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.

[Ascension]

Welcome to the guild. A recent new member pointed us to your blog and I stopped by there the other day. Keep up the good work.

[NeonKnight]

Welcome to the Guild!

[töff]

Cool blog, dude.

[ravells]

Excellent blog! Welcome to the Guild!

[Gandwarf]

Welcome to the guild Dyson!

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard!

[Dyson Logos]

Just a quick bump, because I edited the introduction as a re-introduction.

[Dyson Logos]

One other HUGE change since I was last here. In 2009 I was learning how to draw maps using a style adapted from a number of older sources primarily (1980 Dragon magazine "Halls of Beoll Dur" and the uncredited cartographer who did those maps, as well as the awesome cartography of Rick Barber from the early & mid 80's products "The Octagon of Chaos" and "Tower of the Dead" - Barber's work, in particular, was something I wished I could emulate but just didn't have the technical skills for) and even a few contemporary sources (my secret door notation was created by Matt Jackson a few years back for instance).

I've played around with a variety of fills and styles and gotten to where I am now with a style that was pretty unique for a time - it wasn't NEW per se, but in 2009 we weren't seeing a lot of hand-drawn maps in the RPG publishing scene anymore... Then people started imitating the style in question not based on my sources, but based on my work and it started being referred to as "Dyson-style maps".

So in the last seven years I've gone from learning to draw maps (and I'm still learning), to having a distinct style named after me.