Christopher West's page

Thank you, folks!

Nick Logue's Dark Horizons stuff looks very cool. I'm looking forward to that.

Looks pretty cool Chris. I love starship deckplans.

Have you previously done (or would you consider doing) a multi-level castle or manor house as a Map of Mystery? I have a need for something along those lines in an upcoming game…

{Edit: I looked it up for you, and I think the strongholds were in Dragon #295. Available here:
http://paizo.com/store/magazines/dragon/issues/2002/v5748btpy7ywc}

That having been said, Dave Gross (former Dragon Editor-In-Chief) has been urging me to make a poster map of a castle sometime. It's high my list of future fantasy-themed miniatures-scale poster maps, right up there with a new sailing ship. :)

I don't have a sci-fi campaign going, Chris, but I love your maps so much that I think I'll take one--maybe for future use.

Awesome.

I picked up the Exodus Cruiser / Shipping Center map at GenCon after discovering Chris' booth in the art corner. I was so happy to see some sci-fi folding maps.

I am really looking forward to whatever else Maps of Mystery will be producing (I was told that he was working on a Degobah swamp map next). Whatever it may be, know that you have a dedicated customer in me.

b.t.w. you might want to look at your photo in the about the author section. I think your parts are showing :)

Thanks for all the kind words, folks! I'm glad you like what you see! :)

This post may be a little off-topic, but for those still following this thread who want to see what I've been up to more recently (this year): My first direct-to-consumer RPG product is now available right here at Paizo!

http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/m/mapsOfMastery

The first offering is a sci-fi product (complementary to the body of work I've done for the Star Wars miniatures games over the years) but if this does well I'll be releasing a broader range of stuff, including some decidedly fantasy-themed poster maps.

Thanks again for the support, folks! Someday I'd like to create a new world like the Lands of Mystery, but one that I own and can do with as I wish. I feel one step closer to that today. :)

Thanks so much for the great write-up in your store blog! I'm honored! :)

Thanks, Vic! :)

Doh. I just noticed a typo in my post: "docking back" instead of "docking bay". Oops.

Thanks guys!

Maps of Mastery is my own company/brand for independent map projects that I wish to sell directly to players. This poster is my first offering in this new enterprise; since I've done most of the official cartography for the Star Wars miniatures games, and players of that game are craving new skirmish maps, it seemed logical for my first double-sided poster to have a sci-fi nature. The next one will be useful to the triumvirate of fantasy, sci-fi, and modern RPG players!

You can learn more about these maps and upcoming products at my website: mapsofmastery.com. I've got a little feedback forum set up there, as well as a gallery of some past work.

I am still doing contracted work for other publishers as well, but I had a lot of free time earlier this year to prepare some new content of my own. This is the result. :)

A bit of expanded information, for those interested:

This double-sided poster map measures 22 by 34 inches when unfolded, and features a 1-inch grid for play with most miniatures game systems. Various objects and structural elements printed in the maps feature fine colored lines to mark the boundaries of different kinds of terrain, like walls and obstacles; these are easily ignored if your game of choice doesn't need specific designations for terrain types, but useful if it does.

The front of the poster is designated the "Exodus-Class Heavy Courier", and was designed with RPG use in mind. Many different kinds of sci-fi adventures take place aboard starships or even involve the player characters as owners of their own transport--this ship fills both niches very well. It's a large freighter or transport ship outfitted with secret cargo holds for restricted goods and enough bunks and escape pods to support a good-sized number of passengers. The ship was built to ferry important cargo or VIPs across territorial boundaries and past enemy blockades.

The Offworld Shipping Center, on the back, includes a another complete (but smaller) courier ship in the upper-right-hand corner, parked in the docking bay of a spaceport-type location that includes a refueling station, big cargo bays, a command center with holographic display, and a workshop for the sci-fi train that uses this port as a loading facility. Multiple bridges and conveniently-positioned cargo cranes provide crossing-points for the recessed train channel.

