Zap Dynamic, our resident expert in theoretical cartography, has just returned from another sojourn in a fantastic land. It is Zap’s pleasure to bring cities, valleys, countries, even entire continents to life for your cartographic amusement. You can learn more over at Zap’s Atlas, but today we’ve got another encounter map to share!
A Strange Feast
Three standing stones rise before a natural amphitheatre in the middle of a forest clearing. The trees all around are changing their colors in preparation for a long winter. And plain as day in the clearing–against all reason–a table set for dinner and heavy with feasting food lies waiting…
Zap’s Atlas: Autumn Glade depicts a clearing in the middle of a wooded realm. The trees are beginning to show their seasonal colors, and there are signs of sentient activity: sawn stumps, standing stones, and a seemingly out of place feasting table in the midst of it all. What stories are hidden in this place? The map makes an excellent aid for theatre of the mind gameplay in any fantasy setting, especially The Seven Quillcrows, the free one sheet we released two weeks ago. Separate layers allow you to remove the table from the maps if you prefer an empty clearing. These layers can also toggle a grayscale version of the map for easier printing.
It’s Pay What You Can over at DriveThru RPG, so go pick up your copy today!
Design Notes
Like I’ve mentioned before, I prefer my combat encounters to take place on interesting, complex terrain. For this map, I knew I wanted a clearing in the forest but I knew it couldn’t be that simple. What good is an empty field when it comes to climactic battles? Even professional wrestling spices up an empty ring by making use of chair props, the posts, and the ropes. In this map, I made sure there were plenty of levels characters could take advantage of. There’s the amphitheatre itself, but there are also boulders, trees, and stumps that could be exploited by ingenious players.
Just like the Forest Ravine map, the Autumn Glade is made with your budget in mind. This is a 300dpi .pdf sized for print on US Letter paper. In addition to removable wagons, the file contains a color version of the image and grayscale version I adjusted for easier printing.
If you like this map, please rate and review it on DriveThruRPG. If you use this map in your game, we’d love to hear about how it went!