The Manix Map: Step One (Waters) & Step Two (Mountains)

Manix: Water & Continental Outlines

Manix: Mountain Ranges & Elevations

My partner has run a variety of D&D games in his home-brew fantasy setting called Manix. First created when he was in high school, it's seen a wide variety of adventures and gaming shenanigans, and a large number of players have trod its soil through the years.

Recently, he decided he wanted to return to Manix for the purpose of running a D&D Next game (using the last iteration of playtest rules). So, I volunteered to take his binder full of notes and lovingly hand-drawn maps and apply a little Photoshop wizardry to them.

This map uses the Saderan Tutorial I've mentioned before, from the geniuses at the Cartographer's Guild.

Since I already had a map of the place, I didn't need to generate a new continent outline.

Instead, I created the base layer of clouded black-and-white (see the tutorial for what I'm talking about here) and then pasted the map I had in a layer above it. I then reduced the Opacity of that map layer low enough to where I could see the black-and-white layer beneath it, and then shaped the landmasses below.

Now, although Manix is a flat-world created by magic, and so doesn't necessarily have to follow terrestrial standards for things, I still wanted to use what little I know about the basics of plate tectonics to figure out what its subaquatic geography and mountain ranges should look like. So, on another layer, I simply drew in some red lines as rough guidelines, basing them on where my partner had already put mountains in his setting.

After that, I put some detail into the water for the map, as you can see in the first map above. After that, I went ahead and added in the mountain ranges, layer-by-layer, until I finished with what you see in the second map above: a continent cluster full of various mountain ranges.

Total Time Spend in Map Creation by this Point: 2-3 hours

Blank Continent Map 3: The Islands

Alright!

This is a small map I put together for a fiction setting I was working on. Fun sort of fantasy setting that I'm sure I'll go back to at some point.

In the meantime, though, feel free to use this map for your personal gaming! I think it'd be a great set-up for some seafaring travel type adventure gaming, replacing the whole "trudging across the hills/plains/forests/tundras" with shipboard travel from one adventure site to the next.

Enjoy!

The Sapphire House (Waterdeep Inn)

The Sapphire House

Today's offering is an inn & boarding house, based out of the Castle Ward in Waterdeep: the Sapphire House.

It's located right across the street from Blackstaff Tower, where a variety of NPCs have taken rooms from time to time. I assumed that it would probably be a bit of player character involvement, but they seem to have taken a liking to other establishments around the City of Splendors (like the Crawling Spider, for instance).

Fortunately, it's pretty bog-standard enough to fulfill the need for any fair-sized inn, so I thought it might be appreciated up here.

Enjoy!

The Vault of Sages, Silverymoon

The Vault of Sages

Part of my Waterdeep game involved the PCs taking a jaunt over to Silverymoon to engage in some crazy Emergency Research Action!

Descriptions of the Vault note that it is "horse-shoe" shaped. Though the map of Silverymoon has a spot marked with the Vault on it, it is a very generous thing indeed to say that the shape they use for it there is that of a horse shoe.

So, what the heck - I'd already kind of fallen in love with the mental layout I had of a massive library/sage-mall in that shape, I went ahead and went with the inspiration over the map.

It is notable that in spite of this freaking place being five stories tall, it also has just as many subterranean levels of vaults beneath it, which are, obviously, not shown here.

Blank Continent 2: Electric Boogaloo!

Here's another blank continent map for you folks.

This is the continent I put together to act as home for my Liminal State game, a D&D 4e game.

Wide open plains in the middle of the continent, bookended by big-ass mountain ranges north and south, and a sprinkling of forests around the periphery.

If you're interested in seeing what I did with it for my own home game, check out the Continent of Rinhony here.

Enjoy!

The Tavern of the Flagon Dragon (Waterdeep)

The Tavern of the Flagon Dragon

Just a quick update here.

Part of very nearly any urban D&D game is going to be the ubiquitous drinking establishment, and my Waterdeep game is no different.




This is a map of the Tavern of the Flagon Dragon, located very near Blackstaff Tower, and so features occasionally in my Waterdeep game.

This map makes a great "generic" tavern, with the basic taproom set-up on the ground floor, and the upstairs space devoted to living quarters for the innkeep & his family (and a couple of the staff).

Enjoy!

The Crawling Spider (Waterdeep Tavern)

The Crawling Spider

Alright. This will probably be the last one for the weekend.

Another tavern of interest/note, the Crawling Spider is actually originally from Volo's Guide to Waterdeep. It describes a weird sort of tavern that is a mocked-up subterranean location frequented by dwarves, (half-)orcs, gnomes and priests from all over the city, in an environment that can best be described as a drow cosplay bar, with sexy wait-staff who dress up in masks and black silk bodysuits to bring some Drow Realness to your evening.

The cellars have a central dance-floor (which includes a "private dancer" situation with the faux-drow waitstaff), which then divides off into a variety of small "caverns" where you and your date - or you and the comely private dancer you've hired - can wonder off for a bit of private entertainment.