Have Ideas? We Would Love To Hear Them!

Customers of our GM's maps range will have noticed that recent maps have included some fan content in the 'Adventure Ideas' section.  We would like to thank all the fans who have submitted ideas for various maps and the adventures they could use them for.

Several people have asked how they could get their ideas published in one of our products so I thought I'd post a quick article about it here.

You can send your ideas to us at gethsemanegames@gmail.com

If there is a map you would like to see that isn't in our range yet, drop us a line and we will consider adding it to our 'To Do' list.

If you have adventure ideas for a map of one of our Grabban drop villages we may consider publishing it here in a blog article.

If you would like to see one of your adventure ideas in the 'Adventure Hooks' section of an upcoming map, let us know, if we like it we might use it and give you a writing credit.

Here is a list of some of the GM's maps we are planning, we would love to hear your adventure hooks for them.  Any genre, and as off the wallas you like.  Send them in and we will consider them.  If we don't use your idea it isn't that we didn't like it, we sometimes get more ideas than we can use in a single product.  We hope to publish some of these ideas as blog posts in the future.  So don't be disheartened if we don't use your idea right away, it may see the light of day on 'Whispers from the Other-Verse'.

Upcoming Maps

Sea Fort
Frontier Fought
Casino
Care Home
Wizards Tower 2
City Morgue
Pyramid

Here is an advanced look at part of the Sea fort that we are working on just now.

New Map

I spent Sunday of this week re-designing the map of the imperial hinterlands and frontier from Spelldancer.

This map was the first part of the Elizium setting I ever mapped, back when I was at 6th form college.  My then girlfriend would be the first person to ever play in Elzium with her Elf mage who would later lend her name to the game - Pandora Spelldancer.  That version was done by hand.

When I got my first copy of Campaign Cartographer by Profantasy Software I remade the map with that.  At the time it seemed great but technology - and expectations - have come a long way since then.  The version in the current edition of Spelldancer was remade using Campaign Cartographer 2 and again, how great it looked when I made it but once again the state of the art has moved on since then.

This version was made with CC3+ by Profantasy Software.  How far things have come since the pencil drawn then inked version on an artists pad!

STOP right there, Dragon DROP villages have just landed, ROLL on over to http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?discount=9b3355be72 To get the first one for just $1, but hurry!  the offer only lasts until December the 15th. 

Have you ever been halfway through a campaign and had to take an enforced break as your players decided to take a detour into a village that's just a name on a map in your adventure?

Or do you need a village as a base for your adventuring party, or just as a backdrop for them to visit?

Well, no more trying to think up and map an entire village – we have designed Dragon Drop Villages with exactly this situation in mind!

Simply take one of our range of villages, drag it over, and drop it in to your campaign notes! A ready-made village, with buildings, NPCs and even scenario ideas, all ready to be used. Just bolt on your gaming system, stat anyone you think might need it, and you're ready to go.

The village is described in detail, with each building on the beautiful full-colour map given its own entry.  Who lives there, what they do, their personality and how they related to the other villagers.  Not Only that but the economy, rumours and lie in the village are all explained and we include a section of adventure ideas as well.

Our first village is a small but important one, with a population of approximately 20 families, a tavern, smith, and a pawn shop which is ideal for adventurers looking to sell the strange items they have accumulated. All mapped out with full GM notes, the Farmer's Market Town is surrounded by crofts and farms and provides a regular market for the farmers to sell their produce, craftspeople and the forces of law and order in the shape of the Burgomaster, Sheriff and Bailiff.

Use THIS LINK  before December 15th to get Dragon Drop Village #1: Farmer's Market Town for just $1 

The Dragon Drop Villages range is system neutral, designed to be used with whatever rules system you use.

Missed the $1 sale?  Don't worry, you can still buy Farmer's Market Town for just $2 for another week before it goe's up to its full price.  Just use THIS LINK to go directly to the products page on RPG.Now

New Release GM's Map 34 'Victorian Members Club'

 An exciting new release in our GM's Maps range, 'Traditional Members Club'.  Popularised in the Victorian period the first clubs actually appeared in London in the Georgian period and many still exist today.  

The first Gentlemen's clubs were established in the upmarket west end of London. These clubs were open only to the aristocracy and the Landed gentry. With names like 'Whites' and 'Boodles' they took on some of the roles of coffee houses.

 As the 19thcentury progressed there was something of an explosion in the number of traditional members clubs. 

