*Thanks for watching!* What is one of the most interesting locations you've created for your game? Let us know in the comments below! Only 24 hours to go to back the Kickstarter for *The Creators Guide to Epic Locations: Nature* Pledge now before it's too late: bit.ly/3dRQajG Find each chapter of the video easily by clicking on the timestamps in the description.
I remember going to the library to look at books and get maps and photocopy them too. And I thought it was amazing that I could do that. It was magical.
I would also recommend thinking of cool actions for the players to do, during battle: Build chandeliers, stacks of barrels, that can be pushed on the enemy, shards of glass, where sneaking over is extra hard or Traps where the group can push the enemy into, or a level to make the gate drop down on the enemy’s head. Especially for bossfights this creates more interesting possibilities! But also let the players be creative with it…We all remember the bar brawl, where one character took a giant fish from the wall and startet slapping her enemys in the face…
Horses and archers get snubbed by most maps I’ve ever worked with. Barbarian has HP and rage, Wizard has fireball, Ranger has arrows… and range…that doesn’t matter on 25x25 maps. I like huge maps that make the movement of the players more meaningful for placement. Having to move cover to cover while being shot at is an amusing challenge to overcome.
Totally agree. I prefer creating bigger maps where combat only takes part in a small area of that map rather than having a map where my players are always running out of tokeep the distance.
I had a wood elf ranger (35ft move) with zephr speed or some bonus spell movement shenanigans, a couple of times he basically ran off the battlemap to shoot from 100ft+ away.
I built a beholder lair for multiple beholders. It was 3D with chambers at all 360°. It had switches that could only be activated with telekinesis. Pits that one had to float across. Traps for land-bound interlopers. My players loved it and hated it at the same time. Super challenging having to think in alien ways.
The map of my son's middle school was interesting. It's function was obviously for channeling foot traffic. I enlarged it to town size, turned the fire doors into portcullises, added some arrow slits and presto! Killing field. It was kinda scary knowing that my child was going there. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought it would make the perfect death trap.
I created a dwarven mine tunnel connecting to a small mindflayer hive/colony. It started at the edges, with the minions and occasional mindflayer attempting to invade and feast, and worked through these winding tunnels to eventually stop this threat in it’s tracks
Huge oversized maps _can_ make for interesting encounters; perhaps the enemy in the 400-foot megatemple has ranged attacks or spells and the party needs to use the columns, pews, and other scenery for cover as they close in, or perhaps it's an outdoor area like a rocky mountainside and they have to navigate some environmental phenomenon to get from one side to the other. Big encounters like these should be used sparingly as major or climactic events though, not the norm. Also, initiative is rolled when combat starts, so you can let the party cross half the temple while the villain monologues to get everyone into a smaller combat area.
Tip that came to my mind listening to you, inspired by games I've played before. You can have a stone temple or the likes out in the middle of nowhere. Thousands of years earlier, the place could had been populated with river and greenlands, then *Mystery* happens, and all of it is gone now, the river is gone so nothing will grow there. But the temple remains because of it's sturdy construction. Solve the mystery of the temple and what happened. Perhaps the players can even figure out a way to return water to the area.
Had a city/town/lodge that several players had input on that was our characters base of operations for a while. That was a Plateau in a canyon accessed by a drawbridge, we were building it in game and resources were scarce and as such it was taking a while and then our major enemy found us (a more powerful enemy)there and we left the town and moved on.
Not D&D but one of my favorite maps was using Cruise ship brochures for my Traveler Campaign. Love you reference to Analog Storage Devises (Books) to look at old maps. I even have several Atlases. National Geographic used to publish great ones. A trip to the local thrift store can grant amazing resources for little money.
I love collecting National Trust (or whatever organisation) guides when I visit castles and stately homes, then photocopy-enlarging the hell out of them and slapping a grid on them to use as locations. We play in a church youth club room when there aren't any youths there, so I can lay out my maps on the snooker tables... I had 3 floors of Wirksworth Castle at about a metre-square each standing in for a brigands' keep... some PCs broke in through the roof while others went in the front door... then later some explored the vandalised bedrooms while others rescued prisoners from the dungeons... Multi-level gaming, and with a (modelled on real-life) light well running down through each level so they could shout or climb to each other... Really enjoyed that session! :-)
i had fun creating a cliffside battlemap, since a story reason was some Victim of bandit attack that fell off the cliff on lower elevation where few goblins were cooking themself food. When heroes comes out from around the corner they can see in the distance a person fighting goblins. Do heroes need few turns before being able to approch the Fallen Victim? yes, But this way layers are entertained with thinking How to interact with battle in distance. Will they run and try scare goblins off? Will someone cast some spell to shorten distance greatly before it will be tooo late? GM may only speculate and Since Victim was just robbed moment ago and threw to goblins for entertainemnt, the time is of the essence.
