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Lady White's Ruins

https://rpgcharacters.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/lady-whites-ruins-grid.jpg?w=529&h=652

2015-07-28 14:47:43 +0000 UTC View Post

R-AN (NorthCott) Sociological Research Domes

Inspired by Billy Longino’s recent postings and drawings for his Metamorphosis Alpha game, my own love of Gamma World, and a recent playthrough of the Old World Blues DLC for Fallout New Vegas, I present the R-AN (NorthCott) Sociological Research Domes.

I picture using this map as the starting point for a classic ...

The Mad Warlock’s Dome & Tower

This month really feels like it was the month of getting to know my compass. Today’s map is again very circular in flavour, even the extra details like the arcane glyphs in the experimental dome are circular.

This map was 100% inspired by playing Fallout: New Vegas again. I wanted an experimental area with ...

Valley of the Mounds

For this map I felt like channeling a bit of the Caves of Chaos, combined with a few classic tombs.

This stream-fed box canyon has been used as a sacred burial site of the Coalfoot Troglodyte clan for as long as they have recorded their history on their clay tablets. At the narrowest point before reaching the pool a...

Chateau d'Aubergine

Because Castle Amber was taken, this one is … purple.

A small and lightly fortified castle, Chateau d’Aubergine is home of Madame d’Aubergine and her children – a clan of noble sorcerers of ancient elven blood. The matron of the family dominates all affairs at the Chateau, with her offspring rarely se...

Backstage Pass - Season 2, #6

Here's the latest backstage pass! 

Not a lot of dungeons coming up in the next bit, but I definitely became better friends with my compass and went crazy with circles and arcs.

Mapper's Challenge II - The Deep Halls

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/friday-map-mappers-challenge-ii-the-deep-halls/

Built by priests of Amon-Gorloth, this dungeon was constructed and adapted from existin...

The Dellorfano Protocols Dungeon #1

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/tuesday-map-the-dellorfano-protocols-map-1/

About a month ago, Stacy Dellorfano of ConTessa (who also happens to be one of my very generous...

Hamel's Well

Many parts of the city are built up over the ruins of civilizations that claimed these lands in ages past. While some forget the roots of the city, others are forced to confront them on a daily basis.

Forty feet below street level in one of the poorer districts of the city, the stairs to Hamel’s Well open u...

6 Mile Hex #3 - The Badlands of Slate

A final map in my trilogy of experiments using the Squarehex mega hex mapping paper (as I write this again, I realize I have no idea what the actual name of this paper is…)

The badlands lurch up above the river, and show the signs of having once been lush forest and river lands themselves. Now dry and shattered, t...

The Honeyed Forest

Today’s six mile hex connects to Tuesday’s map of Baraloba – sitting to the northwest of the Baraloba map. Again drawn as an “experiment” using the Squarehex big hex mapping paper.

On a standard hex this would just be a forest hex, maybe with the road showing through it, but almost certainly not showin...

Baraloba and Environs

A few months ago I picked up “The Works” from Squarehex. It included a lot of cool mapping papers and the one that caught my imagination are the A5 sized “MegaHex” mapping pages. Each has a big ass hex at the top half of the page (subdivided into a lot of smaller hexes), and the lower half is lined paper to write stuff a...

Crypts & Tombs Beer Coaster Geomorphs

I’ve been drawing the geomorphs for the Geomorph Map Contest using the Gridded Beer Coasters that I bought from Peter Regan’s Squarehex store.

At the end of May I put together a set of six geomorphs in this way that work well together – a temple, a tomb, and a set of four catacombs & crypts geomorphs.

Backstage Pass - Season 2 #5

Hey hey, time for another BackStage Pass upload! Here are the maps scheduled to go up on the blog from June 19th to July 10th - including the one that's been getting a lot of attention from the recent photo I posted of it nearly finished - titled the Deep Halls in these uploads.

Sparrow's Fort

Some of the most “classic” maps on the blog that really defined the “Dyson style” were fairly small dungeons spread over multiple levels with a side view map to indicate how they connected.

I realized recently that it has been quite a while since I’ve drawn such a map. So I sat down with my trusty 5 square per i...

The Asymmetric Temple (Underground)

Part two of this week’s Asymmetric Temple map, these are the two underground levels of the temple where most of the actual service work of the temple takes place. At the bottom of the main ramp is the main service area on the left which is used for funerary rites and other obeisances to the death god (with the morgue just to t...

