How to design (and illustrate) a map for your adventure setting

I've designed and illustrated one map for Bazaar of the Gods, so take my advice with as much scepticism as that warrants. But I made a lot of mistakes, which you don't have to make! All my suffering will not be in vain.

Illustrating the map is in itself pure vanity. Functionally speaking, you don't need much more than a diagram. Like the one used in Electric Jungle Jam. If you're planning on playing the Bazaar of the Gods module, maybe you want to skip this devlog as the magic will most certainly be ruined by the mundane mistakes and trickery that went into the final product. Enjoy the magic of the module, then come back and read this. 

Diagram of a dungeon

Source: Electric Jungle Jam by Goblin Goulash

I started with diagram like this one. Resisting the temptation to start pulling out refence photos and looking at all the cool things I wanted to draw into my adventure map, I started with a boring (but very functional) diagram. What things absolute need to be on the map and where do they need to go in relation to each other? When plotting this, I kept in mind some of the principles of 'Jaquaysing' dungeons. Considerations of Jaquaying I put on the forefront were:

• Multiple entrances
• Loops
• Multiple level connections

Bazaar of the Gods, is a Floating Fleefair which I decided would be an exclusive market in the sky, but in terms of a setting I approached it as if it were simply a dungeon. First gameplay decision was therefore that they wouldn't let just anyone in, giving the players a challenge and multiple ways to address it. Obviously, it is an adventure, so we don't want the entering to be prohibitive (or even worse... boring), but there are multiple entrances they can explore and the one they choose will also shape their interactions with the rest of the adventure and NPCs.

Once they were on the Floating Flea fair, the various landmarks needed to be placed in interesting configurations to each other. I didn't want it to be a linear dungeon, I spent a lot of time refining the encounters and NPCs, I wanted the players to have the biggest chance to interact with them in interesting ways, so they needed to be organised with that in mind. I wanted the ruler's palace to overlook the main square. That would give the GM a (literal) platform to showcase the ruler of the Bazaar, but also give the players an obstacle to climb (up to his Palace) or an asset to use (by for example speaking from that platform themselves). Essentially, the landmarks needed to be more than just pretty images, they needed to provide fodder for the player to play with and interact with. Because honestly, otherwise what is the point of an illustrated map? If the visuals don't add to the possibilities, you can just give them the diagram. The advantage of the map is the hope that the players' creativity can be sparked with some additional detail. I remember the time when the GM offhandedly mentioned there was a wooden statue of a goblin in front of the inn. That statue became a central point of player interactions, where we dressed it up, we plated it in gold, and we remembered that statue (more than the whole adventure to be completely honest - sorry GM).

From Dungeon Diagram to Illustration

I wanted them to be encouraged to visit all landmarks. And here I borrow a bit from video game design - where they are very good at leading players to a point of interest. To craft that organic feeling, I used multiple level connections to make it more interesting and organic. Also giving players a number of ways to access the various levels. E.g. take the waterfall down from Class Cruisers, take the stairs through the Palace, climb down onto the Hand of God.

Many routes to and from Class Cruisers
Source: Bazaar of the Gods by Goblin Goulash

So after devising the many ways they could enter (and the many ways I wanted them to be able to interact with the environment), I had to depict them on the map. Which sounds pretty easy, but I quickly encountered another problem due to my lack of experience. All the landmarks should be visible on the map. While initially that sounds obvious, in reality when depicting it, it can become weird. How is it that all coincidentally, all the important buildings are facing the 'camera.'  Unfortunately, there isn't much to be done about this, so I just rolled with it in the end, but you have to make it seem sort of natural and that comes down to feeling and spacing of the landmarks.

Using Silhouettes to Find the Shape of the Map

It all starts with the first question, so the Floating Fleefair is a floating island, but what does that mean. Is it a flat disk, a rock, is it on the back of the Great A'tuin? In my first sketches, I was exploring the possible shapes that could fit all my important landmarks and keep them interesting and related to each other.  I was having a lot of trouble finding a shape that could accommodate the key landmarks and approaches. I wanted a place overlooking the square, I wanted a square around the Hand of God statue, I wanted an Inn, I wanted underground burrows and I needed to shape that could accommodate all these while not looking ridiculous or 'unrealistic'. 

