Mapmaking – Purple Hexing

#Dungeon23 – Week 2 Wrap-up

The second week of #Dungeon23 is over already! I’m pleasantly surprised by how easy it’s been to keep up with it so far. This week I’ve experimented more with different shading, now that I know that that Promarker that I use bleeds through the paper so much. On top of that, I tried making a very tight and closed space, to see how that works out. It felt very cramped to make a map like this, and I’m not too sure how it would work out in play; my hope is that it will create a sense of oppression and would also serve to isolate players a bit on this level.

A scan of my notebook page containing the upper floor maps of the Castle of the Hollow Apparition.

Scanning this map was actually a little tricky to do. I use a B5-sized composition notebook to do this in, and the scanner I have does not hold that comfortably. So, both scans have ended up with this little drop-off to the left and right, respectively, as that is where the notebook was outside the scanner. A secondary result was that the original scans seemed somewhat overexposed, so I had to try a bit of fiddling in Gimp to see if I could adjust the levels and brightness of the images.

Something I tried in map creation was to keep the references in red, so that they would stand out. Any flavor texts/prompts I kept in blue, whereas more referee-facing descriptions I’ve kept in black ink. Since the Promarker bleeds through so much, I tried shading with a regular pencil. In the end, it works out reasonable well in the scan, though on the paper itself it comes out as quite glossy if the light hits it just so, which I’m not a big fan of. Another thing that’s particularly visible in the storage attic is that shading most large objects makes the room look a little “floaty”—shading the objects seems to lift them from the page. I think in future shadings I’ll keep that to the walls and so in, to help the rooms themselves “sink into” the paper a little more.

Moreover, this time I tried adding a little bit more flavor and explanation to the right side of the page but, retrospectively, I think that takes away a little from the actual keys itself. On top of that, it also spreads out information about singular objects to multiple visual spaces, which I’m not that big a fan of. I think in the future, it’s better to use open space like that for random tables, as I did in the first week. That also helps provide more interesting context on its own.

Overall, after working on such a cramped space this week, I’m looking forward to using the next week to make a much larger, roomier space in the crypts. Thematically, I think that will serve an interesting contrast as well.

A scan with the notebook page containing the key for this week’s map.

I’m still struggling a bit with keying maps well enough. I’ve read through The Alexandrian’s Art of the Key series of blog posts, and in particular the second part was very helpful. I’ve also taken a hint from Question Beast’s review of Winter’s Daughter. Overall, both their advice essentially boils down to keeping keys very brief but, most of all, to-the-point and with a clear hierarchy of information. I tried writing this week’s prompts imagining the perspective of somebody walking into the space and where their attention would go as they enter it.

I’m fairly pleased by how these are going, as I think they serve to tell something of a story via the environment. However, I do think, as I mentioned above, that these would have to be combined with some manner of encounter tables to make it more actionable. Something that inspired me the past week, and that I want to experiment with, is Playful Void’s blog post Minimalist Lore. The idea of creating lore incrementally by throwing ideas out there and having them gel together at a later time sounds like a wonderfully efficient and also improvisational way of doing it. I think it also helps to reduce prep time for things that won’t be engaged with during play by only giving attention to those things that are.

Overall, in these upper floors, I’ve tried to incrementally add arcane references to the map, as well as several possibilities for players to interact with the environment in a non-sequential manner. I chose to add a lot of large windows so that players would have multiple opportunities to scale the house from the outside and enter rooms or bypass locks where needed. As an afterthought, I tried to make sure to have the flue of the fireplaces connect throughout the levels so that players could also use that to traverse between levels. The secret steeple, however, I thought nice to just have their as a secret fun addition. Clever players should realize they could reach it by observing the manor from the outside; if they don’t find it, however, nothing is amiss either.

A thing I’m particularly proud of is making the bathtub an incredibly weighty but exquisite treasure. I feel that just having piles of coins or gems around encourages people to just behave like thieves: open a cabinet, grab what’s inside, move to the next room. Making a treasure something odd, unwieldy, or unique results in the whole ordeal becoming more like a heist: the treasure is just right there in view but the real problem is how to get it and where to move it.

I look forward to building on these ideas as I go forward!

#Dungeon 23 – Week 1 Wrap-up

Today marks the first full week of #Dungeon23, with the product to show for it. It was quite an experimental week, as I had no real idea of what I was doing but I figured just power through and doing a room a day will work out for the best. I am so surprised by the final output, actually! I did not particularly set up to create a spooky manor house but that’s certainly what I ended up with as I kept going! Have a look at the map below:

And, of course, there’s a matching key to the map:

Taking these pictures with my phone is a little messy; I may want to do the next one using the scanner to get a more even result.

