Thank you all for your continued support for this challenge! JimP, Dogtag, Lorelei, Barliman, Quenten, Topdecker, Tonnichiwa, Jensen, Loopysue, LordEntrails, and Ralf! - Thank you for following the thread. I'm humbled, and very pleased that you all like the maps.
It's my fortnightly D&D 5e game tomorrow, so I will be out all day and won't get back until late, so my next submission will be on Sunday - and again I will extend the challenge for an additional day. But today, as mentioned in the Old World map post, I can reveal the other adventure that I stuck in the middle of my "Golden Child" campaign, with no tracing - just artistic interpretation.
If any of you have ever seen The Golden Child, Eddie Murphy has to retrieve a dagger from a Tibetan monastery in order to kill the bad guy. Well, I wasn't interested in Tibetan monasteries, but I was interested in Castles - and Vampires - and decided that was where the needed dagger was located, in the foothills of the mountains South of Ounelles in Bretonnia (please see the Old World map above to see where I set the adventure). Of course, It was my vampire and I mapped an original castle on squared paper myself, but I think many of you will know where I got the inspiration for the adventure from...?
So without further ado (again), I present Herwin Wielink and Par Lindstrom meet Strahd von Zarovich!!!
Forgot to mention the nifty way you did the road winding along the mountains, and the different widths to force perspective there, too. Nice touch, that.
Another great looking map!. I concur with dogtag. Nice way to force the perspective. I also like how you used the waves for the ocean as the bottoms of the waterfalls. Nice touch.
DMG - this thread is rapidly becoming the place to be for cartographic eye-candy
Posted By: Topdecker
Posted By: Loopysue Sadly I came at mapping from the pov of a writer, and have never played any games to be able to say much more than that
Do you map after writing, or write after mapping? I am curious about that since I frequently have an adventure in mind, but the process of mapping further embellishes the story elements.
Tim
To answer your question, Topdecker, it depends how the mood takes me. I rarely have any visualisation problems with a scene, so the writing usually comes first, but that's not a hard and fast rule. There are a couple of threads on this forum where the opposite happened - the Arramatapo thread is one. There I just started a map to try out a new technique of my own, and it became a story. Perhaps the most enjoyable part was how everyone chipped in with suggestions about the story as the map developed
I was introduced to roleplaying, in it's most basic form, by Ian Livingstone's and Steve Jackson's Fighting Fantasy series of books (WOFTM, Starship Traveller, and Freeway Fighter were my favourites!), so today's map is a tribute to them.
While the focus of the map is from Steve Jackson's Sorcery! series, the map is my homage to Fighting Fantasy as a whole. There are loads of maps that I could have chosen from, but I remember reading Sorcery! and being presented with a full-page image of the view from the Cantopani Gate as one of the first views of an epic journey that continued in Khare: Cityport of Traps, The Seven Serpents and concluded in The Crown of Kings. It brings back wonderful memories.
You will recognise the Mike Schley style, and I have taken some artistic licence to add names of locations that are un-named on the original maps, but hope you all enjoy it nevertheless.
robotrock - Absolutely makes sense! it's something that I've never tried before this challenge, but some styles are just wonderfully detailed and particularly suited to create a "picture" rather than a traditional map. It kinda brings the setting to life for me, putting you "inside" the world depicted, and I've very much enjoyed making the last two maps.
I'm on 2pm-10pm shifts at work this week, so I get a lie-in, but then have little time for mapping between getting ready to go to work in the mornings and not getting home until after 10:30pm - especially seeing as I'm going to have to watch my recording of the new season of GoT as soon as I get in...
So I'm posting early today, and I'm cheating on the challenge in three ways.
First Cheat - I'm not bringing you a classic recreation. I've decided to go for a recreation of a classic style.
Second Cheat - I had to use photoshop-like software in order to create this map. Simply to import an image of the original map style so I could pipette the colours and build an authentic custom palette in CC3
Third Cheat - I said a custom palette in CC3 because I created this map many years ago, before CC3+ was released.
The story is that Ralf gave a free download of this style on the Profantasy site some years ago. I don't know if it's still there, or if it's compatible with CC3+ (being lazy and not looking... lol), but it was a wonderful style.
All I did to create this map was take that style and modify the symbol catalogue to change the symbol colours to my custom palette, created a couple of symbols that weren't available in the style, and modified others to better reflect the source style.
I do have the original CC3 .fcw file and it opens in CC3+. The created/modified symbols are all in the symbol manager, and it was a simple job to replace the fonts that seemed to be the only thing that CC3+ couldn't import, probably because I don't have the DominicanCaps font on my Surface.
So, enjoy my recreation of this classic style... courtesy of Ralf.
DMG
BTW: If anyone would like a copy of the CC3 .fcw for this style I will happily post it for you to play with. I'm not sure if It will require any work. The symbols only exist in the symbol catalogue, and I'm not sure if sharing it retains the custom palette, and I seem to remember having to do a lot of work to create the coastline, but let me know!
