How to Draw Stunning Encounter Maps
Every adventure needs an ancient, weathered map: at the front of the book, in the hands of the protagonist, the map is painstakingly drawn with just the right amount of detail to help our heroes, but not solve everything. We’ve seen them in books and films for years: charts of mysterious islands, sketches of mountains, treasure maps. But you never get to meet the mapmakers. This is how to draw an encounter map.
In our video, we go into the details that you need to consider when creating location maps for your world: not only the basics of what to draw, but how to make your maps look good enough to hang them on your wall. Check it out here: the Red Quills channel.
Otherwise, for our other posts, you can read more in our Journal.
As always, we start with a blank page. With any site map, it is important to note that you will want to be purposeful from the beginning. For this map, I want it to stand out as much as possible, so I will be combining several mediums from the last few videos - and I will have a site map, several illustrations, a sketch of the dragon itself, and I’ll fill the blank spaces with information about the lore and the contents of the Hall. With that in mind, I’ll make a pencil sketch.
Creating Locations of Interest
In previous videos - particularly in the realm map videos that I’ve made, such as the How to Create Trade Maps tutorial - we’ve created maps that are purely functional. I go into some of the techniques, insights, and details to create a map that your readers or players can use for their own purposes, and the effort that you put into them will reward both them and you. They help to write, to plan, to explain, and to create new ideas.
But encounter maps are different: they are only of one small location, and the smaller size extrapolates to a relatively small practical use. A map of a kingdom can be used for as long as your heroes are in the kingdom, which may be weeks, months, or even years. But a map of a single location will only really be useful for one trip.
Which is why they are really only practical when considering how to draw an encounter map for specific purposes: symbolic locations, areas of personal significance, or final destinations.
Symbolic Locations
Stories are told because they allow the reader to explore themselves in some way: perhaps their history, their perspective of the universe, or the unanswered questions that they struggle with in their own lives. They allow us to search for meaning, and so it is fitting that they should use a map in that search.
Symbolic locations in fantasy are places associated with a particularly strong theme - one that makes us want to linger and spend more time there. Places like Rivendell in the Lord of the Rings or the Vale of Aldur in the Belgariad are symbolic locations that represent the kind of peace and tranquillity that the heroes are fighting to defend, whilst encapsulating how little they really know about the world.
Having a map of such significant locations brings that area to mind for your reader, it allows them - encourages them, even - to linger there in their thoughts. It can be a strong and compelling tool to foster introspection.
Areas of Personal Significance
Everyone fights for something, and if that something is a place - perhaps some quaint round doors beneath a tidy, green hill - then their minds will go back there often. They will dream about that place, speak of it often, reflect on the things that they took for granted, and they will wish, more than anything, that they were back there.
If they carry a map of that place, they will take it out to look at it often, their fingers tracing over the lines of the familiar lanes and roads, their eyes staring at the page but seeing the rivers and woods of their homes. It is a statement in dark places: this is what we are fighting for.
Final Destinations
The most important and obvious use for an encounter map. The heroes are thinking of doing something valiant and probably hopeless, but by chance encounter, an ancient, weathered map is delivered to them. It shows not only their destination, but some secret that will make their impossible task possible.
Though they will only spend a matter of days - possibly weeks, possibly hours - at that location, their minds will be going towards that place, filling the page and its careful labels with dread and terror. They wake in the night, filled with fear, and pull the map out to reassure themselves that what they seek to do is possible.
But remember: all maps have to be useful as maps. When creating your encounter map, strike a balance between that aesthetic and the practicality that all maps must have. Take a look at this map and we’ll discuss.
The dragon’s lair is an old dwarven hall - not particularly original, I know, but this is just an example. The hall has a complex array of chambers and halls, and several entrances into the mountainside. The arrival of the dragon, however, has caused the bedrock to shift: a large crack has shorn away at the north side of the complex. Destroying several hallways, yes, but also opening up a way inside for those brave enough to crawl into it.
The map, then, is practical: it is a simple, to scale, overview of the Hall and its chambers - its entrances and exits, and any landmarks on the way. It has two illustrations of the landmarks that you will encounter: a view of the front door, and a view looking down the hallway that leads to the dragon’s lair. Both of these are not only aesthetic, but very useful. Now, the reader knows exactly what to look for when trying to get into the Hall.
