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GAME Setting: Maps

City Maps

Arlinac City

Each guild district is densely packed with buildings. The map of Arlinac City below is drawn without showing each building to avoid an overy busy map.

This map's .svg file, which I created using Inkscape, is here.

Arlinac Mountain Side View

This map's .svg file, which I created using Inkscape, is here.

Adventure Maps

Base and Temple Map

A small secret base has been excavated and built within the Dweorgish ruins under Arlinac City. Down one hallway is an old Dweorgish temple.

The rooms, passages, and stairs are all stone Dweorgish digging. The three large, square rooms have stone counters that are part of the mountain rock, one piece with the floor. The temple's pews, altar, and dias are similarly part of the mountain rock. The doors and cell bars have been recently added.

This map's .svg file, which I created using Inkscape, is here.

The draft of the map was drawn on one of the grid-ruled 3" by 5" cards my wife purchased for me as an anniversary present: the first of many maps that fit into a 15 by 21 grid.

Sewer Black Market

In a place under Arlinac City where a storm drain and sewer meets, members of the Obsidian Association have set up a black market. What vendors work in a place so dimly lit? Do they have incense enhanced with Bergtroll musing or is the shopping unpleasantly fragrant?

This map's .svg file, which I created using Inkscape, is here.

The map was inspired by the Wizards of the Coast map of the week Sewer Pipe Black Market. That map is prettier but needs more locations!

Busy Sewer

The storm drains and under Arlinac City are used by criminals and secret societies, as well as maintenance workers from the Grate family. Rats, spiders, Fell Animals, and Arzens also live there. What lurks in this stretch of storm drain passages, and what is hidden behind the secret doors?

This map's .svg file, which I created using Inkscape, is here.

Dweorg Tomb

Why is the PC entering an old Dweorg tomb?

This map's .svg file, which I created using Inkscape, is here.

The map is nearly identical to the map named The Tomb of Durahn Oakenshield submitted by Dyson Logos for the 2009 One Page Dungeon Contest, which won the "Best Introductary One-Shot" category. All the contest results are available in PDF format here. I bothered to recreate the map in Inkscape because I added two doors and several more numbers on the map, making it difficult to merely refer to that PDF file.

Country Manor Map

What troubles could threaten this serene, country manor? And what are the secret rooms hidden in the basement?

This map's .svg file, which I created using Inkscape, is here.

The map was originally inspired by the Wizards of the Coast map of the week The Haunted Temple, although in its final draft only the patios with pillars bear witness to this.

Wealthy Manor Map

A large home in the city is in trouble!

This map's .svg file, which I created using Inkscape, is here.

The map was originally inspired by the map of the Booth Western Art Museum. In its final draft form the three levels and vague outline of the building still bear witness to this inspiration.

Palisade Tower Map

A tower on a hilltop is surrounded by a wooden palisade. The original, round, stone tower has been augmented with four wooden rooms. Who lives here? What happens in the extensive basement rooms?

This maps' .svg files, which I created using Inkscape, are here and here. The map was an experiment to play with using fill textures created entirely within Inskcape. The verdict is that they are definitely not worth it.

The first draft of the map was inspired by the Wizards of the Coast map of the week The Old Tower.

Unseigable Tunnel Map

Some group has dung a tunnel designed to hold off invaders. Who dug it? What is it protecting? Who inhabits it now, and do they know its secrets?

This map's .svg file, which I created using Inkscape, is here.

Secluded Keep Map

A four-story keep dominates a hedge-bordered yard. But the keep is the least strange thing here!

This map's .svg files, which I created using Inkscape, are here and here.

Warped House Map

An Unseemly has built a strange house in Arlinac City. The fabric of space is bent within its walls! The marked "warps" are locations that directly connect, contrary to standard geometry (they are not places causing teleportation). The furnishings are also odd, and a few rooms contain further examples of broken physics.

This map's .svg file, which I created using Inkscape, is here.

An "Escher Dungeon" is nothing new. The most recent one I have seen, which most directly inspired this one, was Justin Alexander's submission to the 2009 One Page Dungeon Contest, Halls of the Mad Mage. (All of that contest's winning or honorably mentioned entries, compiled into a PDF file, are available at the blogs of Chgowiz or ChattyDM.)

There are seven "special effects" marked on the map. What they do may be changed by the GM. Recommended effects are:

1. Teleportation with Size Change: A hallway in the southwest ends in a door, that unexpectedly opens to a mouse hole in the corner of the kitchen. Passing through the door will cause the appropriate change in size; passing through in the other direction reverses the effect.
2. Endless Hallway: This hallways continues south forever.
3. Mismatched Parallel Hallways: These two hallways should have the same length, but the northern is twice as long as the southern.
4. Teleportation with Size Change: Approaching a fountain in the atrium causes shrinking; leaving the fountain reverses the effect. At the base of the fountain are stairs that emerge not elsewhere on the fountain but atop the wall within the endlessly circling stream.
5. Endlessly Circling Stream: This stream circles counterclockwise, and always appears to be running downhill. There are even small waterfalls at both the north and south ends. A thick, two meter tall wall in the stream's center is painted with strange colors. The walls of the stream's alcove are painted to resemble an outdoor scene, but with a frustratingly improper perspective. The scene actually looks realistic when viewed from atop the wall by someone only an inch tall.
6. Drop from the Walkway: The "tower" in the south corners of the house has three stories connected normally by stairs. However, the three floors are all on the same level as the rest of the house. (This is similar to the warps in which a flight of stairs appears to be going to a new floor but does not.) The tower's third story is ringed by a balcony. There is a fifteen meter drop from the balcony down to the atrium, even though breeching the balcony's other walls would show it to be on the same floor as the atrium.
7. Stage Stairs: Something odd happens when the stairs to the stage are climbed. Perhaps the person shrinks, or the handedness of the world reverses?