I’ve been trying out a few different things right from the get-go, which is why the key, handwriting, and pens vary a bit as I go along. I find something charming about capital lettering in places but sometimes it doesn’t quite work out. On top of that, I’ve tried doing some shading with a Promarker but as will be visible in next week’s products, it actually bleeds through the paper significantly! Not to mention that yesterday, the marker really bled through some ink and left a big, ugly stain on the paper. Well, all adds to the charm, I guess!

My biggest challenge right now is writing an actionable key. Specifically, figuring out what makes a make really useful. Right now, it’s more of a scene with some prompts rather than something directly workable. At the same time, I haven’t tried running this, so—who knows? For all I know this gives enough to work with, really. The approach I’ve taken so far is that I want something on paper, and that’s what I’ve achieved. The way I see it is that at some point if I want to run this, I’ll have good groundwork to build on top off.

I’m really surprised by how well a more carefree attitude opens up creativity. I’ve always said that I don’t consider myself a particularly creative person—give me a sheet of blank paper and I will struggle tremendously to put something on there. However, give me a basic prompt and I can riff off of that. Having a much more carefree attitude where I don’t particularly have to put something interesting or good on paper has really opened the door to just get something down, which in turn has so far allowed me to just go with it.

On top of that, while I’ve made dungeon maps with Dungeondraft and have played around a little to draw some things on grid paper, I’ve never approached mapping on paper itself as seriously as I’ve tried right now and that’s quite interesting to see. I wonder how much daily practice will end up helping in learning how to draw. Either way, I’ve already learned some lessons in general:

Lessons Learned

BE MESSY—As soon as I’d made my first mistake on what I was working on this week, the pressure was off. I felt more free to test things out, be sloppy, and just create things.

DRAW TEXTURED WALLS—I made the walls be just a thick line (using a Pigma Micron size 08) but that starts looking monotonous rather quickly. I want to try out making textured brick-like walls and outlining them starkly.

QUICK PROMPTS IN THE MARGIN ARE COOL—It was just a spur of the moment thing but once I added the first note in the margin, I was hooked. It makes the map look as though somebody annotated it based on experience, and adds a sense of mystery without prescribing something.

GO LIGHT WITH SHADING—I got a Promarker Ice Grey 4 to shade my walls, and boy is it a dark and dominating shade! I used the regular highlighting end first, which created a really deep shadow that felt a little too big. For the next rooms I used the finer tip on the other end to create more gentle accents. Also, it bleeds through the paper of my notebook!

SKETCH THINGS OUT IN PENCIL FIRST—In retrospect this seems quite obvious but I only sketched out a single room in pencil before putting ink to paper. However, once I added the table of random draughts, I realized I wasn’t thinking about the composition as a whole. I realize that I’ll at least need a rough sketch of the map before making individual rooms.

Building up resources for #Dungeon23

I’ve been looking around to help prepare for #Dungeon23 and give myself the best chance of success going forward. Having ideas and structures in place ahead of time will help lower the threshold daily, particularly since I know there’ll be days where I’m tired or pressed.

The first handy resource that I’ve found is a collection of resources (why do repeat work if others have already researched things?). Andrew Duvall has created a wonderful page of prompts, blog posts, work sheets, and more, which itself contains links to other gatherings of resources.

I’ve gotten a few resources, such as the 1e DMG to help generate random dungeons, Filling in the Blanks to help ease the creation of a hexcrawl, and the Tome of Adventure Design to help with generating randomized prompts overall.

If I end up with material that I want to digitize, I already had the wonderful Hex Kit from a previous itch.io bundle, as well as both Wonderdraft and Dungeondraft to help with map creation.

And what good luck that just yesterday I finally found a nice second-hand secretary desk of the style that I’ve been trying to find for quite a while now. They’ll be bringing it over on Wednesday, and once we actually managed to get it up the stairs, I’ll have a nice, dedicated writing space as well.

Heroquest Battlemap #12: The Witch-Lord’s Barrow

I skipped making one of these maps the last week, as I couldn’t really get into the groove of it. Fortunately, this weekend, I felt inspired to head back into this and create a new Heroquest Dungeondraft map I can feel proud of!

Interpreting the maps and making decisions

This time, the two maps are once again largely similar. A minor difference can be found in the top-right, where the US version includes a reason to actually go down that hallway by adding another fake door and a trap.

The NL map of Barak Tor-Laatste Rustplaats van de Heksenmeester

That little stone trap at the top-left is meant to cut off the heroes, so that they have to proceed through the map. This makes a lot of sense, as the central room, marked B, already has the item that the players are supposed to find , so there’d be little reason to proceed from there. The idea is that the players then keep exploring until they accidentally wake up the Witch Lord in D, which requires them to flee quickly. This sets up the next two adventures, combining all these into a final trilogy for the base game. Interestingly enough, if players were very careful, they could actually find the secret door in the central room, explore that hallway, find the two secret doors in the next two rooms, and escape without ever waking the Witch Lord!

