Dyson's maps suck

[Two orcs]

Scouring the internet for dungeon maps often lead me to Dyson's website. He has drawn a metric fuckton of maps, they look superficially good, are easy to read and are generic enough that you can use them for most settings. The problem is they suck as D&D locations! I was happy to see Bryce complain about the use of Dyson maps in his reviews because it means that he understands this as well.

Their main problems as I see them:
Generally a branching but not interconnected structure (no loops!), this makes exploration predetermined. You will always come upon a certain place from another place even if the order might be different or you might skip it altogether. This gives no room for flanks or retreats tactically but more importantly this means the choice in exploration is to skip or enter a certain branch. An open but interconnected structure means you can deliberately attempt to approach an area from a different direction, search for alternate routes or simply be surprised when you realize you've come back to an earlier place.

A low amount of strange, dynamic or surprising architecture. It's room, a few branches, room, a few branches. The players should marvel, fear and be entertained by the form of the dungeon itself. There is nothing wrong with a linear string of 5 rooms, if that is a break from the usual and if the chain contains something interesting. Maybe it's a gauntlet, maybe each room is identical and trying to fool you that you're in a teleportation loop. Or half the map is taken up by a single huge chamber. Or a room is an octagon, each wall having a door except for one (that wall will endure closer inspection). A room with a statue. A room with 40 statues. Real fake places are built deliberately by engineers, mad gods or giant insects, the players should feel that there is a purpose to the place they are exploring even if that purpose is crazy or unknowable. The Dyson maps give me the impression that the purpose was for Dyson to draw a dungeon.

Do you agree? Have I missed something? What are other features of goods maps beyond interconnectedness, purpose and entertaining variety?

An exception is Dyson's delve, a large multilevel dungeon he drew and stocked long ago. It is excellent. Why does he understand dungeon design there but not in his newer works?

 

[Two orcs]

Some examples of his recent work. #1 is just awful and a perfect illustration of my points. The second is decent with some dynamic architecture, a stronger sense of purpose. It looks fun, but could have been better with a few minor loops attached to the main one.

 

[EOTB]

The Dyson maps give me the impression that the purpose was for Dyson to draw a dungeon.

Anything done in volume is hard to do in quality. It's just a law akin to gravity. I haven't followed Dyson's work, so I can't speak to them specifically, but strange, dynamic, and surprising architecture requires SDS ideas behind them. It's hard to put that sort of content out on a patreon schedule and maintain a full life.

Another prolific mapper who (IMO) has an older-school sense of dungeon design is Turgenev. He posts freebie friday maps at DF nearly every Friday (they may be elsewhere also; I see them at that location as I post there). https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=27578

However these aren't released for general commercial use - private instead, although Turgenev does make maps commercially and I'm sure would be happy to negotiate a license for maps not already licensed to someone else. However, if you're looking for maps to nick for use in your campaign, that thread is gold.

 

[Two orcs]

Anything done in volume is hard to do in quality. It's just a law akin to gravity.

I disagree! The quality of hand crafted goods should go up with quantity as you gain experience in your craft. I'm familiar with Turgenevs site and have used several of his maps for my games, but I've not seen that thread before. Just comparing the first 10 to the latest 10 pages you can see how he has become more skilled not just artistically but also when it comes to the interconnectedness of the maps. The earlier are more like Dyson's with branching instead of interconnected structure.

This tells me Turgenev has honed his understanding of what a good map looks like. The fact that Dyson has regressed in ability either suggests he doesn't care about that part of his craft, or that he has a different playstyle which his maps are more suited for.

 

[EOTB]

OK, but I present Turgenev as the exception which proves the rule. If you feel experience means churning out quality quickly, then we should be in quality golden age.

What I find true most of the time, is that people build up a bank of slow-cooked goodness developed when they're unknowns, exploit that for a period of time where they're eating their seed corn, so to speak, and then start shoveling out whatever comes to mind on a schedule. If you find otherwise, please share links!

