Small Regional Map

[Trog]

Linky to regional map

I made this map as a zoomed-in portion of a larger map (Linky to that map though this one was snapped before I labeled everything) that my gaming group will be adventuring in for the next dozen playing sessions or so. I think it turned out better than the original larger map which probably means I'll be going back and fiddling with that some more. For the moment, though, this regional map is as done as I need it to be.

And the fact that I spent New Year's Eve at home making this map for Dungeons and Dragons pretty much says it all for my social life recently, doesn't it?

(Also, I hope I'm linking these images properly here. If there's supposed to be another, more proper way to do this someone give me a shout. )

[nichollsr]

I really like this. Its clean and simple yet gives enough information for you to start writing a campaign set there.

Out of interest where did you get the tree texture from ?

[Steel General]

Coming along nicely...

[Sarevokk]

That is pretty nice.

I would also like to know about those trees. They are beautiful.

[Trog]

You know the trickiest bit about posting in these forums is going to be giving credit where credit is due. I have so many elements I have taken from here and mostly no clue as to where I found them. Luckily I did remember where I got the trees though.

Tom_Cardin deserves all the credit. Here's his post. It's a seamless texture so I set it all up in a Photoshop layer set to multiply at 50% with a drop shadow (darken 50% Distance 8 Size 8 ), bevel and emboss (Smooth inner bevel Depth 150 Size 5 Highlight overlay 100% Shadow overlay 100%) Contour 50%. I used a scatter brush on the edges to give it the feel of small trees. Also I scaled the pattern down quite a bit.

Also I just read that bit you're supposed to read before posting a map here and realized I didn't give this map a proper explanation... so here goes: *ahem*

This map was created entirely in Photoshop CS for my gaming group who will be adventuring in this area for several playing sessions. Probably the first thing that you'll notice about this map is how minimal it is - many things are (*le gasp!* ) unlabeled. This was done deliberately in order to focus on the aspects of the map that are likely to come up most often in play.

My players have a hard enough time keeping track of all the NPC names, location names, nation names, history, plot, etc. that I felt it best to stick to the bare minimum descriptions. The Nations are labeled (and their borders) so that the PCs have a definite sense of when they are in enemy territory (in this case in Acheria). The major cities are labeled for ease of reference because I will be referring to them a lot over the course of this adventure. The roads were included to give some idea of how people typically get from point A to point B.

I had considered putting a grid of some sort on the map but I find those distracting to look at and kind of ugly, useful or no. Plus if I said that from Fallhollow to Cavorna is 50 miles as the crow flies it makes the topography a bit unbelievable as there would certainly be more detail in the landscape at this scale but the real world often looks pretty flat flying high above it and I like to keep the sense of vertical scale in the realm of the fantastically majestic. Plus if you look at, say, The Return of the King movie by Peter Jackson you will see this technique done with Minas Tirith. In the book there are houses and roads and trees and such all over the field between it and Osgiliath but to concentrate on the important stuff that was all wiped out and replaced with blank field.

Otherwise everything else has been left blank so I can, as a DM, make more use of the map. I can merely point to it to show where the PCs are located and where they are thinking of going. I have found that if I label each thing on a map I tend not to refer to it on the map - instead I say "You need to travel to the such-and-such forest" and many times the players don't even look at the map then. So in order to make the map more useful as a visual aid I had to leave a lot of it blank. Plus I'm a minimalist at heart.

The entire map was created by following the tutorial for Saderan posted here by the lovely and talented Tear. Although I deviated from the tutorial when it came to creating/choosing textures for different layers. I had created the overland map of the entire region covered by the campaign (a non-labeled version was posted here). I got the job done eventually (it was my first photoshop map) but it still needs some more work as I've improved my mountain making technique a bit since then. This little bit I shall call done, however - labels or no.