Thematically, the map appears to be a decayed tomb set up just for the Witch Lord. Nearly all of the monsters involved are mummies, skeletons, or zombies, and there is little other purpose to the structure other than to lead to the tomb. Given that the Witch Lord was apparently such a fearful enemy, I’d wonder who would bother to set up such a tomb in honor of them. Particularly given the idea that the Witch Lord wakes up as soon as the heroes enter this room, you’d imagine that either an enemy would bury the Witch Lord so deep they could never be found or their allies would try to resurrect them as soon as possible!

The number of secret doors involved to get in and get out suggest that this might be set up by the Witch Lord enemies to contain them. Similarly the rooms at the top right have a number of traps set up, so clearly the people who built this didn’t particularly want people going through here. However, the rooms at the top right are now also closed already, so the place has probably fallen into massive disrepair and has been repurposed.

Particularly given that the Witch Lord’s actual tomb is hidden behind secret doors, I enjoy the idea that the top-left rooms have been used by people who had no idea that the Witch Lord was even here. Perhaps as a small hideaway or a rest area. The monsters here could then actually be just poor unfortunate souls who died here and were resurrected by the Witch Lord, powerful enough even in their torpor to awaken the dead.

That would flavor most of the map as being broken and decayed, with the top-left being repurposed at times. Given that the Witch Lord will have reanimated lost souls, it would be interesting if the bottom left could be a place of worship, as the reawakened corpses would tend to the Witch Lord until they wake once more.

All this provides some good hooks to hang a map from!

Information from the flavor text

This time around, the NL text has a bunch of additional information that isn’t found in the US text anymore. This may very well have been a licensing issue, with references to Games Workshop material spread throughout; however, I know too little of that to make the distinction.

The NL text, curiously enough, has a lot more detail this time around.

An interesting difference between the NL and US version is in the word used to describe this place. The Dutch uses “Laatste Rustplaats” which translates to “Final Resting Place”—a common phrasing for a burial site, with the usual euphemistic connotations common to words connected to death. It’s a curious choice, as there is a more accurate Dutch word, namely “grafheuvel” (“grave-hill”). Barrows were quite common in the Netherlands from prehistoric times all the way up to Roman times, so historically it wouldn’t be that odd to use and thematically it would match the connotations of the word “barrow” far better: ancient, old, and mysterious.

In fact, the Netherlands has a large number of neolithic barrows, belonging to the tradition of hunebedden found in the Netherlands, north-west Germany, and Denmark. These are structures like dolmen, which would be a large cover stone on top of two supporting stones. Often, there´d be a barrow underneath these. The myth in the Netherlands is that these are constructed by huyne, a race of large giants. The likely reality, of course, is that these are large stones brought down from Scandinavia in the last ice age, which were then used as markers for burial sites. The Dutch word “hunebed“, though, has a more quaint connotation than “barrow”, so I can understand why that would not be a preferred translation.

Barak Tor-Final Resting Place of the Witchmaster
There is a threat of war with the Orcs of the East and the King is trying to find allies to survive the possible battle. For this, he must find the ancient Star of the West, which was carried by legendary kings and by Rogar when, in centuries long past, he fought Morcar. Whomever finds the gemstone will be rewarded with 200 gold pieces. The diamond is located in Barak Tor, the last resting place of the Witchmaster. Better known as the King of the Dead and long since contained by the Ghost Blade. The Ghost Blade is the only weapon that can defeat him.
My translation of the NL text

As far as the texts themselves go, the Dutch text just adds some detail by mentioning somebody called Rogar who supposedly fought Morcar (Zargon in the US version). Also, unlike the US version, the Dutch version specifies that the Star of the West is a gemstone and specifically a diamond at that. I translated “heksenmeester” as “Witchmaster”, but “meester” could equally be translated “master” as well as “lord”, so there’s little change there. The Dutch word does imply that this is a ruler of witches, rather than one with mastery of witchcraft. Another new specification can be found in the Dutch, identifying the Witch Master as the “King of the Dead”. That epithet would explain the preponderance of undead in the map.

Either way, what the flavor text tells us is that this is an ancient structure. The word “barrow” suggests something neolithic in origin, and the Dutch text identifies the Star of the West as having been worn by kings of legend, which also suggest events of quite a long time ago. The proposed image of an old, decayed crypt seems to fit quite well, then.

Translating into a final map

I wanted to emphasize two key aspects in this map: firstly, I wanted there to be an overall sense of oppression and decay; and, secondly, I wanted to make sure that two areas were highlighted: the stairwell and the actual tomb. By emphasizing these two key features, I figure that the touchstones of the quest will really pop out.