Initial shape sketches - small and lose to find the right shape

The silhouette was also on my mind. I remember a Design Cinema Episode where Fen Zhu explained that silhouette's were especially important in games because the player has to know what they are looking at within a fraction of a second. And while he was talking about first-person shooters and I suppose when evaluating a floating island over the desert, there is less urgency in deciding whether it should be shot at. In the end settling on the silhouette also help settle the interaction and the interlinking between the various key areas of the story. 

Then I roughed out the buildings and some of the landmarks. 

It was almost like carving out the buildings from the rough shape. As you can see the rough locations remained the same, but the details of the buildings did change. Considerations prompting these changes were mostly due to homogenizing the styles as it was looking too chaotic. I wanted it to mix Byzantine architecture and junktown containers, but this become a bit jarring and chaotic on paper. Therefore, it was a bit more homogenized. It needs to seem like it exists in the same world, and putting too many diverging styles in just makes a chaotic soup. Again great advice from Feng Zhu: 

For each project, keep your drawing and painting styles consistent. More importantly, you must keep your design languages uniform.

And my daughter kindly helped with a few touches of her own. These did not make it into the final version of the map.

Not so isometric after all

With all that settled (and a highly recommend settling all that before rendering) it was time to render the map. My initial intention was to make it an isometric map. Inspired by Niklas Wistedt's Paths Peculiar (who if you don't know you should 100% look up - he's also way more experienced at maps than I am), and many Shadowrun games, I thought isometric was the way to go. But I encountered two problems with this. 

1. Isometric would make the map surface even bigger
2. My initial sketch was nowhere near isometric

Fitting a small city on an A4 is already a challenge, but isometric art is specifically designed to have the most visibility of all the objects in the scene. Objects don't scale with distance and all 'tiles' are the same size, so that would mean that each part would take up more space on the page. This is less of an issue with a digital map, where we travel along with the camera, but with a fixed A4 page size to work with that paper real estate is at a premium. And this is probably why when doing the initial sketch I was very far off from isometric perspective, making my groundwork sketch pretty useless for anything but planning. I decided to simply go with a simple 2-point perspective that to the naked eye could come close to being seen as isometric. So if you want to do isometric, take this into account early on. Use an isometric grid to help you even with the initial sketches and take into account the extra space you will need.

So Many Details in the Map

I had the sketch down and I decided on my vanishing points and I was ready to work on the linework. I had been warned about the level of detail by David, but I was optimistic. Each detail that needed to be rendered takes time. That's understandable, obvious even. But I love detail, I love reading comic books with wonderfully rendered and detailed backgrounds. And they are great, but each building as a huge amount of detail and there are a lot of buildings. One detailed object is fine, a city-worth of detailed objects gets out of hand quickly. I simplified the initial details and still was left with too many. While, I'm happy with the result, I'm not sure the time invested in all the tiny details are worth the end result. It will help to decide at an early stage the level of detail you'll be wanting to achieve. A map can look very good with little detail, but keeping this in mind when designing is important because it needs to be balanced.  Having one building super-detailed and the other buildings of the city drawn with less detail will give it an inconsistent look and this will be jarring for the average player. 

Want to see how it worked you can download and try out Bazaar of the Gods. Want more 1-page modules, we've got them!

Keep me company on BSky and/or Instagram.

How to Create a Pamphlet Module in a Day

Two quick disclaimers up front: 

1. We will be recommending some books down the line. We are not affiliated with Games Omnivorous. This is not a sponsored post. We just love what they are putting out there. 
2. There will be no playtesting! We are churning out a whole module in a day, and we don't have time for naysayers or pesky players complaining about our mirror puzzle (more on that later).

What are we doing?

We aim to create a 3-fold pamphlet module similar to the ones you can see on the Goblin Goulash itch.io page. These are small self-contained adventures, playable in one or two sessions. 