It's not an adventure or module, but my poster map (which just went on sale here at Paizo) might be of use to you:

http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/m/mapsOfMastery

It features a starship on one side (appropriate for a group of spacefaring heroes in any sci-fi game system) and a docking bay/shipping center location on the other that should be a great encounter location.

Thanks for noticing that, Jeremy. I was a little nervous about the misalignment of the freight car and the starship on the landing pad because I didn't know if the miniatures game players would find it problematic, but I decided that it was worth the risk to make the map feel more natural.

Thanks for the compliment! :)

I'm glad you guys liked what you saw at my site! It certainly was a long time in the making.

I'm hard at work on a larger set of terrain cards now, which can be laid out to form any number of different large starships (anything bigger than a starfighter could be constructed). Hopefully those will be done and printed within a month or two.

I've got another double-sided poster in the works as well; this time it features a swamp location on one side and a desert location on the other. Though they will likely be listed in the sci-fi section of my site, there won't be any technology featured on the posters. Therefore, Pathfinder and D&D players (even players of modern, horror, or superhero games) should be able to put them to use in an adventure. Those posters are mostly finished; they're just waiting for more of my first set to sell through in order to finance the next poster print run.

Beyond that, I have plans to release one or more decidedly fantasy-themed poster maps at next year's Gen Con, finances permitting.

In the meantime, I am working on two other fantasy map projects for different publishers. Nothing for Pathfinder, unfortunately, but Paizo knows I'm always happy to work with them.

No news on the idea of a collected volume, mainly because I spent just about every penny I had to print up a double-sided sci-fi poster map to sell at Gen Con and online and thus don't have the funds to think about a book right now.

It's still very high on my to-do list, but for now I need to focus on selling my posters; if successful, that will build up enough financial latitude to think bigger about map books and the like. :)

Is anyone still interested in the complete gazetteer of the Lands of Mystery? Now that I've updated my website, I'm thinking about posting it there.

Don't feel too bad; I printed my Maps of Mystery to display, but couldn't actually sell them. All I had available to sell was sci-fi stuff.

Almost three years later...

I have updated (actually, "completely overhauled" would be a better description) my professional website. :)

New URL: http://www.mapsofmastery.com

I need to go over my old contracts and see if I can legally reprint the Maps of Mystery in a collected volume. I believe most of them have a clause in the contract that allows the artist to have his or her work reprinted in books profiling the artist.

If that is consistent, I might have the wherewithal to do so.

Thanks! :)

Interestingly enough, I just printed out this map (along with pretty much every other Map of Mystery I ever made) to take with me to the Gen Con art show.

I made a Giant's Lair map of mystery, but I honestly couldn't tell you, now, which issue featured it.

I saw it and enjoyed it. It's a fun summer action flick with shapeshifting robots; what's not to like?

Yes, it has plot and pacing issues, and there several things about it that I wish they had handled differently, but at the end of the movie I felt pretty satisfied and entertained. I look forward to seeing it again.

I really enjoyed his maps in Dungeon, but I haven't seen his work in Paizo products lately.
What's up with that?

All I know is that a previous art director wanted to give other cartographers a chance to do some of the GameMastery modules (which is an understandable decision that I can certainly respect). I'm pretty sure he is no longer with the company, though, and I'm not sure who's making those decisions these days.

Anyway, I'm available if they want me for anything. :)

Wow, that is remarkably epic. I'm very impressed! Please keep us informed about how it works out! :)

Just for the record: if Paizo ever does have a product that they feel would benefit from a map feature similar to the "Maps of Mystery" from Dungeon, I'd be delighted to provide them. :)

You guys know where to find me. :)

I got my tattoo at Bay City in Erie; it's not gamer-related, though.

Cool idea!

Congratulations, Neil!!! I'm impressed, and not at all surprised. You earned it. :)

Very evocative, with fun and unusual enemies, highly memorable scenes that I can picture players reminiscing about years later, and a great sense of style. I very much liked some of the others, but this one gets my vote. Congrats Neil!