I stuck to my earlier idea that the top-right would be a repurposed area. The first room shows evidence of a previous party that camped out here and were murdered in their sleep. The room in the middle, which used to be some manner of welcome area, leads to what has at a later point in time been repurposed as a speakeasy bar. I just loved the idea of some weird thieves’ gang or a group of hipsters deciding to build a secret bar in a tomb of horrible evil. Further in the secret areas, however, we see remains of a more serious settlement. The tomb has a waiting area, a place to perform ablutions to the right, and the tomb itself is clean and candle-lit (where do they get the candles? . . . magic). A ruined area after suggests this used to keep records, histories, or other such administration. Lastly, I imagined that the final room was the room of a warden or caretaker. Perhaps, at one point in history, the barrow was watched over by some cleric or monk, dedicated to discover a way to dispose of the Witch Lord for good?

Lighting-wise, I choose to overlay a dull grey darkness, to add to the oppressive feel. Only the stairwell shows a clear light from above, which should form a stark contrast to the rest of the dungeon (and a relief once seen again at the end!). Similarly, the tomb will really pop due to the lit candles surrounding it. The heroes only needed to recover a gemstone but suddenly they see a fully-lit catafalque? Such a bier would hopefully draw the players’ interest.

Aside from that, I wanted to make sure to place a lot of rubble throughout the map, along with a multitude of smudges and shadows to help darken sections. There are two very small details to be found in the maps, only with careful inspection at a zoomed-in level. Each location of secret doors actually has a very thin line on the floor to indicate the walls being moved, as a reward for an attentive player. Similarly, the spear traps actually have small pointed tips on the walls that a perceptive player might spot as a clue.

The final map for Barrow of the Witch Lord. I wanted it to look dark and oppressive, so I adjusted the light to a darkish grey.

The small map above may give a bit of an indication of the feel of the overall map, but I can recommend looking at the larger version in the Reddit post:

Heroquest Map 12: The Barrow of the Witch Lord from dungeondraft

Watabou Hex Map Experiment #6

I’d made this map a while ago but hadn’t gotten around to posting about it yet. After a bit of repair of some things I forgot, I can now post this Wonderdraft remake of another Watabou Perilous Shores map.

The original Perilos Shores Generated Map

I liked the large format of this map, and the great number of trees on it. What would be a challenge is those dead trees, as I don’t have an asset for those yet. I ended up choosing to use regular trees but to color them a sickly brown to indicate dead trees. To create more variation, I also tried to color the other oaks with some yellows and reds to create a bit more of a fall look to the map as a whole.

The other thing that I’m practicing right now is making the labels look nicer. For the region label, I chose a Torchbearer style with orange lettering surrounded by a dark red outline, in a font that is reminiscent of that style as well. For the forests and mountains, I tried using a darker font with a light outline, and to vary with the sizes and spacing to indicate major and minor locations. Overall, I think it came out quite nicely, with lots of detail that doesn’t look to cluttered either.

I uploaded both maps to imgur, so for large versions you should be able to click the maps themselves.

Heroquest Battlemap #11: The Bastion of Dread

While I’m still struggling to find a good way to make the full-sized versions of these maps available on this site, I went ahead and made the next Heroquest Dungeondraft map. Quest 11 is a happy return to a more cohesive map, as opposed to Quest 10‘s wacky concept.

Interpreting the maps and making decisions

The NL and US maps this week are almost similar, which is quite surprising! Both the number of enemies as well as the number of traps are identical, which hasn’t happened much. In fact, nearly all details in the maps are the same, with the exception of the left-most hallway being slightly longer in the US version (probably for purely visual reasons).

The maps show an interesting division of labor. There are quite some goblins and orcs on the map, with a few chaos warriors. In most cases, the chaos warriors appear to be in some manner of adminstrative position: there is one near the throne in the center of the map; one in the mid-left next to an alchemy table; one to the right near a cabinet; and one next to the weapons rack. It seems like the chaos warriors here are the administrative or ruling arm of the map. The fimirs, by contrast, are only present in the top-left, in the two adjoining rooms next to the torture room. It seems that the fimirs, then, are used as some kind of muscle or police force. Lastly, the orcs and goblins are spread out throughout the map, so they appear to some form of working class in this structure.Information from the flavor text

This division of labor helps us establish themes for the individual structures. It seems like the three top-left rooms, then, are some manner of policing area. Torture chamber to interrogate prisoners, along with a room for a bailiff or reeve, next to a storage area. The bottom right appears to be a bit of a mix: weapons storage at the bottom-left, general storage top-left, and an empty room bottom-right of that cluster. Overall, I imagine this to be a workspace/storage mix, hence the need for both admin and workers. Lastly, the bottom-left appears to host most of the goblins and orcs. It makes sense, given that this is a bastion, that this is where most of the front-liners would be. So, probably, this is a guard room, entrance, along with rest area. The top-left of that little block would probably be a lieutenant or other such administrator. That, of course, leaves the central room for overall admin and control.

