Greetings from a Grognard Dungeon Mapper

[Dyson Logos]

Re-greetings!

When I first started drawing maps for my blog in 2009 I also came here to the Cartographer's Guild and chatted a bit with the membership. But that was over seven years ago and I spent most of 2010 just drawing and posting small geomorphic maps to my blog and ignoring the rest of the world.

But I was "suckered" back a tweet from the Guild twitter account about Miska's Mapvember which I was taking part in, so I came back over here and started posting my mapvember works as I created them. And then when that challenge finally ended (30 maps in 30 days? I'm still kind of stunned that I managed it), I felt a void in my life. Not that I wouldn't be drawing more maps, but I kind of missed the deadline of the challenge. So I came back for some of the challenges here.

Since my last time here, things have changed significantly for me. I draw maps now. When I was last here drawing maps was one of the things I did, but these days it is essentially all I do besides game and the occasional house work. My blog has gone from being a general RPG blog with a few maps to a Fantasy Map Blog with a few RPG articles. I launched a Patreon campaign in 2013 that has been quite successful, and my blog is now my primary income stream. Which of course means that my skills have improved slightly over the last seven years also.

Here's the first map I ever posted to my blog:

tomb-map-1.jpg

And here's the same map when I tried drawing it again earlier this year:

return-to-oakenshields-tomb.jpg

So, this is my long-winded way of saying I'm back and looking forward to trying out the various challenges and just chattering with other map makers here as I continue to work to refine my style.

Greets.

I'm Dyson Logos, an old-time gamer (started with OD&D in the late 70's) who has recently rediscovered pen-and-paper mapping for my games.

I maintain a blog over at http://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com where I try to post a map every Friday, and sometimes include a PDF "one page dungeon" to go as a supplement for the map.

I was inspired to my current mapping style by a new player in a few of my gaming groups who draws excellent old-school maps and I'm trying to bring my style up to his, and to create dynamic environments and convey them through the map.