My favorite map was a sewer designed by cultists to hide routes that only they could take. It had misdirection, but there were definitely holes in the perception, and it still had the function of a catacomb sewer
I created an ewok village style tavern in the treetops, which had multiple rooms and decks connected by bridges. The players needed to find a contact within this very popular location which created a lot of fun trying to navigate the various bridges and rooms.
Great video! I generally agree with most of it, however you can also create some excellent large scale maps to go with your narrative. Taking your imposing 400ft temple for instance can work out great if used to flavor the combat or introduce an interesting twist. This can be done by incorporating long range options for everyone (i.e. some magic crystals which can focus and fire destructive energies across the place which can be used by anyone and every missfire causes satisfying destruction as grand pillars and bits of sculptures come crashing down amidst the chaos of battle). Or use it as a gauntlet! Evil cultists are summoning the spirit of the evil necromancer and the heroes must stop them. Lacking ranged options and under severe time pressure the heroes have to dodge spells and traps using their wits and the environment to ultimately reach the dais and stop the cultists in time! That said, for the most part smaller scale will serve you well.
Your idea of the heroes racing under time pressure to get across the 400ft temple sounds fun at first, but I think that it would actually just result in the players saying "I'll run forward" for a few turns with several evasion rolls and such, which would look cool as a scene, but takes away a lot of agency from players in my opinion.
@@kasane1337 Well, to be fair if the only choices were to run closer and take damage I think I would have to agree. However I believe you could easily add meaningful choices to your players, e.g. multiple routes including the environment (add a balcony for ziplining), throw in some lowlevel enemies on the way that want to deter the characters, add an obvious shorter route which is also obviously trapped. In the end it is important that the players are always active and have multiple options (slow and steady, daredevil, creative use chandelier to delay, destroy pillar for a shorter route, use lesser baddies as meat shields). Of course your mileage (and players) may vary, so when in doubt take Guys very sensible advice!
My favorite location I made was a forgotten Druid temple deep in the woods that was accessed by airship. Much of the temple was overtaken with bodies of water and flooded hallways that had to be traversed. The campaign also involved popping in and out of the Shadowfell via portals (the two realms were being pressed together). The Shadowfell side wasn't any easier, as the water flooded hallways were instead loaded with numbing poison.
My favorite battle map was my PCs starship, the Camellia. We have a scifi/fantasy DND setup with space battle rules, life support systems, cargo bays, weapons platforms, etc. They got their own starship and set up their own spaces in the starship. One of them was an artificer spider alien who chose to set up a web in the engine room rather than live in the crew quarters, the druid elf monitored the hydroponics and life support, the human wizard worked with the shipboard AI to navigate and fire weapons. We'd had a couple space battles where lasers and ballistics would damage rooms, they'd have to evacuate areas with hull breaches, but it all changed when the spider artificer who was in charge of shifting power supply from the shields to the weapons was interrupted by one of the space bug-humanoid pirates who had managed to sneak on board during their last rest-stop. I got to (digitally) roll out the big map of the ship alongside the external map which showed the space battle with the pirate ship. Suddenly, the little tiny ship where everyone felt like they were in the same room became a lot more real as the distance between the druid in life support and the wizard in the bridge was suddenly quite dangerous. The spider artificer couldn't shift power anymore, which meant they were stuck with the energy going to the shields until the battle in the power station was finished.
One of my decent locations was a city called Crucible. It was on a platform above a world of molten rock and minerals where they would extract lava/magma to harvest metals, and use the heat for their forges, and as it cooled they would pour the lava into molds to create fabricated basalt walls for the structures that formed the city's industrial district. There was no farmland, and the city would trade crafted good for food with other worlds/planes.
I see. Interesting. I guess I've been designing my maps correctly all along. Function first and then figure out how to use it in my campaign. All my campaigns are verisimilitude and narratively based, so players are in a "real" world and my maps have to adhere to that. 7:05 and this is why I love systems that use zones. Distance based systems fall apart really quickly unless you begin at spitting distances.
