# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Dungeon/Subterranean Mapping >  ETCR - Expedition to Castle Ravenloft in DD3

## Shindig

I began this project in September of 2010. I knew that I wanted to run this campaign soon but could not find any maps anywhere that got into the amount of detail that I felt this castle deserved. I am by no means an advanced cartographer. I had purchased Campaign Cartographer nearly 5 years previously and never really used it, telling myself each time, I will have to learn to use this program someday and putting it off. 

After using so many maps from this site I decided that it was time that I contributed something of my own as repayment. I sat down and decided to teach myself Campaign Cartographer while making this castle. I didnt care how long it took me, nor how many times I would end up backtracking on already completed floors as I learned how to use the program properly. It took me four months to complete the major parts, but I am still finding things here and there that I go back and retouch. 

Each room was done after reading through each description entry of each edition of the module. I tried to capture everything that is included in the descriptions into the map. The length of time I spent constructing these maps should not be taken as an indication of wise or knowledgeable use of the program as much as it should reflect the amount of time perusing libraries of textures and symbols and overcoming indecision on which to use. 

I am now in the middle of reffing the actual game. They have yet to actually enter the castle. I am making the other encounter maps for the campaign as we encounter them, now that I am a little better at using the program. The castle itself is for the most part complete. There are a few points I would like to make about mapping this castle, though.

The castle has had slight changes made to it throughout its various incarnations from D&D 1st edition, 2nd, 3rd and now a 4th edition board game. The last I have not even bothered with, even though I own it, as it is more random layout. 

I created the castle for use with the 3.5 version. However, there are quite a few oversights that needed to be addressed. Staircases changed directions as well as orientation, and the third floor had two renovations namely the Hall of Ghosts and the secret passage area. I referred to all three renditions of the castle when doing this and used the 1st edition version as drawn by David Sutherland III as the final authority. So the Hall of Ghosts has 10 alcoves, not 6, for example, and the secret passage is wider than the 3.5 version. 

The maps are designed to be used with Maptool. My players have a monitor (ASUS 25 flat) that is laid out with a protective piece of plexiglass over it on which they place their niatures. The maps are presented on the monitor in scale with fog of war in place as well as 
light sources for the characters. This called for quite a bit of detail to be put in these maps. 

The castle itself has a darkness effect that I represented by adding a glow of black to the walls. It is a little distracting when viewing it as a fully lit map, but when using Maptool with the light source effect on, it is quite eerie. I have only done this on some smaller test maps as these maps after rendering are quite large. 

This brings me to an important point. I have done all of this and would like to share what I have done but these maps are huge!  I created them as pngs for the transparencies, then used irfanview to resize them and convert to jpeg. The more I resize them, the more blurred or pixilated they become. I need some advice on getting these converted properly. I have seen quite a few maps posted here that are quite detailed and beautiful in just a couple of megs. I am having a hard time figuring a way to do this with what I have done. So lets talk numbers. 

The first floor map is the largest since it includes the castle battlements, drawbridge and surrounding area. It is 13200 x 9000. To capture the detail properly I rendered at 300 dpi. I divided this into 18 segments and resampled each of these to 2 m files so that they could be imported into maptools, then put together again. However, most floors are much smaller since they are just the size of the castle proper. 

To post on this site I am putting the first floor and grounds together and resampling to 3 3 m files just to give you an idea of what I am doing. The whole thing (1st floor and grounds) started as a 137 m file. I then rendered the actual inner castle in 2 separate files. This is all to avoid having the whole thing look like an 8-bit Nintendo game. 

I am sure that there is a better way, short of dividing everything up and posting 18 images per floor, but I am unaware of what that is. I admit complete ignorance on converting these formats. I have a co-dm that has a little more experience with these matters and he also is struggling to find a way to get these manageable yet preserve the detail. 

If anyone has any advice for me on this matter, please speak up! 

I am happy with the results, otherwise. I just hope that I can post these in such a way that others will find these maps useful. 

