czepeku
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Ages of the Vale Pt.1 [27x39]
🕑 Added 2021-07-27 23:12:02 +0000 UTCOh, there you are!
Come quickly and gather round. Don’t mind your muddy boots. And you can leave that shield by the door. There’s still space at the bar, or come pull up a chair here with us.
There’s plenty of fuel for the fire, so relax and grab a pint.
Oh, so where are we? A simple tavern of course. The sort you might find anywhere along your journey, the sort with a roaring fire, loyal pups by the door and local bards caught mid-song without the right lyrics.
Why are we here? Because somehow we’ve made it to 100 releases without ever really dedicating one to a tavern, even though it has been requested again. And again. And again and again and again.
But there were already so many taverns out there and we wanted to make ours special.
So a better question than where we are, might be when we are.
A building doesn’t exist in a single point in time. They stretch through a community’s history. And more than any other building, a tavern ties all the locals together. A tavern tells the story of a community, its births and baptisms, its feuds and families, its weddings and wakes, it uprisings and undulations, winding through history.
A community without a tavern is like a bear without armour or a samurai without a sword. It was about time we had one around here.
So this isn’t just a tavern, but a story of a tavern, through all of its history. A story of its simple pastoral conception to its last customer and on into its ruin until it is claimed back by the earth, left to rest at last. A memento mori of sorts, a memory box of a village that we wanted to create for you.
Our hope is that you can use this for all sorts of low level adventures:
a flock of sheep is missing,
a rabid beast is terrorizing the village,
a flood is coming and the children need rescuing to high ground,
and so on.
And we hope that this can be a recurring locale in your campaigns, that changes and grows as your party grows. Perhaps the party can own it, become its stewards, fix it up, hire locals for your retinue.
We've purposefully designed this map so that it ties in thematically and stylistically with several of our other maps, notably Crossroads, Serene Lakeside, Impact Site, Baba Yaga's Domain, Medieval Monster Festival, Adventurer's Guildhall and Ogre Queen's Feast. Hopefully with these maps combined you can set up a hub area for your players with tons of variations for when they come and go from the dungeons to the village.
We've also added in some extras, like these maps of the wider village of Creake and the Vale, where the battlemaps are set. So that you can explore the surrounding areas and see how those too change over time.
Dagonzo Adventures has kindly created two stat blocks, The Black Shuck and Baba Yaga for us, which are monsters that appear in the variations. As always, consider supporting his work! He'll also be making the 5 or so other monsters that will be coming in parts 2 and 3.
And lastly, for our Master Cartographer tier supporters we put together a little PDF with some lore writing for each variation, basically the reason why we made it and I guess how we think you could introduce it to your players.
Anyway, not sure if anyone will make it this far through all the text but we really hope you like this idea and that you're excited to see the rest.
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Get this week's map files:
Ages of the Vale - Extras (All Patrons)
Ages of the Vale Pt.1 - $1 Rewards
Ages of the Vale Pt.1 - $3 Rewards
Ages of the Vale Pt.1 - $5 Rewards (Gridded)
Ages of the Vale Pt.1 - $5 Rewards (Gridless)
Ages of the Vale - Barn of Creake PDF
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Every variation has a rooftop version, like this ^ but for the sake of brevity we've only included the indoor versions in the lineup below.
![Ages of the Vale Pt.1 [27x39]](https://img10.unionfaps.com/storage/12/io/jr/ba8889-019e8fc1-fd8d-7ae4-891e-01712b26cd3e.jpg)
Comments
Dan Grady
GL_Tavern_Indoors_Stage_Night and GL_Tavern_Roof_Stage_Night appear to be the same interior image. There currently is no Roof night stage map in this package. Thank you!
Chris Pagel
barn autumn is missing from the 5$ downloads can you re-add it?
Mike Murphy
So ... The Shuck .... het gets pack tactics but it seems like he might be a solitary hunter? Also, the advantage he would get anyway would be wiped out by the heavily obscured environment from its fog? Especially since it exists until he moves? I think from a design perspective, it might be best to give it blindsight or tremorsense to truly deliver the terror that is intended?
Bjorn Van Houtven
Is there a questline made for this story?
Jacob Faber
Is the tavern the only $1 reward map?
Ben_is_Superman 1
Ah man that’s a real shame. I’m sure it wasn’t the intention but it’s a little misleading that the map that appears on the main preview (ie the barn in daylight) isn’t even available for every patron… Any chance you would reconsider? The $3 tier isn’t even open at the moment so the only way I’d have to access it would be to sign up for the $5 tier, which I can’t really afford right now.
Cze and Peku
Thanks, we're so glad to hear someone say that. The majority of the work in this series went into planning details like changing food, plants, flowers, birds, the building of walls and cutting down of trees over time, etc. in the hope it would feel as real as possible if you wanted this as a base. I suppose that isn't as flashy as the normal maps we do but I hope your players really enjoy it!
Cze and Peku
Hey Kit, glad to hear that! Definitely send over some screenshots if your bard does get on that stage!
Cze and Peku
Because we wanted to present the lineup in the chronological order of the maps we didn't go with the normal system we use. The $1 tier gets the Tavern with day, night and silent night. As usual, it's a base map with a night variation. $3 tier patrons get the barn, apple press and tavern day and night versions. $5 get everything. Hope that explains things! :)
Cze and Peku
Maybe in part 2!
Ben_is_Superman 1
Sorry for being dense, but I'm confused as to which maps we are meant to have access to as the preview images aren't labelled by tier as they usually are. I'm a patreon at the basic 'map scout' tier and my download only seems to contain the final tavern version in day, night and 'silent night'. I obviously don't expect to get all the funky variants, but do we not get access to the three main versions of the basic 'New Beginnings' map in it's different time periods (in day and night)? Sorry if I've missed something obvious! I really, really love this!
DM Dave
What? No roc nest???
Those are what barns look like
BeeGneiss
I adore how much thought went into these maps! I’ve seen comments saying they’re too simple, but a tavern doesn’t have to be visually challenging, especially one that is supposed to exemplify “the local tav”. You’ve done amazingly and I can’t wait to introduce my players to such a richly evolving locale!
Kit Ortega
Love these variations and hope to use it as a recurring stop for my players. My bard is going to love that stage. Thanks!
Cze and Peku
Thanks Ogo. :) Hope you enjoy the next parts too!
Cze and Peku
Thanks Chris. :)
Cze and Peku
We haven't yet, but we can in future!
Cze and Peku
The barn building is based on real barns around where I live. Even though its simple... that's just how the make them! The building will evolve in later parts though and become a more complex shape.
Cze and Peku
That was just a typing error. This set is just part 1.
Cze and Peku
Thanks for pointing out that mistake, i'll edit that tomorrow. The folder layout is just for this set of maps because its complex and has layers. Part 2 will have multiple floors which makes it even more complex to put into folders.
Ogo Sylla
This is lovely. Big fan of it!
Immortalstar01
Have you done a wagon/carriage pack like the airship pack you did a while ago? Mobile land bases are not explored as much these days it seems.
Fox Yusaf
These maps are a bit disappointingly simple. It's always a shame to see buildings which are perfect rectangles. It feels so contrived. The backgrounds are lovely though, and the trees and paths feel organic and lived in, and very beautiful.
CosmoProtogen
The new maps awesome but par2 for the master cartographers is just part 1 again.
Chris Cooper
Absolutely beautiful maps!
Thanks for the new map. Barn Indoors Spring Night has the grid on it in the $5 gridless pack. Not sure what I think of the subfolder layout, it makes it a bit easier to search, but I found the old layout easier to browse.