 Clubs like 'The Reform Club' (Membership of which was restricted to those who pledged to support the 1832 reform act and thus included both peers of the realm and gentlemen of middle-class status) and the purely fictional Diogenes club of which the equally fictitious Sherlock Holmes was a member sprang up all over. By the 1880s London alone had over 400 such members clubs catering only to men and only to those of the middle and upper classes. By now clubs were appearing all over the world form the USA to India.

With the expansion of the numbers of clubs came an expansion in their services as well. These 'Reform clubs' offered middle-class men all the comforts of an aristocratic home. Gambling and coffee were still offered as was an extensive staff employed by the club for the comfort of the members, but many of these new clubs also offered accommodation for members who wished to stay the night (or several nights). At this time some of the older clubs also began to offer overnight accommodation, although this was by no means adopted by all of the original clubs.

By the 21st century, several of the remaining clubs had lifted the embargo on Women joining and so opened up to a wider range of members.

From Sherlock Holmes to Phileas Fogg and Hercule Poirot some of the greatest fictional characters have been members of such clubs, and now your PCs or their Antagonists can too!

Find this product Here

There are a wide number of ways to use the Traditional Gentlemen's Club in your RPG campaigns and we encourage you to let your own imagination run wild. We do have a few suggestions for you but don't feel these are the only possibilities. A usual we would love to hear from anyone who has a unique or unusual idea for how to use the map in their scenarios.

The club may provide a home base for the PCs. The club can be used in much the same way as the stereotypical 'Meet at the Inn' introduction often used in fantasy scenarios, where the PCs are all members of the club and it is this membership that draws them together to begin their joint adventure or investigation. Perhaps a fellow member is in trouble and the PCs represent other members who 'Refuse to let a chap down, especially when he is a member of our club, by George!'.
Perhaps the club itself wants to find some valuable treasure or solve some mystery and the party are members who have stepped up tot he challenge. Members of the club may be patrons or sponsors of the party and may set them a task which leads to their adventures. Of course, some of the clubs resources, such as the library may well be placed at the parties disposal.

A late night discussion in the par may fire the imagination of party members who determine to undertake some great tasks, such as circumnavigating the globe, or perhaps other members lay a wager that the party are not able to complete some challenge or other.

The club may also be the sight of a haunting or the scene of some mystery (a murder or theft, perhaps) that the party determine (or are retained) to investigate.

Alternatively, of course, it may be the PCs antagonists who are members of the club. Perhaps the party are inspired to steal something from the clubs vault or some work of art upon the walls of the drawing room or standing in the coffee room.

They may be planning to confront some arch nemesis who rarely leaves the confines of his club, or they may need to read some rare tome that the club has in its library but will not let them see. Perhaps the rumours of occult rituals or disturbing activities in the club are not just gossip and it is up to the party to put a stop to it.

GM's Map 32 'Cathedral' Launched

The latest addition to our 'GM's Map' range is now on sale on RPGNow.

The Cathedral, a stone edifice of incredible beauty and design, the pinnacle of the stone mason's art and centre of a diocese.  In historical games, the Cathedral may be the sight of some mystery that the PCs are determined to solve, the murder of a bishop or member of the congregation, perhaps?  Or is some clue to an ancient riddle or blasphemous secret hidden in its architecture, vaults or statuary?

A perfect venue for both Gothic and Eldritch horror.  Perhaps the Cathedral is haunted by some ghost or entity that is growing increasingly malevolent or which knows some secret the PCs must convince it to reveal to them. Eldritch horrors may lurk within the vaulted halls or be trapped beneath the consecrated floors, scheming to escape and wreak their vengeance on humanity.

Used in a fantasy setting the Cathedral is a great place for friend and foe alike.  Perhaps the PCs need to seek out one of the clerics in the cathedral to recruit them to their party or ask them for help or perhaps the cathedral is the home of some malevolent sect that the party are sworn to bring down.  A necromancer may have already seized control of the building, or be trying to do so, in order to summon back the dead interred in the crypts beneath to add to a growing army of the dead.

Even in a post-apocalyptic world, the cathedral may still stand, a rallying point for desperate survivors or the home of a nefarious apocalypse cult that seeks to enslave those who dwell nearby or spread its message in a new post-apocalyptic crusade.

In this product, you will find floor plans of the cathedral itself, its towers and lofts and the crypts beneath for you to work into your games however you see fit.

Comming soon to the range: 'Medieval Manor House'

GM's Map #31: Secret Underground Laboratory Out Now!

Available from RPGNow

What sinister experiments are taking place in the secret laboratories deep beneath the ground?

What secrets lurk there that could save or damn mankind?

This map pack details a 4-storey secret laboratory complex with security, accommodation and several labs in which various nefarious experiments can take place.

