Surprise Your Players With Dungeon Maps!
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- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
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With sheets of this size (unlike with flipchart sheets), you could laminate each one. That would let you draw on spell effects and other things that you should remove later, and let you reuse the same sheet/room at another session.
you would get weird overlap issues though because lamination needs a margin
I have a 8.5in x 11in paper, that I drew gridlines on, back in the 90's. I "laminated" it with clear contact paper. I don't use it as much because of the commercial folding grid map I've since purchased, but it's still a great solution for someone looking for low budget ideas.
I'd use pencils and tokens for that
I just sat down to draw a dungeon map for an upcoming Shadowdark session and your video popped up. Gotta love it. Love you work. Keep it up!
I guess the first time you plaster a secret room above the map the players are going to be really impressed... also, dread everything they might miss which is good.
Old school dungeons were full of secret doors, but you had stuff like rumors of hidden rooms or just hidden rooms that only contain treasure that aren't all that vital to further any goal you might have in a dungeon.
I had a similar solution for this; Cardboard. Get plenty of the stuff (I get mine from the store I work at), design the dungeon piece by piece, and cut off the excess.
I’m doing the same thing with props
Oh man!! I've been doing this exact thing recently, and with posca markers too, even!! You introduced it to me with your previous video on the maps on small grid paper. I find cutting them out is an extra step that can make it look super awesome!
Also also, being able to mix and match the dungeon pieces can make a randomized dungeon on the fly, which is awesome too.
Love your videos JP. Your energy is infectious, and I appreciate how you're lowering the barrier of entry and encouraging people to make things!
Appreciate you Brandon!
I love these ideas. My drawing skills are ok, but I like the benefit of a simple approach, so I can focus more on other game prep. I also like the idea of using this for organized gameplay (Pathfinder Society, Adventure League, etc). I can see getting a lot of use out of this, with minimal game prep.
Even more than the benefits of having modular pieces to construct a dungeon, I find that dungeons are just way way more fun when you cut the hallways out and separate it into a number of chunks of adjacent rooms. That's how I do all my dungeons now, even on VTT. Room into room, hallways are like loading screens.
Cool video! I've drawn a dungeon on the backside of gift wrapping paper. Most wrapping papers have a 1 inch grid on the backside. Super cheap, but with the added hastle of needing to cut the wrapping paper instead of having nice sheets like in the video.
YES! I should mention this more. I don't like how slick the paper is, but it's a GREAT option for sure!
NIce tips, the slap a secret room on top is so simple but never crossed me!
I've been drawing dungeons this way for the past 2 months or so. We also had a lot of fun with random tile placement for an underdark adventure. Basically something akin to a boardgame, where you draw from a tile pile and most tiles could be placed and connect in multiple ways to the other map tiles. I'd love to hear your opinion and tips for these.
I've seen people draw large maps and cover up sections until the adventurers enter the next section or line of sight of the next one. This A4 page section style is SO much simpler! I see in the comments a few posters have been using it, but this method never occurred to me, yet it's almost the inverse of the large covered map, just easier!
Brilliant!
😎😎😎😎
I buy rolls of giftwrapping paper at the local Dollar Tree, making sure to pick out the brand that puts a 1inch grid on the back (to cut straight lines). Flipped over, that makes a perfect grid for pre-mapping, which I can roll up to take with me. Lots of surface area for $1.25. While it doesn't accomodate keeping side-by-side rooms hidden, it was PERFECT to re-design the Goblin Caves outside of Phandelver. I just kept unrolling my map as the PCs followed the stream into the caves...
I do the same thing. Recommended!
I've done this before, and you can definitely do hidden rooms! On the full map just draw it as if the secret isn't there, then you cut out smaller pieces of the paper and draw the open secret door and the connected secret room, and you can just lay it over the map when it's found. Another cool thing about this is that you can move where that little room is if you need to, or if your players miss it the first time, to a different spot in your dungeon - assuming there's space behind that wall where it can go. It's one of the benefits of drawing maps like this
This is a very big help! Thank you!
I‘m about to run my first Session as a DM and run the Dragon of Icespire Peak Campaign.
It never crossed my mind to draw the Rooms twice, with and without the Secret Doors, Rooms and Passages and just overlay if my Friends find a Secret!
Thanks again and have a good day!
Back in the day when 1" graph paper wasn't readily available, we'd use the ¼" grid that we used for lab notebooks and such, and just count off four squares to be one inch. Nowadays, with downloadable graph paper, one would only do that in emergencies, but if you're playing tonight and you can't get to the store or the printer is dead, it will work.
