D&D Stuff

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[neutralpartymaps]

If you're ever at a loss for what kind of enemies to add in a random encounter, just make the map itself the monster. Those palm trees? They hate your guts and are coming to get you, same with these rocks and that waterfall, they've all got angry faces and are ready to give you an ass-kicking you'll never forget.

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[drmapzo]

Hello, everyone!

The party of adventurers stumbles upon steaming hot springs in the forest. The pools offer respite for the weary heroes after days of tracking a vicious enemy.

As they took a relaxing bath, one of them notices the temperature rises and rises unnaturally. Out of nowhere, a set of tentacles surge from the depths of the springs, binding some of the party members.

Something monstrous is lurking beneath this seemingly relaxing place.

The creature tokens for this map are an Ankylosaurus, a Ferocious Owl Beast and a Smokey Drake. Emerald tier gets the Smokey Drake while Diamond tier gets all three. In addition, Sapphire tier gets extra creature token variants.

You can see a preview of all of this week’s Patreon content here.

Thank you very much for taking a look and be sure to check out my Patreon where you can pledge for gridless version, alternate map versions as well as the tokens pertaining to this map.

[dicegrimorium]

Greetings!

The party has need of the favor of the Sunken God. They are preparing for an upcoming quest, where they must journey underwater to find an important relic thought long-lost.

As such, they need some means to breathe underwater for long periods of time. Lucky for them, they hear rumors of a group of people who worships a deity from the depths.

When they find them, the priests tell them that if they want the Sunken God’s favor, they must first complete a challenge, proving that they’re deserving of such an honor.

They enter the chambers beneath the temple. Filled with water, they must activate the seven altars. How? Fighting, riddling, scheming… The Sunken God wants to test all their abilities.

You can see a preview of this map’s Patreon content by clicking here.

If you liked the map I’d be extremely thankful if you considered supporting me on my Patreon, rewards include higher resolution files, gridless versions, alternate versions, line versions, PSDs and more.

Thank you!

[drmapzo]

Hello, everyone!

After weeks of dungeon delving, the party goes to a nice retreat by the sea. Located on a secluded cave, the retreat has many amenities the adventurers are sure to find enjoyable.

Everything seems to be going well for them, and they finally have a chance to rest those sore muscles.

But some of the staff begin to whisper among them, surely a conspiracy of some sort.

The creature tokens for this map are a Blue Dragon Hatchling, a Kobold Keeper and a Patient Monk. Emerald tier gets the Kobold Keeper while Diamond tier gets all three. In addition, Sapphire tier gets extra creature token variants.

You can see a preview of all of this week’s Patreon content here.

Thank you very much for taking a look and be sure to check out my Patreon where you can pledge for gridless version, alternate map versions as well as the tokens pertaining to this map.

[tellusd20]

A frozen pond used by villagers for skating has been decorated by the local hedge wizard as part of the winter solstice celebrations. As night falls, glass orbs release collected sunlight and cloak the surrounding snow in a dim, golden light. Hopefully the light and commotion don't attract any monsters. +++ This is a 25x25 grid map, PNG/VTT files are available for free at my Patreon.

[2minutetabletop]

Jungle Waterfall Maps by Uchideshi

Uchideshi is single-handledly fixing our jungle map shortage!

→ Check out their latest maps in our new Community Spotlight

[dicegrimorium]

Greetings!

A harsh winter like no other has come. Blizzards rage, making the need for shelter all the more important. The group of heroes arrive at the city, its gates tightly guarded. They somehow manage to past by, and they head to the city’s center.

A madman is spewing nonsense about the end of the world in a blanket of snow and ice. The few merchants who dared sell their goods are covered in their thick furs waiting to earn just a little bit more coin.

They try to get into the inn, but the place is at full capacity, they’re even charging an admission fee! The adventurers, pretty much broke at this point are left with few choices to take shelter before the weather turns even worse.

What will they do now?

You can see a preview of this map’s Patreon content by clicking here.

If you liked the map I’d be extremely thankful if you considered supporting me on my Patreon, rewards include higher resolution files, gridless versions, alternate versions, line versions, PSDs and more. Thank you!

