Vault of the Profane - Level 1
Indara1920
Newcomer
Hello! I've never shared or posted anything to the forums (relatively new). I am working on a "mega-dungeon" map for my homebrew Pathfinder 2e group. It's meant to be a dungeon where they can complete a floor, but then need to leave and level up and become better equipped to handle the challenges on the next level. This is actually my first B/W map. Being a "younger" gamer, I grew up using color maps and seeing that as the "norm", as opposed to our "old school" gamers who no doubt grew up with B/W norms. But, given the nature of the dungeon itself, it felt it thematically appropriate. I think that I made the walls too "thin"? But I'm also a bit too lazy to go back and fix that atm ?. There is a portion of the building to the west that is "collapsed" due to abandonment and disuse. The only way I thought of to do that was to stack up a lot of large rocks and have the walls end at the rocks.
The biggest problem I have with maps is I have no mental context for distance. Like, I know how long a yardstick is, I can visualize that. I know how long a ruler is, I can visualize that. You ask me how far from the couch to my TV, and I have NO idea how to translate that into numbers. None. You tell me something is 300 feet away, I have NO way to visualize that. So, when making a new map and it asks me for the map dimensions... I usually enter an inappropriate size 90% of the time and have to edit it later. I think that's why my walls turned out a bit on the slim side.
(the backstory of the vault for those interested. The fortress itself was made by the clerics and paladins of Pharasma, the goddess of life, death, and prophesy. As avid undead hunters, they created this place long ago to hold captured undead to study them and develop better undead killing practices and to train their clerics/paladins. The whole project was taken on by a splinter cell of the Pharasmin church, and the main church disapproved of their methods and shut the project down. Of course, they didn't properly exorcise the place before abandoning it, trusting in various wards to keep the undead contained. Now, the Pharasmin church has rediscovered it and is enlisting mercenaries to collect "bounties" by killing the undead within and returning Pharasmin relics.)
(for some reason, the legend I added post ProFantasy doesn't seem to be visible? Apologies.)
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Comments
Get an inexpensive laser measure like they use in construction, and measure those things you were talking about.
Using that inexpensive laser measure, sketch out your house, or your office. I did it on graph paper because I am one of those OG (OM?) people you mention, but I am pretty sure it can be done in CC3 much easier.
For an enlightening experiment of perspectives on distance, measure out the distance you travel every second while you're going 60 mph. For a bonus challenge, compare that to how far in front of you your headlights illuminate at night.
Great B&W map.
Thank you for the suggestions, theHawk :). I try to look up the dimensions of real world approximates for whatever I am trying to map out (e.g. A continent around the size of Australia, Google how wide and high Australia is). It doesn't work out perfectly every time, but it does help get in the right "ball park".