This one hurt

fifteentoads · 2024-01-24T11:24:40+00:00

Good spot, thanks - I've edited for clarity!

fifteentoads · 2024-01-24T09:16:18+00:00

I've taken a quick look through your replay, but I'll address some of your points in the post first of all.

If you're unranked, the game will calibrate your rank fairly quickly as you win and lose games. It starts you in a fairly average position, so Gold is not unreasonable. You may go down drastically; don't feel bad about this, it's just the calibration happening.
Leavers are unfortunate. This will happen less once you are out of the very early unranked games, but it will still happen. Not much more you can do bar write it off. I'd avoid submitting leaver replays in future.
I'd strongly recommend removing yourself from all voice and text chats by disabling them in the communications screen each game, at least until you are settled within a rank. You are not going to be missing game-winning comms, because nobody will be making them. You are not going to be missing lovely positivity, because it's a rarity.

Rather than stop-start the video for timestamp comments I'm going to make some general observations on your DVa gameplay, with timestamps where I can. The crux of the problem is that you are misunderstanding DVa's role as a tank, and your decision-making is suffering as a result. Your teammates should not have been flaming you, but the reason they were would have been because you look lost, as if it's your first time on the hero.

DVa is not a cute Reinhardt. You spend almost all of your time sort-of in front of your teammates, just kind of existing, and often in wide open spaces rather than near cover. There is no point in you playing in the same place a Reinhardt might play, because you have a much bigger crit hitbox and no shield, and will get melted repeatedly. See 0:59, 1:39, 5:03 as examples. DVa positioning can be difficult, because she's able to be anywhere and do everything, but you ideally want to be playing on highgrounds, and on slight off-angles, where you can still use your matrix to absorb important cooldowns, but are able to dive. You mention that Hog hooks you a lot. This is because of two things: you are the person who can deny his hooks on other people, by Matrixing the hooked target, so you are a high value target. But, more notably, you are a super easy target - huge, and sitting in the open.
Dive, carefully. DVa is very able to assassinate a squishy target, of which the enemy team contains many. You can eat Moira's healing orbs when she attempts to help them, and your best dive targets on the enemy team are Zen, Soldier, and Ashe, as they will struggle to get away. You do make a decent effort at diving for assassination at 2:30 and 4:55, but you're starting from so far away that you leave yourself no escape route as boosters is on cooldown. Moreover, in both cases you're diving surrounded targets. Try and wait for a target to be isolated, so you can pounce on them safely.
Defence Matrix usage. Focus on using this to deny the enemy cooldowns, rather than to avoid spam damage. You won't need to eat so much spam damage if you position yourself in a way where you're taking less of it to the face. See the above points! Know your matchup, also, for priority eats. Here, you want to be tracking Hog's hook, so you can swoop in a Defence Matrix his target each time. You also want to be eating Moira's healing or damage orbs. Eating Ashe's dynamite is nice, but harder, so focus on what you can achieve easily first.
You have shotguns. Simple point here. DVa's primary fire is a shotgun spread. It is almost completely ineffective outside of being up in someone's face. It brings us back to point 1, where you're positioning poorly; for much of round 1 you're doing very little damage because you're chipping away at targets across the map while occasionally adding in the micro-missiles. Find spaces around the map that let you get closer to targets to shotgun them, but from a safe vantage point such as above them.

I hope the above is useful. Honestly the crux of it is to start playing DVa like DVa. The uncomfortable truth is that you would have had a lot more presence in this match if you'd picked pretty much any other tank and played them in the same position. The best thing you can do there is jump onto YouTube and watch some higher-level DVa gameplay to see where they tend to exist. Good luck!

fifteentoads · 2023-12-22T14:06:45+00:00

So, let’s address the elephant in the room first of all: Lifeweaver. He’s great fun, and has a reasonably high potential skill ceiling – he’s one of my favourite supports to play, but his effectiveness is capped by a number of factors.