My players crash landed their spaceship into a wooded area, but soon stumbled upon a hidden spa and rehab center for the galaxy's elite. After their agency pulled enough strings, the party was able to take advantage of the spa and engage in various leisure activities while still pursuing a dangerous criminal. It had pools, saunas, upscale apartments with unbeatable views of a rainbow forest of alien trees transplanted by its curators. There was also a hiking trail and inevitable reflection pond / gazebo that staged to a huge gunfight.
I was born in the 90's and I call the internet an amazing resource. But I also remember a time when it took hours for a ten minute video to load (it still sometimes does, because rural internet is not very reliable). I still prefer physical books to flip through over scrolling down a computer screen so I also have binders for collecting printouts of particularly inspiring picture that I find on the internet. I started doing that when I was in art school, but I do find, that my approach to world building is not all that diffrent from my approach to illustration. I'm really new to dming so I hope, that I can fall back on my other creative skills for when it comes time to desiging playable locations.
Though it was definitely heavily fantastical, my most interesting map was also sadly a 5 (or 6?) room dungeon. However, It did have purpose/intent in it's design. I'll leave out the majority of the details for brevity. But here's the important bits. A King had it constructed, by elemental priests, to safeguard his most powerful artifact. More specifically, to prevent any Vampires from gaining access to it. He was about to become a vampire himself (made a bad deal), and feared having access to the artifact in that state. There were 4 "rooms" with connecting hallways, each manifesting a different elemental plane. And filled with denizens of said planes. Each had an object, on a dias, from a different elemental plane. The objects could only survive undamaged in the element they were in, and the element they were from. None of the objects were located in rooms adjacent to the room of their element. Placing all 4 objects on their proper dias opened the doors to a 5th room lit by a permanent daylight spell. There was a full length mirror in the corner, and the room was guarded by a Deva. They had to make it past the Deva, step into the mirror, and face mirror versions of themselves. When they emerged from the mirror the Deva had been replaced by a massive silver plated Iron Golem. The Daylight spell glinting off the silver plating caused a dazzling/blinding effect (con save) if you looked directly at it. The golem was being powered by the Kings Artifact, which was conveniently located in a recess in its chest plate.
I'm in the process of making my own RPG-and it's a MUSH (Text based game) As I sift and weigh aspects for the game this chan has been monumentally helpful! Thank you so much for all the awesome insight!
Small temple with a one level area under the temple. Mostly holding monk cells. But also a library that the players had to sneak into. The monks were a militant order who guarded the library. There was also an underground cliff that the players could repel down to avoid the passages that led down. But there was this spider.
The most fun I had making a map recently wasn't even for my own campaign. My wizard had gotten sucked into a portal and trapped in the Astral Sea. He didn't die, but found an asteroid, and began shaping it with his mind. By the time the party came to get me, he was insane, and had built a tower, proclaimed it a country, and declared himself king. (He's naturally egotistical, but I legit rolled on the madness table and got long-term amnesia as well.) So, I got to create this tower map, with the concept that it was made from fractured memories, but was also functional. There was a library that contained books of actual memories/thoughts and feelings, a Fighting pit where he replayed party battles without him (the party died horribly), and any monsters were caricatures of party members or NPCs. And entire sections were scenes from his backstory, or references to the campaign. It was so fun. Not only because I designed the entire thing in character, but because it was also naturally disjointed.
I think one of the issues with scale comes with players who like ranged combat. Many systems have weapons or feats or class features that key on being used at long range, akin to sniping. But, as you say, if a battle map is too big, entire turns are used up unceremoniously just trying to get within range of each other, except for maybe the rivaling archers or if someone's spells reach that far. But if everyone is always within two turns of melee attacking anyone else, those long range specialists, who went for those special rules for a reason, never get to actually use their greatest assets. Essentially, ranged attackers, in my opinion at least, can never really fully utilize the full advantage of their range because battle maps need to be small enough for melee folks to do their thing, at least in more fantasy settings where melee is as or more prevalent than ranged. I've always felt it's a bit of a conundrum without an easy solution. And I've always felt that DMs, either intentionally or not, don't like such long range tactics; it can feel cheap if the enemy does it and tactically hard to deal with if a player or two is doing it.
I once had my players storm a hobgoblin encampment that was built in between some ancient ruins. They could either use the cover of the ruins on one side or climb up to some walkways in the trees around the camp, connected to the walls of the camp. I had wild magic change the scene of the battlefield because the ruins were built to close a tear in reality, and using magic within its walls destabilized reality around the players.
