About Me

Hey, everyone, welcome to my blog! 👋 This is Adam, the creator behind The Flightless Manticore. I’m from Hungary and I make fantasy maps in my free time, primarily for our D&D campaign.

I’m a librarian by profession, and even though I haven’t worked as a librarian for a few years now, my research skills come really handy for my current occupation as a literary translator/editor.

Beginnings

My journey into RPGs began when I was in high school. My friends and I played forum-based games with other people all over the country (sometimes even the world). This way I went to at least two wizarding schools and had my own one as well, but at one point I was also playing in the world of the TV shows Heroes and Gossip Girl, and even Twilight. (Yes, I know. No judgment, please!) Those games didn’t really have rules (except for the wizarding school ones), the storytelling aspect was much more important, making the experience incredibly enjoyable.

Then, at university, one of my dear friends introduced me to Vampire: The Masquerade, my first proper tabletop RPG, and I loved it so much! Of course, I was still really timid, and the game fizzled out quite quickly, as these things sometimes do, but still.

The Dice Goblin

In 2017 I finally started watching Critical Role campaign one (with episode 85, as you do), and I played my first ever D&D session. I believe we started the Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure but sadly it remains unfinished to this day. However, thus began my dice goblinship. There is no such thing as too much dice.

And that’s when I became a DM. After a while I started DMing the Sunless Citadel adventure, then Out of the Abyss (we never completed that one). I played Oriax, the tiefling bard in our playthrough of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and at the end of 2019, I started my homebrew campaign.

But Why Maps?

As a kid, I always adored it when a book had a map in it. The first one I encountered was, of course, Tolkien’s map in The Lord of the Rings — the first Hungarian edition has a beautiful version of it, and that definitely kickstarted my fascination with the topic. Then, when my interest in D&D was sparked in 2017, I started a few other related hobbies as well, like painting miniatures, or drawing maps. (If want to try out mini painting for yourself, I would highly recommend the Painters Guild on Geek & Sundry.)

I’ve wanted to take mapmaking more seriously for a while now, and in 2023 I’ve finally taken the first steps to do just that. This blog is one of those first steps.

Thanks for reading! I hope you’ll like my maps and what I have to say about them. 😊