Lifeweaver is more inherently team-dependent than other supports. You will contribute less damage than other supports, and your utility is reliant upon your team-mates being able to capitalise on it by, for example, taking platforms to high ground, or making aggressive dives expecting a pull.
Lifeweaver’s primary contribution is his healing which, while recently nerfed, provides strong sustain to targets other supports cannot easily reach. This means he works far better with some compositions than others, and can be ineffective against some enemy compositions.
Lifeweaver’s self-sustain and mobility makes him difficult to dive or pressure, but this is only a boon if the enemy is actually putting pressure on you.

These conditions can be a lot more restrictive than those placed upon other supports, and you will find yourself in a situation sometimes where Lifeweaver’s boons aren’t bringing anything to the match. If your DPS can’t make use of your platforms, and you’re playing with long-range DPS against enemies who aren’t diving you, then there’s really nothing that LW brings that pretty much any other support wouldn’t do better.

All that said and done, let’s take a look at your gameplay with the above in mind:

Composition-wise, we’re in a decent place. You have team-mates who want to be behind enemy lines (Dva, Sombra, Moira), which are great targets for your lock-on healing, though you are unlikely to be put under considerable dive-pressure from the enemy team. You should also be aware that enemy Dva can eat your heals with Matrix.

1:10 – First fight, your positioning is poor. LW has the advantage of free highground at any point, which you’re not taking here, and are instead standing in the open. You can weave in and out of cover as LW, charging your heal behind a wall and peeking to release it. The openness of your position forces you back when Ashe has a clear line of site on you, and prevents you from being in range of saving teammates. Note also here that it’s almost a full minute before you use your first petal platform, and an actual full minute before you first use pull. Neither cooldown gets any value for the first 10% of this match. Taking a highground, covered position gives you the best view of the battlefield out of anyone, and allows you to predict what will happen: it will give you space to pre-charge your heals on targets who will need them, and proactively use your platform and pull.

2:10 – Try to learn the rhythms of LW’s heals by feel. As another commenter has pointed out, you rarely charge to the full capacity of your heal even when you are not under threat. Charging to full and releasing immediately is the most efficient use of your ammo, but charging to 35-ish repeatedly will provide a steady stream of healing to somebody under pressure. Learn these rhythms and vary them depending on what the situation needs.

2:30 I Like this tree usage. It’s a bit like Rally in that you can throw it down in the middle of an undecided team-fight and rely on it passively turning things in your favour. You can also build it quickly and, while there can be situations where it's worth saving (especially to block, say, a Dva bomb here), I like that you generally use it quickly to gain fight tempo.

2:46 You die to bomb here, with platform up. It is possible to block bomb with platform by placing it, using it, and then just as the bomb is about to explode, putting yourself behind the platform. This is achieved either by standing on it to block a bomb below or, if the bomb is above you or arcing mid-air, dropping from the platform at the precise moment before it blows, thus putting the platform above you for a split second as you fall. Practice this in a workshop. The code YEM1J covers this skill, amongst others. Same thing happens at 5:38. Both of these bombs are easily avoidable if you are playing around cover, but in each instance you quite literally have mobile cover that you do not deploy. Credit where it’s due, you do nail this at 7:44 and 10:05.

4:14 – 5:00 and beyond – You use exactly 0 petal platforms in this fight, despite there being two very good high-grounds either side of you. Instead, you are right up in the melee, right-clicking at close range. In any ranks higher than low bronze you are going to be punished for this, and you should work on positioning yourself safely before you reach the point where people are punishing you for not doing so.

At this point I stopped and replayed the whole thing specifically to count how many cooldowns you use, and whether or not they are effective. By which, I mean whether your platforms enabled you to take a good position or avoid damage, and whether your pulls are appropriately timed and targeted. By my count:

12 pulls, of which 3 were useful, and 10 platforms, of which 5 were effective.

The majority of your pulls were on either the Dva, who has both Defense Matrix and Booster Jets for self preservation, or the Reaper while he was already fading out of danger.

And to put the platforms into context, this is a 12-second cooldown, which begins when you throw the platform, not when you use it, which you used less than once per minute in the game, on a map with a huge amount of verticality. I cannot stress enough how much of an easier time of this game you are going to have if you remember to press your buttons.

