NewbieDM had an idea a few months ago: Wouldn’t it be great if there were a version of D&D Encounters that players could use at home? Wizards of the Coast has this nifty weekly program on Wednesday nights where players can drop it at their local store and play a single encounter; as they come week after week, the encounters build into adventures and small campaigns. Unfortunately, WotC does not release these encounters for home use, even after the season is over.

So, NewbieDM and his colleagues decided to start a program for those of us who can’t get to our store on Wednesday nights (for instance, I can’t ever go because that’s my bowling night). They call it 4e Home Encounters, and the first encounter has just been posted. It’s very cool that they’ve gotten this off the ground!

Now, the one thing that they wanted to have for the encounters was a map that players could use – an actual JPG that could be loaded into a program like MapTool or printed out on paper to lay on the table. Unfortunately, their cartographer had to drop out of the program, so they’ve put together an encounter map using Dungeon Tiles (which, for copyright reasons, they can’t provide high-quality JPGs of).

If I ever run these encounters (and I certainly might), I’d obviously be re-creating the maps in MapTool. So, as a service to the community, here is my attempt at a JPG version of the first 4e Home Encounters map as drawn by me in MapTool. Feel free to use it in your own adventure if you like!

And finally, a PDF of the map that’s printable for use at a home table.