Anyone got any kickass dungeon maps to show?
RPGPundit
I'm sure you'll be able to find something in this thread on Dragonsfoot (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=27578) that you'll like.
Quote from: Technomancer;387746I'm sure you'll be able to find something in this thread on Dragonsfoot (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=27578) that you'll like.
Turgenev wins the thread.
Those Turgenev maps are sweet!
I took a shot at doing something similar with Inkscape. Needs work, but I thought this turned out fairly well (http://worldwithoutsyn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/dungeonmap_example.png) for a first try.
Paratime Design (http://www.paratime.ca/cartography/) (Turgenev's homepage)
More kickass dungeon maps:
Hellhound's Underdark maps (http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-gallery-cartography-miniatures-painting/133677-hellhounds-maps-underdark-beyond-13-maps.html)
Melan's Khosura (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=461790#p461790) (I'd love to see that one published, maybe as a Knockspell Special...)
Tony Dowler's Microdungeons (http://blog.microdungeons.com/)
Ramsey Dow's Sickly Purple Death Ray blog (http://sicklypurpledeathray.blogspot.com/search/label/maps)
Dyson Logos' blog (http://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/) (the famous geomorph project, but in older posts are full dungeons as well)
Unfortunately 90% of my maps have been commercial but here are two I can share.
These are of the main dungeon of an intro mini-campaign (http://www.therpghaven.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1101) I'm designing for Moragne. I used Isomage's Cave Generator, then labelled the areas and added the other markings.This the main cavern from which the Servants of Acephax the Fingerbiter, a cult devoted to the arch-demon overseeing leprosy, gangrene, palsies and wasting diseases, operate.
(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l46cksC7GW1qzdd9fo1_500.png)
A dungeon from my Palaces setting.
Level 2 of my Tower of St. Makhab:
(http://enrill.net/images/maps/St-Makhab-L2-600.jpg)
Cool stuff!
Estar's in particular have a great retro style to them... and I really like AM's cutaway view... looking at those has me pining for a bit of dungeonbash.
Level 1 of Castle Delve
Fabulous!
I'm very tempted to sticky this thread.
RPGPundit
I just picked up Todd Gamble's Cartographer, Journal of Maps. It's a beautiful book. You should check it out.
It was about 15 bucks and has full color maps of villages, castles, tombs, and mines.
I'm starting to stagger a bit on the WGH1 maps; I know what I want levels seven and eight to look like (giant sink - basically I'm cheating by putting what is effectively an outdoor area indoors) and an underground lake (likewise) and their associated sub-levels...but I've hit level three and its starting to take me a lot longer.
Still, three has some fun stuff on it.
(http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_l556igcOde1qzdd9fo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1278515944&Signature=%2Fc1qTc%2F8G5aIiwXptKpiNVa4oks%3D)
Jesus, Maw, just show everyone the fuck up why don't you?
Sweet cut, Peter. :)
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;387886Melan's Khosura (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=461790#p461790) (I'd love to see that one published, maybe as a Knockspell Special...)
Just in case Melan misses this thread and doesn't post: the city was in the recentmost issue of Fight On!, the dungeon will be in the next one.
Here's a few I have done (the first and third were meant to be pretty generic)...
(http://www.theweem.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/map_thetemple-288x300.jpg)
(http://www.theweem.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/lavachamber-300x278.jpg)
(http://www.theweem.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/map_thebasement-300x225.jpg)
Full versions via my site (see sig)
Generic or not, do you have a link to your technique for making these maps or would you care to explain?
Quote from: winkingbishop;392175Generic or not, do you have a link to your technique for making these maps or would you care to explain?
I did a very quick tutorial just to give people an idea of how I approach them (for the most part)...
http://www.theweem.com/2010/06/24/weems-quick-map-tutorial/
Quote from: weem;392181I did a very quick tutorial just to give people an idea of how I approach them (for the most part)...
http://www.theweem.com/2010/06/24/weems-quick-map-tutorial/
Nice, thanks for the quick tut.
Quote from: Premier;392150Just in case Melan misses this thread and doesn't post: the city was in the recentmost issue of Fight On!, the dungeon will be in the next one.
I know; I noticed a few days ago, and I already wept bitterly.
I'd love to order Fight On! but Lulu's European (non-)service is an unsurmountable hindrance... (That's why I specifically wished for Knockspell - that one is in distro and I can get it easily.)