The 3m maps of the first floor and grounds will be my first post. The approach to the castle will be redone, eventually, after I get better with overland mapping. The courtyard grass I am not concerned with either, as I doubt that there will be much gameplay out there. 
This ground floor was the first that I did. I then worked my way up the floors and did the basement floors last, touching up the earlier floors as I learned to use the program. The inner castle is the most recent render, some mistakes were corrected (such as the fact that there should be no second set of doors when entering the castle). 

Let me know what you think.

----------


## Shindig

Hmmm, I am off to a fine start. I don't know why only one of those shows up, but at least when you click on them, they do show the upload. Here is the inner castle, then I will post the Chapel and garden.

----------


## Ascension

Our image software has had problems for about a year since we upgraded.  Kind of a pain but, resave the image then reupload it.  It might take 2 or 3 tries.

----------


## Shindig

This should be the chapel and garden area.

----------


## Jaxilon

Wow, those are great. It shows how much you cared that you spent as much time on them as you have. I hope your players enjoy it as they go through all this. Sure would be great to happen to have a nasty storm the night you run it, eh?

----------


## Shindig

> Wow, those are great. It shows how much you cared that you spent as much time on them as you have. I hope your players enjoy it as they go through all this. Sure would be great to happen to have a nasty storm the night you run it, eh?


Yes, it is a great way to learn the workings of the castle, too. I also wanted to give it a lot more of Strahd's flavor, hence the black marble in the 'living' areas and dragon rug. I had to switch computers since the one I was on crashed several times uploading, I want to try it out on my newer laptop. I should have the 2nd and third floor posted soon. The third is my favorite.

Thanks for the comment!

----------


## Shindig

This is pretty ordinary. The only effect I learned with this level was blurring out the chapel so that it appears as being on the floor below. It works well enough, I think. 

I am still having most of these showing up with question marks in the attachment folder. They are going through, though, but they have to be clicked on. If someone lets me know how to correct this I will. I do not see a way of deleting them out of that folder, I can only upload on top of them.

----------


## Shindig

There are 3 files for this floor. The first is the full floor including battlements that are accessed from this floor. It decreases the detail quite a bit so I also include the file for just the inner castle at this level. I just overlay this in maptool. The last file is for the study in case anyone wants to put out the fire in the fireplace. I learned shadowing in this level, and it came out really nicely. The candles in the bedroom can also be edited out quickly in case anyone wants to pick them up and use them as a light source. 

This level deviates a bit from the 3.5 version only because they made some changes in that version that don't work well with the original design. Even the folks at Fraternity of Shadows made mistakes in their errata on this, they must not have had the original version for reference. I corrected it and brought it back in line with the original, as it made better sense. It just makes a hall or two wider, and adds more alcoves in the Hall of Ghosts. 

Enjoy!

----------


## mearrin69

Very nice work. I ran this adventure back shortly after it came out. We didn't finish it entirely but did make it to the castle itself. Would have killed for battlemaps. I drew out the town and forest encounters on large sheets of 1" graph paper from one of those presentation tablets you can get in office supply stores. Trying to do the same for the castle was making me crazy so I just drew it out as the PCs moved through the castle on a vinyl mat. Again, great stuff. Have some rep!
M

----------


## Shindig

Here is some more, starting with levels four and five. I was starting to get the hang of the program at this point, and the maps were smaller, so these went by pretty well. There are actually two files attached here, but only one is showing up. I suspect that it will after after some time has past as that is what happened with some of the previous attachments.

----------


## Shindig

These are the top three tower levels. Level 6 was difficult to capture properly; I may end up redoing it at some point, but for now it will work.

Also, I didn't realize until I got towards that upper levels that the towers taper as they ascend. None of the original maps really work this in very well. I tried to go back and work this in a little better on the other levels, but I never got it to work well, so the last two levels of the towers appear to suddenly shrink in circumference. This is the way the original maps were done, but if you use these, make sure to explain to the players that the outer walls seem to press in on them as they ascend the towers.