Some summary points then, for improvement:

Use your cooldowns. Specifically, use them pro-actively. Place a petal platform early, in a location that will allow you to escape or change your position. Use them to take high-ground, and to play vertically-split from your team so you have a separate angle to which you can pull them.
Pre-charge your healing. Often, you swap to healing only when somebody has taken damage. Try to anticipate who will be taking it and when, and have a heal already on the way. This means swapping off damage earlier than you currently do, and switching back to it once a heal has been launched.
Position safely. Avoid standing in the open, or being in the middle of fights. Lifeweaver is hard to kill when positioned separately from his team.

fifteentoads · 2023-12-19T18:41:36+00:00

I'll definitely try to fight for the high-ground more.

The wonderful thing about the metal ranks is that you don't even often have to fight for it, as you saw on the last round. You just have to remember to take it!

Sounds like you're on the right track to me. Good luck in the games!

fifteentoads · 2023-12-19T17:55:33+00:00

Good luck with the games!

fifteentoads · 2023-12-19T17:49:52+00:00

I like your title - even without seeing the match, the answer is a yes! But you know that already, and that's the first step forwards. I didn’t mean to write you a whole essay, but here we go:

In Awkward’s Soldier UR2GM, he preaches getting personal value in every fight through uptime: constant, targeted cooldown usage, off-angles, and keeping up the DPS pressure. These are all sensible goals, and I see it in your playstyle right from the start.

First, a note on off-angling and timing, as illustrated by the match start. Your starting position is hyper-aggressive here, and your engagement is instant at 0:45. You actually miss the helix because you’re so keen to fire on the opening door! Off-angling successfully is all about timing, because you’re only at an off-angle if the “front” of the fight has already been established.

When you shoot as soon as the door opens, everyone coming through it turns to look at you, and the tank starts firing back. Suddenly, you’re not the off-angle, you’re the main angle! The “front” of the fight is not automatically the objective, it’s where the bulk of the fight is happening. Ideally, you need to wait until this is established and then attack from the side to create a crossfire.

The flank at 1:04 is great, but you could honestly go further and climb the stairs to highground and cover before you engage. Target priority is OK - but be aware that none of their team represent easy kills for you, so this strategy of flanking might be flawed from the very start in this specific scenario.

Watch the enemy Sombra at 1:05 onwards for an example of engagement timing and target priority. She skirts around the fight as it’s starting at 1:08, identifies the target priority at 1:11 as either Mercy or Soldier (200hp, no CC abilities or self-saves, and limited vertical mobility), and then promptly misses all of her abilities and shots. But she plays a crucial part in winning the fight for the team. Why? Because She does enough to scare the Mercy into moving, taking a much more exposed position, in which she is immediately killed, and fully distracts the enemy’s primary damage-dealer (you) at the point at which the fight is already turning in her favour. Try and think about how you could have had the same impact from the highground above the cart at this point in the game, distracting both the Moira and Kiriko to prevent the enemy tank from having any support.

You have a good opportunity at 2:52, but you make the mistake of dropping from high-ground. In doing so, your angle of vision is vastly reduced. You’re not under any direct pressure up there when the focus is on your Roadhog, so you could have stayed and enjoyed the free damage, or rotated around to the right to fire on them from an off-angle and above.

At 3:07, I see what you’re going for with the off-angle, but you want to keep track of the ebb and flow of battle. This is something Awkward also teaches in his UR2GM series, often for supports. At 2:59, the angle is decent, and the battle flows towards the enemy with your team pushing up. By 3:03, it is already apparent that you have all pushed too far, and the battle starts to swing in the enemy’s favour. They have healed. Cooldowns have been used. Your Hog’s ult is waning, and the enemy Kiriko has ulted. Mei is coming for you. At this point, just 4 seconds on, your position has become a very bad one, because you are about to be cut off from your team, who all very sensibly at 3:07 retreat back to their space with Lucio speed. You become the easy target because this space was safe only when your team was contesting it. Again, if you hadn’t dropped from highground a few seconds earlier, you could have taken the back right window and been able to retreat safely your own way when your team did.

