Thursday, 6 June 2019

Kidnap the Archpriest animated map

TL;DR - Preparing to run Skerples' Kidnap the Archpriest? Maybe a map of NPC locations per hour will help out! I made it to help out in my home game, and Skerples gracefully allowed me to post it here for all to see and use.
 
Players, stay out so you don't spoil the excitement of discovering this in-game! DMs, use to your heart's content.

The meat and potatoes

Your players are in the castle's hall of relics looting priceless fingerbones when they break a glass pane. Who's nearby to hear it? Is someone raiding the pantry right when your elite goblin wet team make their way through the kitchen at night? And just where is Father Boswick getting hopped up on opium next?

  • All this and more, answered in a handsome pdf. Pop it into single page view in Acrobat and arrow key from hour to hour.
  • The original powerpoint that I built this in also available (yes, I should've done this in Illustrator or the like, but when I discovered that I was already halfway through).
    --> you'll need to download the Cardinal font, the google default messes up the map.
  • The detail-oriented will note that there's now a guard roster for Henry and Louis (if there is a roster in KtA, I missed it). Also added a place to be for cardinals Delver and Zorn to be at 6AM on day 3 (if they had some other place to be, I missed this as well).

Feel free to use, share and modify, but give credits where they're due!

MOTIVATION

Notice how unlike a cooking blog, I didn't force you to first endure my waffle about my motivation before you got to the meat and potatoes?

My group is making their way through basically the collected works of Coins & Scrolls and Goblin Punch. After Tomb of the Serpent Kings, I see them taking a little hexplore break, then I want to tease them with the Boswitch Bath House...and once they've made a name for themselves (good or bad...) they get to Kidnap the Archpriest.

Skerples' heist module has a huge number of moving components - I mean, NPCs - that can come into play as you try to Kidnap the Archpriest (I'm sure that wasn't a spoiler to anyone). Of course the module advises you to highlight only a couple of them during the planning stage. But during the heist itself, I'll definitely want a birds-eye view of who else is in the room the players blundered into - and who is in the general vicinity.

Like this, but the entire location and with the NPCs moving about. Mesmerizing. Almost a shame to let the PCs get in here and mess things up.


I mean, there could be a Black Endoguard hiding around next door! During the game I don't have the attention span to scan multiple rooms and cross-reference times of day. Which is where this animated map comes in. Hope it's of use to you as well; leave comments below or in the google drive!

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