Announcing the Map Chat Crew

A small group of cartographers has pulled together to read a series of dungeon design philosophy based on the work of Jenell Jaquay and collected by Justin Alexander - you can start reading them here.  We’re hoping to learn from each other and have fun drawing maps.

Our goal is to each create a 3 level Jaquaysian dungeon based on the prompt: “Crypt of the Doomed Warrior.”  We’ll be posting our individual maps more or less together (given the vagaries of living in different timezones) in late March.

Hopefully, this will become an ongoing thing where the #MapChatCrew can continue to encourage and teach one another while producing cool maps.  Want to get involved? Please reach out, we’d love to hear from you.

Thanks,

The Map Chat Crew

Eri twitter, blog, and patreon

Pat Eyler: Foot of the Mountain Adventures on twitter -  blog & patreon

Abigail LaLonde: Alien_Sunset on twitter, Artstation & Patreon

Patrick McGill: Role_Play_Craft on Twitter & 9thKeyPress on Instagram

Nathan Usselman: Usselmaps on Twitter & Instagram

Update - March Results - the Crypt of the Doomed Warrior

• Abigail - https://www.patreon.com/posts/map-chat-crew-of-25713896
• Eri - https://corruptedquill.com/2019/03/31/crypt-of-the-lost-holds/
• Pat - https://footofthemountainadventures.blogspot.com/2019/03/crypt-of-doomed-warrior.html
• Patrick -  https://twitter.com/Role_Play_Craft/status/1111689681626902528
• Nathan - https://twitter.com/usselmaps/status/1127690515921522688 (pt 1)

Favorite Posts

As I continue to post maps and other game-aids, I thought it would be useful to flag a few favorites so that they're easy to find.  I'll update this page on occasion to include more recent items.  You can always start by learning about me.


Maps:

• A Last Night in an Unquiet Home
• The Caves of the Trickster God
• the Crypt of the Doomed Warrior
• The Knot and the Node
• The Pennyworth Mine 
• The Rat Warren Mine
• Roomscapes in a Ruined Castle 
• Roomscape Temple

Other Stuff:

• Spell Variations
• Sentient Weapons
• 4d4 Minor Magic Weapons 

Collections:

• Roomscapes
• Overland mini-maps  
• Underdark mini-maps 
• 1500 Twitter Followers 
• 1000 Twitter Followers
• MapChatCrew
• The Best Left Buried Collection 

My patrons help to fund these and many other things, and get access to a number of maps, magic, and other game aids each month.  If you'd like to help out, consider becoming a patron for as little as $1 a month.  

Hvalrif - a Myrkland settlement on the Underdark sea

Hvalrif (whale rib) is a small Viking settlement on the underdark sea. When @DungeonsPossums mentioned this setting on his blog I fell in love with it and decided I needed to start drawing some maps.

The higher side of the island is the setting for a small graveyard, fenced with whale ribs. The settlement itself is bounded by an embankment offering some protection.  There are several homes and a two-story watchtower. Just outside the embankment lies an inanimate orca skeleton.

Three longships hail from Hvalrif, one or two are generally at sea. At least one is always at the island to provide security.  Another defense the island enjoys is the pod of animated whale skeletons that live in the waters around the island.

Skeletal Whale
Frequency: Rare
No. Encountered: 1d8
Size: Large (30-40 ft long)
Move: 180 ft swimming
Armour Class: 4
Hit Dice: 12
Attacks: 1 bite or 1 tail
Damage: 8d4 (bite), 3d8 (tail)
Special Attacks: Swallow Whole
Special Defences:
  Immune to cold, sleep, charm, hold and other mental based attacks.
  Cutting weapons do ½ damage
  Piercing weapons do 1d2 damage
Magic Resistance: Standard
Lair Probability: Nil
Intelligence: Low
Alignment: Neutral
Level/XP: 13/ 1900 + 16/hp
Skeletal whales can “swallow” their prey, holding them in their mouth and diving to disgorge them at greater depth.  They attack the living, seeking to knock sailors into the water where they can be attacked directly or left to drown. The villagers on Hvalrif have trimmed their boats with whale ribs on the bow and stern, which keeps the skeletal whales from attacking them.  Anyone in the water will be attacked as normal, nearby whale bones or no.

Thanks to my patrons over at https://www.patreon.com/mountainfoot  - their sponsorship makes it possible for me to make more of my maps publicly available and re-usable.  If you'd like to help, and get access to additional maps available for your personal or commercial re-use, please sign up.  Sponsorship levels start at $1 each month.

This map and monster are  available for personal or commercial re-use with attribution. Please let me know if you use them for a personal game, I love to hear that my maps help people enjoy gaming. If you need an actual license with terms, this works for me: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Sentient Weapons

About 2 weeks ago, I posted a question to Twitter -

One of the players in my 1e campaign has acquired an intelligent magic sword and I often overlook "playing" it in game. What tricks do you have for using a sword's personality in-game?

 I got a lot of feedback, and have been putting it into play (pardon the pun.)  Here are four takeaways that stick out to me:

• Make it more visible. Ideas included: put it into your initiative rolls, hang a picture or quick reference card (QRC) from your GM screen
• Flesh it out. Give it more than a name and a purpose. What are its likes, dislikes, and fears? Build a reaction table (or simple AI) for it. Give it some knowledge that could help the party (or misinformation/outdated information that might not help.)
• Plan for it to act. Consider some things that it might do or say in a given situation, record these on its QRC.
• (Unrelated, but worthwhile) Put together some lore.  Think about what players might learn about the magic item from a sage, Legend Lore spell, or similar.

I've put together a format that I'm using for magic items going forward.  I'm currently working on some items for my patreon, and having a template makes it so much better.  Here's what it looks like:

Name:

Description:

Special Purpose: 

5e Specific:

   Sentience:

   Abilities:

1e Specific:

   Alignment 

   Int:     Ego:      Personality: 

   Special Abilities:

   Speaks: Common, Orcish, & Ogrish.

Personality:

Mannerisms:

Lore:

Notes:

Thanks to my patrons over at https://www.patreon.com/mountainfoot  - their sponsorship makes it possible for me to make more stuff publicly available and re-usable.  If you'd like to help, and get access to additional maps available for your personal or commercial re-use, please sign up.  Sponsorship levels start at $1 each month.

1000 Twitter Followers

Now that I've hit 1000 followers on twitter, I'm releasing a special map. Friends are helping my celebrate by publishing 1-page(ish) adventures based on the map.  So far, there are 2 5E versions, a 1E version (by me), and a Savage Worlds version.  If you'd like to play along, please drop me a line to let me know where your adventure is posted and I'll link it here.  If you post it on Twitter, use the hashtag #FootOfTheMountain1000

Here's the map:

 And here are the adventures I know about:

• mine - Beneath The Ruins
• Magic Goblin's - the Lost Temple of Raekor
• Scriv the Bard's - The Shifting Keep
• Black Tome Press' -Blackshatter Grotto
• EmilyJeaSmith's - Queen of the Deep
• Wereoctopus - Sea Cave of the Selkie
• JellyMuppet - The Monster and the Monk

Thanks to my patrons over at https://www.patreon.com/mountainfoot  - their sponsorship makes it possible for me to make more of my maps publicly available and re-usable.  If you'd like to help, and get access to additional maps available for your personal or commercial re-use, please sign up.  Sponsorship levels start at $1 each month.

This map is available for personal or commercial re-use with attribution. Please let me know if you use it for a personal game, I love to hear that my maps help people enjoy gaming. If you need an actual license with terms, this works for me: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/