 

[Two orcs]

I'm talking about craftsmanship in general, which I think level design is. Do you think a writer or carpenter who polishes his 10th piece for a year is producing someting better than someone who did 50 pieces that year? There is a famous experiement (or anecdote rather) about a ceramics class where half is graded on the quality of the 1 pot they present, the other half is graded on the total weight of pots produced. Which half do you think ended up with better pots?

Art & Fear: The ceramics class and quantity before quality

This story from the book Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland popped up in a favorite technology blog yesterday: The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the clas…

excellentjourney.net

I'm not sure if you're talking about dungeon maps or something else, because I think they are much more a crafted good than a whole adventure (or book or whatever) where the author taps into their slow cooked inspiration and then fail to produce something else.

 

[Reason]

Well there's arguments to be made about moving toward an ideal or best or better pottery at the rate of 1 per term vs one who works on 4 pots a term... Stages of development & individuality and all that.

I'm actually not sure your chosen example best illustrate the lack of Dyson's work. I agree with your suggestion in principle & skim over many or most of his maps as uninteresting for those exact reasons.

If I want a simple map for a one night/one shot/random encounter/hex filler on 20 minutes prep I'd look for a Dyson for sure.

But the example chosen (2nd) seems to show galleries overlooking a central grounds (height, interactivity) with a stinking big pit in the middle (mystery, potential).

You can loop around the central chamber + interact with it /cross over at several points.

Then there a shitload of stairs.That's going to pique the interest of any DM/Defender about getting up & down quickly, ambushing, loot carrying, tactical advantages etc etc.

I actually think #2 is an excellent map for scope of challenging encumbrance levels, tactical heights, climbing up/down/flyijg to cross that central chamber etc etc.

I know his work to support your idea in general. But #2 is a damn good map if those balconies are open aired & for a guy not linking to an existing megadungeon but providing scope for... it's a big thumbs up from me.

is it jam packed with interesting architecture? No. But it's free. Is the galleries + pits + shit ton of staircases enough for me to roll with being suggestive of what to do beyond just the bland or provide scope for player shenanigans- hell yes.

 

[squeen]

What I find true most of the time, is that people build up a bank of slow-cooked goodness developed when they're unknowns, exploit that for a period of time where they're eating their seed corn, so to speak, and then start shoveling out whatever comes to mind on a schedule. If you find otherwise, please share links!

What EOTB says is very true (and stated most colorfully!). There's those proverbial 10,000 hours necessary to master a craft, but then there is production to meet a schedule. Quality definitely drops off after the initial muse is exhausted and the creativity is being expected to be provided "on tap". It just doesn't work that way with the human mind.

I do think it is unfair to say Dyson's maps "suck". That's hyperbole to be sure. I think he has shown us all a new standard for (pen and ink) cartography for the hobby. It's detailed and clean. Because of its ubiquitous adoption (folks seem to know a good idea when they see it), his stuff may have been a bit overused as of late. Still I think it is best viewed as "inspiration" and should not be the end product for a published adventure.

Here's why:

The design process should be iterative. Matt Finch talks about on his blog Keying the Map, Or Mapping the Key. When I first read his post (2014) I was wondering WTF he was talking about. Now, after having struggled with this myself, I get his point. That's because it's a Chicken-And-Egg scenario when you want to create a new locale. You need to get something down to start the creative process. For me, that's usually the map. The problem is, at that initial point you are using just drawing something visually interesting with only a very vague idea of its use. It's only after that next step---keying it---that you realize your original map is illogical for the actual purpose for which it (is now) used. You then need to go back and fix the map.

I think this is what's truly at the heart of Two Orcs' gripe with using Dyson's maps. It's not the quality of the mapping craftsmanship, but just that they are difficult to populate sensibility without alteration....so alter them! Do the required next step, ya lazy bastards!

(...and be thankful for the FREE inspirational starter-yeast.)