Still running the randomized game, and I am finding that even with a randomized map, I am able to find rhyme or reason for odd placements. It just takes a little thought.
@@lukeleslie9648 For about a year and a half, I have been running a game that is about as randomized as possible. The map was basically empty, when we started, and it is determined by dice rolls as the group explores it. The towns have been randomized. 99% of the encounters are randomized; only having a few predetermined encounters to pull random threads into an actual story line.
Feeling my age with ya Guy. Used to have a good ol' trapper keeper with all my nerdy game and writing notes, maps, writing paraphernalia, etc in it. Feeling the weight of it in my backpack was an odd comfort lol. Felt like Frodo putting on the ring after Sam gave it back - 'Yes, I know the weight of this burden well.' Kids these days will never understand 😂 -Dan
I have been trying to add a fantastical element. The talking statue, the permanently cold or hot stone, the water flowing up. Every setting in the Wizarding world was that way and I think that was a lot of the magic.
I just found this channel as well as your Great Gamemaster website. I notice at the top there is a link to log in, but I can't find anywhere to create an account. What am I missing?
I'm not yet a super-experienced GM. I ran a campaign where all the characters had to be small and traveling on a ship made specifically for small size people of various species. Then they all woke up bound, gagged, and stripped in the cargo-hold of a ship made for medium and large species and which was slowly sinking. N.B.: I spent the majority of my pre-adult life living on boats and sailing various crafts. So I made the ship as realistic as possible but also wanted to make the size difference actually matter.
Ive made cave maps based on real world caves. Then added dozens of kobold sized connecting tunnels. Another one was a hole in a lake. The water flowed in like a glory holy at a dam. Inside was spiral rooms with multiple chambers. At the bottom was nest of freshly hatched salt drakes. Homebrew nasties with a molten salt breath weapon. The cave was very hot and steamy. The ground was slick. Visibility was terrible. It was great
Another great one was a triangular room with 3 towers in the corners. Each tower had a 12 foot high gap under it. Glyphs of nast things were there in case a player tries to climb up. Each tower had 4 teleportation spots. Each tower had 4 small windows. A beholder was in there. He could fire off a beam them randomly teleport to a new location. In the middle was a large crystal that with a nat 20 could split an eye beam attack into 3 targets. At the top of the 100 foot high ceiling was a lead plug. When released it dropped 500 gallons of a nasty acid into the room. The beholder could blast that plug free at any time it had an action available.
One of my players favourite maps was a cave where all the physics very on their head so water travelled up people fell onto the ceiling but all the valuable things in the cave were on floor level so they had the puzzle of negotiating this to get the treasure
one small thing that drives me batty when i look at maps made these days is the placement of toilets and bathrooms everywhere in huts and taverns, and not a single outhouse is to be found..... And the placement of toilets in areas where they would never be practically possible.
I actually had a player question my sanity after the 3rd letrine the party came across while exploring a multilevel Dwarven Clan Hall Fortress inside a mountain, complete with barracks, bathing rooms, dinner halls with adjacent kitchens and larders, small apartments for the higher ranking dwarves in the clan, armories, store rooms for mundane items (buckets, brooms, wheeled carts, ballistae, etc), forges, foundries, audience hall, inner rock/mushroom garden, dwarven pantheon temple, access tunnels for complex mechanisms like portcullis or mechanized vault doors, etc... if a place where people lives have no sleeping quarters, a place to storage and prepare food, a place to answer the call of nature and other daily support facilities (whiting reason) then to me it's not realistic.
I am Jewish and am using Masada, an ancient Jewish fortress built on a mountain, as the template for the haunted and kobold-infested ancient elven compound the players are facing the BBEG at!
![Kodak Black - Versatile 4 [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VcP_1Ua__vY/mqdefault.jpg)
*Thanks for watching!* What is one of the most interesting locations you've created for your game? Let us know in the comments below!
Only 24 hours to go to back the Kickstarter for *The Creators Guide to Epic Locations: Nature* Pledge now before it's too late: bit.ly/3dRQajG
Find each chapter of the video easily by clicking on the timestamps in the description.
I remember going to the library to look at books and get maps and photocopy them too. And I thought it was amazing that I could do that. It was magical.