Or perhaps the laboratories are humanities last best hope to stave off global disaster?

Whatever is going on down there, one thing is for certain, someone else wants to know about it.

Since the enlightenment humanity has had a love hate relationship with science. It has driven our culture and our development, expanded our knowledge, extended our lie expectancy, eradicated certain diseases, improved our ability to fight other diseases. It has given us modes of transport and communication that have effectively shrunk our world. The knowledge we have gained has revolutionized every aspect of our lives. Yet, from the early days many have also viewed it with suspicion. From those who saw it as a challenge to religion or a blasphemy against god to the Luddites who saw the rise of industrialization as a threat to their livelihood. Much of our science fiction, even from the early days of the genre, has warned of the dangers of meddling in things we do not entirely understand or which may be dangerous and mysterious. Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' (which itself is in part inspired by a far older story, as evidenced by its subtitle 'A modern Prometheus') is a famous example but our literature is littered with examples. The American sci-fi of he 50s cautioned us against robotics and atomic physics (just listen to old episodes of classic radio drama such as X Minus one or Dimension X for examples).

Our horror and post-apocalyptic literature are also littered with examples of the science run amok theme.

It isn't all negative, of course, in superhero literature scientists are often the villains but are also often the heroes or the cause of how a hero comes to be. In many SF or disaster tales, it is a band of plucky scientists working around the clock in a secret laboratory that are often depicted as humanities only hope of survival.

With these things in mind, the potential for a secret laboratory complex in RPGs is staggering.

The PCs may represent the secessionist, trying desperately to hold back some global disaster or simply trying to escape the facility as some menacing alien dimension rips its way into our world it the theoretical physics laboratory (one for the 'Pandora's Wake' players among you, perhaps?).

They may be a band of covert operations specialists tasked with raiding the laboratory and learning its secrets for a rival government or corporation.

Perhaps they are escapees who had been held here, destined for a ghastly fate as experimental subjects?

Let your imagination run riot.

If you come up with a particularly interesting idea for how to use this map, we would love to hear about it! You can email us at gethsemanegames@gmail.com and let us know. If you give us permission, we might even publish the idea on our blog 'Whispers from the Other-Verse', giving you the credit of course.

GM's Map Halloween Special Launched

Map making can be time-consuming and sometimes frustrating for GMs, especially GMs with limited time to begin with. In our new 'GM's Maps' range, we will be providing a range of pre-made maps for you to use in your games.

Mist swirls about the skeletal trees as the two figures creep towards the darkened house on midnight lane. The cold seeps into their bones as each one goads the other on,
“You scared bro?”
“Me? N... no, it's just a house. They are only stories, what's to be afraid of?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Just stories,”
From the attic window, a pale face watched the two students approach. Long dead eyes glared at the two young men.
“Oh yes!” it hissed, “Just stories. The truth is much worse!”

Our Halloween special is an American Colonial style house ripe for the haunting by whatever ghosts, ghouls or ghastly creatures you care to summon up.

Publisher's Licence

Publishers wishing to use this map in their own products may do so subject to the following restrictions;

You may use the map in your own adventures or supplements provided you add your own content.

This map may not be resold as part of a product that is intended primarily as a map or collection of maps.

If you use this map please credit the author B F Irving and Gethsemane Games and include the line “Map created with Campaign Cartographer 3 by Profantasy Software”

Modular Lunar/Planetary Station

As humanity reaches for the stars colonies begin to spring up on moons, planets and other bodies wherever our ships can reach. From research stations to small colonies.
Don't be left behind in the new space-race! At MLPS we have the answer to all your exoplanetary station needs with the Modular Lunar/Planetary Station!

MLPS, the drive behind space exploration.

The Modular Space Station is the latest in our GM's maps range. with 12 modules in the pack and a sample layout for a small station using the modules.

http://www.rpgnow.com/…/2…/GMs-Maps-29-Modular-Lunar-Station

A sample module from the pack:

FREEBIE: Small Local Community Centre Map

This is a small map I have been wanting to do for some time, it's a little too small for one of our 'GM's Maps' products so I thought I'd do it anyway and give it away free to readers of the blog.

Enjoy, and feel free to email me at gethsemanegames@gmail.com with any unusual or interesting uses you come up with for it, I'd love to hear about it.

The 20^th and 21^st century saw a rise in the number of 'Community Centre's'–community or charity run establishments providing activities and social events, information and support for members of the local community. While some community centres are in purpose-built buildings, many others take over buildings that originally had other purposes such as churches or libraries, or are incorporated into civic buildings like town halls.