 

[bryce0lynch]

Maps that support exploration play styles are a special breed. I suspect Dyson maps are fine for other play styles. I wonder also if there's some artist vs designer thing going on? Maps as art vs maps a functional thing in an adventure.

Some of his maps have some nice elements. I just reviewed something with a ruined chateau (Hobgoblin Bride?) that had some grounds attached, veranda, etc. I can also recall one with a pit (in real caving terms) with three(?) branches at the bottom. There were elements to both beyond simple doors and walls which is what made them better. I seem to also recall both of them being rather constrained for exploration play.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

The design process should be iterative. Matt Finch talks about on his blog Keying the Map, Or Mapping the Key. When I first read his post (2014) I was wondering WTF he was talking about. Now, after having struggled with this myself, I get his point. That's because it's a Chicken-And-Egg scenario when you want to create a new locale. You need to get something down to start the creative process. For me, that's usually the map. The problem is, at that initial point you are using just drawing something visually interesting with only a very vague idea of its use. It's only after that next, step---keying it---that you realize your original map is illogical for the actual purpose for which it (is now) used. You then need to go back and fix the map.

I'm very much a proponent of this style of dungeon design. An article I posted on Reddit a while back:

I've designed quite a few dungeons in my day, so I felt the need to share probably the best/easiest method I've been using for doing so: The Ret-Con Method.

For those outside the know, the term "Ret-Con" is an abbreviation for "Retroactive Continuity"; that is to say, it refers to the idea of going back over something that has already been done in the past and modifying your existing works to align with what is already out there. In the case of dungeon design, I view this as the notion that it is easier/faster to design the layout of a dungeon first, and then to make everything inside fit with what's there (rather than the traditional technique of coming up with ideas for what's in the dungeon, and then mapping to fit those ideas).

The key to The Ret-Con Method lies in creative mapping, thereby giving you the appropriate base on which to build creative events/encounters. This is particularly helpful for people who don't feel as if they can sit down an invent a few dozen interesting encounters in the vacuum of thought, without any inspiration - the map becomes a source of inspiration. Likewise, I've found this technique to help a great deal with dungeon plausibility, which is a problem in dungeon design that breaks game immersion (how can a lich peacefully live three doors down from a dragon for over a century? What are fifteen orcs doing in this room in the back of the dungeon without access to an exit for food and water? etcetera).

Let's look at a practical example, using one of my more recent maps: THE MAP

I started the process by designing the map, which basically involved loading up Photoshop and building random room shapes, connecting halls, linking areas, adding small details and themes to certain parts of the dungeon. This was all done on the fly; I literally had no idea what was going to be in this dungeon at this point. Add a few elements you know are in dungeons (secret doors, weird water features, arrow slits, strange building materials, statues, etcetera). The more things you can add beyond just the shape and location of a room, the more you'll have to work with down the line.

Once the map is done, it's time to start defining areas and grouping factions (something all good dungeons should have). In the example dungeon, we can see a few definitive areas:

• G6 through G13 all fit a common theme (jade rooms filled with weird purple blobs)
• G14 through G17 are all connected and have secret entry points, and are visibly different in design than the rest of the dungeon (newer construction?)
• G20 and G21 have commonalities (notice 12 sarcophagi in G20, but 13 statues in G21... potential idea hook?)

Make sure you have some definitively interesting rooms that can become focal points for the dungeon and for unique situations (in this case, Areas G2, G18, G19, G21 and G27).

From here, you can start building encounters and devising the logistics of your dungeons occupants.