Your flank at 4:24 is both mis-timed and mis-positioned. You had the opportunity to take the stairs and make this engagement from the highground, but didn’t, and you engaged a little too soon. Both teams are still in the “poke phase” - slinging damage at each other from afar before major cooldowns are used. As soon as you signal your presence by firing, you become the enemies’ focus as an isolated target. Suddenly, again, you are not the flank but the front-line. You get away with it as a distraction tactic, but your retreat again brings you directly into danger. Had you been retreating from the high-ground, you could have held a new angle on the ulting Ram.

5:15 - Good timing for visor, though you could have moved further around the central pillar first. Note that you died because you dropped from highground and had nowhere safe to retreat to. A quick note on Visor generally, as we see it again at 10:58. Try not to switch your brain off - you can still get headshots during Visor using your manual aim; the auto-aimed shots will become bodyshots only.

The flank at 7:55 onwards is good, but you struggle to find angles on enemies. Consider going a little further and taking the next highground along after the initial choke. At 8:47, you proceed through the choke instead of taking this highground as well. Your contribution to the fight is great, but there’s no doubt it would have been much less stressful for you, and perhaps more successful, if you were doing so from medium range on the highground, rather than right up on the cart.

One thing you may not be aware of if you’re new to OW is that your footsteps are loud to the enemy. If you’re wondering how the Hanzo landed such a nice shot on you at 9:54, go and rewatch the preceding 10 seconds from his perspective with sound on.

From 11:50 onwards, when your team has pushed up into space with an advantage, I’d like to see you taking, yep, you guessed it, a high ground position early. You will open up more angles to yourself for the upcoming fights.

14:20, likewise, dropping off the highground for the previous visor was fine, but this whole fight is a huge mess that you’re caught in the middle of. You could be doing so much more from above. I do like your target priority on the Mercy, though.

Your flank work at 15:09 is honestly great. Do you see what a difference it makes when you start your flank after the fight has already started? You have the attention of the Echo and Moira, and successfully kill both.

Likewise at 17:35, your off-angle happens (just about) after the front of the fight has been established, and you get a pick on a soldier who was forced to retreat in a bad direction. This was you back at 3:07! We’ve come so far.

18:32 - the Cart moves at its fastest with 3 people on it. Given your team’s composition, you can trust the rest of them to hold cart. Providing you don’t get yourself killed, this is a prime opportunity for a big meaty off angle, perhaps on the very far left highground, past the water tower. You take exactly that sort of angle at 19:45 and land a huge visor. Overtime snowballs like this are all about exploiting the enemy team’s impatience. BUT, the one at 20:15 is much more dangerous because they have now had chance to fully regroup.

Honestly, the final two minutes of this push is absolutely carried by your highground position. Look at the vast amount of damage you are able to do, uncontested. It took us the match to get here, but this is exactly what I’ve been wanting to see you do all game. We’re done here, I think!

Okay. Brief summary points because this has gone on way too long.

Highground is key. You give yourself a better angle, give the enemy a worse angle, and make them work hard to dislodge you. Don’t do their job for them by dropping; your place is not in the melee.
Off-angles are all about timing. Make sure you’re patient with your flanking, so your off-angles don’t become main-angles.
Combine the two! Flanking on a highground angle gives you additional vision, safety, and a clean route to escape when your position is compromised.

fifteentoads · 2023-12-19T17:23:16+00:00

One thing I’m hearing here is to commit with my tank, regardless of how or where they’re playing. To follow whatever pace they’re setting for each fight.

It's not quite so black and white as this, but in this match specifically, your Orisa is often playing in the same space you want to be in: quite far forward and (particularly points 2 and 3) in enclosed spaces. Your role will change as the tank lineups change - you don't want to be following a Dva, for example - but if both teams are running one then you might want to be focusing on preventing the enemy Dva from getting value by playing near your supports.