Overall, this map has a very strong organizational feel to me. It’s almost like a central office area to administrate a small municipality (well, aside from the torture chamber, I’d sincerely hope). Overall, I tend to enjoy humanizing these maps in any case, so it might be a fun thing to lean into for this map.

Information from the flavor text

The two texts are mostly the same, being an announcement of a bounty for the murder of multiple creatures in this defensive structure. As always, there are the slight differences due to the trademark change (Chaos versus Dread), but those are largely irrelevant.

Aside from the reflavoring due to licensing issues, the two texts are pretty identical

There’s an interesting word difference between the NL and US version as to what this place should be called. The NL version uses the word “Bolwerk“, which is cognate with English “Bulwark”. In fact, the English “bulwark” comes from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German “bolwerk”, which is itself composed of “bole”, a word for tree trunks, and “work”, to indicate structures or constructions. This is an old word to indicate defensive structures like walls or ramparts. The US version, by contrast, uses “Bastion”, which is French in origin, coming from the Old French “bastille” meaning “fortress”.

The Bulwark of Chaos
The eastern provinces are plagued by plundering Orcs and Kobolds. The King has ordered a group of brave heroes to journey there and destroy these robbers. The orcs are holed up in a strong underground fort, named The Bulwark of Chaos. They are led by a small group of Chaos Warriors. Ye must fight your way inside and kill all monsters that you meet. You will receive the following bounties for this: 10 gold pieces for any slain Kobold, 20 gold pieces for any slain Orc, 30 gold pieces for any slain Fimir or Chaos Warrior.
My translation of the NL text

The core meaning of both texts are pretty much identical: the King sends out adventurers to collect on a set of bounties placed on bandits’ heads. A curious difference, though, is that the US text makes sure to note that the bandits have allied themselves with Zargon, which should give an excuse as to why the heroes are fine to go out and murder all of them in cold blood. The NL text, however, makes no mention of alliance to Morcar. For the NL version, the heroes should just be motivated by pure greed and bloodlust. Yikes!

The text does confirm our interpretation of the map, as it explicitly lists that a group of Chaos/Dread Warriors lead the others. So, interestingly, while this is a group of bandits, they have a formalized administrative structure, as well as a fortified base of operations. So, unlike previous bands of roaming orcs that we’ve featured in maps, now we’re dealing with a far more militaristic operation. This will be good to translate into the final map!

Translating into a final map

I was very much looking forward to making this map, as there were so many good ideas to put in there. I loved the idea of on the one hand making this a militaristic operation and on the other hand humanizing it through some basic office features.

The militaristic nature of it can be seen in a few places: the group of rooms at the bottom-left are quite functional in nature: the entrance room is dark and defended, because the creatures of the dark will have the advantage over heroes sneaking in from above. There is a small guard room to the right, and a rest area to the left, to facilitate shifts. Similarly, the area on the bottom-right is functional and spartan: storage and organization form the key here. The top right is also filled with administrative items to emphasize the utility.

Each place, however, is also tinged with office life. The rooms on the botom-left have guards slacking off and playing cards in the middle room, and there’s some flags from somebody’s birthday party two months ago still hanging in the rest area (an office staple, that). The top-left area has a little roped-off waiting area where you have to register before being allowed to see the bailiff, who can interview you before you’re allowed in to the prison area. Similarly, the central room has some snacks laid out for all those late afternoon planning sessions in the throne room. Somebody has to prepare those snacks, so of course you’d have the kitchen nearby to the right.

Giving this little map some life has been tremendously fun by bringing in those little details. I also took some cues from previous map, and I laid in some stones and moss here and there to bring a little variation in the hallways to break up the monotony. The only thing I was wondering about was whether I should put torches in the hallways at regular distances, but when I thought about it I realized it would distract from the rooms themselves. On top of that, since most of the creatures in here would see fairly well in the dark, I figured it wouldn’t be that necessary.

The final map for The Bastion of Dread. I chose to keep it relatively dark to make the map feel more oppressive. I’m quite happy with the fun little details in this one!

It’d be a shame to miss all these little details, so for a larger version of this map, you can look at the Reddit post about it:

Heroquest Map 11: The Bastion of Dread from dungeondraft

Watabou Hex Map Experiment #5

I’ve been continuing my Watabou Hex Map practice every other day or so, and I’m really pleased with the Wonderdraft tricks I’m learning from doing this. Perilous Shores gave me a basic outline of the Anthir Lakes, a region that is oppressed, dark, and dangerous. I took the prompts to really focus on creating a grungy, dirty-looking map.

