[WIP] Village: Port Therlu
ScottA
Surveyor
Early days yet, but the start of my drow town, Port Therlu. Hard to get a good balance on the darkness so it looks subterranean yet you can still see details! Much left to do, obviously...
Comments
I would like to start a map and this seems like a good size.
But i can never get it right. Always too large or too small.
I'm with Lorelei on the being a bit dark thing. You can make things look dark without them being really all that dark at all, just by adding points of light and manipulating the colours a bit. For example, if you make it more bluish grey or grey instead of all-out black darkness, and then add tiny pools of orange lamp light using the dungeon lighting scheme, you can have everything a lot lighter and more visible than it currently is.
The only quick example I have of this (and you will have to forgive me here for posting an image on your thread) is an extract of a night time village I did based vaguely on the concept contained in the Demon Cycle books by Peter V Brett - of a village that must be protected from demons by magic symbols that glow with power in the dead of night. In this example the light is bluish green, but it would perhaps have been more effective if I had chosen yellowish orange light and given the crops around the magic glyphs daylight colours where the rest is bluish grey.
How about doing the title a bit smaller. It kind of screams out of the map at that size. Maybe half the size would be better? If you did it that big to make it stand out from the map, how about putting it on a plate of its own - not too different from the background... maybe a bit like a bit of parchment?
You might want to EFI the edge of that raised level a bit. Its a bit harsh.
Other than that its looking really good
Yes, I need to add in smaller roads yet. These are just the major ones. The original idea for the buildings on the water was to run docks along them but that is going to be a tedious endeavor, so I have to rethink that unless I just use a wood fill...
Agree about the scale, although I thought the compass face was sort of Drowish. Maybe I'll throw a mask over it to bring down the color and change the scale bar.
Also, agree about the land being too sharp and needing an edge fade.
iridescent colours get me every time.
So it really is water? Hmmm. Maybe something a bit more watery than that might work better?
Maybe its not the one to use with that particular darkening method. If you are using an RGB matrix and blend mode over the map to turn it all blue-grey, then you may need to use something with a tad more contrast on the black/white scale (though obviously not very much more - just enough to show some kind of texture)
Mapping anything in the underdark is always a challenge. Your maps hit the mark every time. I will eventually send my players back to the underdark just so that I can use your maps. My players will not be happy.
I'm not getting this at all am I!
First I think the water is mud, then I think the mushrooms are trees.
Maybe I need to do some research on Drow stuff so I don't get it all mixed up in the future...
That's a better water texture.
Its such a pretty map it would be a shame to put labels all over it. Is there space for a legend? Not really I suppose.
I really like the map. At the beginning I had no idea how to find it, as I never did something in the underdark nor played there, but over the time my understanding grew and now you got me!