Elven Village - Personal Campaign/Community Atlas
Monsen
Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
So, I needed an elven village for this weekend's game. Below you can see the first iteration of this map.
Personally, I am not that fond of elves building their houses inside trees (or in the treetops) [not to mention that kind of architecture requires a very convenient supply of unnaturally large trees, not commonly encountered [and I am also not much into the throwing magic at every mundane thing situation]], so the village is just regular buildings, but I put an emphasis on the elves trying to live more in harmony with their nature and trying to find appropriate spots for their buildings rather than chop down the trees in the area. This lead to a kind of "open" village, at least when the number of structures are concerned.
The map is a bit busy, but that is kind of intentional, I wanted a lot of vegetation around.
The map is also a bit flat, I'll try to gather some inspiration form Shessar's Bryn map and perhaps make it a few elevation levels.
That thing in the middle of a map is a tower (a library to be exact). The players have seen a similar tower before, and I wanted a slightly elongated design without making it an oval, so I settled on that shape (The star-shaped platform is just the outside at ground level)
I'll see how much time I have to improve this map. It is for the game this weekend, and once the players have seen it, it is kind of locked in as far as changes go, so unless I get to fix things before then, it stays like this.
I also plan on finding somewhere in the atlas to put it as well.
[Image_12457]
Personally, I am not that fond of elves building their houses inside trees (or in the treetops) [not to mention that kind of architecture requires a very convenient supply of unnaturally large trees, not commonly encountered [and I am also not much into the throwing magic at every mundane thing situation]], so the village is just regular buildings, but I put an emphasis on the elves trying to live more in harmony with their nature and trying to find appropriate spots for their buildings rather than chop down the trees in the area. This lead to a kind of "open" village, at least when the number of structures are concerned.
The map is a bit busy, but that is kind of intentional, I wanted a lot of vegetation around.
The map is also a bit flat, I'll try to gather some inspiration form Shessar's Bryn map and perhaps make it a few elevation levels.
That thing in the middle of a map is a tower (a library to be exact). The players have seen a similar tower before, and I wanted a slightly elongated design without making it an oval, so I settled on that shape (The star-shaped platform is just the outside at ground level)
I'll see how much time I have to improve this map. It is for the game this weekend, and once the players have seen it, it is kind of locked in as far as changes go, so unless I get to fix things before then, it stays like this.
I also plan on finding somewhere in the atlas to put it as well.
[Image_12457]
![[Image_12457]](http://cc.monsen.cc/img/elven%20village.png){kind=link}
Comments
A great map, sorry for the nitpicks.
I agree with Quenten on the wiggly-sided river at this scale, where you might expect to see the small variations in width here and there, but I think the colour is more guilty of making it look 'artificial'. Maybe not such a very bright blue might help?
A bit of elevation would look brilliant.
I like the look of this. I even like the blue of the river! Granted it may look a little too uniform for some, that doesn't bother me at all...it is a fantasy map, that river could have been man (or elf) made.
Maybe one thing that might help it along (and I can't believe I'm actually giving you suggestions!), is if you could somehow define the riverbank a little better? Give it a bit of elevation, so that it looks like the river cut into the banks?
It looks great! I especially like the complimentary colors of the trees. This is what I've been wanting to do in my maps.
Addressed some of the complaints you horrible difficult people had ;-)
Also did some minor improvements.
Thanks for the feedback everyone, appreciate it.
I didn't mention this in the last post, but this place also harbors a dark secret. But that will have to wait for another time.
[Image_12461]
Don't think I actually used a single drawing tool in this map. Stuck to the basics, using the manual approach.
Well, there are quite a lot of them in there though. My maps actually have quite a large audience thanks to that book. Still think Corgin is my best map though, which I posted here a couple of months back. Trust me, that is by pure accident. When somebody starts talking about advanced color theories like complimentary colors and stuff, I just go "Huh!?!". I imagine this is much the same response that many others have when I try to tell them about programming and software development.
Thank you for sharing it with us
The raised terrace looks really great.
Great map. Where is it going in the Atlas?
Remy, have you thought about looking at one of the elven villages in the Elven Kingdom of Elen Daelarion.
So are you, and a lot of other people here in this forum too. Sharing one's creations with others are a great way of building the community, which repays itself when you can use maps other community members share. This is the foundation the atlas builds on, and thanks to you and many others, there are now a great selection of maps for everyone to use. I've had great use of the maps in the atlas myself.
Campaign Cartographer 3+
City Designer 3
Symbol Set 2: Fantasy Floorplans
The Cartographer's Annual vol 12 (2018)
CSUAC 2.0
Bogie's Mapping Objects
Dundjinni Archives
So, there you have it, the dark secret of the elven village (my map file is really named cursed village, but I wanted to hide that fact until my players found out. My players are very rarely here, but I never take unnecessary chances. There is more things to be discovered by my players yet, after all , I don't think they want to spend the rest of their adventuring career in this tiny village).
Parsing through your sheets, I have a couple of questions about your process. For me, the answer would be something along the lines of, "Seemed to be easiest at the time", but perhaps there is some higher reasoning and/or structure.
I note that you ave entities on the Riverbed sheet and the WATER/RIVERS sheet, that seem to be the same, differing in only fill style and/or color. To my eye, I cannot see the difference if I hide the riverbed sheet. Is it too subtle for my eyes to detect a difference? In general, what is the practical reason behind having a riverbed sheet?
Most (ALL?) of your trees are on the symbols sheet, and not the VEGETATION TREES sheet. For me it would be a matter of "When I placed the tree symbols they automatically went on the symbols sheet, and I left them there." Is that the case in this map, or is there something more subtle behind it?
Thanks, great map!
For the trees, I didn't have any reason to mess with the default sheet they where put on, so I didn't touch them. In hindsight, I should probably have had them on their own sheet to control the shadows better.
Generally, I don't do much planning ahead with the sheets though, I just tend to add new sheets whenever I discover I need them.
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You got a good name for the village that would fit with the setting?
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