Quick Dungeon Making in Gimp

[Malygon]

It's a nice evening on friday. You are relaxing in front of your PC to just shut yourself off a busy week. Suddenly the phone rings. It's someone of your gaming group asking you if you have time to play this night. Well it is a bit spontaniously but you think you can give it a shot. So you all assemble in chat, Teamspeak or just the phone to discuss what to do exactly this evening. It soon becomes clear that you all want to play a roleplaygame but there's nobody prepared to be the GM. Given the fact that all of you having the time to play on the same day is a rare circumstance, you declare yourself ready to do the job. So now you are missing the time to prepare something in detail but still want to give the players something looking not all that bad and still focus more on the idea behind the adventure?

I've been in this situation and being in that situation I thought of a method making quick dungeon maps using the only graphic program I have: GIMP (could surely be also done in Photoshop). And that's what I thought of:

These are the steps to prepare this thing. If you want to do this, I recommend doing it before you get in the situation I mentioned at the top.

1. Make a new image. I use 1000x1000 Pixels with 72ppi to later print them out at 50% on one paper, cut them out and assemble them as a map at the game table. But it depends really on how you do these things.

2. Create 3 Layers. The one at the top should be transparent. Name the one at the bottom "Floor" the one in the middle "Walls" and the one at the top "Grid"

3. Choose 2 colors. These colours are used for your floor and the walls. I choosed a 70% gray for the floor and about 30% gray for the walls. Fill the corresponding layers with their colors.

4. Duplicate the Walls Layer and move the copy to the ground. Rename it to "Chasm" or whatever you want. Fill it with a bit darker color than the Walls layer. I used 20% gray.

5. Go to your Grid Layer and make a Grid. (Filters - Render - Pattern - Grid) How big you make the grid does really matter on what you plan to do with the map. I usually choose a grid with no offset and a spacing of 100 pixels.



6. Now turn off the visibility of all layers except the floor layer and add a new layer directly above the floor layer and name it "Floor Noise".

7. Use the Solid Noise Cloud filter on the floor noise layer (Filter - Render - Clouds - Solid Noise). I recommend experimenting a bit with the properties of this filter until you get the result you like. I used a detail, the X- and Y-size of 8 for the floor.

8. Set the blending mode of the floor noise layer to overlay.

9. Create another layer directly above the floor noise layer, name it "Floor Bump" and fill it with 50% gray. Now use a bump map on it. (Filters - Map - Bump Map). As the bump map take of course the floor noise layer. I set the map type to sinusoidal. My Azimuth is everywhere in every map 120 but you can set it to what you like I think. I played around a bit with the Elevation and the Depth until I get the Effect I want. In my test tutorial map the elevation was 35 and the depth 10.

10. Set the blending mode of the floor bump layer to overlay.



11. Now to the walls. Repeat steps 6-8 with the "Walls" layer but use other values. For the Solid Noise Clouds I used a detail of 15 and a X- and Y-size of 10.

12. Create a new layer named "Wall Bump Map" and will it with Solid Noise Clouds setting the mode to turbulent using a new random seed. I used a detail of 15, a X- and Y-size of 16. Turn the visibility of this layer off.

13. Repeat Steps 9 and 10 only use the "Wall Bump Map" layer instead of the "Wall Noise" layer as the bump map. My elevation in the test map was set to 40, my depth 20.



14. The Chasm area is done exactly like the walls only at step 12 you use a smaller Y-Size for the Solid Noise Clouds. I use a detail of 10, a X-size of 16 and a Y-size of 6. For the Bump Map at step 13 I used a higher depth. In the test map it's 30.



Now you are all set up. Save this image. I use it as a baseline for every dungeon map I make. I tried keeping as modular as possible so you could easily change things without having to start over again.