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Dagon’s Temple & Village of Boggard’s Maw
Nice looking map reference here upon first glance.
A compass rose and scale are present here on the map.
Everything is fairly detailed yet minimal, I would not have many questions about this map.
good use of page space
I think it would make a cool looking finished map, with all the destruction and demon corpses all around. I like it
I do recommend this map to progress to round 3
Contributor
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The Good
There's obviously something going on here, but I'm a little stumped for what it is. There's some interest-grabbing, at least
There's a scale, key, and compass.
The Bad
Holy gosh, that is a gigantic temple, most of which is given over to empty space inside.
Jehoshaphat, that is a huge stairwell. Unless the priests of Dagon herd diplodocus up and down the stairs, it's too much.
There's no sign of infrastructure in this temple. Where do priests sleep? File paperwork? Wash up after a sacrifice?
This map would benefit from additional details. What is a celestial death crater? What is an abyssal rift? Is it a chasm? Then call it a chasm. What is a primordial ooze, and does it live in a pit? A cage? A fifty-foot bell-jar? Too much purple prose in descriptions and not enough effort given to communicating what any given thing is.
My Judgement
It's an evil temple. Something has happened but I can't tell what. It might be okay with a lot of support text, but as a standalone map it's not very interesting. I do not recommend this entry advance to the next level.
Modules Overlord
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Drawing from my blog on maps, and the rules for the round, I’ll judge the maps on a number of questions.
Is It a Full Page Map?
Yep.
Does The Map Have A Compass Rose and Scale? Are They Used Well?
They're there, but Crystal has a point about scale. I am okay with pairs of 20-foot-wide stairwells, but there's also a lot of empty space. And for a temple so huge, we don't even get all of it. Does the adventure not deal with the rest? If not, why not? It should be possible to have the whole building on one full-page map.
Is The Map A Place I Want To Adventure?
Maybe? There are a lot of elements here, so I could see enjoying myself, but the map itself doesn't particularly inspire me. On the other hand, it doesn't discourage me.
Is the Map Clear?
Not enough.
The grey-circle-thing is a primordial ooze? A perfectly round, flat 2-dimensional ooze 50 feet in diameter? Is it a sphere? Is it in a well? Is there a retaining wall? I know very little that would let a cartographer do anything but draw that exact grey circle on the final map, and that's boring.
Is the Map Detailed?
Not enough. In addition to the issues above and that Crystal mentioned, the outside terrain is apparently flat and featureless except for ()presumably new) celestial death craters. No elevation off the bay? No hills, no trees? why not?
Is the Map Imaginative?
There's nothing here that strikes me as really new or imaginative. I could draw a rift and craters on any flip-map church/temple and run the same adventures.
With a few serious problems, this map is not something I could send to a cartographer, and I wouldn't feel motivated to give the designer another chance at it.
I do not recommend this to proceed to Round 3.
Some interesting ideas here that I like- the camp, the ruins of the ship, and the abyssal rift. However, the layout of the temple doesn't really fire up my imagination- it is linear and doesn't give the players any real options on how to explore it.
It looks like you're making the cartographer overlay their own grid to figure out where the piers are supposed to be.
I like the idea of this - the remnants and aftermath of a battle between celestial and internals. The crashed ship carving a channel in the ground is neat too, though my imagination also ponders whether it could be a crashed sky ship too. Why not.
Crystal has brought up some very good points about scale and space.
The key is not so great, and the disjunct between a small square for the ooze and the actual ooze has raised questions already.
I'm not too worried about the mundane aspects of the daily lives of the templars or where they reside, but as Crystal brought it up it does help to increase the verisimilitude of the place as a logical temple.
So I like the basic idea a lot, but feel the execution suffers a little. With a little extra detail (and attention to scale and pace) , this could not only look appropriately apocalyptic, but play like it too.
A solid map you can read it and tell what every thing is, it would be very easy for a cartographer to work with this.
Thumbs up.
BEEP BOOP for more information PLEASE SEE:
Conqueror's Bay, which straddles Varisia and Nidal; Dagon, demon lord and namesake of the Dagon's Fury; the Abyss and the Abyssal realms; and demons, evil outsiders who thrive on chaos.
7th map I have seen, you currently rank 4th.
This map is clear and easy to read...to a point. There are some confusing elements, such as the wreck of the Dragon's Fury. Obviously a ship that crashed, but it appears to only be the fore section of the ship. What is the dotted line demarked section from the wreck to the water? A tunnel? A trough created when the ship ran that far aground?
Also I'm a little confused about the rift. There seems to be a backstory here of some importance. Why would a temple to Dagon be built like this around the rift. The rift seems to have formed and damage the temple. But Dagon is a demon and that is an Abyssal rift. Why would the followers of a demon wreck their own temple to summon a rift? Also the calcified demon corpses are in regimental lines one either side of the temple next to the rift. Is that intentional or are they actually littered around in a random fashion?