That's the one, Dogtag! I knew it would still be somewhere. I really was just too lazy to look, but now you provided the link and I've seen all the free samples available (I'd forgotten how many cool styles are offered free, and wasn't aware they were all updated for CC3+) I'll be grabbing those!
Also, kudos for your translation work! I missed this style very much when I originally updated to CC3+, but I'll certainly be revisiting it again now you've pointed me in the right direction.
One important note, I checked with Ralf and the link to the individual, non-bundled issue (here) is still for the CC3 version. But the bundle has the CC3+ version. I edited my post above to reflect that.
Well, this is the last entry for my challenge, and it seems I failed. Although every map took less than a day to create (and in many cases mere hours or less), I didn't manage to post one every day. I fudged the rules of the challenge to suit life circumstances, and cheated several times - so a fail.
On the other hand, I had tremendous fun creating these maps, ended up posting more than the seven for the week, and hope I invoked a bit of nostalgia in everyone who has followed this thread, or at least just enjoyment in viewing my maps.
Thank you all again for the kind comments and support. I may well revisit this challenge again in the future as I have ideas for many more Classic Recreations from many RPG systems I have studied in the past, but for now I leave you with my final map that pays homage to two classic campaign settings in one. It's a very simple map, but I hope you enjoy it and recognise the settings that I refer to.
In the meantime, I'm going to continue working on my current setting of Aethir, and plan on creating a thread that details my world in the near future.
If ProFantasy still gave out the Master Mapper awards, I would certainly nominate you DMG! All of your maps are beautiful but your world map just has me speechless. Wow!
Cheers Shessar! There are so many superb cartographers on the forums - you only have to look at the contributions to the Community Atlas to see that - we'd probably all end up with a MM award in the end!
Your maps look amazingly beautiful! You have - among other things - an incredible sense for the placement of the texts. It's just perfect, really! This is something I always struggle with and it can destroy an entire map, if the texts are badly placed or have the wrong size. But you've done it perfectly, especially on the maps in the classic fantasy style. Great job!
Also:
Posted By: ShessarIf ProFantasy still gave out the Master Mapper awards, I would certainly nominate you DMG! All of your maps are beautiful but your world map just has me speechless. Wow!
They don't give them out anymore? That was my main motivation to stubbornly stick to do CC3+ even though things could sometimes have been done a lot easier in other software:P
Posted By: HadrianVIThey don't give them out anymore? That was my main motivation to stubbornly stick to do CC3+ even though things could sometimes have been done a lot easier in other software:P
Hahaha! Don't worry Hadrien...you (and Sue, and Lorelei, and Charles, and Tony...and...and...and...) would also get my vote. Probably why they don't hand out the rewards now...Far too many great mappers around here to pick just one.
That's actually pretty true. I feel it's almost impossible to pick a Master Mapper from all the great artists producing CC3+ maps - especially since they are all friendly and very helpful on this forum too!
There are a lot of them, true, but it might still be a worthwhile tradition to pick back up. I think everyone understands that the choosing will never be an exact science anyway, and will just be happy for the person that did get picked. Excluding winners of the title from previous years also cuts a bit back on candidates as the years pass.
Posted By: HadrianVIThey don't give them out anymore? That was my main motivation to stubbornly stick to do CC3+ even though things could sometimes have been done a lot easier in other software:P
Hahaha! Don't worry Hadrien...you (and Sue, and Lorelei, and Charles, and Tony...and...and...and...) would also get my vote. Probably why they don't hand out the rewards now...Far too many great mappers around here to pick just one.
Haha, I did not mean to suggest that I thought deserved it, I do not:D There are many mappers, including yourself, that are a lot better than me.
But the (inexistent) possibility of one day becoming a Master Mapper - and defiance towards the haughtiness of some PS-Mappers - has in fact been a major motivation to get better with my map making.
I should have links on my Crestar site to past symbol get togethers. I made ponds, billard tables, a slot machine, and drive-in movie theaters for those.
Comments
Another day. Another classic recreation!
Thank you all for your continued support for this challenge! JimP, Dogtag, Lorelei, Barliman, Quenten, Topdecker, Tonnichiwa, Jensen, Loopysue, LordEntrails, and Ralf! - Thank you for following the thread. I'm humbled, and very pleased that you all like the maps.
It's my fortnightly D&D 5e game tomorrow, so I will be out all day and won't get back until late, so my next submission will be on Sunday - and again I will extend the challenge for an additional day. But today, as mentioned in the Old World map post, I can reveal the other adventure that I stuck in the middle of my "Golden Child" campaign, with no tracing - just artistic interpretation.
If any of you have ever seen The Golden Child, Eddie Murphy has to retrieve a dagger from a Tibetan monastery in order to kill the bad guy. Well, I wasn't interested in Tibetan monasteries, but I was interested in Castles - and Vampires - and decided that was where the needed dagger was located, in the foothills of the mountains South of Ounelles in Bretonnia (please see the Old World map above to see where I set the adventure). Of course, It was my vampire and I mapped an original castle on squared paper myself, but I think many of you will know where I got the inspiration for the adventure from...?
