Maps for Hoard of the Dragon Queen

[Torgaard]

Ok, so I'm taking a group through Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Thought I'd post the maps I've got so far and maybe my WIP's as well.

Here's the first few I made. I changed up the module a little and decided to have my players enter the town in the NW corner of the Greenest map (see the module), and ran the "Seek the Keep" initial encounter here. Basically they come in from the west along that small street in the NW corner. The fleeing villagers come running from the north, down the street that runs north-south, and put their backs to the home that's not on fire in the SE corner of the map. Had my kobolds spill onto the map from the direction they came and we were off to the races. Worked out great. I even through in a random encounter after the dust settled that came at the party from the direction they entered the map. Players had a great time!

[Torgaard]

This map I whipped together after we wrapped our session on the first one. It's the next encounter on the path the party started to take to reach the keep. Roughly south-southwest of the first one (above). We'll be using this map tomorrow.

[Torgaard]

Here's my version of the keep. It's not really to scale. I kinda made it a bit on the smallish side, but ah well. Plan on changing up this encounter as well. Party will enter the map from the NW and make a break for the keep, though they'll have to fight through maybe a dozen kobolds. I'll have the mini-boss they're supposed to come out and duel a little later (a completely absurd encounter that's actually designed to make the player fail, which really had me shakin' my head when I read it) come rolling in behind the party with like 20 more kobolds and chase them into the keep.

[Torgaard]

This will be the map for one of the first missions: "The Old Tunnel"

[Torgaard]

Currently working on another of the missions called "Sanctuary", where the party heads to the church on the east end of town to rescue some villagers trapped there.

Here's what it looks like on the Greenest map (not much to go on):



Here's what I got so far. I plan on having a burning wagon or something outside the church to the northeast to account for the orange light coming through the windows. Not sure how this'll work out. We'll see I guess:

[Kennyt]

Hey these maps look great - keep em coming! I just finished running both my groups through these encounters and wish i would have caught these before!

Critiques:
The Keep - I would add an artistic license and add a partial "gatehouse" to the keep with the sally port shown, that way you could use the same map for that encounter as well. and maybe a stair or ladder for players to climb up during the dragon encounter. In order to make the encounter more fun i added a beat up ballista and catapult that intrepid adventurers could repair to have a better chance of driving the dragon off.

The church - most of the encounter seems to fall outside of the church so i'd expand the canvas and add some outside terrain.

all in all, great work!

[Jacktannery]

Great maps Torgaard. I love your lighting and contrast.

[Torgaard]

Thanks guys, and thanks for the tips! I'll try to post some WIP shots this week.

[Owen Guthrie]

Thanks Torgaard,

These are great. If only I had known! I should have looked. I just ran the first chapter of HotDQ last Friday. I would have borrowed these had I seen them - they'd have been nice on our overhead projector/digital mapping table. I'll be watching here to see if you create any for the next chapter! The Raider Camp!!

[Torgaard]

Ok, after a bad computer crash and alot of data and rebuilding and just plain old other stuff pulling me in other directions, my 5E campaign recently started up again and I had to hurriedly slap together something to make the Sanctuary map semi-usable. This is absolutely not a finished map, but it's what I used for the encounter. The party has moved on, so I may not get back to this map, but thought I'd at least post it if anybody can use it in it's current state: