Shessar's Battlemap Competition- Winners Announced!

Greetings fellow mappers! Each year, my gaming group celebrates our years together by promoting some aspect of gaming. This year we are celebrating our group's 35th anniversary by sponsoring a mapping competition and offering ProFantasy store vouchers as prizes. ProFantasy is generously supporting our competition by adding additional prize vouchers to the pot. Read on to see the rules of the competition as well as what can be won.

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THE RULES - The competition is to create a Battlemap in the genre and setting of your choice with the following rules and conditions:

--Type of map: Battlemap, no frame
--Size: 150ft x 80ft (or 80ft x 150ft)
--Grid: It must have a 5 foot grid
--Genre: Any (Fantasy, SciFi, Modern or a combo of these for cross genre games)
--Setting: Any (Outdoor, building/room interior, ship interior, cave interior, etc)
--Software: Only ProFantasy software and symbols. (No post work or outside symbols)
--Entry: The map must be created solely for this competition. It must not have been posted or shared anywhere prior.
--A .png of the map must be posted to this thread. Please keep the width of the map within the margins of the forum.
--The map file (.FCW) must also be posted as a whisper to me (Shessar) to this thread. It will be used for viewing by the judges.
--Descriptions- Any description of the map will be ignored during judging. This is not a contest of creating a combat scenario or adventure, it is a mapping competition only.
--Only one entry per person.

Duration: The competition begins today, September 1, 2016 and will close at 11:59 PM North American Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4) on September 30, 2016. Winners will be announced on October 7, 2016.

Creator's Rights: You grant ProFantasy permission to post your map online if they wish, but you will retain all other rights. Your .fcw will be deleted from my computer after the competition is over.

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JUDGING - There are three criteria that the maps will be judged on:

Clarity of Design: Is it easy to tell what everything is? Can different heights, either of terrain or of objects, be determined? Is it clear whether stairs go up or down? Is there an obvious difference between trees and bushes? Can the players tell where their characters can and cannot walk? Etc.

Technical Skill: Have effects been used in the map? Are all symbols and fills placed on appropriate or correct sheets and layers? Are there any techniques used that add to either the Clarity of Design or Creative Design that stand out? Are the scale of objects correct? Etc.

Creative Design: Is the map interesting to look at? Does it inspire the player's imaginations? Is this a map the players would like to see used in game? Does it give the GM an interesting setting to design around? Is the layout focused enough to be a Battlemap? Etc.

The judges are myself and the 6 members of my gaming group. The decisions of the judges are final.

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Prizes

1st prize - $50 ProFantasy Store Voucher
2nd prize - $30 ProFantasy Store Voucher
3rd prize - $20 ProFantasy Store Voucher

ProFantasy is showing their generous support for this competition by offering a $10 gift voucher to each and every person that enters this competition! You do not have to be a master mapper to win a prize!


Please only post competition map pngs and fcws to this thread. Take any other questions or comments to their own thread.

Please show respect to your fellow competitors and have fun mapping!

Moderator Edit:
Dogtag started a discussion thread for this competion here.
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Comments

  • edited September 2016
    well this is great! Battlemaps are what i create mostly, for my own campaign....so count me in!!! Thanks Shessar and ProFantasy! - edit - sorry! i was so excited about this, i didn't even read all the way thru before posting my excitement! I'll add my entered map to this post when i'm through with it :)
  • This is super!

    I'm busy with too many other things to even think of entering, but this is really great!
  • edited September 2016
    There have been a couple of questions that have come up that I will clarify:

    -You may use any ProFantasy Symbols or Fills from any add-on or annual.
    -You may not use any Art from the CSUAC, Bogies Art, or any other outside artwork or package.
    -You may work in metric units if you would prefer, making the grid a 1.5m grid.