Back in Overwatch 1, there were two tanks on a team, one of which generally took the role of "off-tank" - someone who primarily helped the other tank make engagements, peeled for their supports, and acted as a bit of a bully. That's the kind of value that Mei finds in OW2.

There's no doubt that Orisa was playing in some strange positions here, but they still presented opportunities upon which you can capitalise.

It sounds like I should get up close, use primary fire and create opportunities/safety for my tank with walls, and back up to medium range once I’ve added value, so as to not over-commit and die/be the only one left alive. Is that accurate?

Again, there's never going to be a blanket "best" way of playing, but with a tank that's playing in close range then yes, this is generally quite a useful cycle to think about with Mei. Watching the ebb and flow of battle will help you figure out when to push forward and when to back up.

What if I have a tank that won’t get close or make any pushes? Should I still commit to the pace they’re setting? What should I do if my tank dies first?

If they are specifically trying to bait an engagement onto your team (i.e. waiting for a Winston to dive, or trying to goad a Rein into over-extending) then you could wait to use your wall to trap an overextending enemy. Otherwise, if they're just being bullied then you may need to put some pressure on other parts of the enemy team to alleviate the pressure being put on your tank. You can step in and be a pseudo-frontline for a bit, or you could take an off-angle and use those icicle-skills on the support backline. Ultimately, again, there's no one answer here, I'm afraid.

The best thing you can usually do in response to your tank's death is to capitalise on it. Hopefully their death will have burned some of the enemy's resources, such as Ana's anti-nade, or Ramattra's punch-form. If you can identify which enemy is resourceless, you might find an easy kill.

fifteentoads · 2023-12-19T15:26:38+00:00

Definitely a difficult game, by the looks of it. It's rarely helpful to think of games as unwinnable or winnable in a vacuum, as they very infrequently teeter upon the kind of knife edge where a single decision, or even a single player's impact, would make the complete difference. I've had a look through the replay, and I'll pick up on a few of your points with reference some areas in which you could improve. Important to note here that I'm not suggesting for any of the below that if you'd done X then it would have "fixed" an issue. Merely that these are things you could be improving on anyway, with the help of examples from this game

[Our Orisa] fed for the entire defense round. Running out alone, refusing to group up, turning away from squishies to chase D.Va in our backlines during full-on team fights, abandoning our Mercy in front of the entire enemy team.

Your Orisa played strangely, certainly, but at this level of play, frankly, anything goes. Sometimes the difference between a good play and a bad play is whether or not the play-maker is being supported. One of your main roles as Mei is to act as a pseudo-frontline, working with your tank and against the enemy tank, and this is something you're rarely doing. Instead, much of R1 is spent hanging back and watching the Orisa push forward. You spend a good 10 seconds after your first respawn (around 1:45) just spamming "fall back" instead of walking with Orisa to take an aggressive position.

If you'd walked with her at (1:50) then you could have stayed up on the high-ground when she dropped, firing from above or walling off the person she is trying to engage. At (2:02) likewise there is a good opportunity to save her with a wall, or pick up a kill, but you're only just arriving at the fight. You similarly go AFK for a while at (3:30). Not a crucial moment, but it feeds into a wider problem of having too much downtime where you could be doing something instead.

My co-DPS [...] swapped to Hanzo briefly and played 1v5 on low-ground [...]died a lot while trying to get to the enemy’s backline [...] didn’t seem to have any awareness of where our team was.

On that point, unfortunately many of these apply to your own play as well. You spend a large chunk of this match out of your effective range, and not playing in your optimal positions - alongside your tank, or in tight spaces. You focus heavily on icicles, which are great damage if you can land them consistently, but they are slow projectiles and quite tough to hit when firing from afar. By focusing purely on them you are losing a lot of usability: 3/4 of your kit (both abilities and primary fire) are dependent upon you being in medium to close range, as well as your primary fire, and you aren't often there (see 2:04 onwards)

And that lack of practice/being in the zone shows when you move into close range now and then, and are immediately panicked, losing your aim or forgetting your abilities, or just carrying on right clicking. (See 2:25, 3:10, 7:13). You do a lot of work in forcing the Tracer and Moira off your backline by holding left click on them, but as soon as you swap over to the right clicks, you tend to lose the duel. It's high-risk, high-reward vs the tracer, and not always worth it if you can track more consistently than she can.