The confusing elements added with a "we've seen evil temples like this before" vibe is not good. The evil rift damaging the evil temple is new, but not innovative enough. I will not be voting for this entry.
My favorite thing: I loves me some Dagon, and adventuring in one of his ruined temples is something I'd be into.
Other things I like: There is clearly a story to what happened here, and I'd like to know what that story is.
My least favorite thing(s): It's all so empty and I don't think there is a good reason for its emptiness. I think you wasted a lot of space here. If I had to guess (and I do have to, because it's unclear) this temple is somewhere on the coast of the mushfens (because where else would there be a temple to a demonlord of sea monsters), so if there isn't much else to the area, at least throw some swampy goodness around.
Will I vote for it: Sadly no, this will not get my vote.
Challenge: Is this map difficult to execute? Does it in my opinion demonstrate the characteristics of a Superstar designer?
Technique: Did the designer show some skill and consideration in the choices made on the map. Are the words used in the key wise choices that add to the overall utility of the map?
Utility: Can a GM/cartographer make sense of the map and make immediate use of it?
Overall:[b] I'll rate the Map as an A for strong recommends B for weak recommends C on the bubble D for weak rejects F for Do not recommends
Challenge: You went for telling a story with your map which is a superstar choice. Points.
Technique: Looks like you copy dragged a bunch of this in a program and there's too much white space for a computer drawn map, give me textures if you aren't going hand drawn.
Utility: I would draw this and use it but there's some busy elements I'd discard along the way like the multitude of oddly shaped docks.
Overall: D rating from me as I feel this is a weak reject. It is not the worst but not something I'm going to vote for either.
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More detail in the blank areas would be good, are there trees? Is it all open plains? Dirt? It has to be something.
I'm not sure if that boat was supposed to be it crashed so hard that it plowed through a house and that far inland, or it was dragged to where it now rests.
Overall there is a lot going on that intrigues me, but more polish is needed!
An Abyssal rift certainly looks and sounds cool, though this is an odd placement for one in Golarion. Aside from that this map would definitely need some sort of explanation as to what has happened, who has been fighting whom and why is temple so damn big.
Looking at it, there are some good elements. The primordial ooze, while poorly explained, still gives us a striking visual and something to describe as the players walk in. The sacrificial pools and demon corpses are classic imagery and the rift itself could certainly be something interesting. Kind of wish that the rift was old and people had tried to build bridges across it - now that would be a cool combat location - but it's fine as it is.
Unfortunately the map is lacking in detail. What are the buildings along the shore, what's around the temple aside from them, what do the basement and the rooftop look like, is the entrance hall really just one big empty space, and so on.
Vivid idea, but the map doesn't call me to adventure in it, because it lacks a clear identity and the scale really is a bit too big for a typical encounter for a party of four or five.
Too many questions, not enough hook. D.
This is one of the maps I've come back to a few times trying to decide how I feel about it, but unfortunately, it's not growing on me.
That is one massive, massive temple and I can't figure out why. I wish this had been connected with the Runelords or Gol-Ghan cyclops somehow as then the scale would have made more sense -- it's 200 feet across at some points. Il Duomo is 124 feet wide and the Sistine Chapel is only 44 feet wide, but this doesn't quite feel like it would measure up to those.
There's some neat stuff going on here -- that half-boat pulled up on shore, the abyssal rift, the abyssal siege engines; even the calcified corpses and celestial death craters -- but it almost feels like the story's been told already and not somewhere I need my PCs to go. Maybe the idea is the PCs are getting there in the middle of the battle, but none of the spaces scream out to me to have a combat there, I'm afraid.
Sorry, but I don't think I'm going to vote for this one. I wish I could give better feedback on why it's leaving me cold, since I think you were ambitious, but it's just not clicking. Still, good luck and I'll be curious to see what you produce if you do advance.
I think Jacob covered exactly how I feel. Something just seems to be missing.
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Modules Overlord
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Official Round 2 Note: On Map Resolution
We’ve had some comments on legibility of smaller type on the maps, and the contestants are (by the rules of the contest), not allowed to clarify anything, so I want to make a general statement about maps and resolution.
When we required all contestants to present maps at a specific dpi and size, we did so because in past years we’ve had some issues with maps (for the encounter round) being sent to us in different sizes, resolutions, and dpi, making it difficult to give them all a high-quality presentation for the contest. We found that asking for a higher dpi than we’ll use in the end allowed us to create a standard of presentation that kept all images crisp and clean. For encounter-round maps, this has worked well.
