2016-07-03 17:00:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Not quite a full backstage pass like most months - I haven't drawn all the maps that are going up this month yet so here are all but two of this month's maps which I'm in the process of bulk uploading to the blog as we speak.
2016-07-03 05:26:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Cut into the old quarry hills east of Javelin Hill are a pair of stone faces that glower sternly at those who come this way. The faces are of the Sorceress of Javelin Hill who's name has been forgotten, and her husband Jethrun Dugan who was the reeve of Javelin Hill. Between the faces are a set of doors, now in poor repai...
2016-06-28 17:36:32 +0000 UTC View Post