I had a sketch of the dragon: the style is slightly different from the illustrations - the reason being that the dragon became aware that he was being watched before the mapmaker could finish - but it shows what an interloper is looking for. If they encounter a dragon that does not look like that, then they are truly in trouble.
All of these are aesthetic, but they are first and foremost functional. Each aspect can be used by someone attempting to go to the Hall, and they all look good. When designing your own map, always ask yourself whether the aspects that you have are both practical and aesthetic.
Making a Useful and Aesthetic Map
Let’s head back to the map, and see how I’m getting on. In a previous video, How to Draw Your Dungeons, I talked about - well - how to draw your dungeons. But the purpose was creating a dungeon map that was mainly useful to you, the creator of the world. I added a few more illustrations there than was strictly necessary, but I did actually end up using that map in my own dungeons and dragons campaign as a guide to allow my players to explore the Still-Beating Heart.
In this case, the map is ideally going to be given to your audience - your players, your readers, etc - and so you want to make sure that you create something that you’re proud of.
That map was fairly simple to create, if not necessarily easy. It only used ink, for example, rather than the combination of mediums and styles that I have here. So let’s go into a little more about the 'how to draw an encounter map', as well as the content creation of what to give to your audience to strike a balance between too little and too much.
Be Purposeful
Admittedly, on this channel, I tend not to question the ‘why’ of mapmaking very often. I could talk for hours about the benefits of having a map, how they can positively impact on your worldbuilding, immersion, and writing cohesion, but it is a lot of effort to go to for a functional drawing. Each of the maps that I make on this channel take me several hours, and your own will probably take you about that long.
My process is often to experiment as I go, because the next time that I make a map, I’ll alter it to include the lessons that I learned from my experimentations in the previous iteration. For instance, I’ll be painting the main titles on this map, because it was an idea that I had during my last video. But most people probably won’t have the time to make map after map after map and change things as they go.
Which brings me to this point. If you are creating a map, you need to be clear before you set pen to paper of what it is that the map is really pointing to. What’s the purpose of the map? Is it a player handout, the inset in a publication, or for personal reference? Maybe they’re a gift for your one hundredth session, or memorabilia from a long-running story.
The steps are pretty simple:
- Figure out what your map is pointing to specifically. When you know what you want the reader to focus on, you can work out the details around it.
- Choose the style you want. Do you want illustrations, or the watercolour effect I’m using here? Divide the page into the areas you want, figure out what text you’re going to add in.
- Add in secrets and clues. Every single map I make has a secret somewhere inside it, a clue or reference to a piece of worldbuilding or lore that I’ve hidden in plain sight. You could design a decorative border that contains a code, or add in some symbols to mark important points.
But whatever you do with your map, be clear and have purpose.
Find your Vibe
Always ask yourself what the vibe you want to strike is. It comes from asking yourself what the purpose of the map is, but we’ve covered all manner of different kinds of map so far on this channel: kingdom maps, trade maps, maps of culture, maps of significant sites, naturalists’ maps, blueprints for heists - all of them have a different style based on their intention.
All of them can be made to look aesthetic, though they may have different aesthetics. You can either come in with one in mind, or ask yourself, “Who’s making this map, in-world?” Is it an exiled prince, a pirate seeking to hide her gold, an archaeologist scrawling their notes, or a botanist on an expedition?
Then you ask, “What would they look for? What details would they notice?” A botanist would wander into a cave system to look for fungi. A pirate would make note of reefs or shallows, and rumours of wrecks. An exiled prince would know where the patrols of the border would be, and the secret paths through the capital.
Use a Process
Then you can start to create the map itself, filling it with details and points of reference. I’ve talked about how to draw realm maps before, and recently released a tutorial on creating city and town maps - I’ve also spoken about dungeon generation before, but I’ll mention the bare bones again while I’m here.
My process for filling any map with details is always based on the same principles of scale: for instance, a city is four towns pushed together, and a town is three villages pushed together. When you know that, and you have a brief list of what landmarks each of those settlement sizes will have, then you just need to divide your city into four districts (towns), and each of those districts into three neighbourhoods (villages).