• For instance, looking at the map we see that areas G14 through G17 are obviously connected and hidden, but seemingly cut off from the outside world. I imagine something built up this area inside the tombs to hide and move around, so there must be some faction living there - but how can a faction survive without a source of food or connection to the outside? Notice I added a water pool to Area G14 - I decide that it will be my groups entry-exit to and from the tomb; an underwater tunnel that comes up inside the area. Considerations going forward - whatever faction lives there needs to be able to hold their breath for a good while, or even be amphibious in nature. Lizardfolk would fit the bill, or some semi-aquatic variation of kobold maybe (they love their escape tunnels and ambushes). I'm keen on the new and interesting, so I'm going to invent a faction for this area: a race of otter-people.
• Areas G6 through G13 are related, so I'll throw another faction in there. Blobs of purple gunk all over the place... and I have cracks in the floor there... I guess that purple stuff is coming up from the ground, Ghostbusters II style. I can make the purple stuff semi-sentient, maybe it spawns a race of blob-men. Also if we look at the area, there's lots of stone coffins there - perhaps the purple goop can control the dead. The otter-folk would do well to tiptoe around those rooms.
• How about further back in the tombs? Not much there in the way of access to the outside. This being an ancient tomb and all, going to go mostly with traps and undead for these parts, as well as vermin (because vermin are seemingly able to get anywhere).

So we have it - two racial factions (otter-folk and blob-men) and space for classic-tomb-style undead and traps. The logistics are sound enough for the factions (otter-folk come and go through a water tunnel, blob-men and undead require no food, vermin come and go through little wall cracks).

Then we get further down to the micro-level: individual encounters, and dungeon links. I've already got my unique areas, so I can start with those to develop big set-pieces and tie components together.

• Area G18 is hidden behind a secret door, and whatever is hidden there looks big and cool - getting to this will probably be the endgame for the dungeon. A goal is set: the players must figure out how to open the secret door to Area G18. A goal like this is good for getting the players to move around the dungeon - unlocking the door probably requires a few scattered components. I have statues placed around the green blobby areas in some kind of patterns - I can incorporate that into the process (they need to do something with the statues to open the door, and since the idea is to mobilize them around the whole dungeon, maybe they need to gather things to put into the statues to activate them).
• Area G21 looks like the tomb of somebody important - I can build an encounter around an undead lord of some kind, with a cohort of his followers who are interred in the thematically-matching Area G20. Maybe the secret to his defeat lies in the strange "13th statue" there - each of the twelve statues represent one of his twelve followers in G20; if the party realizes that the 13th statue is of the master, maybe doing something to it (breaking it) can be a key to his defeat?

This process goes on until you have a fully-stocked dungeon - notice map features and then ret-con their reason for being like that.

• Dead-end hallway in the northwest? It lines up with the door to Area G23. I'm thinking some kind of Indiana Jones style boulder trap on the door.
• Area G2 has a big pool and a few statues - could be a good water encounter area with the otter-folk (beyond an ambush in Area G1).
• The fountain in G5 totally has to do something wild.
• G22 is empty and detached; looks like a place the party could safely rest.
• Secret door to bypass Area G29? G29 should be some sort of whole-room trap (copper walls and floor with a statue - maybe a giant tesla coil that zaps the room).
• G19 has some big column in the middle with cracks in the floor around it and a strange blue glow - the heart of the purple blob, encased in a column of hard purple substance maybe? Now the party needs to figure out how to get at it - possibly by looting another area in the tomb (a weapon in the coffin at Area G27 perhaps).

And so on.

By looking at your map, you can get inspiration for encounters and logistics, for factions and themes. I've found it much easier to devise an explanation for something after the fact rather than trying to pull ideas from a blank slate. In the end, you have a dungeon that feels more cohesive and sensible.

 

[squeen]

Yes, the map inspires! I would argue that the next step (after a letting it marinade for a while) is to redo the map to make it a better layout for the content you just created---otherwise what you are doing is equivalent to just keying one of Dyson's maps.

Then play test it and fix it all again!

Rinse and repeat.

 

[squeen]

@Two orcs : Glancing back at your original post, there's something I need to know:

Is a metric fuckton larger or smaller than the English fuckton we use here in the United States?