Wow, that's awesome! I'm glad to have contributed to such a cool concept. :)

As for the level of detail in an author's sketches: extra detail in the author's map is always welcome right up to the point that it becomes hard to read. I'd rather see too little detail in the sketch than too much, if the detail included isn't easily legible. But if the details in the sketch are clear and don't bog down the map, I say go for it...add as much as you're comfortable with. The finished map will mirror the author's intent more accurately if the author presents his or her sketch in a legible fashion and makes sure all of the relevant info is presented.

While I'm on the subject, there's one thing a lot of authors forget about, but which I love to play with: light sources. If you want your dungeon to have a predominantly torchlit chamber, go ahead and mark the torches simply on the map. Depending on the scale of the map there may or may not be room to showcase that level of detail, but it's great to know where the light sources are if I'm able to go that far. This is especially true of unusual light sources, like glowing fungus, permanent spell effects, and so on. They really make a map come to life.

I never have time to keep up with all of the many fun threads here on Paizo's forums, but I drop in fairly frequently. I'll keep an eye out for threads that might relate to mapmaking.

I'm glad you folks have enjoyed my comments. I wasn't sure if I should post originally because I didn't want to sway voters or come across as a guest judge when I'm not, but I'm pleased that Paizo gave me the thumbs-up to chime in. :)

I voted for Neil and Kevin.

You're quite welcome! :)

We totally should have thought of getting a professional cartographer on the guest judging panel round for this round, but... we didn't. Thanks for all your comments, Chris!

I've been developing new Maps of Mystery for the online Dungeon, but I also have ideas for similar independent projects that I'd like to publish at some point.

There's not much more I can do with the Land of Mystery since WotC owns all of the maps, but I might create a new incarnation of the concept that's separate from what I've done before. I'm also still hoping to get the full Lands of Mystery Gazetteer available in some more organized fashion.

Just wanted to drop in and let you folks know that this is still on my agenda. :)

I once worked on the maps for a Chris Perkins adventure in Dungeon, called "Tears for Twilight Hollow", that had a dungeon built into a colossal statue. In that adventure, the colossus had long since fallen into ruin and lay half-buried in a swamp; a creature had built a lair inside the head, which could only be reached by swimming down into the swamp and up through an eye socket, if I recall correctly. That was a pretty original use of the dungeon-in-a-statue shtick, but certainly not the first and that was about eight years ago.

I still don't think that's necessarily something that should be held against this entry, but the labels of cliché and overdone do have some basis in the body of work that has come before.

As map sketches go, this one's pretty decent, in my opinion. The line work is clean and easy to read, and the subtle inclusion of color is enough to note the terrain type without cluttering up the map. The only thing that confused me at first was the forest line--I initially misread that as a river before noticing the "Forest Line" label. Some extra texture to that line or the forest area would help it read as forest right away.

The map legend is very good and the whole thing is legible enough that I wouldn't have much trouble translating this into a publishable map.

As far as villainous encounters go, I like to see lairs with cool and remarkable terrain features; elevation changes, obstacles and overlooks, a mix of open spaces and tight corners--that sort of thing. I'm not sure your choice of villains lends itself to a great deal of that, but I think it's a fine effort and your lair lends itself to some fun adventuring nonetheless.

I like this map. It sticks to the grid very well and presents the notable features of the map in clean line work and good detail. It looks like an exciting skirmish location with some interesting elements in play.

Normally I don't like it when organic objects such as the thorn forest stick firmly to the grid, but it's a good thing in this case; the environment has some clearly-defined rules that apply to each square on the battle grid, making this a map where the contents of your 5-foot square really make a difference to gameplay. As the cartographer illustrating this map for publication, I would not stick quite as tightly to the grid with the tree line, but I'd be very grateful to the author for making it so clear where to distinguish the terrain boundaries. My job would be to make it look natural while still holding to those boundaries, and this presentation makes that fairly easy.

This whole lair would be fun to illustrate, and I think the same qualities would make it rather fun at the game table as well.