Made with Dungeon Designer 3 for my 1st Ed AD&D campaign. It's a section of a massive dwarven city.
(http://www.profantasy.com/products/dd3/DD3_Example03_small.png)
(http://www.profantasy.com/products/dd3/DD3_Example03_large.png)
Looking at Melan's maps, I was surprised to see a clear parallel between his style of organizational diagrams relating different dungeon areas with each other and mine, so I'm gonna go ahead and post it here too.
This shows different areas of a huge dungeon I was using during my D&D/Arcana Evolved game some time ago. It basically shows the position of different areas (notice the different parts coming from different modules like Cook's Demon God Fane or Paizo's (tweaked) Whispering Vault) and how they connect with each other. Then each area is fully mapped out. That's a process I'm using with the Black Abbey too.
(http://enrill.net/images/maps/delverscliff-diagram.jpg)
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;392275I know; I noticed a few days ago, and I already wept bitterly.
I'd love to order Fight On! but Lulu's European (non-)service is an unsurmountable hindrance... (That's why I specifically wished for Knockspell - that one is in distro and I can get it easily.)
I have had good experiences with Lulu in the last eight or nine months. On the other hand, if you absolutely do not want to do business with them, send me a PM with an e-mail address that can take large files (the largest is at 10 MB), and I will send you a copy.
And yeah, I am happy to have gathered the willpower to tackle such a huge project. It took a lot of convincing myself that it was feasible.
Promo image, created in glorious, glorious AutoREALM:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/Melan/Khosura-Part1.jpg)
Quote from: Melan;392526(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/Melan/Khosura-Part1.jpg)
Well, now we have empirical evidence that slightly under 50% of the population of Hungary is guys named "Gabor"...
Quote from: Melan;392526On the other hand, if you absolutely do not want to do business with them, (...) I will send you a copy.
That's awfully kind of you, and maybe I'll come back to that offer, but right now I am opening a last line of communication with them, my last try.
I'll be in England next week and I intend to have a few books shipped to me there.
Quote from: Technomancer;387746I'm sure you'll be able to find something in this thread on Dragonsfoot (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=27578) that you'll like.
In addition to that (excellent) DF thread, there's a mega-dungeons design forum on K&K, which includes several sticky threads with good links to map design threads, examples of maps from various folks, and such: http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewforum.php?f=28
I love some of these maps so much. But it inspires this sort of fond irritation -- because they really make me want to design and annotate a big old megadungeon; thing is, I'd never get a chance to run it. Half my players wouldn't run a dungeon crawl if their life depended on it, and I'm not sure I could even sustain enough interest to run it -- and yet I have this perverse desire to make one. Probably a holdover from my high school days, drawing maps on graph paper when I should have been paying attention in class.
All right, this isn't a dungeon map, but it's the only map I still have from my heyday of running a D&D campaign. I wanted a halfling Shire, but I also wanted to tailor it to my own needs and taste. So I decided to not simply use Tolkien's map, but to draw my own. It was never meant to be seen by anyone but me, so it's a bit dodgy.
I know I wrote up some background for it; the halflings in my campaign world were, and are, a more worldly, less bumpkin-ish version of Tolkien's Hobbits. I also recall wanting the Shire to be roughly the size of the state of Ohio. It was meant to be both a homebase for the PCs, where they could rest and equip themselves, and a source of adventure itself. The adventures I had in mind for the Shire itself were more in the nature of mystery and intrigue, but there were some other opportunities that would be more action-oriented.
EDIT: I suck at resizing pics, so these may not be very easy to see.
Quote from: Insufficient Metal;393970I love some of these maps so much. But it inspires this sort of fond irritation -- because they really make me want to design and annotate a big old megadungeon; thing is, I'd never get a chance to run it. Half my players wouldn't run a dungeon crawl if their life depended on it, and I'm not sure I could even sustain enough interest to run it -- and yet I have this perverse desire to make one. Probably a holdover from my high school days, drawing maps on graph paper when I should have been paying attention in class.
You could try sneaking them in as non-stereotypical dungeons. Frex, a "dungeon" map could actually be a castle or town map with keyed encounters. I drew some maps for Civil War in Kaddish & Escape from Kaddish that are functionally identical to dungeon maps but the action takes place in the rats nest of back alleys and medieval streets of a metropolis in my Dawnlands setting. They're currently in someone else's possession, but if I can get them back / recreate them, I'll toss them up.