D&D Maps

Ayyy, one of the books came with a map!

A laminated map of Faerun, spread out on Kabutroid's workbench.

A colourful map of Faerun, glossy and new, sitting unrolled and waiting on the table.

The tube with its map wrapping put on, with a layer of glue drying on it, and sitting on a scrap sheet of paper on the table to keep glue from transferring. It never did thankfully, since that would have pulled the map off the bottom rim of the tube, but better safe than sorry.A closeup of the map, showing some of the wrinkles in it, mostly minor, showing the South Kensington area of London, with Earl Court right near the center.

Kabutroid wearing a red sundress in her room, with the map tube slung cross body over her shoulder. Abby took the photo.
Oh hey, would you look at that, Heroes of Faerun has a map at the back of it! Well, as stated in the books page there, lamination was coming for it, and laminate we did. It has the calendar system on the back with ample space for markings, and a large, detailed map of Faerun on the front, a perfect candidate for dry-erase! But, how to get it to campaigns? Now, when I bought some UV protection film for my dice (which was also shared with literally anything that had a frame here), and that came in this big, really rigid paperboard tube. Whelp remaining UV film, welcome to being tape-rolled up beside the workbench, tube, you come with me.

Now how to decorate it. Now, I've had a map of cycling paths in London from 2022 kicking around, you're about to get a new home my friend. I plastered the back of that map (after trimming off the obligatory ads around the outside of the map, it *was* a free takeaway type of thing), and it just nicely and barely covered the tube with maybe two inches to spare. I did have to cut off a section and overlap the two parts a bit towards the bottom, but I tried to line up those blue section markers, and honestly it's dense enough that you can't find that unless you seriously look for it. Now... applying said map was... mind-bogglingly difficult, because in my infinite wisdom, I thought it would stylistically look best if I applied the map at an angle (which is still true in my eyes, to be fair). That did however make it fight an INSANE amount when wrapping it around, sticky on one side (though I only took the release film off an inch at a time, but even still). So, there's... a number of wrinkles into there, though none MAJOR major, and I did try to focus the incoming wrinkles into the middle of parks so it's lost in the sea of green rather than creating breaks in the roads. But, it came out well enough for my likings.

Now, to make sure it's waterproof, before applying the wrap, I gave the entire thing a coat in Gorilla wood glue, let that dry, applied the map to that plasticy surface, then gave the map cover itself another three layers of glue waterproofing (yah this glue is insane, it is absolutely not water soluable lol), and then made two wire wraps around it from soft 12 gauge stainless steel wire (from the chainmaille flower), and used another several coats of glue just over that to keep THOSE in place. I still had the original shoulder strap from my gourd water bottle, so that became the perfect compliment to finish the map case off, COMPLETE!

Now in regards to maps, I also have map generator dice, and just recently a random dungeon generating Rubik's cube (ayyy, our first link between the AD&D and Rubik's sections!), those I can't so much share with the players (well, aside from 'oohh, lookit, cool, yah you can play with them'), but this map and any other printed ones added will be.

Future maps? If more books come with them, I come across something that calls to me, or additionally, if I come across some wrapping paper that has inch-grid lines on the back to use as short term temporary pencil maps, that'll be added to the case and probably to this page. As it stands though, one dry-erase marker in the campaign bag and this baby is ready for campaign!

Finished May 24, 2026