Greyhawk Underdark Updated

It's been quite a while since I posted my updates to, at that time FtF campaign, delve into the Underdark. My online Roll20 campaign is now half way through the Giants series, and so it was time to re-visit those maps.
I had originally re-done Denis' Encyclopedia Subterranica maps at that time, but I'm still not completely 100% happy with it. Since the original module is already in the old-school blue, and the other scans I have of the Underdark maps from the various Into the Depths modules aren't quite high enough resolution for the online game, I did the next best thing. Now any normal/sane person would have just fired up their scanner and used any of the many modules he owns of this product to get a better, higher resolution image, but noooo, not this guy. Fired up the imaging software instead and went in and redid the map in a closer adaptation of the original maps found in the published works. Don't get me wrong, I liked the others maps out there, just had to make one I was satisfied with.

Here are the results from that little side trip into OCD-land. While it's doubtful the time spent resulted in any great contribution to this already overdone [and some cases better done] map, it nevertheless made me happy about the results achieved. Now to get on with the all the battlemaps for all those many encounters listed on the map. [heavy sigh]

Edit; Since things can always be tweaked now that there is a template to work from, changed out the b&w for colored passages on the map.













Since I already had the hand drawn maps from the Trading Grounds done went ahead and did that first. These are only for my personal online game on Roll20 and meant as an example of my hack job at putting together maps.

This from the original below

New Campaign - B2 Keep on the Borderlands

A while back I was playing an AD&D 1ed game online set in Greyhawk. My favorite game and setting, in case that isn't obvious yet. Unfortunately that game dissolved after a short while along with a couple other online games I had been playing in. After a short stint looking for something suitable I decided to bite the bullet and just DM it myself. This was in part because the FtF campaign I've been DMing is starting to wind down after ~7 years of play.

So now I'm DMing a Google Hangouts game starting off in the Keep. Naturally I've set it in Greyhawk and will be taking the folks through B2 Keep on the Borderlands to start off. Believe it or not, except for a short foray into the Caves of Chaos just recently, I had never played or DMed this module.
Looking around on the web there is a metric ton of info, game reports, maps, conversions and the like for this module. So naturally I decided to add some more junk to the pile. If someone finds it useful, great, but really I'm just putting it up here as a sort of work in progress, for my own benefit primarily.

My first steps in setting up any new campaign is, and has always been, the maps. Looking around for maps of the wilderness and Keep I found a few that I liked but just weren't 'perfect', for me anyways. So, naturally I took the ones I liked and adjusted them to suit my own tastes and style.

The Hexographer map over on breeyark.org was the closest to what I had in mind, so that's the one I adjusted to my liking.
As you can see I've borrowed things from all over the place on this map.
The scale 'debate' I just sidestepped by making the caves ~2.5 hours to get to by an unencumbered man on foot and left it at that. You'll notice some farmhouses and fields located just outside the Keep. These I placed there because it seemed like a perfect place for the start of a new town, with some protection nearby. The farmers scamper into the Keep at nightfall when the raiding gets to be extreme. After all, they're brave not stupid.


Since this is situated in Greyhawk the next question was where was I going to place it, besides the suggested Yeomanry.
Since I'm planning on tying this in with The Temple of Elemental Evil later I decided to place it not too far away on the Wild Coast along the Jewel River. If you click on the environs map you'll see a spot towards the bottom in the middle of the Welkwood labelled Baridel Castle, the name for the Keep I adopted in my version of Greyhawk.

The next step was the keep itself. The Castellan Keep map over at halfblogre.com caught my eye, so that was the next to get incorporated into my milieu. As you can see I just adjusted it slightly to conform to my view of the Keep. You'll notice I've added some storage towers to the inner gatehouse, as well as switching the location of the stables and warehouse. I just figured the Smith would need direct access to the horses and putting it next to the Smithy/Armorer would make more sense. You'll also note that I added some barracks to the inner bailey since the 250+ inhabitants (mostly soldiers) of this castle needed someplace to sleep, too.

Next time is some old school blue maps of the different buildings inside the Keep itself.

