Level 4 in CC2

This one was done iteratively, I'd draw on graph paper, scan & put it on the computer, print it and draw by hand, and so on.  So there's no good original to scan and show.

I haven't numbered the level yet, and I'll probably monkey with it a bit more.

There's two stairways heading up to the 3rd level, a "regular" stairway and a spiral staircase heading down, a well heading down (in that 30' wide corridor up at the top of the map), and a wide hole in a cavern heading down.  I like my players to have to rig up contraptions, so I've always got a few level interconnects where you need climbing gear.

The Basalt Ziggurat of the Hinge-Headed occupies the central cavern.  Vast hordes of Hinge-Headed and their Neanderthal slaves are constantly milling about.  In the surrounding dungeon, there will be plenty of things that players can utilize to mess with the Hinge-Headed should they choose to do an all-out assault on the Ziggurat.

There's a couple of bricked-up walls that didn't really survive the loss of resolution when I uploaded them to Photobucket (an idea I liked from Barrowmaze, although I've gone all sci-fi and they'll require special solvent to dissolve the epoxy mortaring the carbon-fibre bricks together), and a cave-wall just about excavated through by a team of Neanderthal slaves.  So no, I didn't forget to add doors in those places :)

Here's the whole level (click this link to embiggen):

Here's the map turned on inside, and split into two images (click this link and this link to embiggen):

Level 3 in CC2

Wow, this one took a while, but the level 3 map has been converted into CC2.  I need to do a bit more with the underground lake-cavern, maybe drop some islands or a few more side caves in - it's pretty bland right now.  Other than that, though, it's pretty much good to go.

The map is too big to print to a single page, so I'll have to split it into pieces in the printed module.  Photobucket can't deal with the high res image, so it's a bit illegible, but click to embiggen anyways:

And here's some detail on the tunnel section to the west:

And here's the entrance from the outside:

And here's the underground lake:

ASE1 Map Pack - free download

One unfortunate problem with on-demand printing is that the printers don't do anything "fancy," like separate maps that you can pull out from the book and look at.  This makes running the module a little tricky, since you have to flip around a lot.

So to help with that problem, I put together a PDF of all the maps in the ASE1 module and have made it available for download.  It's in the "Download" section to the right (below the shameless money-grab section), or you can get it here:  ASE Map Pack

Fruiting Towers

I'm actually not working on level 2 of the megadungeon - I suddenly remembered I had a deadline for something I had volunteered to do.  Hopefully it'll be done by the weekend - it's an adventure tentatively titled "Fruiting Towers."

Here's a first draft of the map.  It'll look better when I gussy it up in CC2.  Click to enlarge.

Level 2, higher res

I installed Ghostscript and Redmon, and I'm now getting great quality images & pdf's printed.  I also fooled around with CC2 and figured out how to print partial maps, so here's the map split into two images - a lot easier to see detail now.

Level 2 of the ASE in CC2, complete

I finished up translating level 2 of the ASE to CC2.  It really needs to be printed in two different sections - it's a big map, and a single page compresses the detail too much.

You can't make out everything right now due to the size - I'll post up an update when I split the map into two sections.  But overall I'm pleased with how it came out.

Level 2 partially complete in CC2

I've been getting my level 2 map converted to CC2 over the past few nights, it's partially complete now.  I have to add doors all over the place, and come up with some cool little pictures for the various features in the big cavern.

I'll probably split this into two maps, one of the big cavern, and one of the rest of the dungeon.  The map is just too big to deal with one one page right now.

Land of One Thousand Towers - The Map is Done!

Barring any whimsical changes I make at the last minute, the map of the Land of One Thousand Towers is done.  I won't be explaining much in great detail about it, it's more of a visual aid than anything else.  I ended up going with "Lanthanide Wastes" - that lets me cover whole piles of ridiculous elements.  I didn't see Chris's suggestion for yttrium until after finishing the map, but that's also a wonderfully obscure metal - I'll make use of it somewhere.

Just a little bit of write up about the areas, and some stats & tavern names for the big streets, and I'm ready to begin editing.  I'll do a first pass of editing myself, to spare my volunteer editor some pain - but I'll be getting it off to him by this weekend at the latest.