[dicegrimorium]

Ancient Crypt Dungeon Battle Map 22x33

[2minutetabletop]

Basalt Hot Springs by Bird

Our friend Bird has some Iceland-inspired hot spring battle maps for us to enjoy! Tell me GM, what monsters roam these parts?

→ See the full maps here!

[the-griffons-saddlebag]

⚔️ 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺! Wand of Torchlight
Wand, common ___

This wooden wand is twisted into a torch-like shape. Its wood is charred at its flame-shaped tip. While holding the wand, you can use a bonus action to speak its command word, causing a harmless flame to sputter to life at its end. The light sheds bright and dim light like a normal torch, and remains until you use a bonus action to speak the command word again.

The wand has 3 charges and regains all expended charges daily at dawn. While holding the wand, you can use an action to expend 1 of its charges to cast the “light” spell from it (save DC 10). The light appears warm and fiery; the effect ends early if the wand is used to cast the spell again. ___

✨ Patrons get huge perks! Access this and hundreds of other item cards, art files, and compendium entries when you support The Griffon’s Saddlebag on Patreon for less than $10 a month!

[the-griffons-saddlebag]

⚔️ 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺! Intrepid Knife
Weapon (dagger), common (requires attunement) ___

This short, run-of-the-mill dagger can make the timid feel brave, and is a common prop for storytellers. Whenever you make an attack with this weapon, you can create a small, harmless effect in its wake, such as a trail of sparkles or satisfying “whoosh” sound. The effect ends immediately after the attack. In addition, if you’re holding the dagger, you gain a +1 bonus to any saving throw you make against being frightened. ___

✨ Patrons get huge perks! Access this and hundreds of other item cards, art files, and compendium entries when you support The Griffon’s Saddlebag on Patreon for less than $10 a month!

[dungeonmapster]

Harps Run Village Megamap 113x141

The sun shines bright on Harp's Run, a simple village. Villagers move to and fro, tending to their daily labors, whether it be tending to the crops, feeding the pigs, harvesting bounties of wheat, or cutting lumber floated downstream to make ready for the next shipment. At the end of their day's labor, they might head to the Rose Inn for a pint, or a glass of wine from the vineyards just up the hill. The local landed lords might even permit a stroll through the gardens on a fine day...

Hi res, gridless, and variants available on patreon!

[neutralpartymaps]

Look, you don't always need big maps- sometimes you get in a lil fight and need something a bit more.. intimate. You don't need 50 square inches of of map when you get into a slap fight with a wizard or play tag with a goblin. If you could describe your fight as a kerfuffle then consider using one of my certified Small Maps®

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[dailyadventureprompts]

Do you have any advice on making easier puzzles? I LOVE puzzles, I grew up with adventure games where sometimes why something was the correct solution wasn’t obvious and I loved it because it made me think outside the box. My players … they suck at puzzles. They’re missing so many encounters and loot so they’re under level and under prepared half the time. They aren’t exploring or learning anything about the world. But I haven’t found a good way to tone them down without handholding them.

DM Tip: Puzzling it Out

While puzzles seem almost quintessential to the d&d experience, one of my greatest criticisms of how the game is currently handled is that there's almost no advice available to dungeonmasters about how they should go about designing or running puzzle encounters to maximize the fun at their table. We've got vague ideas about riddle doors, big setpiece traps, and clever envriomental mechanisms from the media we consume, but no idea how to translate those things into a format that works well in TRPGs.

Part of the problem is that there's no head's up display or physical feedback in a game of imagination like d&d: players are purely at the whims of the DM and what information they're willing/capable of providing, forcing everyone to spend a lot of time asking clarifying questions or trying out options that won't work. This grinds sessions to a halt, as not only do players need to figure out how to solve the puzzle, but spend twice as long figuring out what the puzzle is on top of figuring out if there even IS a puzzle in the first place.