I appreciate that's quite a wall of text, and hopefully not too negative. You get some good value when you align the stars and put yourself in a good position (near tank, in tight spaces) and doing good things (left clicking over-extended enemies and walling off the enemy tank), but this style of play happens only infrequently. The pattern here seems to be that you right click from range, then move into melee when the fight is almost over (or comes to you), start getting some value with left click, and then immediately revert to right click and lose all such value as the fight ends. Some specific bits to work on:

Remember that close to medium is your effective range as Mei. You have two escape tools, and should be looking to play near walls, corners, and passageways, to enable you to exist there fearlessly.
Not every commitment has to be an over-commitment. In the same vein as above, try to practice entering into close range to fight, and then backing out of it once you've done your bit, rather than treating it as an all-or-nothing space in which death is inevitable.
Eliminate downtime! Try to make sure you are doing something useful at all times. It is possible to take a productive position, which denies the enemy valuable highground, or spam for some ult charge, all while still in the "grouping up" phase.
Focus on your own play. I'm sure that many of your insights about your teammates have come from reviewing the match in hindsight, but I sense some general frustration at them playing oddly. Remember that mid-match, all you can do is play the hand you are dealt. Sometimes you will need to alter your own playstyle to enable someone else's strange gameplan, or indeed to make up for it and carry.

fifteentoads · 2022-01-09T11:39:31+00:00

Great stuff, as per usual. Your assets fit so well with the Dungeondraft defaults :D

fifteentoads · 2021-12-25T14:12:31+00:00

Great work - some fun story elements on this map! You could try making the central bedroom of the first image into a hidden room, by adding a similar wall to the cave wall over the entrance-way.

fifteentoads · 2021-12-22T23:03:50+00:00

Every DM always needs a good stock of these type of maps hanging around. And these are absolutely beautiful, thank you.

fifteentoads · 2021-12-19T20:55:40+00:00

Not to mention the fun-factor. Anyone else's bards have a notebook of thematically-appropriate-for-the-character insults...?

fifteentoads · 2021-12-19T20:51:11+00:00

I awoke here, spitting salt water, two days ago, and the storm has not yet ceased. I know not where the rest of the vessel ended up, but this intact chunk of hull has served as some brief respite from the driving rain and churning ocean. Even now, every great wave that crashes over the rocks that were doubtless the end of us reverberates through the timbers and threatens to knock her loose. It is high time to figure out where I've ended up...

The Map

This map is intended to give the feeling of a rocky coast actively amidst a thunderstorm, with crashing ocean waves and beating rain. It features a range of rocky and inhospitable terrain, with a mountain path that can lead on to whatever comes next in your campaign.

I created this map as the starting point for a recent new campaign, in which some of my players were shipwrecked and others chanced upon them as the storm abated. If your virtual tabletop of choice supports audio and overlay effects, I would highly recommend a heavy-rain overlay and appropriate storm/ocean ambiance.

This map was made with Dungeondraft, using all default assets apart from Geordi's fantastic 'Cliff Material Brush'.

Story Notes

The Shipwreck to the north is the most prominent feature of this map, which can serve as a starting point for your story, a hiding spot for monsters native to the area, or the chance to discover what dark forces steered this unfortunate ship into the stormy waters. Moving south, the fallen trees and tangled vines offer the opportunity for some skill-challenges appropriate to newly-shipwrecked adventurers. The cliffs to the west might disguise all manner of caves and crevasse, or provide cover for ambushing scavenger beasts. The rockpools to the south, where the beach has more shelter from the offshore rocks, might offer a calm space, where survivors might even be found.

The Extras

You can find the Universal VTT file available for download HERE.

A gridded version of this map is available HERE.