For complexes like this, the process is similar, and you use the same idea of scales. I’m a big fan of the five-chamber process. The idea is that there are five kinds of chamber that you can encounter in a complex - or combinations of the two: ambience, environmental dangers, dead ends, puzzles, and encounters. That’s great, but it’s only five chambers, after all, and this map has far more than that.
It’s simple: think big, and then divide. The complex as a whole has five parts: the ambient entrance area, the environmental danger of the forge and foundry, the dead end of the living quarters, the puzzle of the rift, and the encounter of the dragon’s lair. Then you divide each part up into five chambers again, and flavour them according to their theme.
That’s my method for creating large scale, thematic complexes that maintain a level of intrigue and viability for exploration.
Adding Some Extras
Once the map itself has been completed - you’ve determined what it looks like, generated the contents of the dungeon crawl with your own methods and you have something that’s complex, dangerous, and will entertain your adventurers - you can look at filling out the other details.
As mentioned, many of the aspects that I’ve included in this map are directly useful to people on the ground: the map itself, the views of the entrance and the atrium, and the sketch of the dragon. But what can you add to a map, if you’re running out of ideas, what details will be beneficial and add depth?
Add some History
First and foremost, the start of anything that I add to a map is the history of the location that I am sketching. There’s a good reason for that: the history of the place will not only tell you who might be there now, but the style of architecture, the dangers that they will have placed, and the relevant style of puzzles and mysteries that you can encounter.
When talking about the history of an area, I use the ORIGINAL method, writing something about each one of these topics. When you’ve got even one or two sentences on each, you’ll be able to populate the borders of a map, and it will also be an invaluable tool to creating some worldbuilding:
Origins. Whether the founding of the site is shrouded in myth or a set point in history, always begin with a reference to how it started: who founded it, and for what purpose.
Rise (& Fall). You don’t need to go into a blow-by-blow description of everything that has happened throughout the long history of your site, but giving a brief description of when it was in its golden era will give shape to its current state. Seeing as we deal with ruins a lot in our fantasy worlds, I also include the fall in this topic.
Inhabitants. Discuss the original settlers, who lived (or lives) at this place, and what to expect as a traveller. Are they open to outsiders, a xenophobic cult, or strange, otherworldly magicians?
Goods. This one may seem a little boring, but bear with me: if you add in a sentence or two about a specific good that’s significant to the locals, it will come up again. Trust me - just adding in something about how they clad all of their buildings in white marble, or lined their avenues with cypress trees. It can be an import or export, it can be purely decorative.
Industries. As economists never stop reminding us, trade is the lifeblood of civilisation. So, what was the industry here? Every building will have to produce something in order to be connected to the outside world, and even more if it’s not connected. Give the location a focussed industry: in this case, at the Hall, the industry is metallic refinement.
Nature. Adding in a sentence or two about the nature within and around the site also give you more to work with. What is the surrounding landscape like?
Allies & Enemies. You’ve discussed a fair amount about the inhabitants and what their lives much have been like now, so now a brief sentence or two describing their most significant official relationship: either friendly or unfriendly.
Legends. And then you can add in a legend - about its beginnings, its end, or its as-of-yet unfulfilled purpose, to give it a little more of an unknown quantity after being so specific.
Create Intrigue
Another aspect that you can add to your maps is a puzzle to solve, to encourage the reader to linger on the page and consider the site for longer. People have an incessant need to solve problems, so it’s an easy way to keep them interested.
The puzzle could be a riddle, a code, or a pattern that leads to a solution to a problem. It could be a mystery that you’ve woven into the history, or an unknown quantity that you refer to in the layout of the complex itself.
Another excellent way of creating a puzzle is the heist blueprint: you create the problem of getting inside to a secure location without being detected or stopped. Adding in details about patrols, traps, or surveillance will add to this.
A good way of inviting the interest in the speculation and solving of these mysteries is one of my consistently favourite things to add to a map: when writing in the borders of a map, adding to the history and tucking notes into the margins, you can write, from the perspective of the mapmaker, that they have found something that they would rather not know, and cannot discuss. That they only figured it out because they looked at the map as a whole.
