Thread: Japanese Bathhouse Map WIP

The following map-in-progress was my original plan for last month's challenge, but I just got too busy to get to it, so I'm creating it now. Then and now, my plan is to create a set of maps, along with illustrations, cover art, articles on Japanese bathing tradition, a room-by-room gazetteer, statted NPCs, a new ghost template, and 3 custom haunts. I am planning to create a series of supplements for my Kaidan - Japanese horror setting (PFRPG), called Haiku of Horror series. Hopefully I'll be able to create a different one each month for a 12 products per year basis.

This is a Japanese Bathhouse or sento, and this one with the water from a natural hot spring. The following is the first floor (bathing floor). Japanese bathhouses are segregated by caste and sex. The right side of the map is for male bathers, the left side for female bathers. With the entrance at the bottom center of the map, the lobby sits just above the entrance. The rooms at the bottom corners are changing rooms with clothing lockers within. The chambers above these are washing rooms. Above those is the actual bath chambers. The three rooms at the top of the map are upper caste chambers which feature a dining/sitting room and adjacent private baths.

In Japanese bathing tradition, one washes off the dirt with soap and water, but this is not done in the bath tub, so as not to unduly dirty the water, which will be used by others. You sit on a bench with bucket and brush and soap/rinse first. Once clean then you enter the hot bath water to soak and relax.

So as to show you the process with how I create my hand-drawn maps, I'm posting 3 images. The first one is a vector drawing of rectangles created in Xara Xtreme Pro 4 (my drawing/mapping application of choice). This I print at 18" x 24" dimensions onto my large format laser printer.

Then I tape this image down to a table, place a sheet of tracing paper on top, taped down and use the drawing beneath as a guide to getting my hand-drawn lines straight and properly placed. The second image is the hand-drawing by itself.

Finally, I create the final vector shapes giving appropriate colors, bevels and drop shadows, which I place in stacked order beneath the hand-drawing. This is the final (for the first floor).

I plan to create 3 more floors: the tea room/restaurant level, staff living/sleeping quarters on the next level, and the managers office/living quarters as the top floor. I will produce those other floors over the next few days.

GP