I would also recommend thinking of cool actions for the players to do, during battle:
Build chandeliers, stacks of barrels, that can be pushed on the enemy, shards of glass, where sneaking over is extra hard or Traps where the group can push the enemy into, or a level to make the gate drop down on the enemy’s head. Especially for bossfights this creates more interesting possibilities!
But also let the players be creative with it…We all remember the bar brawl, where one character took a giant fish from the wall and startet slapping her enemys in the face…
The Kraken map from Ghosts of Saltmarsh was awesome Guy! Great backdrop for the epic final confrontation between Flick and the diabolical Snickt.
Horses and archers get snubbed by most maps I’ve ever worked with. Barbarian has HP and rage, Wizard has fireball, Ranger has arrows… and range…that doesn’t matter on 25x25 maps. I like huge maps that make the movement of the players more meaningful for placement. Having to move cover to cover while being shot at is an amusing challenge to overcome.
Totally agree. I prefer creating bigger maps where combat only takes part in a small area of that map rather than having a map where my players are always running out of tokeep the distance.
I had a wood elf ranger (35ft move) with zephr speed or some bonus spell movement shenanigans, a couple of times he basically ran off the battlemap to shoot from 100ft+ away.
I built a beholder lair for multiple beholders. It was 3D with chambers at all 360°. It had switches that could only be activated with telekinesis. Pits that one had to float across. Traps for land-bound interlopers. My players loved it and hated it at the same time. Super challenging having to think in alien ways.
The map of my son's middle school was interesting. It's function was obviously for channeling foot traffic. I enlarged it to town size, turned the fire doors into portcullises, added some arrow slits and presto! Killing field.
It was kinda scary knowing that my child was going there. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought it would make the perfect death trap.
That's fucked up💀 but cool🤠
I created a dwarven mine tunnel connecting to a small mindflayer hive/colony. It started at the edges, with the minions and occasional mindflayer attempting to invade and feast, and worked through these winding tunnels to eventually stop this threat in it’s tracks
Huge oversized maps _can_ make for interesting encounters; perhaps the enemy in the 400-foot megatemple has ranged attacks or spells and the party needs to use the columns, pews, and other scenery for cover as they close in, or perhaps it's an outdoor area like a rocky mountainside and they have to navigate some environmental phenomenon to get from one side to the other. Big encounters like these should be used sparingly as major or climactic events though, not the norm. Also, initiative is rolled when combat starts, so you can let the party cross half the temple while the villain monologues to get everyone into a smaller combat area.
Tip that came to my mind listening to you, inspired by games I've played before. You can have a stone temple or the likes out in the middle of nowhere.
Thousands of years earlier, the place could had been populated with river and greenlands, then *Mystery* happens, and all of it is gone now, the river is gone so nothing will grow there.
But the temple remains because of it's sturdy construction.
Solve the mystery of the temple and what happened.
Perhaps the players can even figure out a way to return water to the area.
Had a city/town/lodge that several players had input on that was our characters base of operations for a while. That was a Plateau in a canyon accessed by a drawbridge, we were building it in game and resources were scarce and as such it was taking a while and then our major enemy found us (a more powerful enemy)there and we left the town and moved on.
8:06 the Pelennor Fields send their regards.
Just as I start on a map this comes out perfect as always!
Not D&D but one of my favorite maps was using Cruise ship brochures for my Traveler Campaign. Love you reference to Analog Storage Devises (Books) to look at old maps. I even have several Atlases. National Geographic used to publish great ones. A trip to the local thrift store can grant amazing resources for little money.
I love collecting National Trust (or whatever organisation) guides when I visit castles and stately homes, then photocopy-enlarging the hell out of them and slapping a grid on them to use as locations. We play in a church youth club room when there aren't any youths there, so I can lay out my maps on the snooker tables... I had 3 floors of Wirksworth Castle at about a metre-square each standing in for a brigands' keep... some PCs broke in through the roof while others went in the front door... then later some explored the vandalised bedrooms while others rescued prisoners from the dungeons... Multi-level gaming, and with a (modelled on real-life) light well running down through each level so they could shout or climb to each other... Really enjoyed that session! :-)
i had fun creating a cliffside battlemap, since a story reason was some Victim of bandit attack that fell off the cliff on lower elevation where few goblins were cooking themself food. When heroes comes out from around the corner they can see in the distance a person fighting goblins. Do heroes need few turns before being able to approch the Fallen Victim? yes, But this way layers are entertained with thinking How to interact with battle in distance. Will they run and try scare goblins off? Will someone cast some spell to shorten distance greatly before it will be tooo late? GM may only speculate and Since Victim was just robbed moment ago and threw to goblins for entertainemnt, the time is of the essence.