Focusing particularly on the map, I have to say that it's clean, easy on the eye and quite nice as authors' sketches go. Very legible. At the same time, it seems to try too hard to look nice, rather than including much useful detail.

Don't get me wrong: the statue and column placement is very valuable information and it's nice to see some shadowing involved, but it feels like the time spent putting in a nice stone texture as the floor grid could have been used to put some incidental details in the empty chambers. Areas of debris, collapsed walls/ceilings, and other nuances are important to evoke in the map the feeling you've created in the prose. The cartographer should incorporate those details to make the map a nice visual companion to the text, but this entry gives no detailed guidance for that. If you as the author included it in the sketch, you have the opportunity to arrange the debris in a way that plays nicely for the combat events destined to take place here. If you rely on the cartographer to design those parts, you might not end up with quite the arrangement or feeling you had in mind.

In any case, this lair doesn't really look to me like a memorable place to encounter a special villain. Your description goes a long way to make the locations sound remarkable, but very little of it translates into a visually exciting map and there's not much about the terrain itself that contributes to the encounter. Even the layout itself is plain and boxy: with the exception of one circular chamber, every room of the lair is a simple rectangle.

It's a good clean map that does essentially what it needs to do as far as the cartographer is concerned, but it could have been much more compelling.

The map for this entry is cleanly presented and include a nice key. It's a bit on the bare-bones side, though.

As a cartographer working on this map, I would need to reference the text for flavor and look for more interesting qualities to bring out in the finished piece. There's nothing wrong with that per se--I do always ask for a copy of the adventure text for just such a purpose when working on something like this and almost always need to reference it for some features--but in this case most of the coolest details are wall carvings that never show up in a conventional 2D map. There's just not a whole lot here to make the map itself all that interesting from a visual standpoint. I'd probably choose to play up the claw marks just to eke out some fun detail for the viewer.

Other vexations include wafer-thin walls and the presentation of the upper level below the ground level. They're both easily remedied on the cartographer's end, however.

It's not a bad lair map, and it does include some great descriptive text--there's just not a whole lot to it.

I don't have too much problem with the fortress-in-a-statue thing. It may be a little cliché, but it certainly presents an exotic locale that doesn't let you forget that you're in a fantasy game. That's very useful in providing a dynamic action scene against a memorable villain.

I like the way you've arranged the map elements in a vertical order; it makes it easy to see how the floors align to one another. Unfortunately, the shading on the staircases in areas 4 and 5 don't seem to match the direction indicated. It's a minor quibble, but one that could lead to a confusing error when the finished map is created. More problematic to me is that the color and thickness of the lines on the map don't differentiate between physical walls and the edges of exterior areas, leaving the cartographer to guess were the walls end and the balconies begin. This could be remedied a bit if each floor of the map also included an outline of the statue's edges at that elevation, showing how thick the stone is around each area. Beyond that, I question the boxy shape of the lower two levels...it seems like they could stand to flow with the contours of the statue a little.

The cross-section is a very good idea anytime you have a vertical dungeon like this, and it helps a lot to have it included. I like that you put a spot illustration of the statue without the dungeon level overlay. Every bit of detail like that can be useful reference for the cartographer. Some of the details were confusing, though. For example, I couldn't tell the difference between the "Block" and the "Iron parts" in your map key. I also question the placement of the "Ratcatcher Oubliette", even though I do like the concept of it. I don't think I've got a particularly sophomoric mind, but it seems conspicuously positioned to me in the cross-section. I'll leave it at that.

I do like the idea of the dungeon level built in/on the outstretched arm. That's a nice touch and something I don't remember seeing in one of these before. However, the overall design doesn't satisfy to the extent that other entries have; I feel that I'd have my work cut out for me in developing this map to a publishable state.

This map is nice and clean, and gives the cartographer a lot of detail right off the bat. Everything I would need to get started on this map is plainly visible, which saves some time when one sits down to work on the finished piece.

