Ongoing project to map...everything.

[wdmartin]

Nice thistletop maps. I particularly like the Lamashtu statue. Is that available as an asset someplace?

And as for your experimental caverns, they look good! Care to share some of your techniques? I'm particularly interested by the multiple-shelves jutting out of the walls.

[Askren]

The statue isn't availible anywhere at the moment, though I guess I can dig it out of the PSD and upload it when I get a chance.

I've been extremely busy with work, but I've been chipping away at this cave system recently, and you can see how massively my experimenting has pulled me away from the original snippet. I decided that this cave should be more dirt and less bare rock, so my effort has basically been put towards trying to get some realistic looking dirt floors. I gotta say, out of all the maps I've done, I've spent more time on the floor here than almost any other. No tiling textures here.



There's a pile of others I'd like to finish fairly soon, but not really much to show for those.

Care to share some of your techniques? I'm particularly interested by the multiple-shelves jutting out of the walls.

This is actually one of the least difficult techniques as far as actually implementing it, because really all I did was draw squiggly shapes under the Wall layer that matched the basic outline, but were different so they stood out, and then just applied the same layer properties with shadows and stuff.

For this map, I took them off because while I think they do an interesting job for stone cave walls, I decided the walls of these catacombs were more dirt than stone, and am experimenting with some ways to make that work.

[Askren]

Update time I guess.

Work has really eaten into my schedule the last few months, and it's really cut down on the time I've had to get my maps done. I often find myself racing to get something finished in time to use it, which considering I'm only running one campaign right now, isn't really great.

Anyway, I've got one map in a "useable" state, and a few ongoing side projects right now;

Habe's Sanatorium First Floor

While this certainly isn't a "final" work, and a ton of objects need to be replaced (I put in some placeholders I bought from Roll20), it was enough to use. This is not the actual map from the book, rather the first floor is the same but expanded, the second floor is entirely different.

Habe Sanatorium Second Floor


Habe Sanatorium Basement


And the major project I've got going right now that I'm just sort of chipping away at every now and then is this, my Misgivings Manor attempt. As much as I appreciate Tinangel's crazy-detailed versions, I'm gonna have to take a swing at it myself just for the challenge. Lucky for my, I changed my story so Misgivings happens at the end of the book, so I have a few months to work on this.

[Askren]

Just because I took on the goal of running it as an intro-session, I became interested in the dungeon map from Dragon's Demand.

So, I started it.


The colors and sharpness look awful because I had to crank down the compression to upload it.

This is also one of the first maps I've really done without set, "tiling" pieces, which is why there's some odd blending going on with corners and stuff. Still trying to decide on an appropriate floor texture for the bigger rooms, too.

Lots of experimenting going on, as always.

[Raiko]

That's looking like it will be great Askren, I'm really interested to see how your Dragon's Demand dungeon turns out compared to mine - we are the only two who seem to have taken on this map so far.

I'm considering running Dragon's Demand as a PbP forum game - I've tried before with an Adventure Path but that stalled, Dragon's Demand seems like a nicer length to run on a forum. So I might have a go at the second map soon. Will you be running the whole adventure, or just this dungeon? The Monastery map is awesome, but huge!

I love your recent updates, especially your cavern walls in Thistletop. For your "dug out of earth caves" have you tried a similar method, but with "softer" edges? I thought that that might work.

I also wanted to mention your Old Fishery map, I've tried mapping that a few times myself, and I've always been unhappy with the result - your map is looking awesome, I can't wait to see it finished!

[Askren]

Thanks for the comment. I hadn't planned on running the entire thing, it was really just an interesting module I'd been holding on to for a while, and found the opening chapter to be one I can play out in an engaging enough way that it serves as an introduction for new players to my style of DMing and how I handle roleplaying things. I've been working to put together an E6 Curse of the Crimson Throne game with some hardcore roleplayers, but have been having trouble. This module was supposed to be an introduction for them to how I do things, and see how they all play together.

However, one player dropped so it seems like I might just run most of the module while I search for a replacement.

You're right about the Monastery, it's kind of nuts. If I ever do it, and that's a huge if, it'll be a month-long project for sure. Just scaling that thing would push my computer to it's limits.

A room.

[Askren]

So I recently did some livestreaming of my mapmaking, basically as a thing for the VTT community of map makers/sellers who wanted to workshop or learn new techniques and stuff. Successful? Eh. Productive? Sort of. I got this done;


Not all of it was done live. The gatehouse at the bottom was made by manually stitching together like, 6 completely different medieval brickwork textures done by hand. Which means cutting the edges up and manufacturing bricks to fit the spaces so that the two join seamlessly. That took pretty much all of this past night to do, but I have TV to keep me from getting too bored.

"But Askren, you already made this map, and put way too much time into it. Why do it again?" I hear you say. Well, for fun mostly. But because my process and techniques have changed massively since then, and I wanted to see if I could do it better.

Made some other small little maps for things I'll be running sometime soon, so I'll post those when they're 100%.

[Askren]

For some reason, floor textures matching the grid have been bothering me recently, that's what I spent my last few days doing. I know it kind of feels like I'll never get things done because I just keep messing with them, but hopefully one day I'll get it right.

Actually, I'm more concerned that I'll just run out of good textures to use for future maps and end up recycling them.

[Jacktannery]

Very nice texture on Tiles_4 Asken. Did you create that one yourself?

[Askren]

That's actually the one I did the least editing to, out of the 4 versions that came before it. The rest were the normal grid-style tiles seen in the version a post earlier, and I went through a few iterations of that.

I did do a more "textured" version that I experimented with a little here:


I like how it looks in some places, but the thing that bugs me is the "smoothness" to it, like it doesn't really look like an actual castle's floor. I don't really know.

The other experiment I did was this:


Not necessarily the final texture, but one of the better results with the mixed-size floor stones, and I think it looks a bit more natural, I just have to work on giving it a bit more roughness.