The Secrets of the Lunar Octant title card from our itch.io page

A bit more specifically, here we chronicle the creation of The Secrets of  the Lunar Octant, available here: https://goblingoulash.itch.io/lunar-octant

This module was created during the Malta Global Game Jam in a little over one day. Originally, the idea was to triple up and create three of these pamphlets in parallel with my fellow creators in the Goblin Goulash collective. The initial plan was this:

1. Write the core ideas alone
2. Iterate on it in a group
3. Go back to finishing the writing alone
4. Get a last round of critique
5. Go into production mode: layout, art, etc.

In reality, we managed to create The Secrets of the Lunar Octant and were halfway through Mad Honey Jam when the pens were down. Still not bad.

 

The Bottled Sea

Probably the greatest boost to our speed is working with an established setting/framework. Both of the aforementioned pamphlets were published for use with the Bottled Sea setting created by Games Omnivorous. Working with a setting like this is great because we don't have to figure out a lot of the big-picture stuff, like factions or major locations. Instead, we can lean into the established setting.

For people who are not familiar with them, the Bottled Sea and Undying Sands are self-contained acid fantasy settings that come with 30-40 beautifully illustrated punch-out hexes which you can use to build an over-land map of the region in a randomized way. They also come with a long list of general encounters, rumours, factions, and most importantly for this exercise: a list of short prompts for every major location. They hit a very nice middle ground, establishing much of the themes, major locations, factions etc. without being overly verbose. In fact, both settings fit on a 3-fold GM screen so it's super easy to cross-reference the different encounter, rumour, and location tables.

With the introduction out of the way, let's start jamming!

The Bottled Sea has 18 named locations, so we bust out a trusty d20 and let fate decide — one less thing to think about. We roll 13 and get the following prompts (the Bottled Sea has two locations on one hex):

The Lunar Octant. A resplendent flotilla of futuristic sextants, octants, and astrolabes. Two bumbling scholars seek to unravel its mysteries. If used, players may draw three hexes and place one on the map. They may also re-roll Weather once in the future. The Lunar Octant can only be used at night, when the stars are out. 

A battalion of Manta Rays encircle these waters. Travel takes double time and risks an Encounter. The rays will alert the party to the encounter if their behaviour is observed. 

We use both of the prompts, turning the second one into an encounter table when the players approach the hex, and expanding the first one into a full-fledged location. 

We also check the corresponding hex, because the art usually gives good inspiration and this is the thing the players see before the module starts — if you are using our modules with the established setting.

The hex art by Games Omnivorous from the back of our pamphlet

Planning Ahead

While it is not always helpful to start writing with the layout in mind, because we are working with both limited time AND limited space here, we set up a crude template for the pamphlet content. In the template, we see the available space already while doing the write-up. Hopefully, this keeps us on track. 

My advice here is to hit a middle ground. Don't worry about how much content you produce for the first draft (it's always easier to cut and edit than to write). But also don't go too overboard, if you go over 3 pages for a 2-page pamphlet for the draft, you are just writing for the paper bin. With this said you can find the template here.

It is also good to keep in mind what are the main components we need for a module. In our case, we have this checklist:

1. Front Cover

We only put the title, our logo, and the cover art here. It is a limitation decided on the get-go and it informs how much space we will have for content.

2. Back Cover

Here we will have some flavour text (to be filled out last) and the main plot hooks. The Bottled Sea comes in handy again for the plot hooks, as it provides four different factions. We simply create a hook for each of them. No matter which faction the players are aligned with they always have an excuse to visit the hex. (Again, it is best to leave this for last.)

3. Travel Encounter

We decide early to turn one of the aforementioned prompts into a travel encounter you can throw at the players when they approach the hex. We reserve the inside flap for this, which leaves us one page for the main content.

4. The Twist

These small one-shot modules usually need one good twist that makes them unique. It can be a puzzle, a clever NPC interaction, an interesting dungeon layout — you name it! You can use this twist to organize the whole adventure around. You can sprinkle interactions and small locations around the module to point back to your twist to make the experience more coherent.

