2025 Retrospective and Looking Toward 2026

Hello everyone, and Happy (almost) New Year! I am often so heads down in making my next map that I hardly have time to sit back and enjoy the work I've created and the milestones I've achieved as a map maker. It's important to me to celebrate the hard work I've done every once in a while, and I figured now would be a good time to talk about 2025 and also look into 2026. I also put together this little video for you to see all the maps I've created in 2025, and a very special thanks to RPG Music Maker Travis Savoie for the track used in this video. This is "Introduction (Reworked)" off his album "Beyond the Mists".

Of course, I wouldn't even be writing this without all of YOU. Your support, your enthusiasm, your passion as Game Masters, and your drive to run fantastical and epic games for your players is nothing short of incredible. The TTRPG space has been one of the healthiest and most positive communities I've found myself in, which has given such ardent support for third-party creators. We've seen so many successful Kickstarters and new RPGs come out, as well as your support for artists, music composers, writers, live-streamers, and so many other folks who get together, share their art and passion, and embrace this community.

As the plot of the Fallout series is increasingly resembling the real world we live in today, it's more important now than ever to embrace community, support each other, uplift each other, and create spaces where our imaginations can run wild without rampant avarice creeping into our community spaces.

So thank you. Thank you all for everything you've done to support my family and me, allowing me to live out my dream as a full-time map maker, pay my bills, and put food on my table. Thank you all SO much. Now let's talk about the past and the future!

A Retrospective of 2025

I want to take a few moments to recognize the milestones I've hit this year.

• As Patreon announced getting rid of their "per creation" billing model, I had to make a pivot to the current monthly subscription plan. I had my reservations about switching over to this model, but I'm so glad Patreon helped me grandfather all of my Champion tier patrons who had supported me for SO long to keep their current pricing the same. This was a great way to say thank you and honor those community members who have helped me get here. I am very pleased with the new billing model as I feel it has created a lot less confusion, is cleaner, and easier to navigate. This was a huge effort in making sure the transition was smooth and took a lot of anxiety and worry to get through it all, but in the end, I think it went as well as could be!

• I created new Master Map Posts for each Tier. This is something I've wanted to do for a while now, and while Patreon's such functions are not the best, I am glad not only can I have a master map list, but also links to download each map automatically on click. The good news is Patreon increased their .zip file upload limit to 5gb so the days of me having 8+ zip file attached to a post are over. I have enjoyed being able to link the downloads to each map post as opposed to creating different posts for each tier, and I find running it this way to be the cleanest solution.

• Took on a new Collaboration project with Lunch Break Heroes for their new setting "Lothburgh"; A Victorian / Steam-punk inspired Dark Fantasy setting with both steam-powered constables and vampires creating issues for the good folk of Lothburgh to contend with! It's a dash of Noir, a sprinkle of Gothic Horror, and a peppering of Mary Shelley-inspired electro fun. I've been playing in this campaign with LBH, helping play-test the adventure, new sub-classes, and new monsters, and this has really allowed me to get into the headspace to start creating the world of Lothburgh in my art. I am hoping to see Lothburgh hit Kickstarter in 2026, and I sure do hope you've enjoyed seeing me make something new and unique. Also, I don't know about you, but I personally would LOVE to run Curse of Strahd in a Victorian setting like the recent Robert Eggers film "Nosferatu".

• Partnered with the talented Talanor to venture into the Foundry space and brought him on as my core developer for this project. Thanks to him, I was able to get my maps converted over to Foundry modules, but beyond just walls & lights, he's built a fully customized UI just for DM Andy Maps! Allowing for ease of toggles between map variant, color mood, and weather, as well as controlling turning the Foundry lights on / off. I am SO thankful for his work as it is often demanding and challenging (especially with how I make maps), but time and time again, he's risen above and beyond. I would not be here without Talanor, and I'm looking forward to our continued partnership in 2026. Thank you, Talanor, for all of your hard work on the Foundry front!

• Speaking of Foundry, later in the year, Talanor was able to include a Levels install option via the compendium for a number of my more complex building maps. This has created such a seamless map experience and has given a lot of time back to those running Foundry. I have also started providing more .png files of building levels, roofs, and various upper-level overlays to help make the VTT experience even better!

• I introduced printable PDFs as a standard of map delivery for the higher tiers. I know VTT gets a lot of attention in the map space, but I wanted to also support those DMs who love to have a massive, printed-out map as the centerpiece for their in-person games. I've seen some incredible photos of those who have printed maps, and I'm so happy to be able to support this. I've set up my printable PDFs to print on standard US letter size (8.5x11") per page, which makes it manageable for home printers (though you WILL need a lot of space and a lot of ink!) or for sending those files over to printshops to handle. Each of these is using my gridded 8k maps at 300DPI for the best print results.

• Partnership with DragnaCarta for Curse of Strahd Re-Reloaded, as well as his new publishing company, Eidolon. The Dragna team and community have been so welcoming, and I have spent the year working on tons of maps to support CoS: Reloaded. I was very excited to be commissioned to work on a few map projects for a new adventure created by Eidolon, and I'm extremely excited to see where his company will be headed in 2026!

• Continued partnership with Pyram King for Legends of Saltmarsh. I've currently mapped out 23 of the 30 locations in Saltmarsh, as well as the first adventure in the book "Sinister Secrets of Saltmarsh". But beyond just making maps for each location, Pyram King has been bringing them to life with his written modules! He's been sharing them with the Saltmarsh community, and I am so thankful for our continued partnership over the years. Between Legends of Barovia and Legends of Saltmarsh, Pyram has created a truly rich and detailed landscape of lore, colorful NPCs, and fun mechanics to run at your home games.