So without further ado (again), I present Herwin Wielink and Par Lindstrom meet Strahd von Zarovich!!!
DMG
Tim
I was introduced to roleplaying, in it's most basic form, by Ian Livingstone's and Steve Jackson's Fighting Fantasy series of books (WOFTM, Starship Traveller, and Freeway Fighter were my favourites!), so today's map is a tribute to them.
While the focus of the map is from Steve Jackson's Sorcery! series, the map is my homage to Fighting Fantasy as a whole. There are loads of maps that I could have chosen from, but I remember reading Sorcery! and being presented with a full-page image of the view from the Cantopani Gate as one of the first views of an epic journey that continued in Khare: Cityport of Traps, The Seven Serpents and concluded in The Crown of Kings. It brings back wonderful memories.
You will recognise the Mike Schley style, and I have taken some artistic licence to add names of locations that are un-named on the original maps, but hope you all enjoy it nevertheless.
DMG
robotrock - Absolutely makes sense! it's something that I've never tried before this challenge, but some styles are just wonderfully detailed and particularly suited to create a "picture" rather than a traditional map. It kinda brings the setting to life for me, putting you "inside" the world depicted, and I've very much enjoyed making the last two maps.
I'm on 2pm-10pm shifts at work this week, so I get a lie-in, but then have little time for mapping between getting ready to go to work in the mornings and not getting home until after 10:30pm - especially seeing as I'm going to have to watch my recording of the new season of GoT as soon as I get in...
So I'm posting early today, and I'm cheating on the challenge in three ways.
First Cheat - I'm not bringing you a classic recreation. I've decided to go for a recreation of a classic style.
Second Cheat - I had to use photoshop-like software in order to create this map. Simply to import an image of the original map style so I could pipette the colours and build an authentic custom palette in CC3
Third Cheat - I said a custom palette in CC3 because I created this map many years ago, before CC3+ was released.
The story is that Ralf gave a free download of this style on the Profantasy site some years ago. I don't know if it's still there, or if it's compatible with CC3+ (being lazy and not looking... lol), but it was a wonderful style.
All I did to create this map was take that style and modify the symbol catalogue to change the symbol colours to my custom palette, created a couple of symbols that weren't available in the style, and modified others to better reflect the source style.
I do have the original CC3 .fcw file and it opens in CC3+. The created/modified symbols are all in the symbol manager, and it was a simple job to replace the fonts that seemed to be the only thing that CC3+ couldn't import, probably because I don't have the DominicanCaps font on my Surface.
So, enjoy my recreation of this classic style... courtesy of Ralf.
DMG
BTW: If anyone would like a copy of the CC3 .fcw for this style I will happily post it for you to play with. I'm not sure if It will require any work. The symbols only exist in the symbol catalogue, and I'm not sure if sharing it retains the custom palette, and I seem to remember having to do a lot of work to create the coastline, but let me know!
Second, I can personally guarantee this style (Cartographer's Annual Issue #43) has been translated for CC3+ since I'm the poor slob who updated it.
The official conversion is also free! Folks can get it bundled with the other free Annual issues here.
Brilliantly done, sir. Fantastic map.
Small side note: I, too, converted this style on my own, before I officially converted the annuals for ProFantasy, ha ha!
Also, kudos for your translation work! I missed this style very much when I originally updated to CC3+, but I'll certainly be revisiting it again now you've pointed me in the right direction.
Cheers, man!
DMG
Well, this is the last entry for my challenge, and it seems I failed. Although every map took less than a day to create (and in many cases mere hours or less), I didn't manage to post one every day. I fudged the rules of the challenge to suit life circumstances, and cheated several times - so a fail.
On the other hand, I had tremendous fun creating these maps, ended up posting more than the seven for the week, and hope I invoked a bit of nostalgia in everyone who has followed this thread, or at least just enjoyment in viewing my maps.
Thank you all again for the kind comments and support. I may well revisit this challenge again in the future as I have ideas for many more Classic Recreations from many RPG systems I have studied in the past, but for now I leave you with my final map that pays homage to two classic campaign settings in one. It's a very simple map, but I hope you enjoy it and recognise the settings that I refer to.
In the meantime, I'm going to continue working on my current setting of Aethir, and plan on creating a thread that details my world in the near future.
Take care, all!
DMG
Glad you enjoyed them
DMG
Cheers Shessar! There are so many superb cartographers on the forums - you only have to look at the contributions to the Community Atlas to see that - we'd probably all end up with a MM award in the end!
Thanks
DMG
Your maps look amazingly beautiful! You have - among other things - an incredible sense for the placement of the texts. It's just perfect, really!
This is something I always struggle with and it can destroy an entire map, if the texts are badly placed or have the wrong size. But you've done it perfectly, especially on the maps in the classic fantasy style.
Great job!
Also: They don't give them out anymore? That was my main motivation to stubbornly stick to do CC3+ even though things could sometimes have been done a lot easier in other software:P
But the (inexistent) possibility of one day becoming a Master Mapper - and defiance towards the haughtiness of some PS-Mappers - has in fact been a major motivation to get better with my map making.