I have found the DriveThru search options to be frustrating too. It's not helped because they have several separate sites, and some publishers will only add their products to one or two (commonly DriveThru and Wargame Vault). Searching also presupposes all publishers will use the same keyword terms in their products, and not all do.

Of course, it's possible the kinds and styles of symbols you're looking for may not exist anyway. We have kept coming back to requests for modern and cyberpunk symbols before on the Forum here, for instance.

Can't speak for how Ricko accomplished this, but it would certainly be very easy to do it all in the one FCW file.

I found it is worth hunting around online for old maps more generally, when I was working on my version of a Lovecraftian Providence map late last year. That one compiled information from about a dozen different maps in the end, as the most detailed ones - needed to identify specific properties - were originally published in at least one book, with each double-page map spread scanned separately online.

It really depends how much precision and detail you need from the historical side though, as it can be a lengthy process to find what YOU want, NOT what Google wants to show you!

Ralf mentioned on today's livestream (April 6th) featuring this new style that it is to be extended later in the year, which is excellent news, I think! Look forward to that!

If further suggestions might help, a couple of differently-angled bridge symbols would be nice, in addition to what I mentioned before here - and watching the stream, maybe an oasis symbol for the deserts too.

Thanks Sue. I found it a really pleasing style to work with; the colours just have that Dunsanian magical feeling to them - colourful, but a bit old-world/dreamlike-muted.

Might be fun to see an expansion for some different styles of settlement in it, perhaps - Elf, Dwarf, Halfling structures, say, some ruins in all styles, and some magical site markers - although there's a lot of excellent scenery already in it, of course.

Been ages since I used this style, and even then, never as it was "meant" to be, as I drew out the deep undersea settlement of Ellenge Town for the Community Atlas with it! Be nice to see how it's "supposed" to look instead though 😁

So are you planning on completing it now @Maidhc O Casain ? I do find something very appealing about the clean-cut lines of these older vector styles, personally.

This is a delightful-looking map - though I do especially like this style, so may be a bit biased!

A scale would be good, as the symbol sizes make it look like a little group of small islands right now, not a world map.

Maybe adjust the overall map size so the northernmost peninsula and tree symbol aren't vanishing off the top border edge of the map. It also looks as though the one snowy mountain symbol on this same northerly landmass is partly sitting over a couple of the grassy mountains that should be in front of it.

As Julian mentioned, some further ocean colouring would be helpful, and perhaps seeing if those two large green atolls in the northeast are on the same Sheet as the general landmasses, as they don't seem to have the same outer glow effect to them, which would hint at shallower seas closer to their shores, and perhaps also in their central lagoons (assuming that would be appropriate for what you have in mind here, of course).

Thanks @jmabbott !

I tried playing around with some of the CA97 B&W drawing tools, fills and symbols, which is what made me realise that if only the resolution of some of the original images for the fills and symbols had been a lot better, it would have solved many of the current issues. Of course, whether the original drawings were of any higher res, I don't know. The style's about eight years old, so maybe we could suggest a makeover for it as a few others have had lately, especially given the current popularity of OSR systems overall. [Is that too subtle a hint? 😁]

It's interesting that hex maps never really caught on for dungeoneering. I recall one of my early close-acquaintance DMs used a clear plastic covered hex map and erasable marker pens to draw out key settings on the fly, but that was pretty much of a rarity (this was back in the very early 1980s). I think they have continued to appear from time to time, though quite rarely. Of course, as your drawing neatly illustrates, hexes do create the fresh problem of partial hexes - there's just no winning whatever we try 😉!

Although the ShadowDark dungeon maps use squares on the solid floors (only), which gives a sense of scale to the drawing and in use, the rules are deliberately very free-form-vague about distances overall, with just Close = 5 feet, Near = up to 30 feet and Far = within sight, which (finally!) pulls the game further away from its wargaming roots, of sometimes ridiculously precise needs for measurement on the tabletop.

A quick run through of the YouTube videos for this (they're all VERY short!) suggests the idea is to use whatever's generated with a tablet to actually run games. There are plans to make the dungeon maps SVG format too and to add fog-of-war options for showing/hiding areas.

Perhaps of greatest interest is that the hexmaps are in development for zooming-in to show features like maps of settlements (which are generated by - go on, guess - Watabou!). This should indeed enhance using such a system for online/computer use.