The Reality

This is all nice and well — but in reality, when planning this module, we do change the twist as we go. The first idea revolves around the two scholars we know will be there based on the prompt. Originally we want them to bicker about how to operate the machinery around them — maybe resetting each other's progress. Consequently, we make them with conflicting personalities. Unfortunately, we can't come up with a clever way to "gamify" their interactions with each other and with the environment. And that's okay. We chug along; leave the scholars for now and later we come up with a mirror puzzle for our Twist instead (more on that later).

Drafts

I am a visual type so I always find it helpful to start doodling when I feel that I'm stuck with writing. Just trying to lay out the environment to get the gears turning. While being stuck on the core puzzle of the adventure, I start doodling and after a few minutes come up with this crude sketch:

Draft of the Lunar Octant

Beautiful! Well at least from the outlined shapes we can divine the main locations at the hex. We name them 1) Observatory Tower 2) Celestial Sextant 3) Great Telescope 4) Platearium (why not?) 5) The Deck (we are really running out of ideas here) and 6) Diving Bell. 

We have a good argument with my fellow creators. "Why diving bell?" To be honest, I doodled an egg shape and thought it would be cool to have it as a diving bell. But fret not, the rule of cool trumps everything and you can always find an explanation in hindsight. My explanation? Well achually, Edmond Halley famed astronomer — and namesake for one of my NPCs — also invented a diving bell. You see it's a very clever easter egg. I am so happy with myself that I will repeat this with William Herschel famed astronomer — and namesake for my other NPC — who is famous for his mirrors. Hence the mirror puzzle (more on that later) in hindsight.

And now we are on a roll, we have all the locations, and we have the theme: 18th-century astronomers — the module now basically writes itself. All we need is a good through-line for the adventure.

The Mirror Puzzle

So since the beginning of this project, we've been joking with my fellow creators that we need a good puzzle — something that is engaging and clever; something that is innovative. Obviously, not something like a mirror puzzle — done a thousand times over; distracting from the fiction; devolves into fiddling with measuring angles on graph paper. In fact, we are so above this that early on we have a note in the draft that Herschel (the NPC) tries to convince the players that the whole adventure is a mirror puzzle; but it is not actually a mirror puzzle.

Well now it's 9pm, we are running out of time, and we do need a puzzle somewhere — the whole location screams of puzzle! Fuck it. We are doing a mirror puzzle. Deadlines are looming; I start laying out a mini-dungeon for the Great Telescope — telescopes have mirrors, right? It is not an amazing dungeon map; it is very linear but I at least make it vaguely telescope-shaped. 

The map of the Great Telescope laid out in Dungonscrawl

Arnold Kemp's words ring in my ear as I decide to interpret "mirror puzzle" in the vaguest way possible and just fill my map with an assortment of man-sized lenses and wall-sized mirrors — none of which makes a workable mirror puzzle. I am a big fan of a style of OSR design where puzzles are either incomplete or just have the vague shape of a puzzle. There is no way to push players towards the "one correct solution" because the scenario has no official solutions. It's a mystery to both the GM and the players. It facilitates engaging with the fiction, bending what is possible, and coming up with creative solutions. It does require some leniency from the GM — a lot of "yes and" and a lot of "yes but". I find these puzzles leaning more into the medium of TTRPGs, rather than brain teasers with a set solution or "board gamey" puzzles that hinge on rules (like skill checks or abilities). 

So with this in mind, here is my "shape" gesturing towards a mirror puzzle: 

1. I set up a small map with nonsensical mirrors and lenses. Even on a cursory look they don't make any sense and don't line up at all.
2. To make the "puzzle" unmissable, I triple up on the clues: one of the NPCs mentions a "mirror puzzle" and orients the players towards it; the other NPC sets the players on a quest that rewards them with two large mirrors; finally, I put a translatable instruction in the Observatory Tower that plainly explains what to do.
3. I make sure that every encounter table has a mirror on it. And make a point of covering one of the locations (Planetarium) in "reflective disks".