----------


## Shindig

This level was fairly simple, but fun. It is interesting trying to add the descriptive atmosphere to the maps rather than just simply draw out the rooms. The pit on the right is for when the trap is activated where it belongs.

----------


## Shindig

This was my favorite to map out! I didn't think it would be, since I enjoyed the first three levels so much, especially level 3, but it turned out being a blast to map out. I think part of it was that I was getting used to the program, finally, and could figure out how to pull off effects as they came. I am not an artist so I had to really figure out how to pull off the 'underwater effect' in the one corner of the dungeon. I was able to figure it out fairly quickly and it came out looking just how I wanted it. It was a bit tricky, but doable. Lots of atmosphere to pull off here.

One of the reasons that I did this whole project was that I really enjoyed the 'feel' of the 3.5 edition maps, even though they weren't isometric. I really liked the default blue color that they tiled it with and I wanted to do some of the sepia maps (that they had for the castle rooms) with that same color. However, as I got going I kept finding better tiles to work with (thank you Shessar!) that gave the castle a better appearance. When I got to this section, I decided to keep the blue for that 'otherworldly' chill effect and see if it worked. I think that it did. I split the file up to upload it here. This is the basement side as opposed to the crypt side.

----------


## mearrin69

Nice stuff. I can't rep you again yet...but I shall!
M

----------


## jtougas

Awesome stuff  :Smile:

----------


## Shindig

Thanks for the encouragement! It can be intimidating posting maps here after seeing all the fantastic work on this site, especially for a novice like myself. 

Here are the crypts of the castle, done in the blue tile as mentioned above. Getting the coffin in the south room to look like it was sitting on earth was the only tricky part. The description has it that the stone floor had been 'dug up' and the coffin is on 'loose soil'. I placed it exactly where it is placed on the tactical map, but it does look 'off' a little bit. I may move it at some point, or not. 

The crypts themselves were tedious.

----------


## Shindig

These are the smaller offshoots that can be accessed in the crypts. This should finish off the mapping of the castle itself. 

For those that are interested in the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft campaign, there are some more maps that I will be posting as I get them completed. I have a few done already, but still have more to do.

----------


## Wannabehero

Sweet Jumping Jimminy, this is quite a project you've taken yourself too, I am duly impressed.  I'm glad you're using a program like CC to do it, otherwise I can't even imagine how much work it would be.

I had a very similar inclination to do something like this after I bought the _Expedition to Undermountain_ book, then wisely said "That's crazy".

You're maps are very good, and even more importantly, useful!  Repped all the way.

----------


## Steel General

Nicely done!

----------


## Shindig

I am very glad that people will find this material useful.

The main reason I did this was that I knew that I would be running the campaign soon and wanted a good representation to bring up on the computer tabletop. At the same time, I had a chance to get to know every square inch of the castle and match it up with all of the descriptions that are given in the text. TSR and WOTC were/are notorious for not matching up their art/maps/descriptions and I wanted to be sure that I didn’t get caught in an inconsistency. 

As I got deeper into the project I was very thankful I did this. I soon found that each version of the module had its own set of errors, yet the most accurate always seemed to be the original. Usually, it just amounted to looking at the other two renditions of the castle, finding which one was the odd one and siding with the other two (this was not always the case, though). Sometimes this would be something small, like, “Does the entrance to the stairs appear ahead, left or right?” The 2nd ed. Version wanted to mash the south stairwells into the same area, somehow. The players in my group are very seasoned and will definitely narrow in on these inconsistencies so I had to be sure that I was finding them beforehand and prepared for this, which meant I needed to go over all of the maps and descriptions thoroughly. I am certain that I still have missed things, but I am much better off than I was before I started. 

I also want to point out that 6 or 7 years back I had a most unusual guest at one of my games. One of my former players, Dani, had mentioned that one of the customers to whom she delivered pizza used to be involved with D&D and was terminally ill. She wanted to invite him over to sit in on a game, figuring that he would enjoy it. I agreed. He showed up that week and it turned out to be none other than David Sutherland III, the artist that did the original orthogonal castle map and artwork for the original module and the Ravenloft campaign setting. It was a memorable evening and he left us quite a few nice prints of his work. Sadly, he passed on a few months later.