The Asymmetric Temple - Surface Levels

Since the beginning of March I’ve been playing in an Empire of the Petal Throne campaign using the classic 1975 rules set. At one point some drawings of temples were shown, and one player pointed out that the temples to one of the death gods of the setting are typically asymmetric.

Combined with the majority of th...

The Dungeons Under Ettin Manor

The overlord (now long deposed and deceased) of Ettin Manor kept his most precious of treasures down in the secret chambers underneath the manor. Further, he defended these treasure chambers with traps and intricate secret doors. While his defenses have never yet been entirely breached, some looters have broken into one treasure...

The Ruins of Ettin Manor

I found that I had been drawing a lot of my recent maps (particularly commissioned pieces) by roughing them out in pencil and then going to ink afterwards. However that’s not really my style. Until 2014, I basically did all my maps directly in pen and I’ve been missing that organic feel of growth that I get when I lay someth...

Landing Facility Lambda-Bravo

Through the early days of May, my social media stream was entirely taken over by May 4th Star Wars material and the release of White Star. I really can’t claim that my social media feed doesn’t impact my work, and to go along with the Space Tug UPF Terence Trent D’Arby that I posted earlier this month, I have a place for i...

Final Forays into Castle Gargantua

And we come to the end of my adventures mapping out the interior of Castle Gargantua. From here I will have to leave it in your hands – once Kabuki Kaiser releases the Castle Gargantua book you will be able to explore and map the massive halls and enormous towers of the castle yourself. Remember that these maps were drawn at ...

Further Explorations into Castle Gargantua

Last month I indicated that I was drawing maps for Kabuki Kaiser’s next book – Castle Gargantua. The trick about these maps is not only are they gridded, they represent areas where the squares are 60 feet across instead of the normal 10 feet per square for old school play or 5 foot squares for new school play. The harder pa...

Backstage Pass - Season 2, #4

Here we are with the next installment of the Backstage Pass for all you patrons at the $1 and up patronage levels! Attached are all the maps that will appear on the Dodecahedron over the next four weeks. Thank you again for all your support, you make an enormous difference in my work and my life.

Space Tug UPF Terence Trent D’Arby

Space Tug UPF Terence Trent D’Arby Sometimes I ask my patrons what they want me to draw. Fred Hicks asked (ages ago) for something modern or sci-fi. So I’m finally giving you something. My drawing style doesn’t lend itself well to most sci-fi stuff, so this was a lot of experimenting. But here’s the deck plans for the ...

The Spiral Temple

Inspired by some recent dungeon designs and geomorphs by Nate McD over on Google+ along with some of the odd-shaped buildings on the original map from the AD&D1e Lankhmar supplement, I present the Spiral Temple. But that’s a pretty boring name. It’s probably the temple of Scrovet the Orange, the patron of quests, journe...

Kabus Retreat - The Monastery in the Mists

A couple of months ago a photoshopped image of the beautiful Phuktal Monastery in India with a waterfall added to it for ridiculous effect showed up on google+ with a challenge for the mappers present to take a try at it. Based on it I drew a simplification on my isometric mapping pad and from that isometric view I isolated the...

Still Grotto

Today’s map was inspired by this out-of-copyright piece from “Autour de la Méditerranée … Illustrations par A. Chapon, etc” published in 1892 (and visible on the blog post). From the picture I imagined a pirate boat heading into the grotto in order to unload secret treasure, a prisoner, or perhaps to pick something ...

Chainspire Dungeons

We are beneath the castle […] What are they saying? They talk of a savage beast who prowls these catacombs – with teeth six inches long. Sorry. Sixteen inches long.Somewhere in Chainspire Fortress is a single secret trap door not marked on any map. Beneath that trap door are the old castle dungeons and interrogati...

Chainspire Fortress

The map of Chainspire Fortress was inspired by an illustration from “Our Native Land: a picturesque ramble through the three kingdoms” which has long expired from copyright and was scanned and made available by the British Library. It’s actually a drawing of Castle Roche, but I didn’t use the actual castle as the basis f...

The Seven Secret Maps

A while back I put together a set of funky dungeon bits that I mailed off to an unsuspecting Badger (+Jason Paul McCartan). I've posted all seven maps to my blog now so you can see the seven maps yourself. For this one you will definitely have to come to the blog, as there are seven individual maps to view. 2015-04-28 12:09:58 +0000 UTC View Post