My Dungeon Master Tool Kit Part 5 - Map Case

All righty, a quick and dirty post (just how your mom likes it) for my Dungeon Master Kit series (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4).  Warning: copious phallic jokes within.

I'm running a Castles & Crusades sandbox game in the Haunted Highlands.  I love having a big physical map for the players and me to gaze at.  There is something frickin' cool about a good fantasy map. 

It's a Haunted Highlands hex map made by Darlene, who did the original Greyhawk map.  I bought the PDF from the Troll Lords site and had it printed at Staples.  (It doesn't seem they have it available at their updated storefront.) Since I can reprint it, I have no problem with us writing on it and making it our own.

What I present.

What my players see.

Well, it's kind of a pain to cart around without getting mangled, so being the top-grade nerd that I am, I bought a map case for it from Amazon. It was cheap and has been indeed handy. It's expandable too, which is nice.

Ribbed for your pleasure.

It's a grower, not a shower.

Impressive length.

Everything in my campaigns turns into a dick joke.

The Dungeoneering Dad preps for his C&C session.

I don't know what it is, but every campaign I GM involves a metric ton of Freudian slips. These, of course, spill over into nonstop snickering by my players and, hell, myself.  The dialogue at my game table sounds like it came out of a Kevin Smith movie. I am fine as hell with that and die laughing just about every game session. (I love me some Randal. "I'm a firm believer in a ruling class. Especially since I rule." Sounds like a good DM motto to me.)


In my previous Rappan Athuk campaign, every map I drew on my white board had at least one phallic appendage.

Here are but two examples from last Friday's session of my Castles & Crusades Wilderlands hex crawl:

• What it was: A huge obelisk with a pulsing, red tip.  Why it was that way: I was describing how something labeled the "Dawn Obelisk" on James Mishler's awesome Southern Reaches map glowed red when the dawn sun hit it. What my players got out of it: A big, red-tipped cock standing erect in the desert.

• What it was:  A inn named the "Shrieking Queen."  Why it was that way:  I used Zak's great Vornheim book to generate much of the town of Sacred Rock and randomly rolled up that name. At the time, I thought it was a great name for a bawdy, rough and tumble inn.  What my players got out of it: It was faaaaaaaaaaaaaabulous!

This has potential to be a regular post topic here, so stayed tuned until next time.

The players react to my description of the Dawn Obelisk.