Drawing my own hexcrawl map for Shadowdark
I spent some time today drawing up a regional map for my weekly Shadowdark game. We play with Discord and use Roll20 to show maps and occasionally move tokens. I am adding roads, forests, and using icon art for cities, towers, and other landmarks. This one still needs a great deal of work.
Hey, I’m no great artist I know, but I enjoy doodling with maps.
Map drawing is about as “crafty” as I get in this ttrpg hobby; no plans to open an ETSY site soon. I used to paint lead miniatures, but that became obsessive when I got into Napoleonic wargaming. Still, it is fun and relaxing to sketch out a map, redraw it with my Micron pens, and when completed, I have something original that I can share with players. Funny how at our ages we still get excited about homebrew campaigns or dungeon crawls–something rediscovered from the nooks and crannies of our dottering memories. Ha!
This reminds me though… if you are looking for a new world setting with stellar original maps, take a look at Rob Conley’s Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: The Northern Marches.
Rob’s DTRPG products page to shop:
The Northern Marches expands Rob Conley’s Blackmarsh setting into new lands: the cold taiga and icy rivers of the Wild North, the wilderness frontier of the Southlands, the conquered Viking realm of Vasa, and the westernmost duchy of the Grand Kingdom, Northport.
Each region of the Northern Marches brims with ancient ruins, forgotten magic, and factions fighting to shape the future. The Ring Islands, the Forsaken Desert, the forest of Les Gigantov, the Great Glacier, the Black Marshes, and the underwater realms of the Grey Sea all await adventurers willing to brave their dangers and plunge into their mysteries.