The balcony and chandelier area is a little enigmatic at first, but I really like that you've included the chandeliers and the rigging over the stage in the map as these details just beg the PCs to start swinging and fighting from them. I can imagine a very exciting battle scene taking place here, and that's just not true of every theater map you come across.

One thing I would like to see different is the shape and structure of the building; a well-off medieval fantasy playhouse could be much more than a simple rectangle; you could include walls that curve out around an expanded seating section, or work in other fantasy elements that enhance the performance. Maybe an illusionist's booth near the stage where a specialist wizard can add his or her unique talents to the show?

That said, there's a lot of potential for fun in this place, and that's what makes a villain lair memorable, in my opinion. It doesn't have to be flashy if it makes sense for the villain and gives the players a good time. Nice work.

Speaking as a cartographer who is frequently tasked with the creation of finished cartography from an author's map, I find this entry quite pleasing. It follows the grid where appropriate but isn't afraid to stray from it to create an interesting floor plan for the building or ignore it completely for a nice natural cavern. The line work is clean and clear and the placement of rocks in the cavern feels reasonably natural.

Speaking of the cavern, the mobile bridge element was intriguing enough to make me want to read more about it; nice idea! From a gameplay point of view involving miniatures, it would be easier if the different bridge positions just happened to line up to the grid, so minis could be easily position in their proper squares if the bridge shifts during a fight, but it wouldn't look as natural that way so it's quite forgivable.

One small issue for me is that the walls of the manor don't look thick enough to provide realistic support for a medieval structure with vaulted ceilings, granite walls, etc. That can be fixed on the cartographer's end, but adding thickness to the walls can crowd the interior details unless the thickness is only added on the outside walls.

The manor itself has enough distinct-looking rooms and details that it could really stand to be a separate illustration on it's own at a larger scale, thus allowing the cartographer to play around with more textures and finer details. Since the contest constrained you to one map, though, this composite showing the manor and cave together is perfectly reasonable.

All in all, I like it and I think it would make a fine full-page map if it needed to stay one piece for space reasons. It would also be quite easy to develop the rest of the way into a finished illustration. Good work.

I found myself interested in the map round of this contest out of professional curiosity, but I wasn't sure if I should comment publicly for that reason. I checked with the folks at Paizo and they gave me the nod to go ahead and comment, so here I am. :)

It seems to me that a majority of entry comments so far have been centered on the written elements of the lairs, so I'm going to pay more attention to the maps themselves and assess them from the point of view of a cartographer who might be hired to produce the finished illustrations.

From that basis, I'm liking this entry quite a lot. It has cleanly defined walls with some thickness to them, so there's no guesswork on the cartographer's part when trying to read the map sketch. It follows the grid cleanly, but the angled wall in some corners add interest and keep it from becoming too "boxy". I like that most of the levels are positioned over one another on the page in a sensible way that makes it easy to tell how they line up. (You'd be amazed at how many authors' multilevel sketches present the maps in a haphazard arrangement.) The bit of shading around the basement level is a nice touch.

This map would be very easy to develop into a finished piece, and it has the look of an interesting encounter location with some exciting setting elements that would be fun to experience in a game. I giggled a little at the "Groud Level" spelling error on the map sketch, but that's about all I can find to complain about, and it's extremely trivial. Big thumbs up.

Apropos of not much... I was thinking to myself today about the candidates and what role would they fill in a Dungeons and Dragons Game.

I can't see Obama as a DM but I can see him as a player. I can't see McCain as a player but I can picture him as a DM.

Biden I can see doing both. I can also see him talking the whole time so that otheres never get to play (that man loves the sound of his voice).

Palin I can see as a player, but not so much a DM.

Anyway... back to the politics.

Apologies if this has been mentioned already; I didn't have time to read through the previous pages of this thread, but this post on page one caught my eye.

I've been busy with a lot of Star Wars work for WotC lately. Poster maps for the miniatures game and starships for the RPG books, mainly.

However, I was recently contracted for more Maps of Mystery for the online Dungeon Magazine content, and it's good to be dipping back into the fantasy stuff.

