Caves of Chaos Battlemap
by Darren MoffettI made these on GIMP just to see if I could. I wanted to have players see the Valley and the Caves entrances without seeing the inside. I have been using MapTool as my TableTop. Projecting the Maps onto A Whiteboard laid across the actual table top with my projector. Put the minis on the map use tokens to represent light sources and we have everything we need. I started mostly because I was trying to figure out how to use shading and contour lines to represent different elevations, but it became an entire campaign project by the time I was finished. I made some mistakes but haven't had time to correct them. Most notably the Valley is green grass when its described and rocky and dirt with clumps of trees in the Text of the Module (B2 Keep on The Borderland). I have 2 ongoing D&D 5E campaigns and I have not done much with "Star Frontiers" lately. Both my D&D campaigns are set the "BECMI Known World, Grand Duchy of Karamiekos" AKA "The Mystara" Setting. I'm Using The 5th Edition Rule set. My main Adult Campaign has been running a sandbox around the Town of Threshold and the Characters took the hooks for some things and not others. My Kids campaign consists of whatever the Adult campaign decide not to do. I modified the kidnapped girls scenario from Thorns Mystara to fit my own ideas. The first few Game session with the adults the kidnappings were happening behind the scenes mostly, as they explored the Sewers, the Old mill and Killed a Hag and Rescued a Druid. They didn't get involved with the Kidnappings (even though they had heard about them) until The Baron called the party to a meeting. The adult Party chose to go to Castle Mystamere First. Leaving an NPC party to tackle "the Old Caves" They Rescued the Girls from Mystamere and Jumped on another adventure hook that lead to the Events of "B10 Nights Dark Terror". They are Close to the end of that Mini Campaign. Currently In the "Lost Valley of Hutaaka" about to lay the undead to rest and go after the boss monster under the Temple. The Kids have Just Started and since they couldn't make a decision on what to do; I had Baron Sherlane hire them as "professional fixers" (I hate when old D&D box text refers to the PCs as Heroes or Adventurers) to go and find out what happened at the old caves. (the NPC party never came back) but then I had to make up something about the old caves outside of town. The Basic D&D players book had a tiny little map you my know the one, but I thought it was too small. The version from Thorns Mystara was not one I liked so I said wait... I just made the Caves of Chaos maps..... I will use those The kids will never know that they were part of "Keep on the Borderlands" I had a different map made for the Adult campaign And if this works out I may have the Adults run through it too in a separate campaign. These Maps are large, I put them on a modern 5' grid to match the 5th Edition style so I had to double the size of the grid which was originally 10'. The original had indoors and outdoors on the same map. None of the maps show the secret doors and any of the traps, Because they are players view & battle map style. The Traps show up in MapTool When I allow the players to see them (either they found it and disarmed/avoided or they Set it off) but the Drawings don't show the secret doors or the traps. This means that I am using the Old dungeon master map from the original module behind my DM screen. I also left off the numbering keys that correspond to the room description in the Module text because it distracts the players from the game when they see the numbers ( yes even the Adults). With these maps, I tried to furnish the dungeon according to the text descriptions as originally written in the adventure module by Gary Gygax. I stayed as close to his descriptions as possible on my drawings and with the objects I used I think it came out very well. The one problem with the interior map is that I traced it from a 10 foot grid map that did not line up exactly on every room. This seems to be a problem with a lot of the maps from that time period, The PDF versions don't always line up correctly when you try to trace them. Since this dungeon was so large and had curvy natural cave patterns all over the place I decided that trying to redraw it entirely would be too time consuming. So I traced it in GIMP. I also added shading to give it a 3d feel, so the walls feel like they are above the floor. Well anyway Check out both maps, exterior and interior and tell me what you think.