Unfortunately, since this round requires all text be provided on the maps themselves, many contestants used the dpi and size standards we required as the basis for making sure their text is clear, and otherwise tried to keep words as small as possible so as to not clutter their maps. This was done in the (reasonable) belief that the maps should look good at the size we asked for, rather than in any different size we might present on our website. When resized for smaller, high-quality images, this can result in words that aren’t clearly legible.
We’ve made a change to rescale everything to the higher end of maximum image size for uploaded images for all maps that were entered this round. This should allow for better legibility for voters when selecting their favorite maps to advance in the contest. It is our fault that this process was not properly communicated to our contestants, so consider this when adjusting or finalizing your selections.
Obviously, we’ll explain what is going to happen to the images of maps, and how to allow for it, more clearly in future rounds (and future contests). My apologies to any contestant with a map that has suffered as a result of how we handled scaling in this round.
Here are my ratings for this map:
First Look: B
Decent map, but for lack of a better word, it just looks slightly awkward.
Interest Level of Location: B
An evil temple. There are some features we don't see in the standard evil temple, but they are not defined well enough for me to be excited by them.
Tactical Depth: C
Huge open spaces to fight, with only a few more interesting locations.
Adventure Potential: B
There's a good story here. This is probably intended for a high level adventure.
Clarity: B
Most of my questions are about the details and individual features. The map as a whole is clear.
Logic: C
The scale issue make this somewhat unrealistic.
Overall: B-
First off: Congratulations on making Round 2, and the best of luck in the votes!
Coolness: Do I look at this, and want to use it in a game? Does it provoke wonder or amazement? Does it hold potential for interesting encounters, adventures or roleplay? How much mileage does this map have in it?
Usability: How usable is this for me as a GM (being that GMs are actually the primary audience of most maps)? Is the legend clear and in logical order for play? Does it give me enough information to easily visualize the parts and wax poetic about the varied locations? Does it have the necessary details for me to run with it on the fly, or will it involve a lot of improvisation? Does it have any glaring oddities that stop me mid-breath to go "what the hell is that?!"?
Craftsmanship: Is it clear, legible and containing all the necessary bits and bobs? Does it make good use of the space? Is the scale appropriate for the detail (and visa versa)?
(I suppose you could also call them "Creativity, Functionality and Skill", but I like my terms better :P).
Coolness: D
- Positive: Temple to an elder horror from beyond!
- Negative: Part of a temple to an elder horror, as the rest is absent and not enough detail is present to really get the feel for the place – there are too many giant, empty spaces. Also the 'village' (assuming 5 people per house) just qualifies: If someone shoots a peasant it turns into a hamlet. Not really feeling the cosmic horror that was advertised :(
- Verdict: Too much space and too little detail for me to be inspired. D.
Usability: D
- Positive: I can see how it progresses and where the features are, and can use this layout for an encounter with some work.
- Negative: There is a lot of missing info, from elevations to… well, contents: for example the hall with the chasm is/was 90ft across, 130ft long and… empty. Also; is the village built on concrete? Is the shore a cliff, sand, mud, shale? Why are there houses 3ft from the water?! What is an "abyssal rift" and why is it 50ft across? Need info.
- Verdict: In a pinch it can do as a makeshift encounter map, but not somewhere a group could spend any real time exploring. D
Craftsmanship: D
- Positive: The map is easy to read, contains a scale and compass, and some notes regarding use.
- Negative: This is neither a town map or interior map, and not really an encounter map, but a hybrid of all three and without sufficient detail to use them. The key feature, the temple, is both enormous and incomplete: Where is the rest? The scale makes the temple almost comically oversized and exacerbates the emptiness. Why is there an icon in the key for a "Floor trap door" that doesn't appear to be used anywhere in the map?
- Verdict: Some good ideas at work, but the map is too unfocused and failed to carry through on its purpose, putting this as a D in my eyes.
Overall: D
I am critiquing this without having read others:
I like the simple lines and color splashes where appropriate. Good shapes, not only simple squares and rectangles.
A shipwreck with what looks like a secret tunnel?
Good key. Gives good ideas and tells a story. Although I'm surprised the sacrificial wells aren't around the Abyssal Rift (oooo does that actually go to another Plane?!)
Why so empty?!
I'd like a cross-section of the temple.
Overall, I really like this map. It is interesting, tells a myriad of possible stories, has good locations, and is easy to read.
Celestial death craters! Fabulous!
I thought this was a decent map, somewhat interesting locale. I wasn't sure if the 'wreck' was underground (what are the dashed lines?)
Due to so many excellent entries, this one fell out of my top-16.
Good Luck
I keep debating with myself how I feel about this, but I gotta agree with JWM. It's an okay map, but that's a very huge, empty temple that doesn't look that fun to explore.