Making Maps

I've always been a sucker for making maps. Out of all the long list of parts of working on a fantasy campaign or any table top setting I think sitting down and making up my own personal maps for the world, region, city, dungeon, etc...is by far the most enjoyable and relaxing.

The one features on the left is done with a variety of fan plug-ins for an open source art program. Its amazing what the community will work hard to put together. In this case its a hex based map program that allows you to create the old hex style wilderness maps and campaign maps that they used to feature right in the beloved TSR modules. How cool is that?

To my mind something like this little mapping tool is -very- cool. Not just because its easy and makes a nice looking and practical map for the game it also makes the exact same sorts of maps TSR used to pay big bucks to artists to create for their modules in something like a tenth of the time or less. Ain't technology grand?

I am also a fan of freehand maps although my hand drawn maps tend to be too big to put through a normal sized scanner. I have to haul them down to Kinko's to use their big oversize scanner and that costs a little bit of coin.

Heres a way old enormous map done on parchment. An early effort on my ultimate goal to create a really cool classic swords and sorcery / Conan style setting.

Doing a great big enormous hand drawn map makes for a fun prop for the game table or to hang on the wall during play. Doing it with ink on parchment makes it that much more fun to pass around. I think the players enjoy having this sort of prop as well although I am sure I get a bigger kick out of making it than anyone does mucking around with it at the game table.

Today I nearly finished a Campaign Cartographer 3 overland map for my latest project. I mostly like the finished result. I have to add location labels and decided that instead of importing it into photoshop I wanted to learn to do everything in CC3. More of as a learning experience than anything practical.

As a side note. I love doing all the old school DM work in creating a campaign. Lots of guys I know abandoned all the work and process involved years ago because honestly the vast majority of it never sees the light of day in any game.

After I work up some maps I put together a history, calendar, pantheon, work out information about how magic works, etc... I really enjoy fleshing all of this out. I know for a fact that having done all that work helps me write a better story and come up with better adventure ideas as well. Which is good but on the down side means I need a lot more writing and prior to play creation and writing time than the vast majority of Dungeon Masters need for running their stuff.

Thats all for tonight.