One of the wonderful side effects of living in New York is the chance to run into great people from Tor.com. I’m now part of a semi-regular D&D game, and I draw the party dungeon maps.
This all came about when they posted this great article hypothesizing on the size of the world of Westeros. The article included my world map of Westeros and Essos for Game of Thrones. Long story short, we ended up having a beer, and found out that Irene and Bridget at Tor had never played D&D.
This was a terrible oversight – note Tor is a fantasy and sci-fi publisher. It had to be fixed. Tim Paul (a talented illustrator and mapmaker) offered to GM, and Mordicai Knode became the de-facto journal keeper.
We’re now 6 months in. Bridget and Irene thought this was going to be a fun one shot – but little did they know that D&D games have a habit of lasting for years. So far we’ve:
- defeated an otyugh in a sewer (I’ve never actually fought an otyugh before this)
- saved orphans from horrible abductions
- destroyed a dark wizard who was trying to become a demon by sucking the lifeblood out of innocents
- Found and ‘acquired’ a spyglass
- Got a free pass at restaurants and inns around the city
- Destroyed a necromancer
- Faced off a wyvern in the town square
- Entered a fallen comet and taken on four armed ape-bears with narwhale horns
We’ve still got no-idea what’s going on, but the application of judicious violence in service of our respective deities is going well so far.
Here’s the adventure maps so far, with a accompanying game notes scrawled on each. These dungeon maps are all drawn at the table, with pen, and a little post-processing in photoshop to fantasy them up.
We’re playing 5th edition D&D and so far it’s been a blast. It feels balanced and fast paced. The combat’s definitely quicker than 4th Edition, but still enough options to keep it interesting. We’ve hit 5th level and are just starting to feel the edge of the power curve – I’m intrigued to see how the risk scales with level.
Great story and incredible maps, thanks!
really ike your maps, I printed a 30 x 40 inches cuadricule, so I map everything there, but now I wish I had made it isometric for a better finish on the maps 🙁