I wish I had done this project before I had met him. I would have thanked him for being so much more attentive to detail than those that worked on the maps after him. He was quite thorough. Part of this project is in homage to him and his attention to detail. I only hope I have done it justice. 

In keeping with that notion, if anyone does see an oversight, PLEASE TELL ME. Not that I will correct it right away, but I will keep a list of errata so that when I do go to make corrections, I will have it to go by. 

I do own the Expedition to Undermountain book, but I don’t see myself running it anytime soon and I need to stick to things that I want to run at the table.

I am considering doing other projects next. The one that I have been eyeing up the most is the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk merged with the Expedition to Castle Greyhawk campaign. This is much more problematic, though, then Ravenloft. The main reason is that the two modules have the castle in different timeframes, so that rooms that are shown in both have far more differences than did the ones in the Ravenloft project. Also, the latter campaign refers to the unmapped portions as having to fallen to ruin rather than maintaining their earlier appearance, and much less inhabited. 

I am working on finding a way to merge the differences in such a way that the entire undercastle can be explored with ready made maps. Considering the scope of t project, this will not be anytime soon. 

The other project I am considering is reconstructing the maps for the Scourge of the Slavelords campaign. That seems a little more reasonable for a short term goal while I pick away at the castle. I guess that I am nostalgic for old school material.  :Smile: 

Moving on to more posts...

----------


## Shindig

Here are some of the areas outside of the castle itself, redone from the sepia maps to something more usable. 

I did put together a map for the town, but it is a bit large for posting and does not fill in areas other than the road, so I am not going to post it here. It was just a quick and easy map to walk the players through the town and allow them to make choices as far as direction. I did not redo the maps supplied for the street encounters as editing out the creature markers from the ETCR maps worked well enough. I did make some maps of the random areas, as well as the church, and am posting these below. These are just to replace the sepia versions from the book and are nothing too intricate.

The following areas replace the sepia versions of the outlying areas. This brings us up to speed to where my campaign is actually at. I will be working on the Fanes next.

When I began these, I was feeling fairly confident with the program after completing the castle. I thought, _sure, this is outside whereas before I had the comfort of working with a nice angular building, but it cant be that different_. I was wrong. I had to start learning completely different techniques to get the job done, so the first couple I consider learning projects. Also, _I purposely did not include grids on these_ since they were imported to Maptool. It is MUCH easier to forego the grid at first, since they are needed in Maptool and it is annoying having to line up both grids to avoid the double-lined effect. 

Crossroads was the first. I thought that the path would be too abrupt on the edges so I added dirt and field grass along the side. I found out later that this was unnecessary as the program automatically fades in the path edge, as you can see in the second drawing, Vistani Camp. I dont think that there was a skeleton on the gallows in the book, but I didnt have another gallows to choose from and it fit the ambiance of the campaign. 

Vistani camp came off to much like a circus camp for me, but I was in a crunch and needed to get it done. It was my first attempt at creating a river.

I do like the way the Nymph Pool came out, though. The one thing I like the most about Campaign Cartographer is that vegetation comes out fantastic looking. It is the one aspect about overland mapping that I dont have to work at too much, it seems like the program does enough on its own. I just have to turn the trees/plants a bit if I use the same template more than once.

----------


## jtougas

> I am considering doing other projects next. The one that I have been eyeing up the most is the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk merged with the Expedition to Castle Greyhawk campaign. This is much more problematic, though, then Ravenloft. The main reason is that the two modules have the castle in different timeframes, so that rooms that are shown in both have far more differences than did the ones in the Ravenloft project. Also, the latter campaign refers to the unmapped portions as having to fallen to ruin rather than maintaining their earlier appearance, and much less inhabited.


