Tag: Top-down map

Free dungeon map – the Malign Marathon

In the mood for a classic dungeon crawl but don’t have a map? Please feel free to use this old-school style top-down dungeon map to get started. Fill it whatever monsters, treasure and traps you like and throw your players in there! I call it the Malign Marathon but that’s just a working title – call it whatever you want.

The map is completely free for personal use, I just ask that you do not publish it elsewhere without my consent. The resolution is 300 dpi so it will look good if you want to print it even in large size.

Download link (300 dpi .png file)

marathon_dungeon_map_webDownload

How to populate the dungeon – example rooms

It’s really up to you how you want to populate the dungeon. Use your imagination. If you want a little help to start here are a few ideas to get you going. Use them as inspiration or come up with somtehing completely different.

Room 1 of the Marathon dungeon - the Lobby.
Room 2 of the Marathon dungeon.
Room 3 of the Marathon dungeon - skeletal guards.
Rooms 4 and 5 of the Marathon dungeon.
Rooms 6 and 7 of the Marathon dungeon.
Room 9 - the mimic mimic.

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Medieval fantasy inn map

Since my map of the Nightfall Lodge became quite popular I though I’d expand a bit on it and create a “template” inn map. Use it to create your own inn, tavern or lodge for your fantasy campaign.

I’ve added top-down maps/floor plans for the floors above the surface. Whatever is going on below you’ll have to come up with on your own 🙂

Feel free to download and print this map. I’ve intentionally left some blank space on it for you to add your own notes. The sign is also left empty for you to fill in with a hairy pig, drunken beaver or whatever other colorful representation you want to give your inn.

Free download link

Here’s the download link. The file is a 300 dpi png image in a4 format, so should be quite suitable for printing.

medieval fantasy inn mapDownload

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If you like my stuff and want to give me a tip to cheer me on, please click the button below. I don’t make a living on drawing (I wish!), so don’t feel comitted to do so, though. I use the tip I get either for art supplies, supporting other creators or a beer or two at the local pub.

The Black Tomb of the Wight Knight

The Black Tomb of the Wight Knight is a short dungeon that should be suitable for a night of D&D adventuring. I haven’t written a lot of information on the dungeon itself, other than what you see in the image so it’s up to the dungeon master to make it her own adventure!

I have a loose idea about nearby villagers sacrificing people on the big stone slab by the “entrance”, pouring blood down the shaft to keep the wight knight calm and content.

The giant skull in the chamber below could be made of stone, or even the remains of an ancient creature. Either way it should set the tone of this eerie and grim place.

Feel free to download the image and print it for your own campaign, like always my content is free for personal use. I just ask you not to publish it elsewhere without my written consent. Enjoy!

Free download (300 dpi .png file)

black_tomb_white_knight_dungeon_mapDownload

Support my work – buy me a beer

If you like my stuff and want to give me a tip to cheer me on, please click the button below. Please note that tipping is appreciated, but not expected. Don’t donate if you’re short on cash, I’m sharing content because I like to, not to make money.

Science fiction moonscape map for “Lycaon”

This map was made as a commission for the novel Lycaon by author Wes Parker. Here’s the blurb:

Harvey Howlett, Astronaut and Robotics Technician is nearing the end of his six-month rotation on the surface of the moon. What started as a dream mission quickly turned into a nightmare when Harvey finds a woman from a neighboring base covered in blood and wandering the lunar surface.

The woman's appearance raises a few questions that are quickly answered when Harvey and his team come face to face with a horrible monstrosity...

WEREWOLVES...IN SPACE...

I love drawing science fiction themed maps, and especially retro-futuristic, pulp or horror sci-fi. Illustrating this map was a lot of fun, and I’m really quite pleased with the outcome.

The hardest thing with moonscape maps it that the “palette” is kind of limited to rocks and craters. This goes for any barren landscape map, really. Such maps can easily get a bit monotonous and uninspiring. However, for this map I got the opportunity to play around a bit with the different space stations as points of interest. By not doing them to scale, but rather as map symbols/illustrations, I could add some simple architectural features. I also chose to add curvature and a starry sky to the top of the map. This brings contrast and frames the map quite nicely. These are just a couple of tips and tricks on how to make a barren map more interesting and aesthetically pleasing to look at.

Lycaon is published on 20th of October 2021, just in time for Halloween. You can pre-order it for Amazon Kindle now.

More science fiction maps

I’ve done quite a lot of sci-fi maps, expecially for my Termination Shock setting. Here are a few samples:

The Deepwood Lodge logger’s camp

I made this map for a short horror adventure I ran with my players. Deepwood Lodge is a logger’s camp and lumber mill located along the river in the the outskirts of Deepwood. The adventure was inspired by horro movies such as The Thing and Dawn of the Dead. It all started when a fungus infected, zombie-like lumberjack came floating down the river all tangled up in a timber raft, crashing into Fourtower Bridge.