    Please post any further questions to This Thread.
  • The prize vouchers will be valid until 2019, so even if you currently have all of the ProFantasy software, you will be able to use the vouchers to purchase future products and annuals.
  • edited October 2016
    Feed Me!
    (1st ever battle map)
    by Charles W. Robinson
    Posted By: ShessarThe technical parts of the judging are complete so feel free to post your maps where ever you please, discuss how wonderful they all are, share fcw's, etc.
    My very 1st Battle Map - Enjoy! :-)

    A band of heroes have been dispatched to stop an evil cult from summoning the Great Devourer! As they approach the temple entrance through the woods, they spy the entrance. It has been a long journey this past month to get here. They have had to battle Prowler Rats, Shadow Bats, and Flash Spiders. They have lost all of their henchmen that they started with as well as dear Sir Fredrick. Across the creek is the temple entrance. Six poor souls are chained to the raised stone and stairs lead up to the temple doors. There is a single stone bridge crossing the creek. It is late evening and it is getting dark fast. There are four fires blazing, one at each corner of the bridge, and their seems to be a lit candle in the middle of the bridge for some reason. Braziers line the top of the raised stones where the entrance is. Great demonic golden statues stand guard on either side with piles of skulls laying beyond. They know that something is not quite right though. The temple doors stand open and their seems to be skeletal remains in the entrance. The smell of burnt flesh comes on the breeze. Tellian, the Elven ranger, moves forward to scout around and soon returns back to the group reporting that he found tracks leading from the bridge. They are made by sandaled feet and are only hours hold. In addition, there is a magical symbol of some type, rendered in blood, upon the top of the bridge. The single candle lays in the middle of it. They discuss the situation and decide to examine the magical symbol instead of fording the creek. Johnathan the cleric, can feel the evil emitting from the bloody display and after casting a few auguries, informs the small band what he has found. The magical symbol and the lit candle are binding magic. For as long as the candle burns, whatever is inside the temple cannot leave. The heroes suspect that the human remains at the temple doors are cultists that tried to flee like the others. It seems that the Great Devourer has already been summoned and lays within, waiting on them. Kar the Barbarian, takes a few steps forward to get a closer look at the open temple doors. And then everyone freezes in place, for the two golden statues turn to gaze upon the bridge.

    Here is the link to the larger version
  • I'm just bumping this up so that it doesn't get lost on the second page of the forum.
  • Well, that pentacle on the bridge looks ominous. :)
  • A World Within a World
    by S D McDaniel (LadieStorm)
  • Storm, this is beautiful!! Great job! I am unfortunately not going to be able to enter this contest. I was commissioned by a company to make a total of 4 2'x3' maps for their line of rpg games, so i've been developing some ideas and gearing up to start working on these maps! Good luck to you all! I'll be watching :)
    sla
  • edited October 2016
    Mappy's Moonlight Murder Monster Mayhem


    Gday everyone.

    Here is a link to a high resolution image of the map.

    The glow effects on the grid have been set so when printed to PDF at 720dpi the glow is visible but not overpowering. If you are only looking at the FCW you might have to turn down the glow effects on the grid sheet.

    The top two layers in the FCW can be toggled on and off to either show or hide the treasure beside the little cockatrice and the pit trap down from the stairs.

    Cheers
    Mike
  • RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
    I've made the thread stick for the duration of the competition.
  • ArgoForgArgoForg Newcomer
    edited October 2016
    Here's mine....Ambush Point

    (Edit, 10/03/2016): Added FCW file for everyone to looksee if they'd like!
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    edited October 2016
    My first ever battle map.

    Henge Portal
  • Very nice! I love the how the two different light sources interact!
  • @Sue, I love the story implicit in the map and the spooky effect of the lights on the map!

    LLAP

    Nacon4
  • Blue and orange are complimentary colors which is why the light sources are interacting so well.

    You see a lot of digital recoloring of things to blue and orange, set lighting, etc. in movies and TV to do this. It also has a popping effect I understand with 3D film, which is another reason it shows up a lot. You can actually find some very good articles online that talk about it. In most films and TV it doesn't look good as it is over used and things are made too blue orange often.

    The map did a good job of not over using the coloring, so it looks great.

    Very nice spooky map
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Thank you both. I can't really say much more than that because I'm trying my hardest to keep the discussion over on the discussion thread ;)
  • OK, so here goes, a bunch of first..first image export and post to a forum ever, first noob map with CC and first ever battle map! So I title it appropriately the Journey Begins.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    edited October 2016
    My entry. It is called "Breaking Through".