The one presented here is a small community centre intended to support a village or small town and is based upon the St. Stephens Community Centre in the village where the author lives. This community centre, like so many others, is in a former church which was taken over and repurposed once the congregation dwindled and the Diocese decommissioned it as a church.

Key

1/. Property boundary wall

2/. Steps and ramp to main entrance

3/. Ramp to fire escape

4/. Entrance Vestibule

5/. Kitchenette

6/. Women's WC

7/. Men's WC

8/. Admin Office

9/. Storage

10/. Easy Aces WC

11/. Board/meeting room on what used to be the stage. The door between here and area 12 opens several feet above the floor of area #12

12/. Main hall. There is a door to the board/meeting room which is several feet above the floor of this room. Beneath that is a hatch leading to the understate area which is used for storage and occupies an area beneath area #11

13/. Folding doors which can be used to turn the main hall into two chambers. The doors are sound insulated.

14/. Main Hall

15/. Computer suite

16/. Enclosed yard

17/. Boiler room

18/. Storage

NEW RELEASE! GMs Maps: 23 Victorian Work House

The latest of our GM's maps range 'Map 23: 18th or 19th Century Work House' is now available on RPG.now!

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/215797/GMs-Maps-23-Work-House?src=newest

Map-making can be time-consuming and sometimes frustrating for GMs, especially GMs with limited time to begin with. In our new 'GM's Maps' range, we will be providing a range of pre-made maps for you to use in your games.

The maps will be provided in PNG, JPEG and PDF file format, unnumbered for you to number and populate with fiendish traps and monsters as you see fit.

re sinister experiments away from prying eyes?

Workhouses were a fact of life in several countries during the 18th and 19th centuries the poor, the sick and the orphaned would often find themselves in the loveless, cold embrace of such an institution. Miserable places in which paupers and orphans would be put to work in exchange for basic accommodation and food.

Even in these lowly conditions, the inmates could not escape the rigid class structures so common in Victorian Britain and they would be divided into first and second class paupers, those deemed of 'Good character' and those deemed of bad.

With histories such as these, workhouses would make ideal places for hauntings in horror RPGs. However, imaginative GMs may come up with all sorts of ways to use such buildings. Perhaps the PCs are condemned to live in such an establishment, or perhaps they are investigating some crime committed there. Gangs of criminals may even be hiding out in such a building or, in more recent times perhaps the building is no longer the workhouse it once was but has been converted to another use?

Historically old workhouse buildings have been converted to hospitals, schools, museums, residential apartments, shop units and even civic buildings. Some were even converted into hotels.

Converted Workhouses were remodelled to various degrees to suit their new purposes.

Publishers wishing to use this map in their own products may do so subject to the following restrictions;

You may use the map in your own adventures or supplements provided you add your own content.

This map may not be resold as part of a product that is intended primarily as a map or collection of maps.

If you use this map please credit the author B F Irving and Gethsemane Games and include the line “Map created with Campaign Cartographer 2 by Profantasy Software”

New Release: GM's Map #22: Undersea Lab Complex

The latest in our GM's Maps range is the Undersea Lab Complex!

A perfect place to ride out the apocalypse, a death trap where aquatic monsters have your PCs cornered or a place for an elite team to grab a rival corporation's latest scientific developments. That's for you to decide!

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/214388/GMs-Maps-22-Undersea-Lab-Complex?cPath=5782_27272

GM's Map #12 Released. Mansion (Perfect for your Haunted House Scenarios)

Just $1, introductory offer

Mansions, grand houses of the rich and famous, often steeped in history and dating back several centuries.

The mansion presented here is a medium to large example of a type of mansion that would have been built from the early 18^th century onwards in Britain, Europe or America.

4 levels in all, a basement, ground floor, first floor and attic levels all mapped out in JPEG, and BitMap as well in a PDF with notes form the author.  Just $1 as part of an introductory offer.

Scenario Ideas
Large houses such as this are a staple of Gothic horror, since they tend to have a long history they make ideal locals for ghost stories or other tales of Gothic horror.

Similarly mansions often feature in detective and mystery fiction. We are all probably familiar with the inspector sent to investigate a murder at a mansion house during a social gathering or country retreat.

Fans of hiest drama should have no problem finding a use for a mansion map in a daring robbery stile adventure. Perhaps the party seek to steal a valuable painting from the wall or the lady of the manors jewels.

In espionage games the manor house may be the home of some nefarious agency or foil to the PCs who they seek to confront or perhaps they are out to put his house under surveillance, wiring it with listening devices or hidden camera's.

The house could make an interesting base of operations for a group of survivors in a post apocalyptic world. Certainly a mansion house is not as secure as a castle but can post apocalyptic beggars be choosers?