I’m very happy with the dark, grungy nature of this map. It looks like a terrible place to live but a great place to adventure

The entire map is shaded with a brown tone, and I focused on getting greens in the map, including in the water tone, so that the two colors combined would create a gross-feeling tone to the map as awhole. Among all the places on this map with their dark themes, I love that the central village is called “Rabbitway”, a bizarrely friendly-sounding name.

Another aspect I enjoy about this map is the brown color I’ve given to the pines that were marked as dead trees on the Watabou map. Without having a dedicated dead tree asset, I think this was a nice compromise that ended up adding to the dark nature of the map as a whole.

Heroquest Battlemap #10: The Castle of Mystery

This week’s Dungeondraft Heroquest map was quite a challenge. I felt as though I was hamstrung by the nature of the map, as I couldn’t use my usual methods to form a larger whole. So, it turned out to be quite an educational exercise!

Interpreting the maps and making decisions

This week’s map is downright barren; what a challenge! A set of loose rooms with no particular flavor to them, and only a few numbers to indicate random connections based on a die-roll. Oof!

The NL version of the map for Het Toverkasteel

Our only information is that the players’ starting point is at the bottom left in Room 2/12, the chest marked “A” in the NL version and “B” in the US version in Room 8 is their goal, and that’s about it. The US version has an additional treasure in Room 10, marked “A”, which is a ring held by one of the monsters there.

Normally, this is where I would try to glean information from the composition of the map to see if there are natural or logical flows of architecture or use. Now, though, all we know is that the rooms are randomly connected. I have to say, I was drawing a blank here! Since the only thing I could think of is that the rooms might as well have been floating in space, I figured to make them literally do that. So, I know the background will be space or chaos but what does that make the rooms?

Information from the flavor text

The two texts are largely the same, though there’s a few interesting diferences this time, thankfully.

For some reason, the NL text takes some pot shots at Ollar.

The Dutch version calls the map “Het Toverkasteel“, meaning “The Magical Castle”, which has somewhat ephemeral connotations to it. It’s a word you’d use in a fairy tale to describe the giants’ castle up in the clouds or the dark castle or the evil witch. I like the US version’s naming, though; “The Castle of Mystery” suggests that, in principle, it’s a normal castle, except it baffles the mind of all who enter. What is this castle? Who built it? Why is it there? To me, that is much more evocative and grounded than the NL naming.

The Magic Castle
Long ago, the insane wizard Ollar found the entrance to a gold mine. With his magical powers, he built a magical castle on top of the mine to protect the gold. The castle is provided with many magical portals and is guarded by a set of monsters who are trapped in time. Can ye find the entrance? Others have gone before you but all their attempts were thwarted by the castle.

As far as the flavor text itself, though, I prefer the NL interpretation of what happened here. The US version is quite matter-of-fact: Ollar, a wizard, finds a gold mine, decides to build a castle on top of it, and traps some monsters in a magical portal maze at the bottom to protect the source of his wealth. What a capitalist! The NL version, by contrast, wastes no time in labelling Ollar as an “insane” wizard. In Dutch, “Waanzinnig” actually might mean either “mentally disturbed” or “incredibly good” (in the US sense of “crazy good”), but in the adjectival form used in the Dutch text it’s clear that the pejorative sense is meant. It’s connected to the more medical term “waanzin“, indicating “a state of delusion” and is related to “waanbeeld” (directly meaning “delusion”).

While the US version states that it’s only the lower chambers that has many magical doors, the NL version suggests the entire castle is a maze of portals. Coupled with the wizard being identified as disturbed in some manner, I decided that the rooms should likely be a very curious mix of locations. The monsters are said to be “trapped in time”, so I decided that the rooms themselves should be trapped in time as well. What if the portals didn’t just transfer you through space but also through time?

Now I had a better view of what I would do. There’d be only two rooms in the “now”: the starting point and the mine. The other rooms would be links to different points of time in the same geographical space. Once I’d decided this, I took a little inspiration from the NES classic Chrono Trigger and decided I wanted rooms ranging from neolithic to post-apocalyptic times. Finally, something to go with!

Translating into a final map

In one way, this map was somewhat easy, as I had some separate rooms that could each be their own thing. On the other hand, that made the map incredibly complex as well. I couldn’t rely on my usual methodology of making sense of the structure as a whole, or indicating some environmental storytelling in the relationship between spaces. I was just limited to single rooms and what I could do in there. On the one hand, I wanted to make filled spaces but on the other hand the more I would fill a space the less useful it would be for players to move around in. Given how much more claustrophic these spaces would already be, I chose to keep the rooms relatively sparse, so as not to overload the players.