• Collaboration with a few other incredible content creators, such as Caleb is Drawing (a number of his artworks have been featured as portraits in my maps) and Monument Studios, who just launched their own soundboard this year for running audio at your tables! In July, I also collaborated on a massive "Pirate Themed" map release with a number of my map-making peers, such as BearWorks, AngelaMaps, Eledryll, & D&Demetrius!

• Continued developing custom assets and working with a number of talented asset artists, such as RiverDog Studios and PaePu, to commission new custom assets to further bring my maps to life!

Plans for 2026

I am very excited for a new year of map-making! This will mark my sixth year making battlemaps, and I am working so hard to further hone my skills, master perspective, and create fully immersive maps for your tables. Here is a rough idea of my plans for the upcoming year.

• Continue with my Re-Work of my old CoS maps. This includes: Berez, Yester Hill, The Winery, Krezk, Van Richten's Tower, Tsolenka Pass, Werewolf Den, and yes, even Castle Ravenloft! Additionally, I want to create expansive, robust environmental maps of large swaths of Svalich Woods, Svalich Road, and the Swamps of Berez so you have plenty of outdoor options for encounters (and outdoor maps are fairly universal and system-agnostic).

• I've decided I want to take a crack at creating one of the largest, most robust maps I've ever done to add a whole new level of detail, depth, and height to one of THE most iconic locations in D&D. I want to also make my own tweaks to the castle and expand it just a bit to make it a more practical location (Such as adding more guest wings, a proper ballroom, bathrooms, etc). I think my current Castle Ravenloft map is wonderful for the canon-Ravenloft that is from the book, but I would very much like to create a "Castle Ravenloft Expanded" series of maps with fully integrated Levels in Foundry, floor cut-outs, and the works!

• Keep working on updating my back-catalog of maps to convert over to Foundry, so eventually my entire collection will be Foundry-ready.

• Continue bringing the world of Lothburgh to life with even more Victorian-inspired scenes and locations.

• Finish mapping out the town of Saltmarsh, including the two larger manors as well as creating some generic locations (streets, islands, oceans, etc). I will also be starting on creating map reworks for the written adventures from the book.

• I'd love to start looking at a new setting or biome to tackle as well, and though it might not be until the end of the year, I'd really like to start working with the community to see what you'd all like to see next. There are SO many adventures, worlds, and settings I could tackle, so we'll be in talks later in the year to see where interests lie.

• On the Foundry front, I will be working with Talanor to take user feedback and continue to develop the custom DM Andy Maps UI to make it even better and easier to use. I would also like to start including music and sound effects as part of the package and just need to reach out to some of the music folks I've worked with in the past to make sure they are being supported and compensated for this collaboration. I also want to create a larger map pack module for ease of installation and management. For instance, I would like to take my Parchment Map of Vallaki and make a module where you can click each location, and it will teleport your players to that map. These larger map packs will be more condensed and themed (I am thinking Gloom and Night color moods only to keep the file size down), but will be a little easier to install and manage.

• I am currently working on commissioning new weather overlays and will be working on providing weather overlays as .png files with each map release. This will help keep the file size down both in size and number of map files by not having to bake in the weather, and I hope to give you more flexibility on applying these weather overlays to your VTTs should you choose to use my own. Right now, I'll be working on rain, fog, snow, and sun ray overlays, but I hope to expand into additional variants next year, such as light rain, heavy rain, blizzard snow, light snow, etc.

• I'll be doing more map collaborations with my map-making peers as I want to help get more eyes on their wonderful creations. I already have a map collab planned at the end of Jan with Dark Fantasy expert, Eledryll, and I cannot wait to share more details with you! I'm also in talks to do another map collab in Feb as well. These collabs will essentially be two maps released at the same time, one by me and one by the person I'm working with, so you'll still get my style, but you'll get a free bonus map of the person I'm working with! I think it's important to support the art community for hand-made TTRPG creations now more than ever, and I hope to be able to showcase their incredible work here on my page.

• I've been asked by a few for a behind-the-scenes look at my map process, and I'd like to start creating some time-lapse vids of my workflow from start to finish. I build everything by hand, and I think it will be a fun way to show you how my maps are designed and built! I have my first time-lapse vid planned for mid-Jan and I can't wait to share it with you all. If you like it, I'll try my best to do at least one a month.

• I very much would like to design my own website, even if its core use is just for map searching. Patreon is great, but it's not so great for finding specific maps, and sometimes you either miss something or have to spend a lot of time searching. I want to build a robust tagging system to allow you to search by theme, biome, setting, or keyword to quickly find maps that might fit your encounter needs.

• Lastly, I would like to create a membership tier system over on Ko-Fi to mimic what I have here on Patreon. This will give you all a choice of which platform you prefer to work with without losing access to my maps. The only hurdle I need to figure out is the Foundry integration, as presently, Foundry does not have a Ko-fi integration, as they do with Patreon for Foundry Premium.

I might be biting off more than I can chew for 2026... but I always shoot big! One thing I can absolutely guarantee is a steady flow of lovingly hand-crafted battlemaps for your games. Whether you're playing D&D, DaggerHeart, Pathfinder, Shadowdark, or any number of incredible TTRPGs, I hope to be able to continue making immersive maps for you to use at your tables.

Thank you for a wonderful 2025, and I am so looking forward to 2026 of mapping goodness. Happy New Year!

Cheers friends,

DM Andy