 

[Malrex]

What EOTB says is very true (and stated most colorfully!). There's those proverbial 10,000 hours necessary to master a craft, but then there is production to meet a schedule. Quality definitely drops off after the initial muse is exhausted and the creativity is being expected to be provided "on tap". It just doesn't work that way with the human mind.

I'd add 'frustration' to the production to meet a schedule part. It's one of the reasons I stopped my Patreon. I didn't want to put a 'limit' on myself due to a monthly schedule....if I thought of something else while writing or mapping, I wanted to be able to explore it. I decided to do that anyways with my Patreon, but sacrificed a lot of time that I could of been doing something else as my umm wife would vehemently agree. It wasn't something I could keep up with as I didn't want to just put out chintzy shit. Plus, part of my idea was for me to try new mapping/layout techniques and the schedule would hardly allow it.

I do maps and adventures several ways. Sometimes I have about 80-90% of the adventure in my head and I can sit down and map it out (and bust out writing it very quickly). That's probably 60% of the time. Other times I start with the map and start 'writing' the adventure in my head as I go and write rough notes on the map--like DP's Ret-Con method. Yes, sometimes I have to go back and make a few changes, but I do that rarely. Sometimes it's a 50/50 combo...

Something I NEVER do is write up a full adventure, then map it. The map is my foundation or base. Ok, I'll rephrase that-- as I've never done that before, but might be trying that soon as I told Prince not to have the map limit his creativity for Palace of Unquiet Repose and sounds like I'll have to re-map some of it to match his writing.

 

[squeen]

...I decided to do that anyways with my Patreon, but sacrificed a lot of time that I could of been doing something else as my umm wife would vehemently agree. ...

Not that it's any of my business, but how does your wife (who was very supportive of your kiskstarter) feel about your "umm wife" who's not so into D&D? Have they ever met?

Just asking.

 

[Malrex]

Not that it's any of my business, but how does your wife (who was very supportive of your kiskstarter) feel about your "umm wife" who's not so into D&D? Have they ever met?

Just asking.

*slaps forehead*

 

[bryce0lynch]

It's 2019 squeen. I think I have about eight couple-friends in poly relationships and know substantially more.

So it's ok Malrex, good for you!

 

[squeen]

It's 2019 squeen. I think I have about eight couple-friends in poly relationships and know substantially more.

I guess am Old-School in more ways than one.
Mind == blown.

 

[Malrex]

Oh man you guys....one is plenty! She puts up with a lot and is a saint. I seriously lucked out.


Although, having more wives could form a good playtest group...hmmm...and also a editor wife, artist wife, layout wife, additional content writer wife, wife...and...

 

[The1True]

Late to the party here, but really @Two orcs; have you seen this one from mid September? Like people are saying, the dude's got a Patreon to feed. It blows my mind that he's still pumping out maps at the rate he does! Hell of a thing to complain about free, high-quality maps...

That said, it is a little lame picking up an indy adventure and finding it has generic maps that were available to everybody else. Sort of the same feeling I get from looking at crappy, public domain art in people's modules.

THAT said... some of these maps are pretty cool. It's good to see a key put to them occasionally...

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I'm with True on this one. What Dyson does is mass production, and in all cases of mass production, sometimes you sacrifice a bit of quality. But considering he's offering his wares as more of a helpful service than a business (it is free for people to use his maps, after all), it's not super fair to hold him to the same standards as you would towards someone designing an intentional product for a specific purpose, sold as part of a money-making venture. It's also pretty presumptive to assume that any map which doesn't touch on all the "Rules of Jacquaying" (yeah, yeah, we've all read the article) is somehow automatically deemed inferior or flawed; like there's only one school of dungeon design from which we must never deviate or some jank.

Also I agree that not all of his maps are linear, that yes they're too common, blah blah etc. I'd like it stated though, that even the most straightforward, linear maps can be made interesting - or at the very least, made to serve a purpose - with good creative writing. Even if you don't like a Dyson map, it will still almost always be at least 75% salvageable, which is a hell of a lot better than nothing at all.