That would be an amazing project. It's pretty well known around here that I am a huge fan of _anything_ Greyhawk and would love to see the Castle done in this style  :Smile:

----------


## Shindig

> That would be an amazing project. It's pretty well known around here that I am a huge fan of _anything_ Greyhawk and would love to see the Castle done in this style


When I begin putting together an attack plan for it, I will open another thread and be sure to let you know in this thread. I am leaning towards it, I just have to read through them again and see if it is feasable.

----------


## danielpryor

The maps will be restored later on this month on my new site! It will launch around the same time the new MapForge software comes out!

----------


## Shindig

Thank you. I must say, though, that I like your version of the drawbridge better. I captures the feeling of being on a high cliff better than what I did. 

We are currently in the middle of the campaign and I have found a few errors. They have come in on the first basement and things are playing out nicely! I am missing the secret room off of the north room and I have a desk in the kitchen which should be a cabinet. Ah, well...

----------


## danielpryor

> Thank you. I must say, though, that I like your version of the drawbridge better. I captures the feeling of being on a high cliff better than what I did. 
> 
> We are currently in the middle of the campaign and I have found a few errors. They have come in on the first basement and things are playing out nicely! I am missing the secret room off of the north room and I have a desk in the kitchen which should be a cabinet. Ah, well...


Thank you for the compliment, but I think you did a great job as well, we just have different styles. After seeing your stuff and my old stuff and switching software from DJ & PSP7 to DD3/CC3 and GIMP I decided to redo most or all of them. I am in the process though of learning the new software so it's going to take me awhile. 

Keep up the good work, your stuff is great!

----------


## Molbork

Great maps! My group has just entered the keep and were looking for some nice maps, but as a smart guy, but not a graphics guy I was wondering how would one go about printing these out? Do they print as 1 inch squares? 

This may end up as the nerdiest trip to Kinkos I've ever had and I had to get $6000 worth of physics lab manuals printed for my university one year lol

Any advice would be great!

----------


## Shindig

I use the quick and dirty method on Windows still with my deskjet printer. Yes there are programs that will divide pics over many sheets for you and you can get any type of interface that you are comfortable working with, but Paint has everything I need. You don't have to be 'exact' either, if it comes out that the squares are 1.1 inches, no one will really notice  :Wink:  
I just remember that a sheet is 8.5 x 11. I count the squares used (you may have to check the original maps out of the book since I don't include grids on these) and divide by either 8.5 or just 8 (for margins) or 11, depending on the orientation. That gives me the amount of pages across I'll need. Then repeat for top to bottom. When you set the page setup, take the horizontal and vertical centering off, and choose 'fit to' and put in the page counts that you came up with in the first part of this. Before printing, check the print preview and look at one of the pages that is fully covered. Make sure that you can count 8 to 9 squares for width and 10 to 11 squares in length. If it is too far off, add or delete a page in the 'fit to' section of the page setup. Recheck it until you have the best ratio.
Leave a quarter inch margin, cut the tops and right sides off with a straight edge, use a light paste and it will come out fine. 
That is quick and dirty. And even though it sounds a little elementary, the results are way better than you would think.
If you have access to larger printing, just count up the squares each way and that will give you the dimensions in inches you need. I have found that there is usually at least one worker at a Kinkos that has worked with maps and knows what you're trying to do. But really, just playing around a bit before actually printing it, you'll figure it out. 

If you have access to a laptop and decent flat monitor (25 inch), I highly recommend setting it flat with a plexiglass cover over it and using Maptool. Download it for free at their site (google will lead you right to it), they have a great forum to learn its functions and everyone will be impressed with the results. 
This castle is somewhat of a three dimensional puzzle. For example, all of the rooms on the first floor cannot be accessed easily without going up or down a floor first. Having some form of 'fog of war' that emphasizes how the pcs can lose track of where they are in the castle adds greatly to the feel of the module. Printed maps lose this edge as the players can always see whether they are in the middle of the floor, or at the North end, no matter how much 'covering up' you try to do. And, once you have the monitor ($180.00 for 25"), you stop with the costs of printing. It pays for itself very quickly if you make a lot of maps. 
I hope I answered your question well enough and maybe even given you some new ideas to think about.
Happy gaming!