My favorite map was a sewer designed by cultists to hide routes that only they could take. It had misdirection, but there were definitely holes in the perception, and it still had the function of a catacomb sewer
I created an ewok village style tavern in the treetops, which had multiple rooms and decks connected by bridges. The players needed to find a contact within this very popular location which created a lot of fun trying to navigate the various bridges and rooms.
Great video! I generally agree with most of it, however you can also create some excellent large scale maps to go with your narrative. Taking your imposing 400ft temple for instance can work out great if used to flavor the combat or introduce an interesting twist. This can be done by incorporating long range options for everyone (i.e. some magic crystals which can focus and fire destructive energies across the place which can be used by anyone and every missfire causes satisfying destruction as grand pillars and bits of sculptures come crashing down amidst the chaos of battle). Or use it as a gauntlet! Evil cultists are summoning the spirit of the evil necromancer and the heroes must stop them. Lacking ranged options and under severe time pressure the heroes have to dodge spells and traps using their wits and the environment to ultimately reach the dais and stop the cultists in time!
That said, for the most part smaller scale will serve you well.
Your idea of the heroes racing under time pressure to get across the 400ft temple sounds fun at first, but I think that it would actually just result in the players saying "I'll run forward" for a few turns with several evasion rolls and such, which would look cool as a scene, but takes away a lot of agency from players in my opinion.
@@kasane1337 Well, to be fair if the only choices were to run closer and take damage I think I would have to agree. However I believe you could easily add meaningful choices to your players, e.g. multiple routes including the environment (add a balcony for ziplining), throw in some lowlevel enemies on the way that want to deter the characters, add an obvious shorter route which is also obviously trapped. In the end it is important that the players are always active and have multiple options (slow and steady, daredevil, creative use chandelier to delay, destroy pillar for a shorter route, use lesser baddies as meat shields). Of course your mileage (and players) may vary, so when in doubt take Guys very sensible advice!
My favorite location I made was a forgotten Druid temple deep in the woods that was accessed by airship. Much of the temple was overtaken with bodies of water and flooded hallways that had to be traversed. The campaign also involved popping in and out of the Shadowfell via portals (the two realms were being pressed together). The Shadowfell side wasn't any easier, as the water flooded hallways were instead loaded with numbing poison.
My favorite battle map was my PCs starship, the Camellia. We have a scifi/fantasy DND setup with space battle rules, life support systems, cargo bays, weapons platforms, etc. They got their own starship and set up their own spaces in the starship. One of them was an artificer spider alien who chose to set up a web in the engine room rather than live in the crew quarters, the druid elf monitored the hydroponics and life support, the human wizard worked with the shipboard AI to navigate and fire weapons. We'd had a couple space battles where lasers and ballistics would damage rooms, they'd have to evacuate areas with hull breaches, but it all changed when the spider artificer who was in charge of shifting power supply from the shields to the weapons was interrupted by one of the space bug-humanoid pirates who had managed to sneak on board during their last rest-stop. I got to (digitally) roll out the big map of the ship alongside the external map which showed the space battle with the pirate ship.
Suddenly, the little tiny ship where everyone felt like they were in the same room became a lot more real as the distance between the druid in life support and the wizard in the bridge was suddenly quite dangerous. The spider artificer couldn't shift power anymore, which meant they were stuck with the energy going to the shields until the battle in the power station was finished.
One of my decent locations was a city called Crucible. It was on a platform above a world of molten rock and minerals where they would extract lava/magma to harvest metals, and use the heat for their forges, and as it cooled they would pour the lava into molds to create fabricated basalt walls for the structures that formed the city's industrial district. There was no farmland, and the city would trade crafted good for food with other worlds/planes.
I see. Interesting. I guess I've been designing my maps correctly all along. Function first and then figure out how to use it in my campaign.
All my campaigns are verisimilitude and narratively based, so players are in a "real" world and my maps have to adhere to that.
7:05 and this is why I love systems that use zones. Distance based systems fall apart really quickly unless you begin at spitting distances.
When I started D&D in the late 80s, I had four flip folders for that. 😁
My players crash landed their spaceship into a wooded area, but soon stumbled upon a hidden spa and rehab center for the galaxy's elite. After their agency pulled enough strings, the party was able to take advantage of the spa and engage in various leisure activities while still pursuing a dangerous criminal. It had pools, saunas, upscale apartments with unbeatable views of a rainbow forest of alien trees transplanted by its curators. There was also a hiking trail and inevitable reflection pond / gazebo that staged to a huge gunfight.
