Sneak Peek - Castle Ravenloft Exterior

It's finally here! After over 1.5 years of me making maps for Curse of Strahd, I'm proud to announce my upcoming release; Castle Ravenloft Exterior! 

This has to have been one of the most challenging maps I've ever tackled from the module given the complexity of the castle layout and trying to decipher the isometric images to make sense of it all. Not to mention, the castle has been through many iterations over the decades of our real-time!  However, I feel pretty confident in my creation and I think you'll enjoy it too. 

This map is a massive map coming in on a 100x80 grid which officially makes it my largest battlemap to date. It will include the full castle walls and surrounding cliffs. I did want to try and save on map space given it's already 100 squares wide so I only have the tail end of the drawbridge given that was featured on my previous map, the "Road to the Castle". However it does include the full overlook and if you look closely on the finished map, you'll see the tops of the mist swept pines below. 

In addition to the exterior castle, I also created interior locations for the following: Coach house (which will feature the black carriage), the out-buildings on the outlook, the archer post towers on the main keep and the interior drawbridge mechanisms on either of the main gate tower. 

Lastly, if I have the time I'm going to try to export these maps in 4k, 6k, and 8k. When I did the Western Gate map, due to it's size, I found that it went under the Foundry minimum of 50 PPI for the 4k maps so I think the 6k map will add more pixels per square but be less intensive than the 8k versions so give you greater variety. Both the 8k and 6k exports take about 30 mins each and I will be doing night, rain, day, and clean versions so might take me some time to prep for Monday, but that's my goal! 

In future iterations, I plan on creating some additional variations including adding a small Vistani camp in the courtyard, but right now I want to stay focused on the core maps from the book, then I can go back and add variants and third party content as well as former iterations of the castle. 

Can't wait to share this with you on Monday!

Cheers,

DM Andy