Wouldn't it be clever of me if I could justify the planned aspect by writing 23 paragraphs of fanciful exposition on the city's history and the lore and whatnot? Truth is, I just like coming up with long-winded and utterly silly names for my streets, and so I needed the streets to be long and rather straight just to fit all the letters. A personal favorite of mine is "Blessed Song of the Titan's Eye Boulevard". Or how about "General Saupran Scanoslausington Avenue"?Originally Posted by Arborine
Silly, I know.
Last edited by Daelin; 11-01-2013 at 03:56 PM.
I LOVE it. I understand we need to ask your permission to use your (beautiful!) work in our own games. I don't mean to necro this thread although I really believe the map is worth it.
I'm a newbie to Cartography, so I can't PM you yet, but as the first of my 5 required posts, may I use this map in a fantasy game I'd like to run?
Thread necroing in this area is fine with us. In fact I'll have to thank you as well because I don't remember seeing this one myself and therefore I'm pleased to have it brought to my attention.
Beautiful map.
“When it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? If so, the score does not matter. But if you find that you did your best you were capable of, you will find it to your liking.” -John Wooden
* Rivengard * My Finished Maps * My Challenge Maps * My deviantArt
You absolutely may.
I don't know if it comes across in the map, but at least in my mind, the setting is a weird mix of magic and steampunk what with ludicrous sciences (see #28 and #96), esoteric religions (see #1 and #37) and silly technology (see #21, #81 and #85). So if you plan on doing a "high" fantasy RPG with honorable elves and danky inns and +2 longswords and whatnot, just know that your players may also run into anachronistism like this. Although there are plenty of danky inns in Maffaton (see #91 and #105 and)
I'd been noticing the Aetherology and Xenobiology Departments.
Gorgeous map indeed, and I especially like the texture of the water and its interaction with the shorelines--lovely, muted colors and yet wonderfully distinct. How did you achieve that look?
Thanks so much! Not a high fantasy per se, but with minimal gnome artificing, and minimal steampunk influence (although there is some). Never enough danky inns!
And after reading your keys (Bwahaha!) Spit artists!? I'm going to conform my city to better match your key. Clankhorses, brilliant. Much fun will hopefully be had.
Last edited by Stelknecht; 04-06-2015 at 01:19 PM.
The water was made with 2 layers; first a blue base layer set to low opacity over the parchment layer, then a second layer with the grungy horizontal lines on top of that, also with low opacity. The lines around the shores were made by selecting the blue base layer and contracting that selection and stroking it, doing that several times over, again with progressively lower opacity. Now that's the basic techniques. The exact opacity values, the exact color code and how to achieve the grungy effect on the water lines, now that is done by endless tweaking. Exactly how long that takes depends on how much of a perfectionist you are and also maybe your level of OCD.
I guess you haven't read China Mieville? Perhaps my favorite author. His Bas-Lag universe is total brain candy to me. Spit-art is an actual thing in those books. Art made by a race of beings that look entirely human, except their heads are something close to a scarab beetle. As in this:
He also has giant moth monsters that feed on sentient thought, a giant interdimensional spider that speaks in freeform poetry, cactus people, steampunk cyborg war rhinos, a pirate city made of thousands of connected ships floating on the seas. The. list. goes. on.
That's cool! I took inspiration on your Maffaton City for my Argona City... and I took ideas of China Mieville book (PSS, The Scar and the Iron Council) for building my rpg setting! Coincidences doesn't exist, I suppose
I read his Embassy, very interesting stuff. That's about as far as I've gotten but I like his work. Your map is proving to be more of an influence on my game city than my original plans were! The street names and buildings names are really making pictures in my head of what buildings might look like along Ausculation Way, for instance.
Embassytown is great. Awesome sci-fi universe. Very sober language, compared to his other stuff. In the Bas-Lag trilogy, he goes bananas with the words. Sometimes you feel like you need to have a dictionary at hand when you read those books. But to a word nerd like me, that's only pure coolness. If you can manage the fancy words and if you dig on a weird mix of fantasy/steampunk/horror then Perdido Street Station (Bas-Lag #1) is a must-read!
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