Below the cut I'm going to give specific advice about how you as a DM can be better about implementing puzzles for your players in game:

My number 1 piece of advice for running a puzzle is to be OBVIOUS about it: Hint at the mechanisms involved when you initially describe the room and make them do something when the players poke at them. One of the greatest tools I've given to my party is letting them ask " what's the puzzle here?", at which point you describe the goal of the puzzle, the problem that they're faced with, and the different options they can interact with. You can keep some things out of the description, hidden or missing imputs, broken mechanisms that need improvisation or repair, but if you can be perfectly clear with what the puzzle is at the beginning , the party can dedicate their brains to trying to solve it from the get go, rather than spending most of their time at the table poking around in the dark. When they've done what you need them to do, make it obvious: have the door pop open, play the zelda "puzzle solved" sound, scream " YOU'VE SOLVED MY FIENDISH PUZZLE" in the dorkiest wizard voice you can manage, anything to let them save time and get back to the rest of the session.

No skill checks during puzzles: nothing's more annoying than knowing the answer to something and then being forced to try and retry because the dice aren't being kind. Players likewise shouldn't need perception checks to figure out basic elements of a puzzle's functionality anymore than they should need to roll to figure out if a door blocking their way is locked. The one exception to this is when they've devised a bullshit way to circumvent the challenge that's too flimsy to work on its own and needs a bit of the luck-gods blessing on order to work.

Puzzles eat up session time, so if you want to get things done this session use them as gates for optional content. Alternatively, Consider introducing a puzzle at the end of a session giving the party a whole week to think about solutions to get past it. People are generally really bad at problemsolving under pressure, and there's no reason your precious game time should be sacrificed just because the group doesn't feel like doing verbal trial and error for three hours.

General Puzzle tips

Everything I wrote in my post about “Proactive DM Voice” applies to running puzzles, you want to point your party at the problem give them an understanding that time is limited and that their decisions matter.

When they attempt a solution, tell them why it seems not to be working and if the reason is because they’re missing something, tell them that they’re missing something.

To make your puzzles more interesting without making them complex is to have them missing pieces, either intentionally sabotaged or simply broken from long years of neglect. This lets you highlight two advantages d&d has over other puzzle games: improvisation and exploration. Having your players come up with wild solutions is half the fun of including puzzles in your games. 

On the note of exploration, try to include atleast two different solutions to every puzzle somewhere nearby, whether they be lost parts for the puzzle or a means of bruteforcing the barrier it would normally unlock. This lets your players feel smart, even if its not the exact sort of smart the puzzle’s original builder would have intended.

One of the best ways to use puzzles is to use them to double up on dungeon rooms: placing a fight or other challenge in the same chamber as the puzzle to add a more interesting backdrop.

If your party is really stuck on something, rather than letting them make an intelligence check to know the answer, describe how the mechanism of the trap works and ask how they think they’d get past it/break it. Looking under the hood like this does give them a leg up, but still requires enough problemsolving to make them feel smart.

Environmental puzzles:

These are going to be your bread and butter for most ruined or abandoned dungeons, created either by intention or because objects in the environment landed just so to create a knot that the party now needs to untangle

Rather than letting your party flounder on something that isn’t solvable never be afraid to say  “That doesn't seem to do anything right now” or “looks like you’re missing a piece before you can make this work”. It’s videogamy, but your players will thank you for respecting thier time.

One of the best ways to give your party an advantage when dealing with environmental puzzles is to take the central mechanic of the puzzle and have them encounter a simplified version of it early on. Puzzle about getting an elevator unstuck? Have them do the same to a freight crane for a minor loot drop. Puzzle about draining the water from a flooded chamber? Have them empty a massive barrel so they can reach the keys inside.

If you want to be particularly devious, consider chaining environmental puzzles, making the ones they encounter earlier in the dungeon reliant on the solving of others deeper in. That gives you an excuse to reuse dungeon rooms, as the party circles back to play with the toys you’d previously singled out for later.

Riddles

Riddles are better suited to games with the fey than for locked doors, as anyone trying to keep someone out of their chambers would be better served with an actual lock or password than 

The exception to this rule is “linguistic gap” riddles, where a knowledgeable partymember is making a translation from instructions on how to get past the obstacle but due to age and cultural difference the translation doesn’t exactly match up: navigating a cave by “heeding the unseen serpent” and following the sound of rushing water, or “follow pelor’s patient gaze” to see where the sun points to at a particular time of day.  