----------


## johnnywiggle

Shindig - am deeply impressed by your efforts.  Have been DMing ETCR for (embarrassing pause..............) the last year and my PCs have been in the castle for the last month or so. Well, the best excuse for the lengthy game time is that we game only fortnightly and I've been running them all over the countryside first.  

Anyway, the biggest hassle I've found with running the game is accurately depicting the floor plans well.  I've been generally using the freely available maps on wizards.com (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ag/20061031a) and blowing them up for use on my laptop screen (17") or printing them off.  The laptop screen at 17" is generally too small for most of the bigger encounters; and the resolution of the maps too poor. Am deeply impressed with your rendition of the game's maps - there are so many inconsistencies between the encounter maps and the orthogonal maps.  I've just been through every stairwell to see if they should climb anti-clockwise or clockwise, for example!  I love the level of detail in your renditions - knowing little facts like the middle statue in Sergei's tomb is of cruder construction for example - only things that DMs would pick up on.  I'm sure you're finding the book a challenge to DM too. As much as I love it, the constant cross referencing between the adventure text and the encounter maps is a nightmare.  My bugbear is that information from both those sources within the book doesn't naturally correlate.  I've been DMing encounters and suddenly realised the map is wrong or incomplete in the true description of the text.  I thoroughly understand and appreciate how drawing out and mapping the entire castle has expanded your knowledge of the module.

Am slightly torn at the moment.  Do I use your excellent maps (with due repping, hat doffing etc) by printing and/or maptooling on a new monitor. Or do I buy CC3 and go through the cathartic experience myself..........

Cheers for your excellent work

----------


## Drakecoinus

I have never had the pleasure of experiencing Castle Ravenloft in any format, but I will defiantly have to look into it now  :Smile: 
hats off and JOB WELL DONE  :Smile:  Look forward to seeing more of your work

----------


## Blinded

I lurk a lot and appropriate great maps for my D&D group - this is amazing. Thank you so much for your effort & kindness in sharing.  :Smile:

----------


## Shindig

@johnnywiggle
I totally understand the dilemma. When I started this, I didn't really...'want to' as much as I became frustrated at a) the inconsistencies, and b) Wizard's idiocy in providing only 'keyed' maps that, if you want to utilize for players, you have to edit anyways. (They finally started posting 'clean' maps in 4e.) Unlike many Ravenloft dms, I actually liked the 3.5 maps. Yes, they are inconsistent but I liked the style. I originally was going to keep all of the floors blue as they had done, but then, well, I just started getting carried away, lol. 

The worst part of the inconsistencies in the maps is that they are so darned minor to casual observation until battle starts and you realize, "hey, the dining room door moved 5 or 10 feet from where it was on the other map, what gives?" It seems like such a little thing until you set the minis down and realize that it changes the tactics quite a bit. Great adventure, just wish they had not rushed it quite as much. Also, if you have not found it already, Fraternity of Shadows has a handy errata sheet for the adventure.

Stairs. Good grief! Thank goodness I had all three modules to work with. The 1st ed was the best and became the 'go to' map for figuring stuff out. Here is a good way to keep the stairs straight: Draw a mental line from the front entrance all the way to the back chapel, bisecting the chapel. Every spiral stairway NORTH of this goes UP as you walk clockwise. Every spiral stairway SOUTH of this goes DOWN as you walk clockwise. Once that was figured out, I just had to be careful to keep track of which tiles the stairways appeared at, as that was sort of a hodge-podge in some of the side areas. You'll see those areas as you run the game.

I strongly urge purchasing a flat 23"-24" monitor. $170.00 will get you one and it will pay for itself in a year with ink costs. Projectors also work, but I prefer the under-lighting (especially with some of the miniatures, like Caller in the Darkness, that has a hole underneath that captures the monitor light and gives it a nice, other-worldly glow.) If you're using Maptool, make sure to up the memory usage on the very first small screen that comes up after you click on the icon. It's default is 256 mb which will not load these maps well. I upped it to 1 G and that works nicely, especially on the 3rd floor with the outside walkways.