As for Lands of Mystery, I'd still like to do more with it and get the whole gazetteer published and available. Maybe even expand on it. I'm still undecided if the new Maps of Mystery should be added to the Lands of Mystery map as more are made, or if the print era and digital era should be kept separate with regards to the Lands of Mystery. What do you folks think?

A simple solution would be to keep including arrows (or other marks) to indicate the correct placement, but make them less obvious.

by the way, how do you pronounce "Dyvaldiön"?

Glad to hear there's still interest in this! I'm still looking for time and an effective form in which to make this gazetteer available, but I'm determined to make it happen.

Regarding Arcane Quarter: it has been a long time since I completed those maps, so I had to go back and look at them again now that the PDF is available. I had forgotten how cool some of those locations were! Magic places are fun to map. :) Thanks for mentioning it, DitheringFool!

----------

Anyway, since the gazetteer is temporarily on a back burner, here's a few location entries I haven't posted before:

Base Camp – Some of the earliest expeditions to the mist-shrouded mountains of the deep Rainlands used the headwaters of a tributary to Lake Tympaniss as their common “base camp”. It wasn’t long before these explorers discovered valuable mineral deposits, and Base Camp quickly became a destination of its own, drawing in all manner of prospectors and profiteers from faraway lands.

Blacksand Desert – The coarse, cutting sands of this region make it one of the most perilous places in the world. Flecks of obsidian and pumice give the sands their name, and the frequent storms that send the sand aloft can flay unprotected flesh from the bone in mere moments. A greater threat to lost travelers, though, is the oppressive heat generated when bright sunlight beams down on the black terrain.

Darkmaiden’s Dance* - She doesn’t look all that unusual, but this three-masted blackwood merchant caravel is a traveling wonder of divine providence. The lateen-sailed ship has been blessed with extraordinary powers of transportation by a goddess of the night. Whenever a moon in the sky wanes dark, the Darkmaiden relocates this ship and all those aboard to a different part of the world (some of the crew even claim to have been taken to other worlds) where her captain can find business. As a result, the Dance is often loaded with truly exotic cargo waiting to be traded for local goods that will be just as exotic to some other buyer in a faraway land. Several brave but reckless adventurers serve as the ship’s first line of defense and take up odd jobs wherever she goes; some say that their heroics are the reason for the Darkmaiden’s special interest in this vessel.

Last Stand – When the Dreadforge was born in the heart of what was once a fertile and prosperous land, and war ravaged the great civilization of Isprea, the people of those places did not go quietly. It was a time of heroic battle and great sacrifice of which bards still sing today, but victory ultimately went to the villains. The Isprean kingdom was lost, and the free people who survived the turmoil eventually scattered to faraway realms. Their remaining military forces, however, banded together and eventually fell back to one remaining island stronghold. They resolved to make their final stand on the last bit of Isprean territory they had left--but their end never came. Fell armies from the Dreadforge and naval legionnaires out of newly-formed Tyranor laid siege to the island for months, but they could not push the Ispreans off of their rock. The mere hundreds of remaining Isprean soldiers defied thousands of mighty enemies, and eventually those enemies broke ranks and fought amongst themselves, leaving the people of Last Stand to their fate. Ages have passed, and the descendants of those soldiers still live here, vigilant and free. Not even they know how their ancestors survived the siege, but they remain a proud and defiant people nonetheless.

Shriven – It is said that this forsaken town is somehow connected to the events that gave the Demon Coast its name, but anyone who knows for sure isn’t willing to speak of it. In any case, this place does seem to have an abundance of tieflings, half-fiends, and other beings of questionable origin, many of which seem determined to live here in peace in spite of the general lawlessness of the area. It is a destination of choice for missionaries of the Solajrin Theopolis, and survives on the commerce and supplies that those well-intentioned patrons bring with them.

Smoke Rift – When the Dreadforge broke the land of Isprea and the Blistering Height was born, the tectonic plates were shattered in a circular formation around the epicenter. The outermost fault line filled with ocean water on most sides, but the southern expanse remains slightly above sea level. This region is now known as the Smoke Rift, for geysers and vents of sulfur fill the sky over this marshland with a noxious fume that persists year round.