If you must have riddles, use them as hints rather than obstacles, pointing out secret caches of supplies or secret passages that let the party skip past other barriers. That lets them feel smart for figuring out a shortcut, while still giving them the main road of progress to follow if they get stuck. 

Riddles also work when the architect is trying to prove that they’re smarter than the intruder, Riddler style, or wants to leave behind a false clue that leads them into a greater trap.

As a design consideration consider having the awnser show up as a physical thing somewhere in the dungeon, even if it’s just a representation the party can spot, or evidence that it once existed there. People’s brains are better at drawing connections then they are at coming up with random ideas, so figuring out that “all in armor never clinking/never thirsty always drinking” pertains to a fish is a lot easier if the party noticed a lot of fish in the fountain frescos a few rooms back.

Traps

I like to think that there’s two kinds of traps, death traps, and slap traps. With the former being large indiana jones style setpieces where the players desperately need to escape, and the latter being a minor hazard that softens the party up before an actual fight. 

Deathtraps are like boss encounters, and can be run either in tandem with a fight or as a sort of environmental puzzle on their own. Given that the architect probably didn’t intend for intruders to escape the method the party uses will likely be improvised, letting them feel extra clever for surviving, rather than simply lucky. 

Slaptraps are either best deployed as an ongoing navigation challenge , or as an unexpected threat introduced into another encounter. The days of random 20ft pits in the middle of hallways are a dark and godless time and we should not return to them

Traps that don’t have someone maintaining them will either break or leave behind bodies which attract scavengers. These are important signposting to a delving party that a trap might be coming up, so be sure to include them before you unleash a new trap on them. 

An old bit of advice Traps are put in places where the dungeon’s architect/current owner doesn’t want people to go, and as such arn’t likely to be in populated sections. 

I’m tremendously fond of Dael Kingsmill’s “Click” system, which turn traps from a random suckerpunch into a tense problemsolving encounter. TLDR: When a trap is triggered the party hears a loud “click” , and has a moment to do one thing in response. This action might grant them advantage or disadvantage, or fully negate the trap’s effects on them depending on what they chose as compared with how the trap hits them. It’s important to pair these sorts of traps with a dungeon room that has some details in it, so the party can guess in advance what the trap is.

Mazes, Codes, and Physical Puzzles

Despite how essential they seem to the genre, don’t try to run these sorts of obstacles by way of actually having your players solve them. They take too long and there’s too much of a chance for miscommunication to get in the way of progress. I’ve killed far too many of my sessions dead by throwing one of these in front of my party and expecting them to solve it then and there. Consider instead using my minigame rules to simulate the trial and error of working out something complex.

Art

[neutralpartymaps]

I'd recommend staying away from little caves like this on your adventures. They might look cozy because I lit it up for you, but they're really just full of the kind of critters who haven't developed eyes yet—though it's near the top of their evolutionary to-do list, right after "make mandibles bigger for better squishing of meaty things that wander into the cave" and "learn how to glow to attract more meaty things into the cave."

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[dungeonmapster]

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The local lord has spared no expense transforming his home into a place of beauty. Terraced walls and garden pathways welcome visitors, statues and busts of previous lords decorate the estate. The hedges and gardens are lovingly tended by the groundskeeper, living in a humble house within the estate's walls. The interior tells the story of a landed country lord whose fortunes have steadily risen over the generations, but never forgot where they've come from. Ample servant's quarters and a finely stocked cellar keep the guests' every need well tended, and their thirst for wine and beauty slaked.

[saironwen]

I was wondering if my closeted and invisible self had something to share for PrideMonth🌈… and yes, I do. I have a forest that glistens with all the rainbow colors for all my friends to play in.

As a married asexual woman, I often feel like I live in stealth mode. It fits my trauma, and also my autistic need to not be perceived lol But I digress, life is hard. So here’s something fun and colorful.

✨ Commissions open on vGen if you'd like a map painted just for you!