Thank you, Mandy...
Hey DMs! Here are some city maps you can re-key for your campaign--
just write "New Haven Performing Arts Center"="Mages Guild Headquarters" and "Pine Ave."="Street of White Death" or whatever. Click pics for bigger JPEGS.
Then, at the end, turn it around and watch your players be all "Holy shit, we were in Toronto all along..."
Toronto's NOT a scary place?
ReplyDeleteAfter a visit to San Francisco some years back all of the super prisons on my Mutants & Masterminds games are based on the map of Alcatraz you get while on the tour.
ReplyDeleteI love maps.
the historic new haven green looks like a huge summoning circle! freaky!
ReplyDeleteThat's not Moscow btw. but St. Petersburg.
ReplyDeleteI know--thus the St. Peterseberg hotel. It's just whoever named the file didn't know that.
ReplyDeleteBoobs!!... I mean Maps!!! Love the restaurant map, Just change the words after the frog like this: "BBEG Approved" Lair 'Minion Map' [Year in Game World Here]
ReplyDeleteIt's like the perfect underground complex get away!
I really like the guy who does these personalized maps for A Game of Thrones. I think their even better then the one's in the books!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.westeros.org/Citadel/Gallery/Entry/1362/
I like the "Dragon Crossing" on the south lake, tx map.
ReplyDeleteI've been meaning to use St. Petersberg as a fantasy city map for ages. Great layout.
ReplyDeleteI've got a big folio-type book of 19th century city maps. One day I'll try to scan 'em all in...
Grid-iron street plans? *ick*
ReplyDeleteNothing says Olde World to me quite like winding, illogical streets evolved from cattle tracks heading to the ford or crag-top castle. Maybe with a lost and lonely bit of grid-iron rationalisation thrown in here and there.
That said, the idea of palatte-swapping a city you already know is a good labour-saving device (and those are always good).
PS: "Rancor know what Rancor like." :)
I had the same thought, but this is a game where the players don't see the map--I figure you just tell the players "the road winds and corkscrews southish".
ReplyDeleteOr throw the thing into a photoshop "distort" filter after you've keyed it.
Or try to find a big, detailed building-by-building tourist map of london or tokyo--but that;s not as easy as you;d think...
#1) Boston has a great street layout (i.e., no discernible street layout whatsoever) for this.
ReplyDelete#B) My. Those are scrumtrilescent.
-DYA
2 years ago I translated Microlite 20 into German. It was published as a digest sized booklet, a free introductory RPG for anime fans. (All artwork were ads/screenshots of an anime feature film my employer had licensed; the game was a marketing tool to herald the cinema release.)
ReplyDeleteBecause of the newbie target audience I had to include a DM chapter with real short DMing advice. One was along your line of thinking:
When creating adventure locales (dungeons) think of places (buildings) you've been to and describe a fantastical version of them. The gain is twofold: In no time you've got a believable, workable layout/architecture and an immediate grasp of distances, plus the real world purpose of the building may serve as further inspiration (as it could also suggest NPCs/monsters).
Sorry Grognardia and Jeff, but this is my new favorite D&D blog. Very well written. And I love pictures of Star Wars toys.
ReplyDeleteI love the boobs, don't get me wrong, but I have my own set of those. What I DON'T have, however, is that rancor....
ReplyDeleteAnother late post, but Pittsburgh isanother good city if your want lots of twists, hills, bridges, and rivers. A common saying there when people ask for directions is "You can't get there from here". In many cases for a destination less than a mile away, you end up going ten or more miles due to the vagaries of geography, lack of city planning, and road repair.
ReplyDeletebrilliant
ReplyDeleteFriend of mine ran a game in modern Washington DC. I looked at the map and said "Wait, really? Those streets form a five pointed star? Shit. We've summoned demons in the form of politics." Got me thinking about a dungeon which is designed specifically to create evil based solely on geometry.
ReplyDelete