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Alleyway Battle Map - Launch
🕑 Added 2022-05-31 19:42:59 +0000 UTCHello Adventurers! Sometimes you just need a nice convenient back alley to ambush your party. And so our next map is one of those. It's inspired by victorian city planning, where alleys would run behind working-class housing. These had many quirky names like Gunnels, Gates, Gants and my favourite Snickets. I’m not a fan of extremely narrow places to fight, so I’ve made the ‘Snicket’ a little wider than would be 100% accurate, which I hope will allow for more dynamic fights.
Next Maps
The next map on our list is the Kobold’s Den, a twisty set of passages and underground caves dug out by a group of particularly murderous and devious Kobolds. Expect lots of traps, pits and general Murder Hole goodness!
- The Kobold’s Den of Traps
This map will be a complex cave system with plenty of tunnels and passages, along with locations for traps, ‘Kill Rooms’ and Murder Holes. Very much inspired by the ideas behind Tucker’s Kobolds (Google them, it's a fun story). - Dwarven Mine ( suggested by Scrowyrtha)
I have completely missed creating a general Mine, so I’ll be making a Dwarfen mine with cut rock walls, shafts, open caverns, mine machinery and a mine face or two.
Remember as a Patron you can download all my older maps for free here: Map List
All you lovely Patrons get a virtual hug from me, thanks for the support! Honestly, I love hearing about your encounters using my maps, it makes my day :) And just to be clear you can stream and create videos using my maps, it's all cool, I love seeing one of my maps pop up on Twitch or YouTube! If you have other suggestions for maps I’m always open to them. Finally, I hope your week is going well and as always, happy adventuring! Now, let's take a shortcut through this alley, ignore the shifty looking guys in the shadows, they are more scared of you than you are of them ;)
Map Descriptions
Walking into the alley
The character of the city changes drastically as you make your way down the alleyway. The relatively clean main streets transition to litter strewn cobbles, you doubt a street sweeper has ever touched this place. Years of accumulated rubbish have rotted away, leaving the cobbles caked in a dark and permanently damp mud that reeks of decay.
The Alleyway ‘Snicket’
On either side of the alleyway are crumbling brick walls and wooden fencing. Gates lead to back entrances of squalid terraced housing, the little private spaces are filled with pots, washpans, wooden tools, and workbenches. Clotheslines are strung across every suitable structure, draped with damp grey clothing and bedsheets.
The People
The people are what you’d politely call ‘Salt of the earth’. Hard looking men and women go about their business or sit on ‘stoops’ passing the time with dice games and talking quietly amongst themselves. Their clothes are shabby, often repaired to a point the patches make up more of the cloth than the original material. In the darker nooks and crannies, you notice shadowy figures. It's unlikely they have good intentions.
Flavour
These back alleyways, which generally exist behind lower class housing, have lots of colourful names: Gunnels, Gates, Gants and Snickets. People will sit on the Stoop, or entrance to their home. The locals may refer to their home as their Crib or Digs. A Flash House is a lodging or a tavern patronized by criminals.
Notes and Tips
- 30x36 Grid Map
- The map can be split into sections to create more than one encounter location.
- The main alleyway is fairly open to allow for more tactical combat. Remember to use the backyards as extra combat space and a place to hide enemies. Doorways are another good entrance for reinforcements.
- Line of sight is good down the alley but terrible when it comes to the backyards, doorways and connecting alleyways, surprise your party with extra enemies!
- Have enemies run along roofs and walls. If this is the enemy's home they know the area and will use that knowledge to their advantage.
- Use whistles and calls to indicate something is about to ‘go down’. Have the locals go inside and lock their doors, while shadowy figures block the side alleyways. Ramping up the tension before the start of combat is often more fun than a simple surprise attack.
- Your party needs to get info from a dodgy guy/gal. They can be found sitting on a stoop in this alleyway. Turns out this is a con and the party is about to get mugged by some heavies!
- This part of town is controlled by a two-bit crime boss, the party has been tasked with arresting him, or he could have a bounty on his head, or maybe another faction wants a hit taken out on him. Your party's alignment decides how the job is themed!
- The local slumlord is trying to evict families from their homes, the party sees some thugs forcibly removing a family, do they step in? Or have they been hired by the residents to protect them? What happens when the bailiffs come to remove them? Does the city guard get involved?
- Any number of sewer dwelling creatures could sneak out of the sewers at night and attack the locals, the party is tasked with watching and waiting for them to appear. Use this map with my Rat Kings Lair map for an extended encounter.
- A flock of Stirge (small blood sucking flying creatures) have begun to roost in the eaves of some of the derelict houses. The locals have fled until the infestation is taken care of.
Varients
Need a seedy marketplace? Somewhere to sell contraband or pick up some illegal materials for that super evil ritual? I've got you!
I've also created a snowy version for those people playing in the far north!
And we have lit and nighttime versions of all the map varients
Comments
Afternoon Maps
Its certainly a good idea. I've thought about creating more modular sections of dungeons before and I think it would be super useful to create a set of smaller sections of dungeons that could be used to connect some of my different maps together. Mmm things to think on. Well back to drawing Kobold traps ;)
Keovar
For ideas, I think it would be fun to have a set of maps which could be rotated and connected in various ways to form catacombs. There could be a few types of halls and junctions lined with urn niches, plus a few more complex burial chambers with slabs, sarcophagi, etc.
Afternoon Maps
Thank Evan! Converting people into DnD fans is very worthy work, good job :D
Evan TM
Always a highlight when a new map drops! I've made a few "one shots" based entirely off your maps to introduce people to D&D and they have worked really well!