I picked some distinct and contrasting themes for every room. I knew I wanted a lava room to suggest a more primordial period, and I’d want to contrast that with a fully frozen-over room to suggest the final days of the planet. There’d have to be a room of the castle at its height, so a clean little throne room, as well as a room of the castle in its decline. That tiny little room, I felt would be amazing for an unsettling scene: a single chair, a table, and a book is all that accompanies a single person trapped forever in a tiny room. An unopened crate sits across from that chair; perhaps the prisoner felt it more interesting to have a mystery there, so that the room had at least some possibility in it?

To distribute the other rooms, I looked at the inhabitants. There were rooms with zombies, mummies, and skeletons, so they seemed perfect for the apocalyptic rooms. The skeletons, having lost all their semblance of life, would go into the frozen apocalypse. I’d decided the room with the mummy would be the old, decayed castle, whereas the room with the zombies would be a flooded, overgrown space.

By contrast, the rooms with the orcs I wanted to reserve for the more primordeal times. They’re in the lava room, representing the oldest time period; the jungle room, for the early life; and also the central room, which is the more settled time before the castle was built.

All in all, I think the map works, though it certainly was the toughest to build. I think for the map to work out in play, backstory would have to be hinted at by the referee to bring home the reasoning behind the maps.

The final map for this dungeon. I tried to emphasize the difference in the rooms with various lighting options, though it’s interesting to see that in the small map this doesn’t come out as well.

A larger version of this map is available over on the Reddit post I made about this:

Heroquest Map 10: The Castle of Mystery [26×19] from dungeondraft

Watabou Hex Map Experiment #4

I’ve made another Wonderdraft version of a Watabou Perilous Shore map. This time, setting it for a medium-sized land area with highland features. That resulted in the Bassland:

The original Perilous Shores generated map

Every time I’ve been doing this, I’ve gotten faster at the basics of map-making—experience paying off! Previously, I’d exported the Watabou map and worked with the .png file as a reference; this time, however, while I did export it, I kept the Watabou-generated map up as reference. This helped me discover a cool little feature in Perilous Shores: there are actually more named areas than the legend would suggest! By clicking around the map, I discovered that most little areas actually were named.

That gave me more opportunities to inidividually label mountains, forests, and a few mountain peaks directly, and experiment with the placement of titles like those. It was quite interesting working out what I would want different in naming a large mountain range such as the Mountains of Crosses versus a small range such as the Strong Ridge. On top of that, two peaks had individual names: the Hill of Stones and the Sand Peak. So that gave me three total types of mountainous areas to label differently. Another interesting challenge to explore is that the Outer Forest and the or Woods differ so massively in size, so their titling would have to be differentiated somehow. In the end, I made sure to use the same fonts and colors but differentiate in size, spacing, and outline thickness for clarity.

A thing that I hadn’t figured out how to add comfortably to this composition is a compass rose. The map is so filled with elements that the only place to reasonably add it with some visibility was in the top-right corner just above the Dunes of Savage Fear and to the left of the Whispering Downs. However, that put it on such an odd spot in the map that it seemed disruptive rather than cohesive. As I’d already wanted to add the measurement to the bottom-left, I didn’t really have much other map real estate left to put it, so I ended up leaving it out altogether.

If you want to have a look at larger versions of these maps, you can take a peek at the Reddit post I made about it:

Watabou Perilous Shores Practice from wonderdraft

My post over on Reddit that has the larger version of these maps

If you have any suggestions for me, I’d love to hear them!

Heroquest Battlemap #9: Race Against Time

Another week, another Heroquest battlemap made in Dungeondraft! It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been doing this for over two months now but I’m happy that I’ve kept up with it. Every single map is helping me improve my skills.

Interpreting the maps and making decisions

This time around, the maps are mostly similar and once again rather sparsely filled. As far as composition goes, this one might be a bit tricky because there’s so much empty space to the top-right of the map. I suppose it could be a prompt to start learning some post-processing, even if it is just to crop the map purely to the active area. However, I think I’ll leave that skill to learn later and rather will end up using some text to fill that space or otherwise some fun little ground elements like skeletons hidden in the dirt.

The NL version of the map for *Wedren Tegen de Tijd*

As has become common, the US map has a few extra monsters on it; what’s more unusual is that it also has a complete extra room behind a hidden door! Mark C indicates that that trapped chest contains an Elixir of Life; so, essentially, the addition of this room involves two sources of resource investment (HP loss to a trap and/or to a monster) and one resource recovery (the elixir), making it a net zero room.