Make those words easy to spot, and watch the interest rise.
Write from a Perspective
The last of the three extras that I tend to add in is the personal touch: the mapmakers of my maps always add in their own personal experiences in some way or another. In this map, it is the unfinished dragon sketch, as he was detected before he could finish. In the previous map, it was a diary of his experiences on the Drifting Isle.
Writing in a few short paragraphs - they can be untidy compared to the rest of the map - to say what they were expecting, what they found, and what they are afraid of, can really elevate that feeling of immersion when you draw an encounter map.
Use your Map
This seems like an overly-obvious topic. A map is used to plan a journey, or help when you get lost. That’s fairly easy to ascertain. But as a mapmaker who uses maps a great deal in his worldbuilding, I also know the struggle of creating a detailed and helpful map that then never gets looked at again.
So let’s get into how you can get more use out of your maps, based on my experiences. The secret is to include information that is not obvious at first glance, but can come up later. Let’s divide it into three categories: enemy, destination, and mystery.
Enemy
A point of interest, if you’re running a role-playing game or even writing a fantasy story, to anyone who is struggling to get your protagonists to strategise: you cannot plan without information. Generally, that means that you cannot plan without meeting your enemy, seeing their strengths and weaknesses for yourself.
But if they meet their enemy and realise early on that they are completely and totally outmatched, they are going to need more information than they can get their hands on without risking their necks. And where could they get that information? Why, right here.
If your map deals with the lair of the big bad or the evil civilisation’s headquarters, then you have a wonderful opportunity to add in some clues about their weaknesses and strengths, and some insights into how to defeat them.
Add in first-hand accounts, descriptions of physical limitations, or even prophecies about their defeat. But remember to make them subtle. I have a few in this map, for instance, and none would stand out too much: I refer to the dragon as Axabar the Vain, point out that he is large and clumsy (having broken the mountainside and being unable to enter the foundry halls), and that he happily uses a small horde of kobolds as his guard, implying that there is a physical weakness that he is protecting. There are more as well, but those are the main three.
Destination
You can also discuss the destination itself, and what to expect when you get there. If your protagonists are heading to a faraway location to steal something or confront someone, then knowing something about where they are headed is always useful.
The best advice I can offer on this point is to create a cryptic and basically unhelpful warning: something just clear enough to make them wary, but not so clear that they are certain that they know what the threat is. Couching it in evocative terms or phrasing it like a riddle does wonders for this.
For example, you could make a very obvious crack run right through the mountain from the exterior to the dragon’s lair, and have, in a very small, neat note beside it, the sentence: “The dragon does not guard this entrance into the mountain, for the darkness smells of the Abyssad, and only clears for a time on the night of the full moon.” What does that mean? What’s the Abyssad? Why is it worse than fighting your way through a horde of kobolds?
They don’t know. But they’ll want to find out.
Mystery
Both of the previous aspects had an element of this involved: people love a mystery, and they love solving a mystery. If they are looking forward to an encounter, to a BBEG or a final destination, then they will pull the map out whenever they want to discuss that, but another way of involving them earlier is to pull a theme forward that can be resolved there.
There’s all manner of ways to do this: by having curses associated with the place, prophecies about oncoming heroes, warnings about gods or demons. The rule is that it has to be cryptic. You could just write, “Three great tragedies befall any wanderer heading here, with the greatest to be suffered at the very doors.” It could be a complete lie. But it’s worth remembering.
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Alright, let’s take a look at the map as a whole now; the sketch of Old Gvanlar’s Hall, with the map of the complex, the illustrations of the entrance hall and the atrium, the sketch of Axabar the Vain, and the scrawled history of the Hall and its unwanted denizen. I also have notes on guard movements and traps as well, for anyone who wishes to try to sneak in.
As always, I will have this map available on my Journal - the link is in the description below, along with a list of materials that I have used and the link to my commission page. If you want a map like this of your own, you can send me a message or take a look at my website.
I try to come out with a video every week, check out last week’s video, How to Draw a Naturalist’s Map if you haven’t already. Thank you to everyone for watching, and I’ll catch you all next week.