I was born in the 90's and I call the internet an amazing resource. But I also remember a time when it took hours for a ten minute video to load (it still sometimes does, because rural internet is not very reliable). I still prefer physical books to flip through over scrolling down a computer screen so I also have binders for collecting printouts of particularly inspiring picture that I find on the internet. I started doing that when I was in art school, but I do find, that my approach to world building is not all that diffrent from my approach to illustration. I'm really new to dming so I hope, that I can fall back on my other creative skills for when it comes time to desiging playable locations.
Though it was definitely heavily fantastical, my most interesting map was also sadly a 5 (or 6?) room dungeon.
However, It did have purpose/intent in it's design. I'll leave out the majority of the details for brevity. But here's the important bits.
A King had it constructed, by elemental priests, to safeguard his most powerful artifact. More specifically, to prevent any Vampires from gaining access to it. He was about to become a vampire himself (made a bad deal), and feared having access to the artifact in that state.
There were 4 "rooms" with connecting hallways, each manifesting a different elemental plane. And filled with denizens of said planes. Each had an object, on a dias, from a different elemental plane. The objects could only survive undamaged in the element they were in, and the element they were from. None of the objects were located in rooms adjacent to the room of their element.
Placing all 4 objects on their proper dias opened the doors to a 5th room lit by a permanent daylight spell. There was a full length mirror in the corner, and the room was guarded by a Deva. They had to make it past the Deva, step into the mirror, and face mirror versions of themselves.
When they emerged from the mirror the Deva had been replaced by a massive silver plated Iron Golem. The Daylight spell glinting off the silver plating caused a dazzling/blinding effect (con save) if you looked directly at it. The golem was being powered by the Kings Artifact, which was conveniently located in a recess in its chest plate.
I'm in the process of making my own RPG-and it's a MUSH (Text based game) As I sift and weigh aspects for the game this chan has been monumentally helpful! Thank you so much for all the awesome insight!
Small temple with a one level area under the temple. Mostly holding monk cells. But also a library that the players had to sneak into. The monks were a militant order who guarded the library. There was also an underground cliff that the players could repel down to avoid the passages that led down. But there was this spider.
The most fun I had making a map recently wasn't even for my own campaign. My wizard had gotten sucked into a portal and trapped in the Astral Sea. He didn't die, but found an asteroid, and began shaping it with his mind. By the time the party came to get me, he was insane, and had built a tower, proclaimed it a country, and declared himself king. (He's naturally egotistical, but I legit rolled on the madness table and got long-term amnesia as well.)
So, I got to create this tower map, with the concept that it was made from fractured memories, but was also functional. There was a library that contained books of actual memories/thoughts and feelings, a Fighting pit where he replayed party battles without him (the party died horribly), and any monsters were caricatures of party members or NPCs. And entire sections were scenes from his backstory, or references to the campaign. It was so fun. Not only because I designed the entire thing in character, but because it was also naturally disjointed.
I think one of the issues with scale comes with players who like ranged combat. Many systems have weapons or feats or class features that key on being used at long range, akin to sniping. But, as you say, if a battle map is too big, entire turns are used up unceremoniously just trying to get within range of each other, except for maybe the rivaling archers or if someone's spells reach that far. But if everyone is always within two turns of melee attacking anyone else, those long range specialists, who went for those special rules for a reason, never get to actually use their greatest assets. Essentially, ranged attackers, in my opinion at least, can never really fully utilize the full advantage of their range because battle maps need to be small enough for melee folks to do their thing, at least in more fantasy settings where melee is as or more prevalent than ranged. I've always felt it's a bit of a conundrum without an easy solution. And I've always felt that DMs, either intentionally or not, don't like such long range tactics; it can feel cheap if the enemy does it and tactically hard to deal with if a player or two is doing it.
I once had my players storm a hobgoblin encampment that was built in between some ancient ruins. They could either use the cover of the ruins on one side or climb up to some walkways in the trees around the camp, connected to the walls of the camp. I had wild magic change the scene of the battlefield because the ruins were built to close a tear in reality, and using magic within its walls destabilized reality around the players.
Hi this is Rammas Echor surrounding Pelennor Fields.
