Mythras Adventure: Betrayal at Shadewood Keep

As announced last week, I’ve been working on an adventure for the Mythras roleplaying game and the Classic Fantasy supplement, both fantastic RPG products published by The Design Mechanism.

The content for the adventure is complete and is currently undergoing review with TDM, and all that’s left at this point is to finish up the maps and complete the cover.

This week, I thought I’d share two of the maps I did for the game, and compare them to the original maps I published back in the early 2000’s when I first released the adventure. I’ve had a lot of years of experience creating stuff in Photoshop since then, and I think that the maps are definitely much better than what I had back in the day.

Region Map

The first map is for the region where the adventure takes place. In the original adventure, I split this up into two different maps, one for the overall region and one for all the various encounters in the Shadewood. Since I don’t need “filler” encounters when using Mythras and Classic Fantasy, I was able to streamline the encounters and simplify the map.

The originals:

The new map:

Kewin Town

The region has a single large town—Kewin Town—and multiple smaller villages. The original map was done in Adobe Illustrator and was fairly simple. For the updated map, I wanted to improve upon it, so I moved over to Photoshop.

The original:

The new map:

Encounter Areas

Last year, I spent a little bit of time updating the encounter maps as I intended to re-release the adventure, minus any reference to the D20 license. I had considered releasing the original version for 3.5, and also to add another version compatible with the Pathfinder RPG.

Here is a map that I did for the updated version. This encounter area will not appear in the new Mythras/Classic Fantasy version of the adventure, but it gives you an idea of the style of the new maps.

The original:

The new map:

What’s Next

I have a couple more maps to complete, and a few minor corrections to the text, then the final version will be sent off to The Design Mechanism for approval. Once that’s done, I’ll post the new cover and announce a release date on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.

I do intend to also have a print version of this adventure available—POD through DriveThru/RPGNow—but that will likely come a little bit later, and I’ll need to tweak the files for submission to Lightning Source, the POD supplier.

Once this adventure is complete, I’ll be back to working on The Traitor and the Thief. I’ve needed a bit of a break from the novel, as I have to rework a few sections and I needed to clear my head. But now I’m ready to get back to it and get the final draft done.

See you next week.