D&D’s last 5th edition campaign has some of the best maps of this generation

polygon.com:

For a game of Dungeons & Dragons you really only need a few things: some dice, the barest idea of a possible encounter, and a few other people with characters in-hand. So when I’m coming to the game’s publisher, Wizards of the Coast, for one of their campaigns I’m expecting quite a lot for my dollar — an excellent hook, for starters, but also a lengthy experience with lots of extras to pull my players in.

Vecna: Eve of Ruin, the last adventure to be published for the original 5th edition ruleset, is chock full of those kinds of extras, and the best bits by far are the maps.

D&D’s earliest adventures were little more than maps, carefully annotated on loose-leaf graph paper in three-ring binders by the likes of Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax, and a handful of the game’s original designers and artists. They were strictly two-dimensional affairs, presented from a bird’s eye view. Case in point is the infamous Tomb of Horrors, a deadly yet concise arena originally created for tournament-style play. It’s an elaborate series of hallways and antechambers, most of which exist on the exact same level of the dungeon.

Vecna: Eve of Ruin’s maps are designed in a very similar way, but they are anything but flat.

[Ed. note: This story will spoil key elements in Vecna: Eve of Ruin.]

Take, for instance, the map in chapter three titled “The Lambent Zenith’s Last Voyage.” Created by cartographer Francesca Baerald, it depicts a magical sailing ship that has crashed into the side of a dead god. Here’s the official description, a version of which is what they likely had to work with on the commission:

The stony mass isn’t a planet or an asteroid, but a colossal creature that appears lifeless. Shattered ribs arch over the creature’s mossy spine, and the air crackles with decaying magic.

Among the bones is the shipwreck of a large galleon broken into three large chunks: the sterncastle, nestled in the corpse’s hip bones; the starboard section, embedded in the ribcage; and the prow, stabbed into