![]() Once I had a list of general locations, I made a second list of visual and thematic elements to really get my brain firing. ![]() Room ideas: guard room, training hall, sorcery chambers, library, the black lotus room, central courtyard, meditation chambers, religious shrines. So I draw the maps and write the adventure together right from the start, building upon both in very small stages.įor the map at the top of this article, I started with a kernel of an adventure idea: The characters need to steal a black lotus flower growing inside a monastery guarded by demonic monk-sorcerers.Īs excited as I was to start writing that very Conan-esque adventure, I first needed to make a list of what spaces might exist inside the monastery. At some point you'll need to mesh the map and encounters together, and the longer into the process you wait, the harder it can become. The fact is, maps and adventures designed in isolation from each other are often not harmonious. That random hallway to those four empty rooms suddenly doesn't make sense and forces you to add material that throws off the pacing.įor a control freak like me, that never goes well.The boss room might wind up too close to the scything blades trap room.The map might not merge well with your overall adventure idea.If you had to choose one or the other, I think it's easier to write an adventure to an already existing map. Do you try to write the adventure first and then draw the map to fit it? Or do you draw a map cold before knowing much about the adventure? One of my hangups with maps is the chicken-before-the-egg problem. Even if you write for purely theater-of-the-mind play, you can still benefit from a strong visualization of the locations in your adventure. ![]() If you've ever stared at a blank sheet of grid paper and been totally lost about what to do next, this article is for you! I'm going to show you how I got this:Ī note before we proceed: Not all adventures need maps, but most adventures have some element of site-based exploration. Still, after ungracefully stumbling my way through drafting a lot of maps over the years for publication, I've learned a few ways to ease the process. I might be in the minority here, but I find designing maps to be one of the trickiest parts of adventure writing.
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