Written by: Annie Shi
Motherboard is a post-post-apocalyptic campaign frame set in the Echo Vale—a valley of walled cities and wandering settlements built inside the bones of a fallen civilization, using salvaged remnants of the technology left behind.
When a malicious virus begins spreading through the Network and corrupting machinery into hostility, the campaign naturally pushes your party out of the “safe” streets and into uneasy spaces, such as scrapyards and factories, overgrown ruins, and the wild Wastes where lethal machines roam.
Below are ten maps that drop right into canon-friendly locales from the frame: such as Argent and its guarded districts, factories and scrap workshops run by machinists, the dangerous Wastes and forlorn ruins beyond the walls, and other settlements such as Calcarus, the Northern Oracle, Switch Withawick, and the Library.
1. Walled City / Argent — Desert City Gates
Argent is one of Echo Vale’s most formidable walled cities—fiercely fortified and patrolled by a regimented guard, with scrap operations grinding around the clock.
This Desert City Gate map nails that “citadel on the edge of danger” feeling, providing a hard border where scavenged tech and everyday community life bunches right up against metal barriers and authority.
Use this as your campaign’s recurring threshold between safety and the Wastes—arrivals, departures, and tense stand-offs when the Remnants’ Fury has everyone jumpy. Maybe someone’s quantum disc gets swapped in the crush of the checkpoint and the party gets blamed for someone else’s secrets, or perhaps a remnant lurches into view and the gate becomes a bottleneck.
This map also comes with a scene that’s perfect for your party’s first step into Argent, or another walled city in the Wastes.
2. Walled City / Argent — Desert City Tavern
In Motherboard, technology is “magic,” both literally and in the sense that power and information flowing through the network are what keep cities like Argent functioning.
A bright, modern tavern like this Desert City Tavern is a perfect social hub where guards can unwind, machinists grab a drink after long shifts, and rumors or job hooks can trade hands.
This can be your go-to map for social encounters, whether you’re starting in an established city like Argent or making your own to place within the Wastes.
This map also comes with a scene that’s perfect for a first-night-in-Argent meet, where the party might learn about their starting job over a glass of something questionably fluorescent.
3. Inciting Incident Factory — Trash Compactor
This campaign frame depicts factories and scrap work as core parts of city life. This Trash Compactor map is a dead-on fit for the underside of that industrial backbone, and is especially perfect for the campaign’s Instigating Incident, where the party is tasked by Priv Maelor Rhodek to investigate recent remnant attacks in a factory.
This map also comes with a ton of variants, including four stages of “crushing” progression, which can set the stage for a perfect dramatic moment where the compactor shifts from being a background hazard to real threat, especially if someone gets knocked into the pit and the party has to drag them out before they join the scrap.
This map comes with a scene, plus variants where the crushing mechanism visibly ratchets forward in staged phases, so you can show the danger escalating in real time as the walls close in.
4. Mac the Scrap Jack — Chop Shop
Within cities, scrappers process and sell parts; and “scrap shacks” are the often-illegal operations run by individuals rather than the government. This makes this Chop Shop map a perfect fit for the party’s first real foothold in the setting.
It’s also an excellent stage for the contact in the Inciting Incident: Mac the Scrap Jack, who can provide the party with specialized tech to stall nearby remnants—and a moral decision to make regarding Priv Maelor Rhodek’s request for the remnant cores.
5. Wastes Ruins — Shopping Mall Ruins
The Echo Vale is defined by the reclaiming of ruins from an ancient time—people building lives inside the husks of a destroyed golden age. This Shopping Mall Ruins map is a beautiful, eerie way to show your players that truth without a lore lecture. Your players will feel the loss from this melancholy scene immediately.
Use this map as an early Wastes expedition location, such as for a scavenging run, or a dungeon-like crawl where every broken storefront might hide a wild remnant infected by the virus.
6. Wastes Ruins — Remains of Advanced Society
This is the “echoes of a fallen world” concept of the frame dialed to maximum: a place that makes it obvious that the civilization before yours built higher, wider, and larger than what modern Echo Vale can reproduce.
Drop this Remains of Advanced Society map into the campaign to show your players what is at stake if the Motherboard fails, and if the Remnant’s Fury spreads unchecked.
It’s also generally a fantastic exploration space, with layered verticality and precarious passages thanks to the fallen signs and railings. Perhaps a wild remnant hunts in the waterlogged streets, or perhaps a wandering city’s scavengers are already here—and they certainly don’t want to share.
7. Calcarus — Botany Research Lab
Calcarus is described as a single ancient skyscraper filed with its own small forest, where its denizens have learned to graft wooden buildings into the structure and use height as safety from remnants. This makes a Botany Research Lab a gorgeous fit with its themes: it reflects the city’s identity as a place where greenery, survival, and “old-world tech repurposed” all collide.
Use this as a hub for players passing through Calcarus. Maybe the party is sent to retrieve specimens from within the skyscraper’s forest, or perhaps the lab’s prize specimen in the corner shouldn’t be thriving as well as it is. After all, in Calcarus, the remnants might be outside the walls, but the real danger can be what’s growing inside.
8. The Northern Oracle — Heretic Monastery (Prime)
The Northern Oracle is mentioned in the text as a pilgrimage site, with a massive amphitheater filled with screens, where the High Oracle claims to use them to speak to the Motherboard. This Heretic Monastery map is a great interior stand-in for the “devout core” behind that spectacle.
Send the party here when they’re chasing answers that the cities can’t give them. Maybe the High Oracle is a careful fraud, selling certainty to frightened people—or maybe she’s real, and the truth is worse. Perhaps one of the screens will flicker to life with a message in kohd, spilling something stark and unwelcome into the room.
9. Switch Withawick — Underground Metro
Switch Withawick is described as a subterranean city whose citizens rarely come to the surface. This perfectly supports a rail-and-tunnel Underground Metro environment: a lived-in subterranean artery where movement and trade all funnel through narrow routes.
Use this map when you want the undercity of Switch to feel claustrophobic; maybe the party is sent down to fix a failing engine, escort a cargo run, or follow a lead that fizzled topside. The low light can also present an interesting problem, especially when somewhere ahead on the tracks, something scrapes by—just out of sight.
10. The Library — Intergalactic Museum (Old Glory)
The Library is an institution built atop a large spider-like remnant, representing an insular side of Echo Vale’s culture—people focused on protecting items and information, rather than adapting and developing new technologies. An Intergalactic Museum map is nearly a perfect translation of that idea: orderly, curated, and obsessed with preservation.
This is Motherboard's “knowledge archive,” but the danger here is less about hostile machinery, and more about what people are willing to do to keep information controlled—especially when the Motherboard is at risk and desperation grows across the land.
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