And do you know the little dots and squares you can buy for garage sale price tags, or whatever? Draw your secret doors and such on the most appropriate size of those, and when the party finds one, stick it down. They're not really removable, but if you're only using the map once, yeah, it'll work.
I learnt to draw maps by using the symbols in Mentzer Basic.
BECMI is still the very best version of D&D.
Good to see more old school mapping and the separate sheets is more convenient than a large map.
I use wrapping paper with grids on the back for maps. Works wonders and is relatively inexpensive.
Edit: they're also really easy to transport because you can fold them up and put them anywhere.
Could use a clear plastic page you put over a room that has just the secret room on it so you dont need to remake a map twice for secrets. Also lets you have multiple secrets easier in one room if needed.
A quick tip for drawing pretty straight lines without a ruler is just to make sure you are orienting the paper so that you can draw a straight line in towards your body. I find this works better than drawing a horizontal line
Fantastic video! I love that you've created a reference book as well. Keep up the great work!
Backing those sheets of paper onto thin card would also help keep the paper flat and prevent an errant breeze from blowing them all over the place.
i need me some of that paper JP!!!
The back of wrapping paper works too.
While not blue grid and as big and impressive, I have started working up maps like this on blank index cards so I can lay them out as they players explore the areas. They were checking out a tunnel system underneath a town where people had been going missing and really enjoyed the suspense of finding out where the passages connected. Oh and they freaked out when they found the one with an illustration oh a secret temple hidden away down below. Love the video JP!
If you aren't worried about a grid, this sounds awesome! Takes up WAY less table space too ;)
...Aaaand the markers?? Where does one buy those?
If you use standard 5 mm squared notebook paper, you can use an even finer grid.
Your maps look really clean I like them. I am a big fan of hex grids personally, I wonder if Gamingpaper has hex sheets? I'll have to look. I know they sell rolls but I like the pages.
If you have more than enough time to do that, do it. But I have just the time to prepare the story for the next session, so I have to stick to my rough sketches.
Interesting. I ended up only being able to play on line recently so we are just doing theater of the mind. Would love to see your take on a spooky adventure with all the classic movie monsters.
I hope one of the next videos will be How to draw a Kingom come: Deliverance style map😊
Great video, really inspiring! Gonna try this in the future!
Very cool. Gotta get that Zine.
I may try that with my nexr Call of Cthulhu scenario.
It very relaxing to draw maps.
I was seriously going to DM you today and ask you to make a video like this.
Awesome maps as usual, JP. Do you think it would be possible to make a video in the future for people who want to do this stuff and will spend days, weeks, even months making these systems, maps, and mini games for their own games, but don't have the confidence to take the next step and put it out there? That's the one thing I struggle with, and I'm actually an artist by trade, but I'm deathly petrified when it comes to showing any of my stuff to the public anymore. That fear of rejection's pretty bad and I bet a lot of other people struggle with that aspect as well. If not, no big deal, maybe you can consider doing a video where you talk about how to balance your own monster designs and their stats vs the amount of players playing and the expected challenge level of your campaigns?
Sounds like multiple video requests in there. I've been asked about how to share work a few times recently. To make a video about that I'd want to have some advice outside my own experience, so it might take some time.
If you're looking for info on monster stats and prepping encounters, check out @slyflourish . Mike has written entire books on the subject!
Thanks, JP. I'll definitely check out Mike's stuff.@@JPCoovert
Thanks this is a great video.
Hm, I saw the first 10 sec and it just screamed Castle Ravenloft to me, I really spent to much time figuring that place out :p
Also, Its not too hard just to get a ruler and draw out you own lines. Then you can take it to a copier place and print out copies!
I've used a similar "gaming paper" before that came in a big roll like wrapping paper. I didn't care for it because it was glossy, so you couldn't draw on it with most things, which really sucks because it's a cool parchment color. I wonder if this paper is the same way
No! This paper isn't glossy like wrapping paper.
You can get that grid paper at a hobby lobby store
Make more dnd mini characters please
Do those markers bleed much? I've been using the Sharpie King Size marker to fill in big shadows and it bleeds big time. Kinda cool sometimes. Leaves an almost perfect copy on the flip side of the page.
No! But you do have to be careful not to press down too hard because they can dump ink.
hey JP. Is there any way to get the Drawing Dungeons PDF format by buying it?
Join the Patreon and you get access to everything digitally!
Can also be mounted on foam board like this: ua-cam.com/video/GJnjqZwTDOw/v-deo.html
Gamer paper: *GASP*
No international shipping: NOOOO
Aww bummer!
👍
Or....
Draw it on a large sheet and cut it up.
Honestly, skip the specific gaming paper there.
There's a few places where you can freely make custom graph paper or even hex paper that you can just print off as needed.
Nice