Dungeon-Series Theme
Added 2018-10-14 19:56:40 +0000 UTCHello all! Apologies for spamming you guys over the weekend.
Now that Castle Ravenloft is finished I wanted to start putting some feelers out there for what might be a suitable next target for some battle maps from WotC content. While Ravenloft took much longer than I anticipated it taking, the end result I'm fairly proud of and hope that it will continue to be a helpful boon for DMs running through Wizard's popular adventure modules.
So with that in mind, I've listed a few of the dungeons found in the recent 5E modules that generally take place within the Forgotten Realms. My plan is to create more detailed battle maps of the individual rooms/sections of these larger-scope dungeon maps in much the same way that I did for Castle Ravenloft. Release one-per-month and eventually have the whole dungeon mapped out for easier crawling through. The (number) noted by each Dungeon title is my rough estimate of how many maps (and therefore, months) it would take to complete it.
I have tried to include suitable maps that can be completed in as much time as Ravenloft took or less. I currently have some favoritism for Wave Echo Cave, though can be swayed if a different one feels the most popular right now (I have not yet read Dragon Heist, hence why none of it will appear here this time)
Comments
I would also love Dragon Heist stuff, but I understand wanting to wait a bit. I LOVE Wave Ech Cave and voted that, but also am hesitant about tying up your time with a big dungeon.
Joshua A Calderhead
2018-10-20 13:09:50 +0000 UTCIf I could choose another option, Dragon Heist would definitely be at the top of my list.
Jonomytho
2018-10-19 02:51:08 +0000 UTCI would love for you to tackle the maps in the new Waterdeep adventure. While I like the idea of re-doing existing maps, the quality in the maps you mentioned is already great to me. The difference with Ravenloft was the fact that there were no top down maps for it that were up to snuff. With Waterdeep’s maps, my main issue is the quality and lack of color: I cant print them for my players to give them the same dungeon experience I gave them with say, Fane (ToA) or Ravenloft. So please do Dragon heist!
Eric Holterman
2018-10-17 13:38:34 +0000 UTCWhat I like best about Ravenloft maps that you've created is that you can take individual pieces and create your own dungeon. :) Love it.
Ignas Orlovas
2018-10-17 07:49:30 +0000 UTCAfter having run a couple of these adventures and dungeons, I can honestly say that while they are beautiful maps and you can get some really high quality maps to use for reference, having individual battle maps of, at the very least, the important rooms would have helped me out so much. Due to the sheer size of some of these maps, even drawing a room on a grid before the encounter can really take you out of the immersion, due to how long it will take. I don't see the problem with doing this, as you can easily reuse the rooms in other encounters and such. The way I see it, we are getting a modular dungeon set. I'm excited to see which one wins (Personally, I am rooting for Wave Echo Cave, as I plan on rerunning LMoP soon).
Julien Therrien
2018-10-17 01:49:48 +0000 UTCThe ones you have chosen are all illustrated beautifully already. Whilst they are not ideal as battlemaps, they can certainly be used. I know you said that you aren't looking at Dragon Heist yet, however that is the one I would see as having huge potential. All the maps are blank & white sketch drawings and would immensely benefit from a Venatus-ing. You mentioned above waiting for the dust to settle, but the adventure is totally self-contained.
Aaron Graham
2018-10-17 01:41:43 +0000 UTCAs a follow-up, I support re-doing the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist maps, because I'm personally not a fan of the new choices they've made stylistically, and would love to have high-quality battle maps of those. Regardless of what you choose to make, I appreciate all of the work that you do.
Benjamin Rhoades
2018-10-17 00:20:17 +0000 UTCI'm approaching from the perspective of having D&D Beyond. Most of the maps that are provided by that platform tend to be fairly high resolution. I should say, they are high enough resolution that for me to take them into Photoshop and rescale doesn't degrade them so much that I would no longer want to print them out and use them as physical battle maps.
Benjamin Rhoades
2018-10-17 00:16:49 +0000 UTCDefinitely not planning on stopping the production on my own content anytime soon!
Venatus Maps
2018-10-16 19:40:34 +0000 UTCI didn't vote because I don't even know what any of those things are. Your generic content is what I'm interested in.
Phergus
2018-10-16 16:33:41 +0000 UTCDefinitely not interested in just making restylized versions of these maps--I agree that would not be a great use of my time (and would likely not compare well with Schley's work). What I DO want to make are high-detailed battle maps of the individual sections of dungeons to make them suitable for tabletop play, which is something none of the above maps are currently equipped to do. They work wonderfully as overall maps of the dungeon layout for a DM, but were not originally designed for playing through room-by-room which is why I feel revisiting them will be so helpful to DMs I see out there struggling to recreate these dungeons at their table for their players.
Venatus Maps
2018-10-16 11:32:19 +0000 UTCI don't really want to vote for any of these. I agree with Ben. I don't really see the point of just restylized versions of maps that already exist. There are far better uses of your talents!
Joshua Crouch
2018-10-16 05:21:41 +0000 UTCThank you for the feedback Ben! I agree that the isometric nature of Ravenloft made those battle maps especially helpful--if you have ideas for other published maps that are not well suited for top-down play that I should take a look at please let me know. I will have to disagree however that any of the listed maps are high-quality enough to play on a battle map scale. While they are all beautiful in their own right (I wouldn't want to remake a dungeon map of White Plume Mountain, for example), none of them are at the appropriate level of detail for a 1in grid scale battle map. I believe one of the major points of appeal here is the ability to get individual 'rooms' of a dungeon printed out easily and in high detail in such a way that they can be placed while exploring.
Venatus Maps
2018-10-15 18:54:16 +0000 UTCI feel as though you're missing the point of the popularity of the Castle Ravenloft maps. What made them especially useful,and valuable to me is the fact that the maps provided by the book are isometric rather than top-down, which makes them really difficult to run if you prefer a dungeon-crawler method, as opposed to a theater of the mind method. The options you've listed here already have really high-quality, top-down maps for them. There are three criteria that I see that would incentivize creating a map: 1) haven't been mapped before, 2) have been inadequately mapped, 3) aren't suitable for running in a top-down dungeon crawler.
Benjamin Rhoades
2018-10-15 18:06:14 +0000 UTCI would love anything Arab/AncientEgyptian/LandofFire/Southlands/Osirion/Dark Sun/Al-Qadim - series-wise that could be the Desert of Desolation series ^^
Anders Bersten
2018-10-15 10:09:23 +0000 UTC
