The new Kobold Quarterly is out in pdf – and being shipped in physical form. It’s a beautiful creation with a very lovely cover. I was asked to do a map illustration for the interior for a vertical battlemap. Here’s a downsized (25%) preview of the map:
The article that this illustrates goes into how to build an encounter that focuses on vertical action.
So many great action sequences focus on falling off things, climbing up things and jumping over things, but this is really hard to represent on a standard top down battlemap. So for this encounter, where a drider is climbing the side of the king’s castle, the PCs must fly, climb or run up the stairs before it breaks down the doors to his chamber. It’s a fun article, and a great way to add a refreshing change of pace to encounters in a game. The classic European castle style also (inadvertently) fits with the Arthurian cover. Must be fate. Definitely worth checking out here.
I wish this map had been in color in the print version but its still very nice.
Yep, It was tricky making sure this was readable in black and white. All the stone is pretty close in tone but it came out pretty well.