Champion Tier - Castle Ravenloft: Dungeon & Catacomb

Disclaimer: All content controlled by Wizards of the Coast IP is available for free in compliance with the Fan Content Creation Policy. The free post for this map can be found here. 

We are finally here! The final map for my re-make of Strahd's Castle, and this time, I bring you the Dungeon & Catacombs!

What a journey this has been, and after months of hard work on this project, I'm super excited to say I've mapped out all of the castle! Additionally, I now have maps for just about every location from the CoS module!

But fear not, I'm not done mapping out the spooky world of Dark Fantasy and have plenty more to come in the future.

This map grid size is slightly larger than the previous castle maps I've done. This is due in part to a few reasons. Mainly, I wanted enough room to show the cliffs and fog below. While most of your players won't see it if you are using dynamic lighting, I know some will include some areas for them to look out of the windows from the royal crypt, and what a view they will see! The other reason is if I had made all of the previous maps on an 80x60 grid, I would have lost a lot of detail quality in having to size everything down. My goal is always to create a big enough space for a playable area while maximizing the quality of detail.

Since there are not any traditional "variants" I normally do on this map, I've decided to give you plenty of different colors moods to help capture the vibe you are trying to cultivate in your game. The moods are:

Ancient: This is dark & moody while providing layers of muted colors, browns and giving the map an overall ancient and old feel.  

Banshee: The focus here is to bring out the ghostly blues of the crypt and make it feel cold and uninviting. 

Bright: I worry my maps might be a little too dark, and I never want to remove details from your players. This mood brings all of the color intensity to the surface. While not dark and dreary, this will make the visuals and details pop more for your players. 

Gloom: The focus here is on the dark shadows of the crypt and dungeon while giving it a cold and eerie feel. 

Grave: This mood lightens things up just a tad while still focusing on the ancient and ghostly feeling of the crypts. 

Haunted: This mood is dark! Very dark.. I've also introduced shades of a more eerie greenish hue to the map to provide a truly gloomy and ghostly feeling. 

Original: This is the map as I built it, untouched by any color alterations.

As a perk of being a Champion Tier Patron, you get the following with this release: 

• 4k / 8k Resolution jpgs
• Grid and NoGrid versions 
• Clean versions (No fog or lights), including clean versions of each color mood
• Six Color Moods (detailed above) 
• Webp files in 4k / 8k with a VTT sizing guide

While this marks the last "official" location from the CoS module, I'm far from done! In a previous post, I mentioned moving over to the Ghosts of Saltmarsh module, and I plan to start making maps to supplement this module next month. I also have two more maps to finish for the Interactive Tome of Strahd: The Burgomaster's Mansion / Garden & the prologue. That should wrap up the IToS project nicely.  

While we took a break last month, I am working on creating maps for one of Lunch Break Hereos first original adventure: The Hunger! This is the only adventure I've not mapped out for LBH, as it was created before I became their map maker. I'm excited to bring you the town of Dawnvale and its spider-infested mines! There will be two map releases to support this adventure, the town with all of the key location interiors, and the second map release will be the spider-infested mines. 

And, of course, Pyram King and I are partnering to make a dungeon of our own creation. Pyram is putting his amazing skills into creating an expansive dungeon crawl that will provide an alternative entrance to Strahd's Castle through the pillar stone below it! 

Lastly, I plan on creating V 2.0's of my older maps (Such as Death House, The Amber Temple, Village of Barovia, etc.) to bring them up to my current map-making standards and create more generic Dark Fantasy maps that can be used for any campaign. I also have plans to create different variants of the castle to include changes by other popular content creators as well as creating new locations (such as the Vallaki Orphanage and Reformation Center). 

Lots of exciting plans here in the workshop of DM Andy! As always, thank you for your support in my map-making journey, and I can't wait to see what the future has in store. 

Cheers,

DM Andy

"DM Andy Maps is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC."

"This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode."