Meyhovic House - Because Everyone Needs a Haunted House Now or Then

[Ashenvale]

Here's my first map post as a new member. Please tell me what you love and hate!

I created this country manor ground-floor map in Photoshop for a one-session D&D adventure (with a strong Call of Cthulhu bent) that I wrote called "True Malice." It has almost seen publication twice. (I hate the word "almost".) As an RPG supplement, I designed each room after I'd written the encounter for each. Every room has one or more clues through which the players can unravel the arc of a horror mystery driving the adventure. With respect to the map's visual presentation, I focused on compelling light conditions. I wanted the map to remain dark overall, suggesting a house long abandoned by the living. Simultaneously, however, with isolated sparkles and pools of light, I hoped to present a full range of color that both suggests something terrible lingers here on the edge of life, and, from a purely artistic standpoint, supports the overall composition's rhythm and movement. I strove to make the image at once beautiful . . . and scary. I kept the word "haunting" at the front of my mind from the beginning to the end of the creation process.

The image I've posted here can't begin to reveal the details the original map contains. My website, however, has close-ups of all Meyhovic House rooms. Please, please, PLEASE check them out there! CLICK HERE to go to this map's webpage, and then click anywhere on the main map image. That will pull up a detail page showing the specific room on which you clicked. Then use the next and previous arrows at the top to scroll through the details, taking a tour of the ground floor of the manor. My hope is that you feel like you're inside each room -- and you're unsettled by the experience.

The big questions about the finished map (whose answers will greatly assist my second floor cartography project!): Do the walls confuse you? Are light conditions overdone? Is the excess of detail too distracting? Do you too wish your home looked like this? No . . . wait . . . that's a personal question for me and my therapist.