Trade Town of Calantis

Since subscribing to the annuals, I begun trying out all the new types of maps on locations in my current campaign world. Here's the first result: Calantis. A small trading town at the crossroads between various towns. It was built among the ruins of an ancient fort.

I used the John Speed style, and used the ruined tower symbol from the Overland B&W style for a couple of ruined towers. I'm quite pleased with how the ruined wall turned out but I would really appreciate any suggestions on how to make the swamp at the south end of the lake look better.

Calantis

Comments

  • edited July 2009
    Noooooooo... don't post cool maps like this. I had my eye on this style for a while now and you have no idea what amount of pressure I had to put on myself to make sure I didn't purchase it. You broke my resolve... now I know for sure I will purchase the annual some time in the future. Darn you :-)

    Anyway, really like town. The ruined wall and towers are a great addition. The swamp does need work, but as I haven't tried this style yet I can't really help.

    I love the symbols and I think we need lots more in this style/perspective.
  • I decided to use the John Steel maps for my old maps. So, when the players find a map hundreds of years old, it is in this mapping style. One of the old Judges Guild scenarios had a shield that had a map on it that could be seen only in moon light. So I used this style to convert my sketch drawing to a CC3 map.

    This 'map seen in moonlight' lends itself well to B&W maps.
  • Henrie61Henrie61 Traveler
    Wasn't a really big fan of this style till I saw this map.
    Good looking map.
  • I really like that map!

    To be constructive and to answer your question, the lake could be uniformly bordered. The NE side has a black outline wheareas the SW hasn't. It's perharps because you don't want to make the transition clear (twould be realistic for a swamp) but my eyes want's to find an outline there two, even if it's the road/street (whose outline is thinner).

    The swamp symbols look too regular on the SW edge and too overlapping everywhere else.

    Is there any way to align the field (I suppose that's what it is) with the overall angle ? The square angles look at little out of place but it might be my eyes again, eh?
  • bearclawbearclaw Traveler
    Ah, good point... Perhaps if I made the 'swamp water' area smaller and used the swamp grass as the border around the edge and filled it in more.

    Thanks. I'm going to try that and see how it comes out.
    We gamed with this map last night and it turned out wonderfully. Having this sort of tool to visualize for both me as DM and the players is such a help. Now we can look at this map and say "That's the tower where we pissed off the local lord and were imprisoned". That's the tavern we blasted with lightning bolts" "oh, and there's the freshly tilled field we found the mass grave in!" (all of which actually happened in this town last night. Great times)
  • bearclawbearclaw Traveler
    So I've adjusted the swamp area and labeled the map based on locations that my players revealed (ie: I made up on the fly) in last nights game session:

    Completed Calantis Map
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