Per Quenten's suggestion, I have been playing with the Line Styles for the roads. I didn't try creating a custom one, but I did try some of the other presets, and they didn't really work. I also tried checking the Paper Scale checkbox, and that had weird effects when I zoomed in.

Here's an attempt that sets the roads to be solid and leaves the guided routes as dotted lines. I like that it makes it a bit clearer which ones are actual roads. I will also put it in my WIP gallery to make it easier to zoom in. Thoughts?

I have been looking forward to seeing what you do since you first claimed Elkton.

Also: DD4 things! Squeeee!

Well, I was going to make a twist of Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity") phrased more like Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"):

A secret grand design is indistinguishable from stupidity.

The truth is...just a clumsy attempt to recreate from a much bigger parent map that was itself derived from a much, much bigger parent map.

This is the parent map I took it from (Gongodûr is in the lower right):

And this is the section parent map that this whole 1,000 x 1,000 mile section comes from:

When I downloaded the FCW for the parent map, it said there were green mountains there, which I took to mean vegetation-covered hills and small mountains.

So no real grand design, just an over-exuberance in trying to add more detail from the parent map and slip in some mapping/adventure hooks.

Thank you!

I admit that I drew from a lot of different sources. The base is CA186 Creepy Crypts (2022), which I used in preparation for when I get to the basement/dungeon section. The main fills for the walls and floors of the tower itself come from CA149 Beaumaris Castle (2019), and the windows are from that, too. Most of the furniture comes from Dungeon Designer 3, but some are drawn from CA14 Symbol Catalogs (2008), and some of the fireplaces are from Shessar's free supplement. Some of the outside vegetation comes from CA141 Japanese Temple and CA143 Asian Town (both 2018).

Normally when designing something for the Atlas, I try to limit it to just a few styles to minimize the chance that others might be missing chunks of it. This time, I gave myself free rein to create my wizard's "dream home."

Here is "Basement 3" for the whole area -- beneath the mansion, the graveyard, and the church. It shows both the municipal sewers as well as secret places carved out of the rock.

Secrets Hidden

The built-out area in the upper left in below the mansion and the rocky outcrop it stands upon. The broken-down part of the sewers, in the upper middle section, are beneath the ruins on the main outdoor map. Whatever destroyed the buildings there also caused damage to the sewers below, damage that has not been fixed. The stairs near the center of the map ascend into the area below Briarheath Tomb, the family tomb in the center of the graveyard. The portions of the sewers that jut out from the main sewer lines are portions that go beneath the houses on the first map.

I still have more furniture and stuff to add, and then I will write up an explanation of everything that is happening in this sophisticated criminal enterprise.

Secrets Revealed

This version shows secret doors and passageways. From the mansion, you can descend through secret passageways and stairs down to a third basement, which has a secret access to the sewers. From the sewers, you can then pass through one of three other secret passageways to another built-out area that includes stairs rising into the area beneath the Briarheath Tomb. You'll recall from earlier in this thread that the area beneath the tomb also includes a secret passageway to the church. That allows those in the know to be able to clandestinely travel between the mansion, the church, and the graveyard, though it requires hiding from sewer maintenance workers when using the sewers to travel between disconnected secret sections.

When the mapping is all done, I am going to write this up like a proper D&D campaign module.

For waterfalls, the Forest Trails waterfalls are pretty versatile and I have used them in a lot of different non-Forest Trails maps, but you could also look at Fog and Mist symbols to see if they work. On one of my maps, I used a snow terrain fill with edge fade and blurring effects to make it look like a waterfall's splash.

This example uses the "Mist" symbol from Mike Schley's SS5 along with a Snow bitmap on a sheet with Blur and Edge Fade, Inner effects.

(Ignore the bevel acne -- only shows up exporting at this zoom so I never noticed it before.)

I know Sue is swamped with work for CC4, but this last image inspires me to once again plug for a Spectrum Overlands expansion, maybe ones that includes demi-human (elven, dwarven, orcish) settlement symbols. Probably something that works as a stand-alone but is compatible with Spectrum Overland, so folks can use it even if they don’t have older annuals. (Maybe part of CC4?) Similarly, a demi-human annual compatible with Darklands City would be so great.

There probably are in some of the top-down dungeon sets, but there aren't as many symbols available in the Perspectives style.

Are the Alyssa Faden's clouds all from "CA95 - Alyssa Faden Overland," or does she have more clouds in another annual? They look so different here.

Heading out soon to spend the holidays with family. Happy holidays to you and everyone here.

This is very helpful advice. I will go back and redo the forests at the bottom of each map.