CC3 is a great program but has a tough learning curve if you are only used to Windows based programs and have not used a CAD based program before. Like me. But then I found some great tutorials that explained its functions quite well and now I love it. But I would not have attacked this whole thing if I could have found something online that I could use, that is why I HAD to post these when I completed them. I have 'borrowed' more than my share of maps for my game, and it was high time that I paid my dues back to the online community.   :Wink: 

I am preparing another module and doing some map work again after being busy with work for the past year. I am going to figure out why I have not been getting e-mails from this site when someone tries to contact me or adds to this post and correct the problem. If you have any further questions, message me, and I will be checking this site weekly from now on.

Thanks for your kind words!

----------


## Shindig

> I have never had the pleasure of experiencing Castle Ravenloft in any format, but I will defiantly have to look into it now 
> hats off and JOB WELL DONE  Look forward to seeing more of your work


Thank you for the kind words! Come to the darkside.   :Smile: 
It's a well made castle with a well made villain. Not one that the pcs read about, meet once, and then battle to the death, but a villain that they meet many times and get defeated and pushed into doing his bidding. The hatred in my game group is seething for this guy. We are just in the last part of it. Two of my players are on their 5th characters for this module. I believe that once they defeat him (if they do, and I hope they do) they will be doing victory dances while their characters jump up and down on his corpse, lol.

I am back at the map making for a while now. I hope to post soon. 

Again, thanks!

----------


## Shindig

> I lurk a lot and appropriate great maps for my D&D group - this is amazing. Thank you so much for your effort & kindness in sharing.


No problem! It is about time that I gave back to the site that I lurked myself for years, downloading maps as needed. I am just thankful that people have taken to them so well. I am working on some new projects so I will post again soon.

Thanks!

----------


## Bogie

Great set of maps Shindig!  Nice work.  
It was also fun spotting a number of pieces I had posted on the Dundjinni Forums in your maps.  The first one that caught my eye was the round table in front of the fireplace.  (and the floor in front of the fireplace uses the same original photo I took, it was a tiled floor in a hotel lobby, then I made a table out of it.)

----------


## Shindig

> Great set of maps Shindig!  Nice work.  
> It was also fun spotting a number of pieces I had posted on the Dundjinni Forums in your maps.  The first one that caught my eye was the round table in front of the fireplace.  (and the floor in front of the fireplace uses the same original photo I took, it was a tiled floor in a hotel lobby, then I made a table out of it.)


Thank you twice then, sir! Once for the compliment and one large one for posting your artwork for me to utilize! I used two main libraries besides the library that comes with CC3: Shessar's Map Art Collection (SMAC) and a Maptool art set that I am not sure who compiled, so one or the other probably included your work somehow. Glad it could come back to you in a format you enjoy. Thanks again!

----------


## strike277

I know this thread is 6 months silent at this point. But I wanted to give it a bump due to it being a fantastic one. Thank you for doing these maps. I ran the first module when it came out and have every rendition produced through out the years. Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into this project.

----------


## Shindig

I know it has been a while, but I have finally broke in my new pc and am busy once again with building maps. I have completed the Garden of Graves which my players have recently finished, but only the first chapter of the whole book. You can find this in the Virtual Tabletop/Battlemap Mapping forum. That is probably where this should have been placed, but I am not going to attempt to move this thread.  :Smile: 

I have also completed a darker, more earthy version of King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, which I will be posting soon.  That will probably be posted in this forum. 

Enjoy!

----------


## charcon

I have access to huge printers and small color printers both....what size should i print this out to so i can lay them out for miniatures while we play? Please help!

----------


## Bogie

Most people play that 1 inch = 5 ft.  At that scale, the close up map on post 2 should be printed as 34 inches wide.

----------


## charcon

Awesome! This ought to be epic! So if I re-size the pics how much do I resize it in microsoft publisher do you think from the orginal size to make it big enough...any ideas?