    Click the image for access to a high-res version as well as a daylight version.
    If you open the hi-res version of the file you're immediately going to see a very stupid mistake I did when creating the PNG. I didn't notice until after I posted it, and didn't have time to correct it later. It is only on the image though, not the map itself.

    [Image_6641]
  • GatharGathar Traveler
    edited October 2016
    Hello, this is my contribution for this competition, the map is named: "The sanctum of Nidaba, dying goddess of seasons"


    image


    Even though comments will be ignored for the competition, I wanted to give some details on what I was thinking while designing the map, and what I've tried to depict, in order to share some of my thoughts while drawing this.

    My main current campaign take place in an Arabian nights setting, with lots of deserts, and a never-ending summer. But is has not been so all the time. 2000 years ago, there was a huge battle against djinns invading our green and temperate world. This battle almost destroyed the world and turned most of it into a desert, something like a magically-powered global warming.

    So it seemed appropriate to me that the goddess of seasons is in a comatose state since this battle, resting in her sanctum until the world could be healed, and the seasonal cycle could resume.

    The Escher-like stairwell (well it's Escher-like in idea, but this is really hard to show from a top view...) in the middle of the map is called "The never ending spiral of time". It represents the fact that even as time goes by, the four seasons repeat themselves each year. Priests were supposed to take this stairs only up, never down, because time always goes in one direction only... Or does it?

    The white vegetation with light randomly coming out of it, as well as the black holes, represent the fact that since the goddess is badly hurt, she cannot fully maintain the integrity of her sanctum. Should she die, the sanctum would dissipate into the nether world.

    Initially, this place is not a castle, nor a dungeon, but a sanctum, placed in another plane of existence. It meant several things to me when designing the map. First, there aren't any notions of inside or outside, of days and nights, and seasons are different places, not different times. Secondly, this is the real home of the highest ranking members of Nidaba's clergy, where they could live together with an avatar of the goddess herself. This means that it should basically be a comfortable, pleasant and peaceful place to live. But in the 2000 years since Nibada is comatose, thinks may have changed a little... What would be a battlemap with a battle! :)

    The goddess was modest, benevolent, mostly worshipped by peasants. Her sanctum is small, not everything is paved with gold, the furniture is mostly simple. Being a goddess of agriculture, she is also a goddess of wealth, everything is in abundance here, but most of it is non showy.

    Hope you'll like it, and thank you a lot Shessar for enticing us all into producing battlemaps!
  • edited October 2016
    Here it goes. Part of the Younger Sister keepfortress.
    image

    //Linked a bigger picture.

    //Attached .fcw.
  • The competition is now closed.

    Thank you to everyone who entered and to everyone who wished us well!

    My gaming group will be meeting several times this week to review the maps and cast our votes for the winners. I'll post the results next Friday at the latest. The entries are amazing and I know that we are going to have a tough time picking one over another.
  • Nice, nice competition!

    Nice, nice entries!

    For me, one sticks out heads and tails above all of the others. And of course, I wouldn't think of saying which one it is.

    But I'll be looking with great curiosity to see how close the tastes of Shessar's group are to mine.

    Nice work, everybody!
  • Although I didn't enter it I just wanted to say that it was great to see everyone's maps. I also really appreciate the fact that at least some of the .fcw files are being posted. The contestants maps look great and being able to look into the different parts of the map so I can try to use the effects\techniques in my own maps is wonderful. Thanks to all, coming from a spectator in the peanut gallery!
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    edited October 2016
    Mine is here for you all - attached to the bottom of the original post :)
  • Nice job, everyone! I see some really great battlemaps here! Sorry I wasn't able to enter, but i just had too much going on IRL, eight pending commissioned maps and my own campaign, that coming up with some fresh ideas and a new map was one project too many :)

    thanks to Shessar and her group for putting this together for our community! Good luck to the contestants~
  • GatharGathar Traveler
    I've added my FCW too (bottom of the original post). Do with it whatever you want!
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