Tree/Forest city - looking for advice and suggestions

Working through mapping the towns and settlements in my D&D campaign, I've come to the first partly Elven forest/tree town. I'd really like to dial up the "fantastic location" aspect here and make it look like something other than a generic medieval town just with more trees.

Does anyone have any advice, tips or experience regarding this kind of town/city map that they could share?

DrV

Comments

  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    If you have City Designer 3, the Bitmap B style have an elven set with tree houses and walkways. Selection is a bit to limited IMHO to make a complete settlement, but it can be mixed with more traditional houses from the same style.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
    Some of the free third party symbol sets have pretty spectacular trees?

    If you don't already have them, there are links in the sticky thread about resources.

    Installation can be a bit tricky, but the majority of people seem to survive it as long as they stick absolutely to the letter of the instruction manual that comes with each one. Do not confuse the similarly named directories that both start with 'Program'. From reading other people's comments that seems to be the main root of installation problems.

    Anything more exotic than that, and there's a FAQ page over at the Vintyri site. There is also a contact email on that page which may have had a few hiccups in the last few months. I don't know if it's currently working.
  • The Bitmap B style from City Designer 3 that Monsen mentioned is worth thoroughly exploring, as although the strict Elven items are, as noted, very limited, there are a lot of items that could easily be reused and reworked into something suitably rustic/Elven beyond these, including individual trees (in the "Default" catalogue) and hedge-lines - and don't ignore the "Skyscrapers" or "Vehicles" options, as you may find some help for unusual building shapes there as well. There a straw horse's hat with a flower stuck in it under "Vehicles" for example that correctly handled with a bit of imagination could become a small dais, or even a thatched roof. The two "ears" sticking through the brim are helpfully brown in colour, so could equally pass for branch-ends. Look under "Walls" for some linkable hedge-line pieces (you can actually construct mazes from them), and also some wooden docks that could easily extend the treetop walkway options.
  • JimPJimP 🖼️ 280 images Cartographer
    edited April 2019
    I am hosting a modern house, with sidewalks, for another CC user.

    Just looking at the jpg, he used a brown line with width for the sidewalk.

    Tana's Place page contains a zip of the fcw file.
  • seycyrusseycyrus Traveler
    Jim, just hazarding a guess, but was this post meant to go in the thread that talked about modern roads and sidewalks?
  • Possibly. I do get rather tired.
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