----------


## charcon

Also...I will print them all out and after we use them to play if anyone would like them after we are done let me know. They would be around 85 bucks a piece to print at Kinkos! Ouch! Love my work!

----------


## templar12

You,sir, are a savior. I had received interest from my group to play this. Looking through the book and being a fan of VTT's, I was overwhelmed at the effort I would have to put in CC3 to make maps. (I suck at CC3). Being a googler and borrower of what I cannot make, Thankfully I came here. I want to say THANK YOU!!!

----------


## Shindig

I've been gone for a while. It is so great to hear people have been able to use these! I just purchased the new CC3+ and am getting interested in creating something again. I promised Castle Greyhawk a few years back, so I will do a little research and see if anyone else has done it already in the manner I prefer. I want to tweak it quite a bit anyway. Coming back and reading new comments is urging me forward!

----------


## Revderrick

Just wanted to say how impressive this is! I ran EtCR a few years back with the WOTC maps, cleaned up as best as I could, protecting them down onto a whiteboard table and it was decent, but these would have been amazing. Bravo.

----------


## charcon

Shindig how can I email you or can you email me about your awesome work? You have a huge following.

----------


## charcon

I printed these out 1"=5' and they are amazing and perfect for minis!!!

----------


## Shindig

I am always glad to hear that people are still using these maps! It took quite a while to figure out the details from the three different maps that are available from TSR/WOTC. Some maps had stairwells misplaced by one square on certain floors and I kept having to cross-reference each map to figure out the correct placement. Not one map that was published was error free. Then again, I am sure that mine is not either. 'Tis a big building.

Charcon, I PMed you how to get in touch with me. My time these days is spent mostly between my job, renovating my house, and the occasional night out to forget how long my renovation project is taking. I miss map making a great deal and would like to get some time to get back to my next project but it may be a few months yet. 

In the meantime, keep up the good game, and thank you for making use of this lovely, dark castle!

-Shindig

----------


## designbot

Thanks for the great maps. You mentioned that you resized them for the forum—any chance you could upload the original, full-resolution files somewhere like Imgur, Google Drive, or Dropbox?

----------


## JTM_77583

You know this thread is going to become a METRIC TON more popular with the sudden resurgence of the Ravenloft series via the Curse of Strahd expansion.

Here's a link to a project that someone shared with me... basically it sows how to make your own flat panel table top monitor that you can use with minis... so DD3 and battlegrounds and other mapping utilities becomes that much more powerful for you if you want to use digital maps at the local Adventurer's League session.

https://thefriisfamily.squarespace.c...s-and-crafting

----------


## JTM_77583

Forgot to say... Fabulous Job (!!!) and Thanks!!!

----------


## Chad Federwitz

Thank you! This is the greatest Map for Ravenloft ever I'm sure.  Wonderful Work.

----------


## Cadfael

Thank you very much

----------


## Cadfael

This will help my party to enjoy!

----------


## Cadfael

But where are the maps?

----------


## Cadfael

I mean how can I download the maps of the adventure?

----------


## Cadfael

I appreciate the help!!!!

----------


## Neyjour

> I mean how can I download the maps of the adventure?


There are a number of maps posted (as attachments) in the first 3 pages.  Just left-click the thumbnails and they should open in a new window at full-rez.

Or are the thumbnails/attachments not showing up for you?

----------


## kilthooligan

> This should be the chapel and garden area.


I have looked at all your maps ... wonderfully done. I have not had a chance to ever run this adventure, so thank you for taking the time to work on all these maps.

I have a question, this particular map there appears to be some sort of overlap on the middle and right sections and it is throwing me off. Is this the way the map should look?

Thank you for your time on all this.

----------


## HelpMeOuch

Thank you so much for these gorgeous maps!!!

----------


## Shindig

Wow! What a great surprise to log in after so many years! I hadn't thought about this site while renovating, then COVID... You know the rest. I hadn't received any emails, I guess I must have unsubscribed by accident. I am SO glad so many were able to use this! I want to get back into this so badly! I miss it!

Thank you everyone for making my day!

----------

