I finally finished our first Dungeons & Dragons 5e campaign last month – and to celebrate the end of the campaign I made a poster-map that I gave out to all the players in the group as the campaign wound down.
Over a week and a half, I took the original map that I drew up for the campaign (last spring, about two-thirds of the way through the game) and expanded on it and drew it at a much larger size – where the first map took up most of a letter page, this version took up four sheets of paper.
The campaign started as a slightly modified version of the D&D5e starter adventure, “Lost Mine of Phandelver” – but my aversion to the Forgotten Realms meant mashing and mangling the setting a bit. So I started the campaign, and my redraw of the campaign map, with Winterspire, my replacement for Neverwinter.
Winterspire is a city built on the ruins of the old space elevator. The top of the spire is perpetually covered in snow, and living in the upper sections is a sign of abundant wealth because it means you can afford to have coal or firewood shipped up the spire to heat your house year-round.
In the end the adventure travelled around a lot, explored a few cities and adventure modules (listed in the map above) and was a lot of fun. This redraw of the map was almost as much fun to do – I feel a lot more confident in my skills as a cartographer and even a bit as an illustrator.
I also discovered that I can get my larger B&W works printed for a pittance at Staples using their Engineering Prints – up to 36″ x 24″ B&W prints on 20lb paper for only $3 per copy.
I hope you enjoy this map, it was a LOT of fun to draw and I’m exceptionally proud of the end product.
The maps on Dyson’s Dodecahedron are released for free personal use thanks to the support of awesome patrons like you over on Patreon. Every month 400 patrons come together to make these releases possible. You can help too in order to keep the flow of maps coming and to improve their quality – and even get a map of your own!
A beautiful map. I assume your players were extremely pleased?
AWESOME…..now thats map to be proud of……A+ in my map trove……and i have thousands……best maps are the homebrew….where legends are born…..
Im thinking to get you to do a commission of my 30 plus year home made campaign map……….i love the idea of having alternate drawn copies….adds to the hmmm spice of the adventure
I really want to know more about Winterspire.
Wow, super impressed with the map! Now if only I could get my players to actually stick around for a campaign.
I too would love to hear or see more about Winterspire!
Great job as always Dyson!
A nice Fighting Fantasy vibe coming off this one. Good work.
This looks impressive! Well done!
This map took six months I think and the sacrifice of three maidens.
I love this. I would love to hear more about your changes to the Phandelver adventure and any other notes about your campaign.
s=secret door; c=concealed door. What does ‘f’ stand for? Also, are there/will there be maps for other cities on the “Eastern Shore”, such as Winterspire?
Probably not any time soon, to be honest. I just finished another 5e campaign set on the east coast of the same continent and haven’t revisited the Eastern Shore since this campaign ended at the beginning of 2017.