Anyhow, here's the map all gussied up in CC2:

Land of One Thousand Towers

This map is the least important of the bunch - it's for yanking place names off of in a hurry, when the players meet some NPC from foreign lands, or if I have to figure out which direction a wandering wizard may have come from.

The Land of One Thousand Towers is the name for the world, due to the vast number of wizard towers.  It's a terrible place, but with one bright shining light - the city of Denethix, which is experiencing a glorious renaissance.  I'm sure the players will wreck that for the poor people of Denethix in some horrible and unintentional way, but right now it's all butterflies and roses.

The wizard towers do not have any wizards assigned to them, that will be done on the fly.  The jungle I expect I'll change to pine forest.  I want a Cretaceous-era feel to the map (thus the "Western Interior Sea"), and I don't need jungles for that.

I haven't tossed in much flavor yet, I'll add that as I re-do the map in Campaign Cartographer 2.  I'll probably also rename the Titanium Wastes to a more obscure element.  It's a good place to drop in a lanthanide.

Click the map to enlarge.  Each square equal 20 miles.

Old wilderness maps

Some old wilderness maps.  There were some map keys with them, referring to locations that I couldn't find on these maps at all.  These are all pretty old, probably from the mid or late 80's.  I'm terrible with cameras, so the pictures are lousy - I upped the contrast after taking them so they'd display a little better.

Map of Greater Denethix area, this times with hexes

Spawn of Endra pointed out that I hadn't used hexes - total oversight on my part.  I completely forgot.  They looked fairly nice when I substituted them in for the square grid, so hexes it is.

I also tossed in some random bits of map flavor.  Only one area (the unnamed cave in the hill) do I know exactly what's in there - I have a general notion of what's in the ruins in the northeast corner, and the rest is just names dropped down for inspiration.  1 hex = 2.5 miles.

Map of Greater Denethix area

I came up with a map of the Greater Denethix area - the surrounding villages and towns.  I need to add some "flavor areas" now.  Nothing with any actual detail, but some evocative names sprinkled around the map would be cool.

Here's what I've got so far:

Old maps

I'm in shipping/receiving hell.  140 items to package up.

Here are some maps, they're a little under 20 years old nowadays.

The Dwarven Crypts, upper level:

Dwarven crypts, lower level:

The Underworld!  Yeah, getting derivative - looks like I read a copy of D1-2.

Were-rats and drow?  Definitely D1-2...

And a drider lair.  Drow? Driders?  Oh well...  it was marginally fresher way back when...

Leading straight to... a MAZE.  Don't know what I was thinking.  When the players hit it, I remember hand-waving their way through it, they hired a minotaur guide or something...

Upper level of the maze... players are getting closer to the surface now.

One section of the maze changed depending on what levers you had pulled.  I'll probably recycle this concept for the megadungeon, it still works for me.

Finally, the players escape into the swamps, and discover.. this poorly drawn lair... of whatever Ki'inari is...

Denethix Map in CC2, completed

What a total pain in the neck.  Making this map took endless hours.  There's 2000 little buildings, and while I could lay them down in tracks, there are bugs in this 10 year old version, and it tended to get a little crashy.  I haven't been posting as much because I've been stuck on this city map project forever.  It's done now, and I can finally move onto something a bit more interesting.

The printed version is so much nicer than this JPEG export, too.  Anyhow click to make larger.

Denethix city map, partially done in CC2

I'm so far removed from Blair's one-hour dungeon experiment it's not funny.  A megadungeon level takes me 8-12 hours, and then I spend hours more moving maps to CC2.  The dungeon maps aren't that bad to do in CC2, just a few extra hours and it's done.  The city map is a total chore though.  I've got a few shortcuts I can do to get buildings down quicker, but it's still pretty painful.

The JPEG save function in CC2 continues to underwhelm.  Fortunately the vector output is fantastic and it prints out beautifully.  Here's the work-in-progress.  As usual, click to enlarge.  If you want to see the hand-drawn original, click here.

Denethix city map, hand-drawn

I spent a little time drawing a crude map of Denethix, the big city that the players just traipsed through (and that I described earlier in this post).

The wizard's tower is in the center, between the Palais Immaculate and the Palais Indomitable, in the middle of a large open square.

