Map Commission: The Borellus Connection

After doing the front and back cover maps for the Fall of Delta Green, I was happy to get back to this awesome game for “The Borellus Connection” campaign by Gareth Hanrahan (with Ken Hite). It’s available now from Pelgrane Press as a pre-order for the physical book (you get the finished pdf right away).

Combining the Cthulhu Mythos of Delta Green with “French Connection” style crime thrillers, the campaign takes you in a drug-fueled nightmare from the haunted jungles of Laos and Vietnam via the underworld of Marseille to (un-)familiar streets of Baltimore and beyond. Just reading it makes me want to run a GUMSHOE-style game again!

I’ve created several maps for this book, from the big overview maps showing the flow of the heroin trade around the world, to smaller locations within the individual adventures.

For some I was able to re-use the base world maps I had created for the FoDG rulebook, for others I set up a new style in Campaign Cartographer 3+, reproducing military tactical maps of the era. This style is available as part of the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 16 now.

I highly recommend The Borellus Connection as another excellent role-playing campaign from Pelgrane Press, Gareth Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite.

Map Commission: High Magic & Low Cunning

Cave map for the first epic-tier battle against the Orc Lord's minions.

Cave map for the first epic-tier battle against the Orc Lord’s minions [Copyright 2016: Pelgrane Press].

One of my largest commission in recent years was a series of maps for Pelgrane Press’ 13th Age role-playing game. Their Battle Scenes line provides ready-to-play encounters tied to the iconic powers of the Dragon Empire setting, and for the first issue “High Magic & Low Cunning” I created maps for the Orc Lord, Prince of Thieves and High Druid encounters.

You can grab sneak previews of “Rafting Razoredge Gorge”, the three adventurer-tier Orc Lord encounters and maps from these places on the web:

1. The introduction and Battle 1: Catch of the Day are available from Pelgrane Press directly.
2. Battle 2: Zip-Lines and Wardrums can be download from Six Feats Under.
3. EnWorld has Battle 3: Razordedge Orc Camp

The maps are included in black and white in the book and as hi-res pdfs with the download, but they are also available separately in gorgeous color print in the “Map Folio” for High Magic & Low Cunning.

PrinceOfShadows

Where does this stone door in the hillside lead? One thing is certain: It is connected to the Prince of Shadows [Copyright 2016: Pelgrane Press].

And now Pelgrane is working on the second installment in the series: The Crown Commands. I am providing maps for the Lich King series of encounters.

Mapping for Ashen Stars

Ashen Starts - The BleedAshen Stars is a wonderful space opera rpg by Pelgrane Press, based on the GUMSHOE system. I had the pleasure to create the game’s published setting map (a part of the Galaxy called “The Bleed”) based on a sketch by Robin D. Laws.

Lately I got to revisit the setting when, after play-testing the upcoming Terra Nova adventure, Simon asked me to create a simple black and white diagram of the adventure’s featured luxury liner. You can see the result below (the color background was added for web display). While the exact layout of the ship isn’t important for the story, the relative position of the important locations is, and the map shows those.

Terra Nova