Jon, Author at Fantastic Maps

The 5 Room Dungeon

Ben McFarland, Clinton Boomer and Matt Banach have some strange ideas.

Coliseum Morpheoun came from their twisted minds – a demiplane of dreams and nightmares where teams in search of glory duke it out in a dream warped arena for the pleasure of the Khan of Nightmares.

(click through for a larger version)

This is a mini adventure that spins off from that, or works as a stand-alone in its own right. The PCs are sent down the rabbit hole into the dark chaotic underbelly of the plane of dreams. The adventure takes place across five separate locations – each a little weirder than the last.

I was brought on board to map their creation, and this is the result. I’ve removed any labels to avoid spoilers. I wanted to give a bit of a feel of the disjointed and chaotic nature of the realm, whilst also giving a bit of a feel of a journal of some hapless academic explorer. I like the overall look and feel that resulted. If you want find out what the locations actually hold, then check out the full adventure (currently at a reduced price for launch): 5 Room Dungeon on RPGNow.

Barricades and Bonfires – the Siege of the Inner City

It’s a new month, and that means a new map pack. Once again we venture to cold and wintery climes – unlike the current balmy weather we’re enjoying on the Eastern Seaboard. Today’s map pack takes us deep into the heart of a besieged city of ice, with the armies of the attackers camped outside the central compound. A moat, crenelated walls and sturdy gates bat the final assault. In the stalemate, the attackers have built a robust barricade of carts and wagons to fend off any counter assault. Buildings are shattered from artillery fire but calm reigns before the inevitable storm of the final assault. (map preview after the jump) Continue reading “Barricades and Bonfires – the Siege of the Inner City”

Charting the Unknown

Normally when a client comes with a map commission, they know what they want you to draw – or they have an idea of the major locations, or at least a landmass. But Open Design doesn’t always choose ‘normal’. Right now I’m mapping the unknown – literally:

Ocean map for Open Design's Pathfinder world of Midgard

The vast ocean will not remain unknown for long. Explorers will board ship in Barsella, the City at the End of the World, and traverse the uncharted waters off the west coast of world of Midgard. They will happen across strange and wondrous lands and populate them with fantastic and deadly beasts (such as the Nethysule). As they create the world, the map will evolve to show their discoveries. The Isle of Morphoi is already taking shape:

Ocean map for Open Design's Pathfinder world of Midgard

Who are the explorers? Well – anyone who chips in on the Journey to the West Kickstarter(it’s not a press-gang, crew on this voyage are entirely voluntary). This project, like many Open Design projects, is a community driven affair. If you contribute $25 or more, you’ll get to jump into the forums and help shape the lands beyond the horizon. The project’s already funded, but there’s no limit on the number of crew for this particular voyage. And, if the kickstarter hits the top goal of $6,500, the final version of this map will be printed out in lustrous glory to adorn the walls of those intrepid explorers that decided to jump the life to come and set out into the storm lashed waters of the Western Ocean.

The Arboretum

Remorhaz vtt token by DevinNight — Remorhaz token by DevinNight

Forstor Nagar is an icy city, carved out of a glacier in the frozen north. However not all things can be created from ice, and the city needs wood for building, and fruits and berries for nutrition. But how do you grow things in these sub-zero temperatures? Well, first of all you create greenhouses, and then you heat them with drugged remorhaz! What could possibly go wrong?

In this week’s map pack we find an arboretum in the heart of the frozen city. The remorhaz (or other burrowing creature of your choice) has escaped, and run riot through the quarter leaving destruction in its wake.

With each square representing 5 feet this is another large battle area, with both indoor and outdoor areas (notice the smokehouse to the west of the map). The trees provide places for PCs to hide and nervous adventurers can retreat to the icy roofs of the houses to the south to use ranged attacks. Continue reading “The Arboretum”

Free city and archipelago maps

So it seems it slipped my mind to post these maps up. They were created for Wayfinder #3 (a long time ago) and are free for people to download for their own use. I tend to stick to battlemap scale maps for my fantasy map packs as I feel those are the most useful. If you’d like to see maps like this as map packs – let me know in the comments.

First up – an archipelago:

Second – we have a small city (well, really a large town):

These are free for personal use. Feel free to download and share around under the CC-BY-NC-SA license. Who know, a series of islands and a fortified town on the water might be just what you need for the pirates in your Skull and Shackles game!

More IDW Maps! Now with extra Drizzt.

There’s a new IDW comic line out – the Legend of Drizzt. As with many previous comics IDW decided to do a special Module Edition of the first comic in the series, with an adventure for 4e D&D (written by Logan Bonner) included so that you can run sessions involving that most famous of the drow for your own players. I was very happy to be asked to do the maps for it. The module edition is a not-for-sale special edition, but might well appear in the compiled series, or in a special legacy edition as with earlier comics.

Continue reading “More IDW Maps! Now with extra Drizzt.”

Bundles of maps

Fantasy map pack bundle with kobold Quarterly

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! Continue reading “Bundles of maps”

Wings of Twilight and the World of Calliome

I was commissioned by Hans Cummings (who some may know from his work on Coliseum Morpheoun and Litorians, as well as his work on the ENnies) to create a map for a eBook he’s been creating called Wings of Twilight. Here’s the result, a map of the world of Calliome:

For centuries, Twilight Dungeon has attracted treasure seekers and glory hounds to its depths. No one has ever returned.

Now that’s an opening any fantasy fan can get behind! Check out more details on the novel over on Hans’ website (including a higher res version of the map), or go straight to the Kindle or Smashwords stores to pick up your copy.

Across the Rooftops – New Map Pack

This month adventurers can leap from roof to roof, chasing villainous scoundrels or sneaking into a defended compound in the new map pack – Over the Rooftops

Fantasy map pack for rooftop city chase scene The alleyways, broken roofs and barricade offer a range of tactical options to players, and a host of vantage points for enemy guards. With the ballista poised on the tower to the north the PCs must not remain exposed for long or risk being the target of the mighty siege weapon. Continue reading “Across the Rooftops – New Map Pack”

Maps for Grimm Tales by Pantheon Press

Not all the maps I get asked to do are full colour multi-page affairs. Pantheon Press contacted me back in the spring to ask for some black and white maps for their tarot card based game system – Fortune’s Fool. These maps were for their Grimm Tales adventure – I’m sure you’ll recognise a lot of the references:

There’s a special challenge to maps like these. Each map has been uploaded at 100dpi, so the size you see it on the screen is roughly the size it appears in print. That’s not a lot of space to get a lot of detail in, and when you can only use greyscale you lose more tools for differentiating different features.

The sites were fun to walk through, and I got to design the Manor house from scratch – which had some unique challenges due to the nature of the residents. It’s not often that I get to reference Jurassic Park in design discussions on maps – I’ll let you guess why.