Hi folks! Sorry for my absence lately; I've been very busy and didn't have much to report, in any case.

Maps of Mystery news: WotC has two new Maps of Mystery from me that haven't been posted yet. I got quite a bit behind on them originally and was responsible for the long delay in new MoMs, but I'm surprised they haven't gone up yet.

They're a pair of maps, thematically related, that connect to form one bigger map, similar to what I was doing in the print version of Dungeon. I've been asked several times to do a Dragon Graveyard map, and I think those looking for such a map will be quite pleased by these. :)

Lands of Mystery news: I tested the disk (on which I had archived the maps and text) with my new computer and have managed to recover the original files! I'm still not sure when I'll get around to providing those in a polished form, but it has become a viable undertaking once more! :)

Thanks for your patience and continued interest, folks! I haven't forgotten about this.

Thanks, MrFish! I had a good time working on the maps to that one, and looking back on it I think it marks the point where I really started to hit my stride as a professional cartographer. It was my biggest assignment for the magazine at the time (something like 9 maps if I recall correctly) and featured some very interesting locations!

While it's well known that Chris Perkins makes some of the best adventures in the business, what few people probably realize is that his map "sketches" (if you can call them that) are similarly among the best I've ever seen; his clean line work and clear detail gave me a great starting point for developing the finished art.

Thanks very much folks! I'd be happy to do some Pathfinder work for Paizo, just as I've been happy to be able to work on the occasional GameMastery module. They know they can call me any time. :)

That said, Rob's maps in Pathfinder have been impressing me very much, and I won't be upset to see him continue as the Pathfinder cartographer. His encouragement regarding my early work helped to get me started in this business, and he commissioned me for my very first WotC assignment outside of the magazines, back when he was their cartography Art Director. I always look forward to seeing his work, and his maps in Pathfinder (particularly the cities and towns) have been spectacular.

Even the really great Islands poster map that came as a Map of Mystery in Dungeon 150 had port cities named on the map and a legend showing where everything is. (GREAT map btw).

Regarding the point of your message: it sure sounds great to have that choice, but the reality of the publishing industry is that they'd basically be doubling their printing costs for no increase of revenue. (It's cheaper to print one item in larger numbers than it is to print two items in smaller amounts.) Customers would generally buy one or the other, but probably not both.

The idea becomes more feasible if you focus on PDF products, but even then they have to pay their designers for the extra time spent producing out two different sets of files for each product. (Or, in the case of salaried designers, that simply uses up time he or she could be working on other new products.)

I know that any future maps I produce for Paizo will be provided with a labeled and unlabeled copy, so that they can product their PDFs in a way that lets the viewer choose not to display the text. I just can't imagine a way for them to make it feasible to produce two different printed versions.

My two cents.

The "evil" alignment descriptor causes some characters to be more vulnerable to the Paladin's power attack: evil characters do not get a defense roll against it, if I recall correctly.

There may be other cards that relate to alignment, but that's the one that jumps to mind.

I didn't want to short my players on the wealth-per-level scale when I ran this adventure and the doomsday scenario happened, so I had the transformed Raknian throw them their winnings with a scornful laugh before departing. I believe his parting shot was something like "My thanks for a job well done, Heroes! Try not to spend it all in one place!", spoken in such a way as to suggest that he didn't think that they (or Greyhawk itself) would be around long enough for them to enjoy it.

I was thinking of a simple protected woodland, but your idea is way cooler. :) Two thumbs up.

There isn't a PDF of that map--yet. I have a Word document describing each of the locations on the map, but that, along with my original Photoshop image files, is trapped on a DVD disk somewhere in my office.

I'm still determined to make those available for download somehow; I haven't given up on it.

A new Map of Mystery will probably go up on WotC's Dungeon site next week. The holidays put me behind schedule, but I'm catching up. :)