Mystery and horror may be the commonly accepted order of the day for places such as this, but don't shy away from letting your imagination run riot and finding ways to use the mansion in any genre of play you wish.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/207909/GMs-Maps-12-Mansion?src=hottest_filtered

GMs Map #9 The Catacombs released

Places where the dead are interred have long been a staple of RPGs. What party of adventurers has not either looted a long forgotten tomb for fabulous treasure or ventured within to put an end to some vile undead menace? Such places can be useful for other genres too, from Gothic horror to SF or post apocalyptic survival games. A catacomb may prove a useful place to hide from the splatter punks, mutated creatures and bandits of the surface world!

Catacombs are subterranean networks of tunnels and chambers into which the dead are placed. They range from large ossuaries (places were the bones of the dead are stored) to complex networks of burial chambers. The most famous of these are probably the Paris catacombs where millions of bones are stored, however many other catacombs exist across the world and not all of those are fully explored!

Presented here is a medium sized catacomb for you to use in your campaigns as you see fit. The map was inspired by various real world catacombs but was not directly copied from any of them. Some of the inspirations include the Mazar-i Sharif of Afganistan and the catacombs of Kom el-Shuqafa in Egypt.

Available now for just $1 on RPGNow

Small Tombs

In late 2016 Gethsemane Games launched our 'GMs Maps' range of short supplements, consisting of a map in various formats and a short text accompaniment to go with it, giving some ideas of ways you may use the map in your games or some background on the type of building depicted.

The range was an instant success.

Each map was inspired by real world examples of the building in question.  The range so far includes castles, Victorian houses, an Asylum, fall out shelters and bunkers, temples and other religious buildings.  It is ever expanding and I keep a list of the sort of maps I want to add to the range.  Currently I am expanding the range at an average of 1 map every week or so.

However, there are some maps that, although they would certainly be of interest to GMs, are a little small to charge money for.  These smaller maps may only be a dozen or so chambers and take me around half an hour to draw. I will be releasing these maps free of charge tot he blog readers, right here on Whispers fro the Other-Verse.  Like our large, more in depth maps which are for sale in the 'GMs Maps' range which you can find HERE these maps are all inspired by real world examples but may include a little artistic licence on my part.

Unlike the GMs Maps paid range, these freebies will not be supplied in multiple file formats, but should be easy enough for you to print or even copy and use in your games.

Without further ado then, here is the first, a small tomb.  This one is based upon the tomb of Ramesses VI, uncovered in 1922 by British Egyptologist Howard Carter and his patron excavator and collector the Earl of Carnarvon.
The tomb may be useful for Horror or modern genre games as well as in Fantasy.  Imaginative GMs may even find  use for it in SF and Post Apocalyptic scenarios!

1. Surface Entrance.  Blocked by a plaster or carved stone panel
2. Descending stair case with a painted plaster wall at the bottom.  Cunning GMs may trap this or add a curse or other magical protection.
3. Passage.  Both ends caped by plaster walls, probably painted.  the passage may slope downward and may or may not be trapped or even guarded by some magical beast.
4. Antechamber with decorated walls.  Again, a good place for traps, guardians or magical effects.
5. Annex.  Hidden behind a plaster wall that is probably painted and/or sculpted to look like the stone wall around it.  The contents may include mundane goods buried with the tomb's occupant or more traps and dangers.  Of course, both is also a possibility.
6. Burial Chamber. Hidden behind another false wall. What dangers may or may not lurk here, along with the sarcophagus of the tomb's occupant is a matter for the GM!
7. Treasure Chamber, leading off the the burial chamber is a room containing the more valuable treasure buried with the tombs occupant.  Along, or course, with whatever other dangers the GM sees fit.

The Second Small Tomb is inspired by the chambers under the Pyramid of Unus, but i have applied a little artistic licence (adjusting scale, adding chamber #10 and changing the shape of chambers #8 and #9 a little).

1. Surface entrance
2. Long downward sloped passage
3. Vestibule.  A good place for a guardian or trap
4. Mid passage.  this may also be trapped guarded and or sloped
5. Camber.  In the original material there are 3 gates or portcullises here.  A GM may add any form of obstetrical, trap or guardian (s)he sees fit. 
6. Long passage
7. Antechamber
8. Tomb-Chapel
9. Burial Camber
10. Treasure Chamber.

I hope you enjoyed this article and get some use from it.  Keep an eye on the blog for more free mini-maps.  In the mean time why not check out our range of GMs maps at RPGNow for lager, more complex maps and plans, a bargain at just $1 to $2 in price!