City map from a template

Hi all,
Hopefully I'm doing this correctly. The other day I downloaded the RPG Citymap Generator and played with it for a bit. It turns out some funky stuff sometimes but I can see that it's a nice tool to generate some inspiration to start off a map. In particular I was instantly excited by the old west town map settings (and the viking and african village settings) and it made me want to make a map...if I didn't have a bunch of other stuff to do.

So. I thought about it for a while and realized that it might make a good challenge to provide a "template" (like the one attached) from the generator as a starting point for everyone to make a map. This one's straight from the program (cropped but otherwise unaltered) but the challenge template could be cleaned up before posting, if desired, or have the cleanup left to the entrants (might be neat to see how different people deal with overlapping buildings and such in their own way).

Even if you don't like *that* app, it still might be fun to see what people come up with given the same template as a starting point. I know I'd like to see the results.
M

Reminds me of Lago, from High Plains Drifter. I see the old west connection for sure.

I like it. Creativity + Constraint.

May even spawn a new class of Challenges... the "Template Challenges"

Yeah. I was thinking it doesn't have to be a city map. Could be continent outlines, or...

There's a video from Gnomon where Scott Robertson scribbles with grey Prismacolors on some vellum and then scans them in, collages them together, and paints some very cool landscapes from the shapes suggested by the collages. Might be something there for mapping as well, or...

You could pack up a collection of brushes, patterns, etc. and have people build something from them. Might get some interesting surprises from a grab-bag mapping challenge. I've seen something similar done with modeling (physical) where folks get a box of parts and have to build something.

So many possibilities...too bad we have to work.
M

The Sept 07 challenge was kind of this theme. RobA created a really rough sketch of a proposed regional map, and all entries had to recreate the requirements of the sketch in each mapper's own style. So while this idea is for a single town/village, that earlier challenge was for a region - but same concept really.

GP

There were a couple of challenges like this last year as well. A regional one and a 'town' one. They were the first two I had entered and I had connected them through the backstory I had 'cobbled' together.

I like these kind of challenges.

There was also the random dungeon map challenge where everyone worked from the dungeon template created by a random dungeon maker. One of the more popular challenges we had here.

-Rob A>

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RobA

There was also the random dungeon map challenge where everyone worked from the dungeon template created by a random dungeon maker. One of the more popular challenges we had here.

-Rob A>

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And the first challenge I ever entered. That was when I first joined the guild.

Like SG, I like these types of challenges, and love this one as well.


-IG