Underdark Map - Trading Grounds

Since the last Underdark update the party has been exploring the lower third of the map. Actually more accurately party B has been exploring the Underdark while party A has been travelling the surface world clearing the Gray Plague from the land. Most of the player's had 2 PCs for a while there and since they're getting pretty high level [in the low to mid-teens] the group decided to split the party into Group A and Group B so that they weren't waltzing so easily through encounters and also partially to avoid having to split up XP so many ways.

As mentioned in my previous post I've been using much of the material from the Dragonsfoot Collaborative Project: Mapping the Depths of the Earth. As happens much of the time the players decided to go where you haven't prepared fully ahead of time. Wouldn't you know it the party decided to go to the trading grounds [L/19 M/19 on the Underdark map] which has no associated map. So I put together a quick map from the description for the PCs on the spot. This is the PC version only, the DM version has the manor and the rest at the bottom of the map behind the locked gate. I edited that portion out because the players do look at the blog posts occasionally. This way they're not tempted to look at what they haven't seen/explored yet. I'm finding the whole Encyclopedia Subterranica from this project to be of tremendous help and a great time saver in getting the various locations fleshed out for exploration. I would recommend it highly for anyone running the D series modules or any other Underdark adventure.

Greyhawk Underdark Update

Well the PCs have finally made it through the "Against the Giants" series of modules

and are proceeding into the

"Descent Into the Depths of the Earth" portion of the whole GDQ series. Now, while I own the original modules, I still like using printed out maps in game, usually as covers in the 3-ring binders I have all my DM notes in. While the maps provided in the modules D1-2 and GDQ 1-7 are all good, I ran across Maldins Greyhawk pages a long while back and he has a color map he re-did for the Dragonsfoot Collaborative Project: Mapping the Depths of the Earth. While I like his map the distinction between the tertiary tunnels and the hidden tunnels are hard to distinguish (for my old eyes anyway). See for yourself.

 

Maldin's original page and map

That's why I dusted it off and edited it slightly to conform more closely to the black and white map in the Descent series, as far as the tertiary tunnels go anyway. I also changed the encounter hex colors for the non-module encounters to yellow as well as the river color. It's easier to just look at the revised map to see the revisions.

Revised DM map of the Underdark

For me anyway, it makes it clearer which are the secret passages and which are the tertiary tunnels, as well as distinguishing between the Gygax module encounters at a glance. My thanks to Denis for a fine map.

Now with that all said and done the players, naturally, don't get the pretty printed  out map, but rather they have to make do with the hand drawn map below.

Players Map of the Underdark

They got this from the deep gnome spy in the Trading Grounds, for the appropriate price of course as well as a promise to debrief him on their escapades in the Underdark as well as any intel on the Drow.

Hex Map Updates

A while back I posted a general environs hex map of the Greyhawk area in the 
Lost Temple of Pelor post.

Greyhawk environs

Since then a couple of characters have staked out a couple of hexes for themselves to be cleared out and castles/headquarters built. The two hexes are listed below. Note that the map below includes (3) three new labels; for Brightwoods, the Honey Tree and Lion Castle.

Brightwoods

And below is the exploded 30 mile hex view of the Honey Tree area.

Honey Tree

The Lion Castle area is still TBD but it will contain the very familiar map from the BSOLO module Ghost of Lion Castle.

Hex Mapping and Scale

 The Hydra's Grotto In Praise of the 6 Mile Hex caught my attention today.

Aside from this pretty graphic he made a very reasonable argument for its use. He's not the only one expounding on the merits of wilderness hexes. A while back Chgowiz was talking about wilderness hexes(sorry that link is now dead). As well as Bat in the Attic who's been playing with hexes too here and here(and Chgowiz got Stirgessuck thinking a bit).

I used to be a big fan of the 5 mile hex as published by Judges Guild. Since I'm using Darlene's Greyhawk map and  that scale is 10 leagues (or 30 miles) per hex. Up 'till now the 5 mile hex has worked out very well, but then again so does 6 mile hexes. Sooo, after reviewing all of that info I might just be revisiting the smaller blow up hexes that I've been using and see about rescaling them from 5 miles to 6 miles.