Made some changes to the map for added clarity.(Click to make it bigger).
Obviously what the little pictures for each room are supposed to be will be more clear once the map gets keyed, but the basic idea of how the rooms connect to one another should be pretty clear. Lemme know if anything's hard to understand.
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Edited--thanks to Roger the GS for pointing out I had a stairwell going the wrong way.
14 comments:
The sidebar helps a lot to clarify what exactly we're looking at. Good idea that.
I would assume that the book will have some kind of explanation of what staircases and doors look like -- again assuming you're going to be using the same kind of imagery throughout -- as things like that staircase in the top left could easily be mistaken for an artistic flourish without such guidance.
I love this format. It's innovative, but also intuitive, to the extent that it could work without descriptive text. You could get some interesting variants through different interpretations of the images; (e) might contain a nest of snakes in one game, but one massive python in another. Brilliant.
Sorry, the staircase in the top-right.
@ kelvin
yeah, there'll be a legend showing which symbols mean what.
and yeah, the lines that show where staircases go are staircase-shaped just so that they don't get lost in the mass of other lines racing around the page.
if you look at the first draft you'll see two of the lines are staircasey and one isn't and that right hand path is less obvious.
This change helped me understand it a lot better too. When I saw the original map, I got a pretty good sense of the rooms, but not how they were connected (despite the obvious doors). But with the addition of the simple floor guide on the left, it makes 100% more sense to me.
Immediately intuitive.
Ah yes, I see what you mean. It's more obvious in this one.
Much improved - I didn't really get the first one.
Still a little unclear about which way the steps go - if I have it correct,
stairs from J go "west" then turn and head "east" into G;
stairs from G appear to head down but then go up to A (this is a little baffling);
stairs from F head "east" then turn and enter room B going "west" ... is that all correct?
It's a really awesome and original approach to mapping. Unlike many other common approaches it manages to immediately evoke the atmosphere and flavor of the setting.
@roger
the lines between the stairs are just meant to show which stairwell leads to which room, they don't represent the physical space the stairs traverse.
Though the stairs on the right of G should be leading up--good catch.
There's a variety of things I like about it, but one is the relationship to real-world medieval maps. They often consisted of drawings with lines connecting them, with little attempt to convey actual scale or exact direction.
If I ever get around to making the Castle Ghormenghast supplement I've had kicking around in my head for years, this is EXACTLY how I'd want the maps to look.
I don`t like the door symbol or the representation of stairs.
I think I`d prefer it if different floors or levels were more separate.
Awesome. I like the level notation on the side. I posted a link to the early post over at storygames. Looking forward to the book!
I this is great - anything that confused me last time is clear here.
I think this is an awesome idea, Zac! Making the maps cool pieces of functional art in their own right serves as a great source of potential inspiration for the DM. This is something I use my collection of old modules for all the time.
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