Isometric Tutorial #9: Evil Idol in a Niche

I've just posted my ninth isometric dungeon tutorial, this one is an evil idol in a niche.

I haven't posted one of these in a while, so you may not be aware of the rest of the series where I draw an assortment of isometric mapping features.

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As a reminder, there are only three days left to vote in the ENnies! Trilemma Compendium is up for four awards: Best Adventure, Best Layout/Design, Best Cartography, and Product of the Year. I'm sure whoever you vote for can use your support, so vote for what you love before it's too late!

Lost Lair of Lorethain Sharr

I wanted to support the One Page Dungeon Contest this year, and Luka Reject hit upon the perfect method—offer an illustration as a prize!

It was a bunch of work to comb through the entries to find one that could benefit from a map, but yet was clear enough—and interesting enough—to illustrate well. It made me respect the judges all the more, as they had a mighty pile to go through indeed!

In the end, I selected Jeremy DS Marshall's Lost Lair of Lorethain Sharr, mainly because of its clarity and richness—it's chock full of things to draw. Enjoy!

Isometric Dungeon #8: 2D to 3D

I've just posted isometric dungeon tutorial #8: how to convert a 2D map into a 3D isometric map.

Isometric Circular Stairs

I've put together a tutorial for one of the more brain-boggling aspects of isometric dungeon drawing, circular stairs.

If you're just watching it to see that it can be done, enjoy—but if you're watching to actually do this and draw some, definitely watch the (less exciting) video on how to draw isometric circles. Circular stairs are (no surprise!) riddled with circles and bits of circles.

Map Update

I've updated the map to v1.12, adding the last few adventures. I'm also going to be maintaining two versions - the original, with all the adventures located on it in blue..

..and a second, 'Atlast-style' version that has all the adventures removed and only shows the place names that surface-dwellers would know:

I've also changed the legend from 24 miles/hex to 8 leagues/hex, which is about the same distance, but is my preferred unit these days (along with 'paces') given the whole imperial vs. metric deal.

Basilica of the Leper Messiah

The inestimable (and generous) Andy Action hit me up with a concept for a short adventure over a year ago. I'd always intended to do it up, but time sure flies.

Nestled within the city of Owlshade is a walled-off enclave, filled with everyone afflicted by the plague. This miserable patch is ruled over by Husmanna, a cadaverous sorcerer who blasphemously extended his own life centuries ago.

Basilica is deadly back door into Owlshade (or whatever fantasy city of your own design you insert it into). Using treatments only he can provide, Husmanna adopts the afflicted from wealthy families, extending their lives. For centuries, he has cultivated his influence over the noble families this way.

The Basilica would make a suitable addition to a fantasy city where the players are looking for a seedy way to buy influence.

There's a downright apocalyptic angle to this adventure, however. If adventurers are careful it won't trigger, but this has the potential to completely explode.

As always, the text and art are released under CC-BY-NC thanks to generous Patrons.. like Andy!

The Halls Untoward - WIP

For fun I've been doing a collaborative dungeon-stocking project, The Halls Untoward. I've been pleasantly surprised by the response. It's about half full at this point (the pink areas have been stocked).

If you'd like to participate, jump on over to the Google Document.

When it's done, I'll do a 3D dungeon illustration for it, give it a basic layout and release the whole thing for free under CC-BY-NC and as an at-cost softcover on Lulu.

The Mermaids' Knot

Once upon a time, there was a peaceful mountain village. It was blessed with a holy pond, inhabited by a pair of mermaids. Sisters eternal, they loved nothing more than to help the villagers using their great wisdom.

"Obey us in all things, no matter how strange," they said. "What we will ask you to do may alarm you, but it is for your benefit, and your village will prosper." And so it did.

But if that were the end of the tale, you wouldn't be here.

In the spirit of a sandbox adventure location, what the adventurers will get up to depends entirely on them. The mermaid sisters have a great amount of magical knowledge, and could legitimately serve as mentors, patrons, or at least wise resources to player characters.

If, on the other hand, they believe the Wives of Spring that the priestesses and mermaids must be stopped--or if they fall victim to the snares they have put in place to feed their great projects--they will have a fight on their hands in an unusual situation.

Inserting the village of Magda in your own campaign setting can be done a few ways. One, you can just plop it somewhere and wait for PCs to stumble into it. People have a habit of disappearing around Magda, and someone may petition the PCs for aid.

If you want to raise the stakes a little, the Wives of Spring may have chosen to murder or abduct someone well known passing through the area, in the hopes of bringing down trouble for the priestesses.