The adventurers were tasked by Majken the cleric to investigate a remote logger’s camp called the Deepwood Lodge, about a day’s march upstream. At the scene they discovered the lumberjacks had been infected by some type of necrotic fungi, killing them and reviving them as undead.

I might write out the full adventure at some point, but as for now I don’t have an active InDesign subscription so that will have to wait. Until then, please feel free to use the maps with your own gaming group.

Maps of the logging camp:

I have prepared two maps for you. The first map has a legend to fit into the Fourtower Bridge campaign environment. The other map is without legend (and I have removed the dead body laying on the ground), so you can modify it to fit your own campaign. Both are free for personal use. Click the links below to download the maps as .png image files.

Overland map of Fourtower Bridge and its surroundings
An overland map of the Fourtower Bridge campaign environment

Support my work – buy me a beer

If you like my stuff and want to give me a tip to cheer me on, please click the button below. Please note that tipping is appreciated, but not expected. Don’t donate if you’re short on cash, I’m sharing content because I like to, not to make money.

VANADIS-13NE Space station blueprint

Vanadis-13NE is a manned space station in orbit of Neptune. It’s main purpose is to scan for information about Neptune and it’s moons, but also to pick up radio signals from space and monitor astronomical phenomena in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. It was built by the Swedish Space Agency in 2090 and deployed shortly after, it is currently the only earth construction in Neptune’s orbit.

Vanadis has a crew of four scientists who typically serve for 24 months on overlapping rotations. It can host another 10-12 people in temporary quarters when needed, and other earth ships may dock to replenish supplies and get help with repairs. It get’s lonely out there, so the crew of Vanadis-13NE are happy to welcome guests whenever possible.

Termination Shock

This map was made for the Termination Shock campaign concept, click here to read more about it.

Boulder Dash – rolling boulder dungeon trap

Traps should be unfair, deadly and combined. The poor sods triggering the boulder trap (by opening the doors) will get a chance to dive into the alcoves for cover. Too bad for them the alcoves are really pit traps.

Depending on your playstyle, you can either let players roll suitable saving throws (such as reflex or vs. breath) to avoid the different traps, or you could go for the more grim approach of OSR games – “no saves, if you didn’t look for traps it’s on you”.

You could also reward clever, quick and creative thinking, spellcasting, etc.

Players who approach this situation carefully, examining the alcoves, should be able to find the pit traps, and perhaps realize something sinister awaits them on the other side of the door. I would probably not allow the mechanism of the rolling boulder trap to be found, but that’s really up to you as the dungeon master.

I didn’t have a specific reward in mind for surviving this situation, but if you want, there could of course be a hidden cache or an important inscription behind the boulder.

Option: you could also decide that the boulder is an illusion, and enjoy watching the player characters needlessly throw themselves into the pit traps 😀

Draw your own maps!

Would you like to draw your own maps? It’s a lot of fun! I’ve done several tutorials to help you get started. Check them out here!

The Scarbrough family crypt – dungeon map

In the spirit of Halloween, I drew this map picturing the horrible crypt of the depraved Scarbrough family. Should provide a spooky adventure location for dungeon masters wanting to add a little horror to their campaign.

The crypt is the final (un)resting place of the noble Scarbrough family. These awful people terrorized the countryside in life, and continues to do so in death.

In their mansion in the moorlands, the Scarbroughs practised foul necromancy and other perversities. Lord Edgar Scarbrough and his cousin and wife Elsbeth had five children, each newborn more sinister and depraved than the previous – culminating in little Pamela who’s cruelty became the stuff of moorlands legend.

The family sealed their fate in a grand ceremony, the “Scarbrough Bloodbath”, where they murdered the villagers of Worthon and reanimated them as ghouls, and then committed ritual suicide in the family crypt. The newly risen ghouls buried the Scarbroughs according to their instructions, and then sealed the crypt.

The ghouls of Scarbrough estate roam the vicinity of the mansion and attacks (and eats) any intruders, keeping the crypt safe from inquisitors and grave robbers alike. The ghosts of the family haunt the countryside, and most feared of them all is little Pamela – commonly referred to as “the tooth fairy”.

Click here for a larger version of the map

Click here for a version without the legend

Medieval fantasy castle map

A medieval fantasy castle map I drew using the same techniques described in these tutorials:

I added a side view to this map, mainly because I think top-down maps of large structures can be a bit hard to interpret. The side view is also a useful tool for the dungeon master to show the players when describing the scene.

Arcane Chambers and Svart Grift dungeon map

I decided to merge two of my previous dungeon maps – the Arcane Chambers and Svart Grift tomb. I also took the opportunity to add some illustrations to set the scene for whatever adventures awaits in this dark place.

These maps work well together, as they are both leaning quite heavily towards dark fantasy, somewhat bordering horror. This asset should work well for OSR-games like Lamentations of the Flame Princess or D&D campaigns set in a grim world.

I hope you enjoy the result!

Click here for a larger image!

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