Winterhaven Revisited

A mini-post, for Saturday:

Between my writing here, the several games of Keep on the Shadowfell I've played in or run, and the discussion I've had about it on forums, I feel like I know Winterhaven pretty well by now.

Which makes it very odd to see Winterhaven rendered artistically from the original KoTS map and find it recognisable. Like it's a place that actually existed, and that I've been to.

Some of you, I know, are already well acquainted with D&D Doodles - particularly its author Crazyred, who's an Eleven Foot Pole reader! Somehow Crazyred's failed to heavily promote his site here at EFP so I'll do it for him. All of you who haven't been there before, go give it a quick click.

Relevantly to the focus of Eleven Foot Pole, D&D Doodles features an awesome series of Nentir-vale related sketch art and maps. They do a great job of bringing 4th Edition's "default setting" to life and making it seem like a real place that people live in. If you've not seen it before, go and check out his Winterhaven, his Fallcrest, and the wealth of other excellent doodling and cartography that's on display.

Bonus Post: The Cutest Lil' Displacer Beast

Today, instead of me being too lazy to do a post, you get this picture of the world's cutest displacer beast. It's arted by Wuffie, who is starting up a pretty awesome Etsy shop at Elsie Levels Up. You can also find her on Twitter and Livejournal. Her profile info is my writing so if awesome geek art isn't your thing you should at least go have a read.

Wuffie plays Horatio Beverage, elven cleric, in my weekly Maptool game, which has just polished off Rescue at Rivenroar and is moving on to the Siege of Bordrin's Watch after a short hiatus.

If anyone else has D&D themed art or craft they want to show off you should feel free to send it through to starfall2317, at gmail.com, with links you'd like connected to it. If I get a bunch I'll do a post of it.

A Thousand Words

Thunderspire Labyrinth comes with a chunky handful of art to jump-start your imagination and bathe players in raw atmosphere. Pictured above is the Chamber of Eyes Narthex, the first area of that mini-dungeon.

Module-specific art is a fantastic resource. Wizards' access to the world's best fantasy artists is one of its greatest advantages over the competition, and it's always a pleasure to wallow in the sumptuous graphics that come as part-and-parcel of Dungeons & Dragons.

It's a little unfortunate, though, that the art in Thunderspire doesn't always match the module. Take the picture above. It represents the following descriptive text:

Two fearsome looking statues squat on either side of a stairway leading up to double doors. Inscribed upon the doors is an image of a great eye with multiple eye stalks, as well as a symbol of a circle with a crossbar rising out of it.

Well, the statues are there, and so are the stairs (sort of). We've got an eye, but where are the eye stalks? And the circle-crossbar motif (the symbol of Torog) is nowhere to be seen. Much like with the map of the Labyrinth, it seems the artist wasn't working from the final text of the module.

The image is also a little disappointing in that it doesn't depict the most important feature of the room. A balcony runs along the room's northern edge, terminating at a second-storey door that opens into the hobgoblins' lair. It's a deliberately-placed opportunity for players to try an approach other than just bludgeoning their way through the front door. It's sad, then, that the front door is the sole emphasis of this picture.

Luckily, the remainder of the art is pretty solid, and with the un-troubling exception of a picture of the Horned Hold that doesn't quite seem to match the battlemaps, players and DMs can look forward to a selection of great images to enhance their Thunderspire experience.