Alternately, the wisdom of the priestesses may be know throughout the region. If the players are looking for an answer to something, to lift a curse (or to raise the dead), they may find leads that take them to Magda.

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As always, many thanks to my patrons for supporting me. Because of your generosity, the text and the illustrations from this adventure are all available for use under CC-BY-NC for non-commercial uses.

Isometric Dungeon #5 - Cavern Waterfall

Here's a fifth video in my isometric dungeon drawing series, a cavern waterfall.

This time it's a cavern waterfall. I don't say much, although I had fun with the audio regardless. Happy to take requests - what has stumped or intimidated you in the past?

Curves in Isometric Mapping

A recent post in a G+ map-making community highlighted how difficult it is to draw curved objects in isometric maps.

Here's a typical, challenging object: a curved chute that drops from a trap door into a lower level.

This is a worthy attempt at a complicated shape, but as you can see it doesn't look quite right; it looks a bit twisted, like licorice.

The main problems seem to be two-fold:

1. How the $#*@! do you draw a nice curve?

2. How do you take that curved surface and extude it into a three-dimensional shape?

Drawing Isometric Circles

I've taken a stab at this before, but I've found a couple of ways that are a lot easier.  Here's the basic structure, taken from this excellent blog post by Douglas Flynt:

That blog post spends a lot of time on subdividing the original square, but on isometric graph paper it's a lot easier. I'm drawing the outer curve of the chute, which has a radius of five squares:

Next step is to draw the inner curve, which has a radius of four squares:

Erasing my construction lines, I'm left with this shape:

Extruding the Shape

Now I need to extrude this into a three-dimensional form. The trick to doing this is to draw exactly the same curves one square over:

With a bit of practice you can manage this freehand, until then, you may need to set up the curve-drawing framework you used for the original lines.

Once you've got this, follow the northwest-southeast axis to "tie" the two sets of curves together. In the lower left, you're drawing a tangent across the two sets of curves:

Then, trace the lines that will be visible to get the outline of the final form:

It's still a little bit wonky; as always I recommend doing all your construction work in pencil (or better yet, with blue pencil/marker so you can pull it out with Photoshop), so you have lots of tries at the freehand curves.

The Call of the Light

As some of the others have done, this adventure started out as a stubborn visual I couldn't get out of my mind: a massive heap of automaton parts under the baleful light of a lamppost.

What brought them there? Why, the call of the light.

As always, thanks to my generous patrons, the art and text for this month's adventures are free for non-commercial use under the CC-BY-NC creative commons license. Enjoy!

Isometric Dungeon Tutorial #3 - Village Well

Short little post today to point people to a third isometric drawing tutorial, this time a village well.

After a long dry spell of suffering with OS-basis video editing, I'm back to using a real editor, so I can make the whole thing go by much faster, while still stopping to call out a few things I've breezed by in the past, notably freehand circles.

Lair of the Lantern Worm

Deep in the desert, a Heelan death cult flirts with a horror of the underworld to snatch secrets from beyond the gray veil.  Click on the thumbnail to download the free PDF:

Although I expect most people will use it standalone, this adventure caps off something of a Heelan trilogy which started way back with The Oracle's Decree, and was expanded on in last month's The Roots of Ambition.

This adventure is also slightly unusual in that it features art by Juan Ochoa, who did an amazing job on a Heelan proudskull.

As you all probably know by now, this goodness (or badness?) is supported by a bunch of generous folks who back my Patreon campaign. If you find this content useful or inspiring, consider tossing a buck in the jar!

Isometric Tutorial Videos

I've started a series of isometric tutorial videos, showing how I draw various pieces of dungeon architecture. So far I've done some stairs and a set of arched double doors.

I'm using graph paper from Incompetech, specifically the "isodots", with the dots set to light blue. Using cyan dots lets me pull them out easily with Photoshop (using a black and white adjustment layer with the cyan slider set all the way to white).

The basic points I cover are:

• block out the 3D space the object is going to occupy
• ensure you're rigorously following the isometric lines - all drawings are flat, so this is important to reinforce the impression of three-dimensionality
• finding points in 3D space often happens by finding the intersection between a vertical and a horizontal line (as with the stair creases)
• texture adds character, but must also follow the isometric axes or you'll quickly spoil the 3D impression
• circles are tricky - as with other shapes, first draw the square tht the square that the circle occupies, then draw it as four separate arcs
• draw your objects from the front of your dungeon to the back so you don't accidentally
• draw in pencil first (ideally blue, so you can use the same PS trick to remove it without having to erase)
• use a waterproof pen, so you don't smudge your ink
• use thicker lines to indicate depth changes between objects

Hope it's useful!