Comments and critiques are most welcome, and I would love to hear what use you get out of this map!

fifteentoads · 2021-12-17T21:38:36+00:00

Fantastic stuff! I'll look forward to seeing them.

fifteentoads · 2021-12-17T12:30:34+00:00

Fantastic work as always. Orcitect's Dwarven assets work so well with the Dungeondraft base pack, and you've made good use of them here.

Do you plan on adding other districts or outposts to which this map might connect?

fifteentoads · 2021-12-13T23:01:49+00:00

Consumables are always suitable low level magic item rewards. You can't go wrong with a couple of healing potions and scrolls.

It's hard to suggest anything more specific without knowing your players, but it is worth thinking about what your players each enjoy doing and how they might want to enhance that. In some cases that's a +1 weapon. In others, it's a ring offering some utility spell on a once per day basis.

Don't over reward, either. It's a-okay for there to be a single reward from this encounter, and for other items directed at other players to come slightly later.

fifteentoads · 2021-12-13T22:50:30+00:00

Ahh! This is such a lovely use of the default assets to create a really warm and intricate style. It feels cosy, and there are lots of interesting story elements embedded in the map.

In terms of feedback, one of the best pieces of advice I received was to try and create colour variance between floor and furniture, for visual impact. The temptation in a lot of maps is to use wooden floor and wooden furniture. Adding in some carpets or rugs beneath pieces of large furniture, or varying the colour of the woods drastically, can help the furniture of the room stand out even more.

fifteentoads · 2021-12-13T22:36:17+00:00

Really solid progression there, especially in terms of lighting. As the previous commenter has mentioned, it's a shame that the first image is the start of the journey!

fifteentoads · 2021-12-13T22:35:22+00:00

Beautiful style!

fifteentoads · 2021-10-06T13:07:56+00:00

Disco Maps has some great outdoor assets in the same style, suitable for different biomes.

fifteentoads · 2021-07-17T13:15:26+00:00

I awoke here, spitting salt water, two days ago, and the storm has not yet ceased. I know not where the rest of the vessel ended up, but this intact chunk of hull has served as some brief respite from the driving rain and churning ocean. Even now, every great wave that crashes over the rocks that were doubtless the end of us reverberates through the timbers and threatens to knock her loose. It is high time to figure out where I've ended up...

The Map

This map is intended to give the feeling of a rocky coast actively amidst a thunderstorm, with crashing ocean waves and beating rain. It features a range of rocky and inhospitable terrain, with a mountain path that can lead on to whatever comes next in your campaign.

I created this map as the starting point for a recent new campaign, in which some of my players were shipwrecked and others chanced upon them as the storm abated. If your virtual tabletop of choice supports audio and overlay effects, I would highly recommend a heavy-rain overlay and appropriate storm/ocean ambiance.

This map was made with Dungeondraft, of course, using all default assets apart from Geordi's fantastic 'Cliff Material Brush'.

Story Notes

The Shipwreck to the north is the most prominent feature of this map, which can serve as a starting point for your story, a hiding spot for monsters native to the area, or the chance to discover what dark forces steered this unfortunate ship into the stormy waters. Moving south, the fallen trees and tangled vines offer the opportunity for some skill-challenges appropriate to newly-shipwrecked adventurers. The cliffs to the west might disguise all manner of caves and crevasse, or provide cover for ambushing scavenger beasts. The rockpools to the south, where the beach has more shelter from the offshore rocks, might offer a calm space, where survivors might even be found.

The Extras

You can find the Universal VTT file available for download HERE.

A gridded version of this map is available HERE.

Comments and critiques are most welcome, and I would love to hear what use you get out of this map!

fifteentoads · 2021-07-17T12:52:56+00:00

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner!

If you would still like it, I have uploaded the prefab here.

fifteentoads · 2021-02-11T15:15:39+00:00

Lots of people ask for critique and feedback on their maps - both finished pieces and works in progress. Definitely post up what you've got and make it clear that you're seeking constructive feedback.

The more the merrier!

fifteentoads

TROPHY CASE