Something that’s bugged me about the Lost Mine of Phandelver (the adventure from the 5e D&D Starter box) is the LMoP shortening. So I’ve renamed mine “the Lost Mine Near Old Phandelver” which is much so much more pleasing with the short form of LMNOP.

Anyways, I’m running my second session of Phandelver on Sunday. And I wanted to switch it up a bit from classic D&D-isms. The adventure feels VERY traditionally “Forgotten Realms” D&D. It’s not bad, but that’s not the style of my most recent games, so I wanted to switch things up a bit.

So I’ve changed it from being near Neverwinter to being in “The Land of Spires / Needles”.

And as I was tidying up the other day, I came across a piece of cardboard (about 8 inches wide by 5.5 tall) and decided to redraw the regional map on the cardboard for the players.

Lost Mines Near Old Phandelver

The replacement for the main city (upper left hand side of the map, where Neverwinter would be on the standard map) is the base of an ancient space elevator. Around the region are a bunch of angled spires, some still with “spires” or “needles” rising unseen distances into the sky (support lines for the base of the elevator – yes, I know “real” space elevators don’t work this way, but this isn’t real).

The Cragmaw hideout is in the base of a collapsed support spire, so I’ll redraw the map to have hints of older buildings within it instead of just caves.

Also, I find it looks way better photographed than scanned:

LMNOP Map in progress