The Lenses of Heaven

This adventure started out with a weirder-than-usual kernel - immigration control in space.

The legendary astral city of Saaru has long been sought after by sages, adventurers.. and invaders. Once far too easy to reach, Saaru's gods sealed it off behind a hidden choke point, Tlarba.

But over the long centuries, the order that swore to protect Saaru from daemons has itself become corrupt, and what at first looks like a bureaucratic delay will soon become a nightmare for any who pass through the lenses.

Inserting Tlarba into your campaign world is easy enough - place it in front any otherworldy, interesting destination, or use it to intercept adventurers teleporting or using magical portals of whatever sort.

Thanks again to my many patrons, who along with a bunch of folks on G+ voted for this adventure to be next!

The Sky-Blind Spire

Titardinal's Spire is an ordinary-seeming stone tower at the edge of a large, live-giving lake. Few borderlands towers are so well placed, and it has changed hands many times. Unfortunately, Titardinal wove magic into every brick of his tower, making it a difficult place to hold onto for long. But the wizard's loftiest ambition was never achieved—perhaps you will claim it!

Many thanks to my patrons, once again - you have unlocked all the full-resolution graphics under CC-BY-NC for anyone to use:

• Sky-Blind Spire Map
• Tower Sketch
• Tower Summit

If you enjoy this or my other adventures, consider tossing a buck in my tip jar over at Patreon!

West Marches for Kids, Redux

As I'm sure I've mentioned, I run an annual World of Dungeons at a winter retreat for the families of my daughters' primary school.  The first year, I sat at a table in the cafeteria with a pen and a roll of butcher's paper and drew a map.

It looked like this:

Before long, some kids wandered by, asked what I was up to. "Drawing a map," I said.

"What for?"

"An adventure role-playing game."

"What's that?"

When I explained it to them, their eyes nearly popped out of their heads.

"I wanna play!"

"Me too!"

"Okay, go and find a couple more friends, and decide where you want to go."

An hour later, we were all off to Raventree and the Doughman's Wood. The next year they did back-to-back sessions of Sorg Devours (The Coming of Sorg) and River's End (Though Flesh Be Vast).

This past year they explored the midden mine (Midden of the Deep) then hacked their way to the top of Tannoch Rest-of-Kings.

I started coloring the locations they've visited between games, and adding a few new locations for them to visit in the coming years, so now the map looks like this:

Running sessions for parties of nine eleven year-olds is intense.. I think I go through two bottles of water at a session just keeping my throat from drying out!

One-Page Dungeon Contest 2016

The 2016 One-Page Dungeon Contest deadline is fast approaching. If you haven't heard about it, you're in for a treat. Every year the 1PDC collects a ton of creative submissions. Some are traditional D&D-esque fantasy, while others are downright zany.

Entries from previous years are a fantastic resource to dip into for some spontaneous gaming.

The prizes are great, but the best thing about it is an excuse to get creative and share your work with others.

If you're stuck for a map, here are three that I'm putting into the public domain. Fire up that copy of Scribus, put on a pot of coffee and get started! If you're stuck for a concept, head on over to Hill Cantons and give the Old School Module Name Generator a go.  If you're stuck for the writing part, well, you're on your own. :)

EDIT: Please feel free to add comments with other usable map resources, such as the Donjon random map generator.

EDIT 2: +Dyson Logos has thrown down the motherlode with his free-for commercial use Commercial Maps list. Seriously, there's like fifty maps there!

Bring Forth the Strange Weapons

This afternoon, the adventurers start out as dirty, half-starved villagers emerging from winter to find the landscape around unfamiliar and deadly, steeped in the poisons of the Martoi. The village elders are bitterly divided on the first priority, what will the adventurers do?

All the PCs will have to go on, for now, is their intuitions, a precious few parting gifts from the elders, and a Seree-era prefecture map.

For those of you following along on the big map, this is Slumbering Tealwood, from Nall Lake in the north to the Near Soont in the south. Let the stocking begin!

I have a few immediate 'fronts' - the effects of the poisons; goblin slave-takers moving in to round up the dreamers; a necromancer meddling with the ancestral bargains to the south; chalk mermaids eager for gullible acolytes who will collect magic in return for scraps of power.

The Chains of Heaven

Long ago, the Seree wizards found a way to wring magical power from the gods themselves. From their mountain-top fortress, they plucked deities from the heavens, imprisoning them in a pit.

The gods retaliated, razing the fortress and installing a guardian to ensure the Seree magics would never again be spoken aloud.

But the Seree are nothing if not patient.