Tags
City, Commercial Maps, Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, Maps, OSR, RPG, Urban
Ah, city maps. They are some of my favourites, and some of my most hated works. A good city map makes me want to run a game immediately when I see it, but takes me three times as long to draw as any other similarly-sized map (maybe due to all those little boxes I sit and draw for hours at a time?)
Alderbridge
Named for the massive wooden bridge that spans the Merrow River in the heart of the city, Alderbridge is better known for its more recent and impressive (non-wooden) span – “Kurroth’s Crossing”.
Made by dwarves during a lull in the great war, it is a good 60 feet wide and 180 feet long and made of black metal and nearly white quartz-heavy granite. “Kuroth’s Crossing” is also known as “Kuroth’s Beard” because the head engineer (Kuroth Burgothal) had a beard that was almost as white as snow except for four long bands of black that he braided forward prominently.
Alderbridge is quite close to a major granite quarry which explains the number of fortified structures in the city (drawn in black). It is further fortified by the small enclave to the south of the city proper. This sub-fortress is the Alderbridge Scholastica – a school of wizardry, magics and astrology.
This map is made available for your free use thanks to the amazing patrons of the Dodecahedron Patreon Campaign that keeps me fed and sheltered while I draw these fancy doodads for your enjoyment. Awesome people like Brian Gosell, Carolyn, Casey Garske, Charles Ferguson and over 200 others!
One step further – because of the incredible generosity of my patrons, I’m able to make this map free for commercial use also. Each month while funding is over the $300 mark, each map that achieves the $300+ funding level will be released under this free commercial license. You can use, reuse, remix and/or modify the maps that are being published under the commercial license on a royalty-free basis as long as they include attribution (“Cartography by Dyson Logos” or “Maps by Dyson Logos”).
For those that want/need a Creative Commons license, it would look something like this:
Cartography by Dyson Logos is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Again, this shouldn’t need repeating, but this only applies to these two maps in this post!
So enjoy! Alderbridge (or whatever name you give it in your games) is yours to do with as you please, personally or commercially!
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
I’ve just started a D&D 5th edition campaign with my family and some friends and initially I’m running through some simple prepared adventures that are supposed to act as a precursor to Tyranny Of Dragons. Having read some reviews of ToD I’m not planning to run it but therefore need something to use for the city of Phlan the early adventures have been set in. This is such a gift, you can’t believe how useful this will be. BTW I love the stuff about Kuroth, that’s definitely staying in.
Is it me or can it not be a wooden bridge if it’s made of iron and quartz heavy granite.
I seem to have lost a paragraph in the middle there in the cut-and-pasting. My bad. I’ll fix that.
Time for me to put my reading glasses on. Just worked out what it actually says.
Dyson – This is fantastic! You are absolutely bringing the ‘A game’ for your free Patreon maps… I kind of half expected you to throw up some smaller encounter area maps and save the larger pieces or more intricate work for the stuff you keep ownership of. This is very impressive on a number of levels. Thanks!
Awesome map! Did you have a scale in mind?
Nope. My mental scale is always measured in handwaves.
That way each DM can use it as they need. Need a HUGE city? Each of those little buildings is actually a whole bunch of buildings packed together. Need a small city? The smallest building is 6×6.
This is a cool map. I like how tightly packed the buildings are. I am curious about the portcullis-looking structures in the river on the East & West sides of the city. What are the intended to be?
Perhaps river chains to be pulled up to stop boats.
They’re obviously huge mollusc-pole-arms embedded in the river mud…
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