Madness at Gardmore Abbey Encounter Maps

I think the path looks good. It's rather refreshing to see something not quite "in the lines" so to speak. The bull is good... Horse is to dark IMO, but it might just be it's shadowing. The triceritops is good, but the shadows are wrong...light on the south dark on north when the lighting is coming from NE(perhaps just a quick turn to the opposite direction???)

One question though(not that it's bad or looks out of place or needs to be changed), but why would someone build their walkway into a trough? Of course, if it rarely rains or snows or whatever, it's a moot point.. just something that stuck out at me since it appears quite a bit "deeper"(perhaps 9-12 inches or more?) than the surrounding ground

Good catch on the triceratops. I turned it and moved it somewhere completely different. Also reduced the gully along the road (it was supposed to be terracing as the slope falls away, but obviously it did not work) and also fixed up some errors with the interior shadows in the shack. The triceratops is too bright (which is why I had shoved it behind the house earlier) - I can't seem to make the colours match the bull and horse - I may have to delete it completely (much to my regret).

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I thought that I would also show a WIP glimpse of the final overview map. The base map with the buildings is part of the larger map as published by WotC, to which I have overlaid the green bits. You should be able to make out the first three encounters on it. The red squares are the next three. It seems to be working ok so far, and its nice that each encounter area is recognisable.

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Well even though the last map is not at all finished I have to keep powering on with the rest of them, until I know where my PCs are going to begin - damned non-linear adventures. So here is - the Belltower. The map is supposed to show steeply sloping paths winding up the hill, but I don't think I have been able to achieve that with my shadows. I'm getting a terrace effect rather than a slope. I'm happy with my steps, but I think they need a lot of shading work to make it more obvious which parts are leading up and which are leading down. The roof is from these forums - it was an orange tile roof and I changed the hue to make it slate.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

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EDIT: attempt number 2 - better slopes, but is it too dark?

Also - I want to add a huge broken and overgrown bell on the slopes, that fell from the belltower. No idea how that's going to work out.

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EDIT2: Added the bell. The map is a bit dark, but I quite like it. I'm especially proud of my steps.

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This is an absolutely terrible photo-montage of the PCs first view of Gardmore Abbey. I had intended to draw it properly but I had no time - the PCs are arriving there tomorrow... - so I copy-pasted a bunch of images from the googleweb and stuck them into a collage to make this franken-thing. I used a cartoonify filter to disguise its awfulness but it just made it worse.

Still, at least this way they will be pleasantly surprised when they see my encounter maps. So long as they head to the foresty-bits first, rather than the gatehouse and village.... I'm going to need to make a bunch more encounter maps this weekend I think.

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I have been looking at this and I like the collection of maps as a package. I might even buy a product that had them all combined into one place.

For the last image, I like it the way it is. To use in game I would put a scroll border around it, making it look like it was cut/torn out of a frame. The PCs carry this around to know which of the little hill towns they are encountering is the correct one that they are supposed to be visiting.

Or I would just post that image you have on my website and call it done.

Nice work

BOB

Fantastic collection of maps, can't wait to see more!

Thanks for the encouragement. Anstett, these maps would never be on sale because they include many elements that were created by this community and other people, uploaded for free, for free use only. So even if you wanted to buy them you wouldn't be allowed. Feel free to use them though.

Right - I have two encounter maps left for this area, then depending on what the PCs do I can either improve them or start the next area. The next two are the font of ioun (for which I intend to use the excellent jungle alter set-piece uploaded a while ago on these very forums - have to do a search and find it) and the watchtower. For the watchtower I am using as a base a sketch of a tower that I also found on these forums - I wish I wrote down the name of the authors so I could thank them, but I always forget.

Anywhere, here is the first WIP. This map uses a 50 pixel grid so that the tower is eight grid squares in diameter - important for the internal parts. The next step is to find a jagged rocky outcrop texture using my googlefu. If anyone remembers the name of the original artist sketch let me know.

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frankenlandscape.. bahahahaha.. still doesn't look bad.. why not just let them see it in thumbnail only :P

Okay here is WIP 2 of the Watchtower. I think that the exterior is pretty much done now except for adding some trees - I'm not that fussed about the outside anyway. Mostly this is an interior encounter, over a number of tiers. I plan on blurring the background various amounts for the interior maps to depict height. I also need to do the interior of the belltower...

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EDIT: And now I have finally finished tweaking:

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Amazingly, it takes twice as long to go from the middle WIP to the finished map/last WIP (both on this post) then it does to go from the first concept (last post) to the middle WIP.

That last one almost looks like a 3d render. Nice...