This way the players have plenty of options and the goal is clear. The puzzle is not figuring out "what to do", but figuring out "how to do it" with missing or imperfect components. As a final "yes, but" I also add one major hurdle in reaching the puzzle — a monstrous slug that can paralyze the players.

As a sidenote about said slug: note that the text says "It excretes a substance which can paralyze a person for 1d6 hours" instead of "its attack has a chance of paralyzing the players". It is always a good idea to create obstacles that could be turned into boons under different conditions. Sure the slug is a huge obstacle but what if the players can somehow safely store some of that paralyzing slime? It might come in handy later.

Similarly to the Great Telescope, the other half of the puzzle involves a missing Projection Sphere (a MacGuffin). Depending on their allegiances, the players are explicitly visiting the hex to find one. However, the sphere is missing with no clear directions on where to get a genuine one — leaving the players to improvise if they want to use the Observatory Tower. This is another type of weird puzzle, one that has all the well-defined necessary components but some are inexplicably missing. Just like puzzles without a canonical solution, these puzzles force players to think outside the box as well.

Art and Inspiration

Probably the best tool out there for making professional-looking dungeons is Dungeon Scrawl. As you can see in the figure above, even a sketched-out dungeon looks perfectly good, it basically only needs some labels and we are good to go.

For the rest of the art, we go to Unsplash, Pixabay, and Wikimedia Commons. They are a great source for royalty-free pictures including photos, sketches, and vector art. The challenge with working with royalty-free pictures is keeping a consistent style. In this case, I hack the problem by relying heavily on old woodcuts. Because of the style and fidelity of these old illustrations, they generally blend together very well. 

All the components for bashing the Lunar Octant together

The figure above shows how the different illustrations come together to make the vague shape I sketched out the beginning. To round out the "dungeon map" of the Great Telescope, I also swipe an illustration of a slug in a more-or-less matching style from Pixabay — and I add some labels to the map as well. While rummaging around for illustrations, I also find our cover art on Wikimedia — a woodcut of two astronomers observing the sky with an octant from Johannes Hevelius's "Machinae Coelestis: Pars Prior" (1673). Perfect!

Finishing Touches

The only thing left now is to tie everything back together with the established setting. We go back and write the adventure hooks, giving each faction a reason to send the players to the hex. This can be something as simple as a callback to something on an encounter table (e.g. the Shepherds are after the fabled Gargantuan Manta Ray from the d6 Things Hiding Among the Manta Rays table) or something more complex (e.g. the Collectors looking for a Projection Sphere which plays a major role in the core puzzle of the module). After this, we write a short flavour text.

Done! A pamphlet in more-or-less a day. While most of the write-up and the art was a solo project, I had constant conversations with my fellow creators at Goblin Goulash, who gave feedback on the content, helped with figuring out details, and proofread the docs. In the meantime, they were taking the lead on other projects — including the draft of the Mad Honey Jam and the map for The Bazaar of the Gods.

Final touches to the itch.io page

Once the templates on Google Docs helped us definining the basic layout with the main spaces where we needed art, and the general flow of the document. All was left to lay it out and put everything together. Once we have the PDF, we go through our itch.io checklist quick:

• Cover Image (630x500): We grabbed a free 3-fold pamphlet mockup template for this.
• 3 Preview Images (877x620): For this we just double the Cover Image — because it won't show up on the game's page otherwise — and add two low-res previews of the pamphlet spreads.
• Banner Image (960x400): This is optional but the game page looks much better with a graphic title.
• Google Fonts: Save the names! You can set itch to the same fonts to match the pamphlet.
• Content: A quick introduction to the game.
• Attributions: In our Hexomnivorous pamphlets we obviously give attribution to Games Omnivorous but also give shoutouts for the people who created/compiled the free art assets — this is optional, technically all images can be used without attribution but it's good praxis.

That's it! Published! Have fun!

Check out the finished product on the Goblin Goulash itch.io page!