Redoing the map for the old AD&D the X1 Adventure: The Isle of Dread

Hi! I'm back after an extended hiatus. Been working on cartoons and other map projects that are all in various stages of completion. But I wanted to share a hex map I put together recently for the pathfinder campaign I'm in.

We wanted to play the old D&D module X1 "The Isle of Dread" but I wasn't particularly pleased with the map (We also swapped out the whole central plateau section for something more appropriate to our campaign - but that's another story). So I decided to remake the island map into something that would look better in roll20. Here it is. Enjoy!

  

 In our campaign this island was still full of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures, but as you got closer to the center of the island, the monsters took on a more Cthulu-esque quality. This was because we used the map as a lead-in for Strange Aeons and some of the early things that drive that AP (before book One) were found here.

We placed the island in the Castrovin Sea, east of Eastsea and the Stolen Lands where our kingdom is located. Here's a map of our campaign kingdom to orient you:

 

As you can see, we did quite well in our Kingmaker Campaign. Eastsea is the Savannah extending east from the Dunsward (and is not canonical - but we needed to put something there!). The Isle of Dread is somewhere in the ocean east of Eastsea. 

A castle from the past

Time for a little change of pace. The map below I drew around 1990. It is the stronghold of one of the PC's I was playing around the end of high school. There's nothing amazing about it, unless you take into account that the map survived 25 years with only some slight wrinkling.

Castle Ziemovit, circa 1990. 

The castle was not much, Just a keep surrounded by some buildings and, further out, a few tilled fields. Beyond that its just open grasslands. There's a small dock in the center that allows boat traffic to the sea. A watchtower is at top-center and a waterfall is center-left.

Given more time and playing, I probably would have filled in the rest of the blank space with copses of trees, small hills and the occasional home or farm. But this campaign wound down shortly thereafter and the map sat in the stack of my notes for a long long time.

Lastly, one item of housekeeping. I am going to attempt to adhere to a Fridays only publishing schedule. I was thinking three times a week, but I don't want to burn out too quickly over this. :) The good news is that it means 3 posts this week (there will be one on friday).