Still running the randomized game, and I am finding that even with a randomized map, I am able to find rhyme or reason for odd placements. It just takes a little thought.
The randomized game?
@@lukeleslie9648 For about a year and a half, I have been running a game that is about as randomized as possible. The map was basically empty, when we started, and it is determined by dice rolls as the group explores it. The towns have been randomized. 99% of the encounters are randomized; only having a few predetermined encounters to pull random threads into an actual story line.
@@RyuuKageDesu that is very interesting.
@@lukeleslie9648 I'm glad you think so.
Feeling my age with ya Guy. Used to have a good ol' trapper keeper with all my nerdy game and writing notes, maps, writing paraphernalia, etc in it. Feeling the weight of it in my backpack was an odd comfort lol. Felt like Frodo putting on the ring after Sam gave it back - 'Yes, I know the weight of this burden well.' Kids these days will never understand 😂
-Dan
I have been trying to add a fantastical element. The talking statue, the permanently cold or hot stone, the water flowing up. Every setting in the Wizarding world was that way and I think that was a lot of the magic.
I just found this channel as well as your Great Gamemaster website. I notice at the top there is a link to log in, but I can't find anywhere to create an account. What am I missing?
I'm not yet a super-experienced GM. I ran a campaign where all the characters had to be small and traveling on a ship made specifically for small size people of various species. Then they all woke up bound, gagged, and stripped in the cargo-hold of a ship made for medium and large species and which was slowly sinking. N.B.: I spent the majority of my pre-adult life living on boats and sailing various crafts. So I made the ship as realistic as possible but also wanted to make the size difference actually matter.
how does your limitations work with Mounted combat and moving combat ?
btw Minas Tirith was surrounded by farmland and very large
Ive made cave maps based on real world caves. Then added dozens of kobold sized connecting tunnels.
Another one was a hole in a lake. The water flowed in like a glory holy at a dam. Inside was spiral rooms with multiple chambers. At the bottom was nest of freshly hatched salt drakes. Homebrew nasties with a molten salt breath weapon. The cave was very hot and steamy. The ground was slick. Visibility was terrible. It was great
Another great one was a triangular room with 3 towers in the corners. Each tower had a 12 foot high gap under it. Glyphs of nast things were there in case a player tries to climb up.
Each tower had 4 teleportation spots. Each tower had 4 small windows. A beholder was in there. He could fire off a beam them randomly teleport to a new location.
In the middle was a large crystal that with a nat 20 could split an eye beam attack into 3 targets.
At the top of the 100 foot high ceiling was a lead plug. When released it dropped 500 gallons of a nasty acid into the room. The beholder could blast that plug free at any time it had an action available.
City In The Sky, essentially the Las Vegas strip in the sky. Saturday’s session takes place at the MGM Scam
One of my players favourite maps was a cave where all the physics very on their head so water travelled up people fell onto the ceiling but all the valuable things in the cave were on floor level so they had the puzzle of negotiating this to get the treasure
one small thing that drives me batty when i look at maps made these days is the placement of toilets and bathrooms everywhere in huts and taverns, and not a single outhouse is to be found..... And the placement of toilets in areas where they would never be practically possible.
I actually had a player question my sanity after the 3rd letrine the party came across while exploring a multilevel Dwarven Clan Hall Fortress inside a mountain, complete with barracks, bathing rooms, dinner halls with adjacent kitchens and larders, small apartments for the higher ranking dwarves in the clan, armories, store rooms for mundane items (buckets, brooms, wheeled carts, ballistae, etc), forges, foundries, audience hall, inner rock/mushroom garden, dwarven pantheon temple, access tunnels for complex mechanisms like portcullis or mechanized vault doors, etc... if a place where people lives have no sleeping quarters, a place to storage and prepare food, a place to answer the call of nature and other daily support facilities (whiting reason) then to me it's not realistic.
Guy's new haircut looks really cool. 😎👍
"Fresh"er water. Because no fish ever has excreted anythiing, not to mention bigger fauna.
I am Jewish and am using Masada, an ancient Jewish fortress built on a mountain, as the template for the haunted and kobold-infested ancient elven compound the players are facing the BBEG at!
Okay, that's just AWESOME!
Thy backing will be done
I hate maps😭 it's so much work tho
Guy. You’re looking good sir. Have you also lost some weight? All the best to you and yours.
He said 5 by 7 would only be normal under medieval peasant standards, yeah haha... good thing mine's 6 by 8. 😎
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