Closing Off Dungeon of the Mad Mage (Patreon)
Content
Level 1 of the Undermountain released in October of 2021. Two and a half years later it is amazing to be wrapping up Level 23 of this behemoth mapping project and looking ahead to the next adventure. It took far longer than I expected (and with a rocky middle section while my now-happy-and-healthy-2-year-old was in the NICU for 4 months) but it is incredible to be wrapping this up.
This adventure offered a lot of variety (more than I expected, TBH) given it all takes place in a dungeon. Swamps, forests, mines, tiny castles, crystal caverns, scrapyards, asteroids, spaceships, and more. It was a lot of fun to get to try and make each level feel unique!
Thank you. It may be cliche to say this wouldn't have happened without you - all my amazing Patrons - but that it absolutely the truth. There is no way I would have been able to see this through to completion without all of your amazing support. A special shoutout to the 76 incredible humans who have been here for the entirety of the Mad Mage!
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
It was big. I'm a data nerd so I've been keeping running stats on the Dungeon. Here are some tidbits:
In total this adventure amounted to 137 individual maps (ie. Map A, B, C) spread across 62 releases.
If you printed out all 23 Levels of the Dungeon in a 1-inch grid and laid them top to bottom it would be 316 ft (96m) tall - so yes, a VTT is recommended.
I've had 2 children in the time it took to map the Dungeon (a 2-year-old and a 3-month-old at present)
My maps of the Dungeon cover over 11 million square feet of area based on a scale of 1 grid cell = 5 ft. That's 258 acres, or just over 1 sq km. However, this does take the full square map area, not the actual dungeon square footage.
The largest map by far was Level 3 + Skullport.
Favourite levels to map were Level 8 (Slitherswamp - swamp things!), Level 15 (Obstacle Course - lava!), Level 17 (Seadeeps - mind flayers!), Level 19 (Caverns of Ooze - spelljammer ship!), and Halaster's Tower (that statue?).
What's Next? I'll be announcing what adventure is next Monday April 29th! However, if you like a puzzle, take a good look at the Halaster's Tower maps as the answer is hidden in them.
Over the next month-ish I also have the following action items:
Foundry Module Update - to add the remaining Levels (will be a paid release for all patrons)
Clean up and repost some asset packs (free for Mapmaker+ patrons, no one will be charged anything for their release) - breaking up the now massive DOTMM pack into smaller 'by-theme' packs.
Other misc cleanup of both DotMM and WDH maps/files that have gone neglected in my task list for too long.
Waterdeep City Map - exploring this idea to some extent still, but I'd like a Waterdeep City Map to match my other content and style - will likely release a single ward to start and piece it together in the future.
WDH Chapter 2 content (expect some polls for these ones) - filling in a few gaps in the map set for WDH
...and of course, getting started on the next adventure!! Expect the first maps for this to release in mid-late May!
Again, thank you for being with me on this adventure and I hope you will stick around for the next one!
With many thanks,
Ian // Tych Maps