Champion Tier - Death House v2.0 - Basement - [30x40] (Patreon)

Disclaimer: All content controlled by Wizards of the Coast IP is available for free in compliance with the Fan Content Creation Policy. The free post for this map can be found here.

Update Aug 30th, 2023

Hey everyone! One of our astute community members very accurately pointed out that my spiral stairs were backward from the upper level. I am so sorry for the oversight on my end! However, I went ahead and corrected the staircase position and re-uploaded all of the files and color moods. 

Original Post

Hey everyone, and happy Release Monday! Today is the second part of my revisit of my older CoS maps, and as part of this, I am releasing the basement dungeon for Death House v2.0 from last week's release!

Just a reminder to all, especially our newest community members, I will be going back and re-doing / updating all of my older work to keep everything consistent and in line with my standards today. I've grown a lot over the past two years I've been mapping, and it's important to me you have as much of a consistent set of maps to help support your games as possible. I hope you'll find value in these reworks of my older content!

Map Details

The first thing to note here is that I enhanced the size of the map just slightly (like I did for the house). It's a pretty cramped dungeon by design, and I tried to keep the hallways nice and cramped to lend to the horror aspect, but I also expanded other areas a bit that have larger fights or chances for roleplay (such as the crypts and Strahd statue room).

As your party goes through the dungeon, you'll notice the writing on the stones of the crypts with the Durst family members on them. The sleeping quarters for the cultists are basic and simple, now falling into ruin, but each area smells of mold and death.

Probably my favorite part of this map is the Strahd statue. I really wanted to create a looming and ominous presence here, and since, for most parties, this is the first time seeing Strahd, I wanted to try and captivate his look as much as possible. Having hand painted and textured the statue, I wanted to give it that painted wood feel and make the statue large and imposing.

Finally, as you head to the lower chamber, you'll see the murky, brackish water and the stone dias and altar in the center. I added silhouettes of chains dangling over the water, connecting to rings in the ceiling, and dangling down over the altar to bind the hapless victims of the death cult.

Variants

While I know the module does not specify fog and does mention the entire dungeon is unlit, I just had to add a version with lighting to create a dramatic and contrasting feel. I thought a thin layer of fog, looming just feet over the ground, would make for a fun effect to introduce and would certainly make any trapped floors hard to see! The thought of stepping on something "crunchy" only to realize you are stepping on mounds of ancient bones.

So with that said, there are four variants to each color mood:

• With Fog & Lights
• With Fog & No Lights
• With Lights & No Fog
• Without Fog or Lights

I created seven different color moods for the variants to help capture the perfect tone for your game. They are:

• Ancient: This mood is dry, old, and dusty
• Banshee: This mood has a hint of ghostly blue to it giving it that haunted feel
• Bright: This mood will help you control the brightness level for your own VTT
• Dark Fantasy: A mix of blues and purples gives this a creepy and witchy feel to it
• Gloom: My standard for the dungeon; dark and creepy, with deep dramatic shadows
• Verdant: This mood feels old and moldy, focusing on green tones
• Warm: This mood creates an earthen and dusty feel to it.

Map Release Details

For my Champion Tier patrons, you get the following with this map release:

• 7 Color Moods
• Variants include: Fog & Light options
• 4k / 8k Resolution
• Jpg / Webp file format
• VTT Sizing Guide

Really happy to have a few of these v2.0 maps done and under my belt. I'm excited to revisit the big towns like the Village of Barovia, Vallaki, and Krezk, as well as create more generic locations in the surrounding countryside to explore.

On the Ghosts of Saltmarsh front, I am going to be working on creating a series of Ocean maps that you can use for any ship assets you might have. My goal is to create a good blend of calm waters, shallow waters, and stormy waters with, of course, variants for fog, day, night, etc. My hope is these maps will act as a good landscape for you to add your own ship assets, tokens, etc., on and should be versatile for any water encounter you have planned.

I will end the month by creating the third and final dungeon for the Temple of the Lost Fane; the new dungeon Pyram King and myself are working on adding within the pillar stone of Ravenloft itself! I know Pyram has been working on his content for the second map I created last month, but if you are running CoS and have not yet heard of this, you can check out his vid here.

Thanks as always for your support; you are helping make this map maker's dream come true of creating these battlemaps full-time!

Cheers,

DM Andy

“DM Andy Maps is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.”