The Wilds - Just in Cave

A short turn this round. With the PCs deciding to take a break from the downpour they find themselves in, they head into the cave for a short break. As they soon find out, there's a bit more to it than that...

Tiled Floor Tutorial using Inkscape and Gimp

Over on G+ I was asked how I created the tile floor I showed in my tile grunge tutorial. Here's the basic method I used, in what I hope is a useful format. First, here's what we're shooting for:

Let's begin, shall we?

Tile Grunge in Gimp Tutorial

I've been doing a bunch of work with floor tiles this weekend, and stumbled across a pretty quick and easy way to add some nice grout grunge to floor tiles using the standard filters available in Gimp. Here you go!

The Tombs - V2

Here's another look at my current mapping project, The Tombs (previous round here). After exporting the first version to Gimp and doing some work on the floors, walls and doors, I found myself unhappy with some of the corridor layouts relative to the grid. This version is reworked to align some corridors and clean up some doorways. Once again, this is a poor quality, low-resolution Inkscape export with a texture slapped into the background. It's nowhere near done.

You might note a few additional details here, like a whole bunch of caskets and coffins. I decided a project based in a tomb needed to show these, so I'll be messing about with how to make them interesting without them turning to mush. I've also added a few markers for statues and altars, but I'm not sure how I'll handle those. The red areas will be raised platforms, the pink will be stairs.

The Wilds - Another Day, Another Tree

In which, the party finds their way blocked by a huge stand of thorny shrubs, and takes a detour...

Koslac's Crossing - Now Available

Koslac's Crossing is now available on DriveThruRPG! I'm pretty pleased (and nervous) about putting this up. It's the first map project I've published, and the first PDF I've produced myself. Fingers are crossed.

I'm still trying to figure out DriveThruRPG's preview publishing. The last two products I've published, Deadly Blows, and Tome of Names Volume One, have both been PDF, so the built in PDF previews have worked. This product is a zip, so I want to show a sample section from the map. Apparently the sample image got lost in translation. If you want to check out some of the early-stage art you can see it here and (even better) here.

So what's in the package you ask? Here's the summary:

A 13-page PDF containing a brief site history, architectural notes, and compact, printable maps for use in preparing encounters and content.

Three different versions of each of the dungeon's two level maps. Levels are approximately 300 feet by 300 feet, and maps are marked with a five-foot grid (60 by 60 grid squares, 70px per square). The following maps are included:

• GM Maps - numbered, all secret doors/passages shown.
• Keyed Player Maps - numbered, no secret doors/passages shown.
• Unkeyed Player Maps - no numbers, no secret doors/passages shown.

Note that these maps are probably not good candidates for battlemap printing. They really were intended for virtual tabletops.

You can get the whole thing right here.

And since DriveThru is still being finicky about the sample image, here's a preview.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

The Tombs - New Mapping Project

Here's a first look at a new mapping project. The Tombs is a collection of underground crypts and tunnels, complete with its own worship area, body preparation chamber, waiting rooms and reception areas, and priest / attendant quarters. This is a quick export from Inkscape showing the main rooms and corridors. I did a quick fill using Gimp to provide a little texture and contrast. The lines are a bit fuzzed because Inkscape's png export is sub-par.

I'm going to try a more old-school doors-as-squares and black-lines-for-walls look with this project and see how it goes. I'm also going to work in a larger scale in Gimp. I targeted Koslac's Crossing at Roll20's native 70px grid resolution. I'm going to do my Gimp work at 300 dpi with this map. This is a smaller map too, as it's built on a 40x40 grid of five-foot squares compared to Koslac's 60x60 grid.

One of the mental hurdles I always face with virtual maps is the ten-foot versus the five-foot corridor. When I started gaming, it was all graph-paper all the time, and my brain's native resolution was 10' squares. With the advent of battlemaps and virtual tabletops based on five-foot grids, it's sometimes tough for me to plan out corridors I'm happy with. I'm relatively pleased with this (so far).