The River Pristine flows to a natural waterfall and down into a massive gorge, that becomes the River Effluent.  The city's sewers (the City Underfoot) drain right out through the cliff walls of the gorge, pouring filth down into the river below.

That "dotted line" section of the gorge is where a series of bridges and platforms have been built, spanning the gorge, effectively creating fashionable real estate for the upper-middle-class who can't quite afford the Street of Upright Living.  It also allows thieves, the Society of the Luminous Spark, and other miscreants to crawl around underneath that section of the city, and provides an easy way to dispose of bodies for those who own buildings above.

The waterfall will have turbines strung across it, capturing the energy from the water flowing down and sending the electricity up to power the wizard's tower, and the rest of the city.

The scale of the map is 250' per square.  Overall, the city covers somewhat over a square mile of area.  The most disreputable sorts live on the outer fringes, and in general wealth is concentrated in the center of the city.

This thing is going to be a pain to convert to CC2.  So many tiny little buildings to draw in all those empty spaces.  I don't want to leave wide open spaces like I've got now, that doesn't look very artsy-fartsy.

I've got a question posted at the ProFantasy forums about whether I can publish maps for profit using the CC2/CD2/DD2 symbols.  Hasn't been an issue with the dungeon maps, those are all custom symbols I drew myself.  I'd hate to have to draw up building symbols as well, but if that's what's required, that's what I'll do.

Click to enlarge the picture.

Level 3 map, hand-drawn

Another gigantic map.  Like level 2, it's not yet done in the "cavern" area - which in this case is a gigantic lake.  I'm pretty sure I messed up some of the stairs too, so I need to go over those and make sure it all works out.  Right now the upper right section of the dungeon is way too high above the level of the lake, that's supposed to be a gently sloping stony beach on the far right, not a plummet of death.

The big lake on the right floods the bulk of the dungeon with water, about two and a half feet high, the water running down the stairs at area 50.  It slowly drains out at area 21, with subterranean fissures in the drainage system (not drawn on map) causing the pool outside the dungeon entrance at area 20 (see the little searchlight drawings?)

There are tons of flooded 30' wide corridors with rounded ends.  I decided to stick a bunch of niches with statues in the upper left, and when I counted the remaining rounded ends there were eight - same as the number of niches.  So there will be some kind of scavenger-hunt puzzle involving the eight statues at the corridor ends, and the eight statues in the niches.

Oh, and notice the hangway on the sandy beach at location 138.

This is another massive level.  It's going to be an interesting exercise trying to figure out how to get this legibly printing in an 8.5" x 11" book.  I might split all the maps into multiple pages, with 1/4" squares.  None of them were drawn with splitting in mind, so it'll be a trick to get it down neatly.

Here's the third level in total, Photobucket shrank it quite a bit so it's hard to read (click to enlarge of course):

Here's the upper left piece of paper:

Here's the lower center section of the map:

And here's the lake:

Level 2 map, hand-drawn

I'm mostly done with the map of level 2.  The tower in the northernmost cave needs its own separate map, and I need to add more stairs, pit traps, etc.  But this is pretty much how it's going to be (click for a larger image):

Level 1 map in CC2

The level 1 map of the megadungeon has entered into CC2.  Once again, the JPEG conversion stinks, but it prints out fine.  It's late and I'm tired, so enough talk, here's the map.  Click to enlarge.

Gatehouse map with symbols and numbers

The gatehouse map is done.  I made a Moldvay-style symbol catalog - it turns out that it's pretty easy to do.  I had to redo half the symbols because I didn't test the first door I created, because there are some bugs in how the symbol control points work.  Chances are you have no idea what that means, but my solution was to just not use symbol control points.  So I spent a few hours reworking some symbols, and popped them into the map.

The other two bugs I noticed were:

a. When printing to the printer, the doors are solid black, instead of white outlined with black.  Maybe CC3 fixes this, or maybe it's my printer driver.
b. When saving as a JPG, some of the diagonal lines turn a little "jagged", you can see a few spots like that near the octagonal rooms.

So here's the completed map, click to make it larger.  It definitely looks computer-generated, I don't know how I'd make it look more hand-sketched.  So a little sterile, but way more useful for a PDF than a scan of the hand-drawn original.