I may not remember exactly which idea came from where, but they are all in the links below somewhere. I have saved every single source of information and inspiration and will put links to all of these at the bottom of this post, which I advise you to check out. Some sections here are wholesale lifted from certain sources because the ideas were so perfect, whereas other additions may have been gleaned or influenced by other sources. I took inspiration from a massive variety of sources including youtubers, Reddit posts and other gaming blogs. Full Disclosure: Influences and Inspiration TL,DR – Feel free to skip past my In world Lore and go to the section labelled Map Key for exactly that – A key to my maps.
This post will serve to just introduce my map and give it context in my world, before I later develop a full map legend including room descriptions, encounter designs and loot. Now, I know that the Wave Echo Cave/Lost Mines are quite far off in the adventure for my group, but I was inspired by the map made by Hituro here, and decided to take it further and develop my own. I have begun running the adventure for one of the groups I DM for and after reading ahead, quickly realised that I wanted to change so much to not only improve on the adventure as written, but also to increase the level of realism and better fit it into my world. As part of my Summer break, I am taking the time to redesign the Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set Adventure – The Lost Mines of Phandelver.