What is interesting about this map is that the players start in the room marked “A” at the bottom-right of the map. With three doors visible, all peopled by a bunch of monsters, it feels a little trolly that the real door is the hidden door in room A. It’s clear that the designers wanted quite some resources sapped just at the start so that the rest of the retreat would become more of a scramble. In the US version, even if the players were to directly run to the exit, they’d still face six monsters (compared to only three in the NL version).

None of the rooms here suggest a clear intended purpose other than this being a trap followed by a gauntlet. I could see the grouping of four rooms at the bottom right as sharing a function, and the grouping at the bottom-left as well. The bottom-left set has a fireplace and a table in the grouping, so that might be a food area. The top-left grouping seems more of a general entrance or introductory area.

Even though there’s little to the content of the rooms itself to give me indications of what to do with this map, figuring out groupings like this at least help me try to form some indication of what I want to do here. Still, with such a bare map, I’ll absolutely need the flavor text for more input.

Information from the flavor text

The two texts pretty much agree on what happened: the players are led through an underground structure by a guide who betrays them by abandoning them in the dark surrounded by enemies.

Other than the US text clarifying what the victory condition is, the two texts are pretty similar.

There’s only minor differences in the NL and US versions: the structure is either a maze or a dungeon, there are dark corridors but perhaps also dim pathways, and the US version makes sure to emphasize that there is a stairwell that represents safety.

Race Against Time
A guide has bought you to an underground dungeon that legends say hides a great secret. He has led you through dark passages and past dim pathways and now ye stand in a room with three doors. Suddenly, the guide extinguishes his torch and ye hear him laugh in the black darkness. “Farewell, my heroes,” he mockingly calls out as he disappears. Ye have been trapped! Escape, or die in this forgotten hole.
My translation of the Dutch version of the text

What is interesting to me is that the players are guided into this structure by a guide with a torch. So, apparently, they would have seen the route here. If that is the case, then how come the players would assume there is only a room with three doors if the only actual exit is a secret door they must have come through to get in? Moreover, if they came in through the stairwell, why wouldn’t they know the route back? Let’s just chalk it up to the Heroes being a little complacement and depending too much on the guide; I guess that’s why the US version chose to call it a maze, so that we may assume that the Heroes got lost.

In any case, we now have a number of prompts for our map: it’s underground, a dungeon or a maze, there’s dark passages (and potentially dim pathways), and it’s a dark, forgotten hole. All of this speaks of neglect to me. So, perhaps this is a map of a long-abandoned dungeon. I like the idea, because the map itself is called “Race Against Time”, and theming the map around a long-abandoned and decayed dungeon seems quite fitting for that—this dungeon lost that race.

A dim and dark map is a bit of a challenge for me. I love the idea of it being pitch-black but that only works well for use in a VTT. If it’s just the visual of a map itself, then having it dark just obscures things. Normally, I’d add a bunch of torches and lights but that wouldn’t make sense for an abandoned set of ruins. This is a place where a bunch of monsters have set up an ambush for the players, so it should be mostly empty. The only means to deal with it would be to keep it dim rather than fully dark.

Translating into a final map

This map was quite a challenge because I’d set myself the idea of having an abandoned and ruined underground structure. Normally, I tend to go far with decorating rooms and setting up their uses, and working on a little storytelling through the environment. This time, though, I would have to be quite barebones with it. On top of that, the Crosshead Studios assets I use don’t have too many broken items in them. It would’ve been nice to include some knocked-over bookcases and so on but I’d have to improve a little.

This time around, the fill in the map would have to come from sets of rubble and plantlife, as well as smudges, dirt, and holes. A few areas I chose to put some more intact items but very quickly that already seemed in too good a shape for this long-abandoned place. What I ended up doing was scaling down a lot of full-sized bushes to almost miniature size to suggest they are slowly growing based on what little light they can get. Fortunately, there were a few fern-like plants in the pack that would make sense in low-light conditions.

The other thing I wanted to make sure to try out was some different lighting options. So far, I’ve been using the standard few lights (a three-tiered wavy light, a standard light, and a fuzzy light) but Krager’s Shadow and Light Pack comes with quite a few more options. So, I figured I wanted to have spots of light in the map to indicate holes in the ceiling, as well as a beam of light or two to vary things up. It would also make sense for those to be there, as the plants would need some light to grow! Overall, I like the final effect, though I think I can improve on those little spots of light and particularly the light streaming in from the stairwell.

In any case, with a little experimentation, I came to this final map:

The final map for this dungeon. Since there are few lighting effects, I kept the map relatively light. However, I picture the map as being quite dark with a few beams of light from the surface, through pockets and gaps eroded away over time.

As usual, I have a larger version of this map available over on Reddit:

Heroquest Map 9: Race Against Time [21×27] from dungeondraft