A couple of years ago I teamed up with Steve Russell to turn a couple of the maps that I created for the Rituals of Choice adventure path into map packs. The plan was to see whether people were interested in the maps themselves as a product separate to the adventures. The packs initially just included a multi-page pdf that allowed people to print them out at home and assemble them on the table, but quickly expanded to include high res jpgs, an A4 bundle alongside the US letter format packs, gridded and gridless versions of the maps and finally maptool campaign files for those of us who prefer to use virtual tabletops.
So did it work? With over 2200 map packs sold at the time of posting this I think I can say yes!
This year I’ve worked with Wolfgang Baur at Kobold Quarterly to add the maps I’ve illustrated for KQ to the stable of Fantastic Map packs which has been a resounding success. Last month we marked a watershed.
The first Fantastic Maps core bundle and the Kobold Quarterly bundle are complete! Future maps will be added to new bundles.
The Fantastic Maps bundle contains 18 maps for $17.99 – a saving of 2/3 off the cover price with locations ranging from a Dragon’s Lair with a lava cavern spanned by a precarious rope bridge – to stony koppe in the savannah with look out posts and a fence of briars to keep the wild beasts at bay.
The Kobold Quarterly pack contains 6 maps for $11.94, a saving of 1/3 off the cover price with locations from a sunken ship’s graveyard to a bandit’s lair buried in a mountain and accessible by a winch up the side of a waterfall.
Each pack contains:
- Multi-page pdf map pack in colour and printer friendly greyscale for A4 and letter format paper – for printing at home for use at the game table
- High resolution jpgs of the full map with and without grid – for use in your virtual tabletop program of choice, or for taking to a local print shop to create a poster
- Maptool campaign files for OGL, Pathfinder and 4E games with vision and light built in.
- Many also contain extras like individual png files of key objects like magic circles or gears and cogs
I’ve got a lot more ideas for map packs in the works – so keep an eye out for new releases. There’s a new pack out on the first of every month. Who knows what strange seas Bundle 2 will chart. Watch this space!
