Geek Native’s Patrons have cast their votes, and the spotlight shines firmly on ndvmaps for this month’s RPG Publisher Spotlight.
The timing is tight, as the editorial team is preparing to head south for the UK Games Expo in Birmingham this coming weekend. With the convention floor calling, the deadline to arrange a traditional sit-down interview naturally fell on this weekend, and independent creators are frequently deep in the trenches of running their own games or prepping new projects. While we did not connect for a direct Q&A session this time around, we are delighted to showcase the impressive work of this community-chosen cartographer.
Behind the title of ndvmaps is Narin, an independent map maker and Game Master based in Poland. Like many great storytellers in the tabletop space, Narin’s journey into publishing began at her own table. Driven by a passion for creating highly immersive, visually dense scenery for her own players, she made the leap to share her tactical battlemaps and atmospheric vistas with the wider global roleplaying games community.
Operating as an independent creator for over four years, Narin builds her worlds using Inkarnate. The popular web-based cartography platform allows creators to assemble highly detailed maps using an extensive library of assets, stamps, and textures, granting users on its Pro tier commercial distribution rights. By combining these commercial assets with a sharp eye for granular, realistic environmental storytelling, Narin strikes a deliberate balance between traditional tabletop high fantasy and genre-specific vibes, ensuring GMs have modular resources that slot cleanly into almost any campaign setting.
Stepping Into the Scene
A deep dive into the ndvmaps catalogue on DriveThruRPG reveals an extensive, highly organised collection of resources that cater specifically to tactical grid navigation and setting the physical scene of an encounter. Narin divides her releases into distinct tactical categories, focusing primarily on highly specific regional environments and versatile multi-map collections.
Her standalone and thematic releases focus on distinct narrative ecosystems, offering multi-pack variations that include:
- Themed Adventure Locations: Packs curated for specific biomes and seasonal campaigns, such as the Autumn Adventure, Jungle Adventure, Desert Adventure, and multiple iterations of Horror Adventure (forest).
- Classic Delves and Subterranea: Essential configurations for deep exploration, including the Caves series and her highly modular Dungeons expansions, engineered specifically to map out traditional underground encounters with modern 4K clarity.
- Environmental Ecosystems: Focused collections addressing specific tactical challenges, including water-based layouts (Water Adventure), otherworldly regions (Fairytale Dreams & Nightmares), and fortresses under siege (Siege City Maps Pack).
High-Value 5-Star Bundles
For GMs looking to secure a broad foundation of tactical assets without assembling individual packages, ndvmaps relies heavily on high-value, comprehensive bundles. Several of her curated releases have earned a 5-star rating from the DriveThruRPG community, highlighting their utility at the table.
Key 5-star bundles to enhance your campaign layout include:
- Map Pack Caverns Bundle (PDF): A subterranean collection designed for classic dungeon crawls, offering winding passages, hidden chambers, and rocky choke points.
- Camps Map Pack Bundle (PDF): Perfect for managing the classic, vulnerable long rest, this pack provides various wilderness camp layouts where players might face a midnight ambush.
- Desert Maps Bundle (PDF): Designed for harsh, arid environments, offering sprawling dunes, oasis oases, and rocky desert canyons to challenge travellers.
- Ruins Map Pack Bundle (PDF): A collection of crumbling fortifications and forgotten temples, providing tactical cover and verticality for ancient encounters.
These packages focus heavily on modular, customisable layouts. Rather than offering a single static environment, these releases pack unique, illustrated floor layouts into unified bundles. This approach allows a GM to dynamically reveal changing scenery, such as transitioning floor by floor up through a modular layout or moving from the outer tree line into a spooky forest, as the players advance through a scene.
Furthermore, Narin has expanded her creative scope beyond environmental layouts into tabletop tokens, offering resources such as her Characters: cards & portraits packs to help GMs quickly represent the inhabitants of these detailed spaces. With crisp 4K resolutions, thoughtful PDF formatting for immediate digital casting, and a clear dedication to the practical needs of a GM sitting behind the screen, ndvmaps delivers exactly the kind of grassroots utility that independent tabletop gaming thrives on.
