Fantasy maps and mapmaking tutorials by Jonathan Roberts
Grasslands are tricky to map. They’re large empty open expanses. But if you just flood fill an area with light green it’ll stand out like a sore thumb against your beautifully rendered mountains and lovingly painted rivers and forests. The colour is tough too – you want it to be a light green without being fluorescent.
I’ve found that the following works well for grasslands: Continue reading “How to Draw Grassland”
Following my quick run down of how to draw cliffs here’s an equally quick one for drawing cliffs on isometric maps.
A while ago I ran a gallery show of fantasy maps, and through that I met Christopher Merwin – a great guy and a local New York game designer. He was working on a fantasy world for the Pathfinder RPG called Sæmyyr, and asked me to work on up a fantasy world map. See below for the unlabeled map, and some details on how it was made.
This month sees the release of the World of Illfrost, a new world for 4e D&D. Its icy grip is perfectly timed as winter descends our own frozen north. I worked with the guys at Illusionary Press to create the world map and the maps for the first adventure.
To give you a taster, Illusionary Press are giving away a primer for free over on RPGNow. Continue reading “Journey to the world of Illfrost”
I’ve been keeping up a game with a couple of friends from university (using maptool as we’re now on different continents). We take it in turns to run sessions, and in one Pathfinder game we’re exploring the manifold intrigues of the Kingdom of Thulaan and the royal court of Orphaleson. There are scheming Dukes, warring religious factions and dispossessed sons of nobles, along with a looming orc threat and some unwholesome undead raised by forbidden necromancers.
It’s great fun and we’re starting to get a feel for the world. The GM has managed to create a great suspension of disbelief by keeping most of the foes human and the plot lines believable – no mean feat in the fantasy world of dungeons and dragons. I suspect his PhD in Mediaeval Polish history has come in very handy whilst building this campaign.
But this is a cartography blog rather than a campaign journal – so it should be no surprise that I’ve been playing with putting together a map of the lands of Thulaan. Continue reading “Work in Progress – The Kingdom of Thulaan”
Fire and ice – the northmen have come.
Open Design has released Frozen Empires, the first regional supplement since the announcement that the world that holds Zobeck would be the world of Midgard. The christening of the world was a good opportunity to change the style of the world maps a little, and this is the first in the new style to be released. Here’s a low res version of the Frozen North (you can click the image above to see a larger version). The full size version appears in the Frozen Empires pdf, and print versions. Check it out!
I talked a little earlier about the upcoming Annual Style for Profantasy. It’s out now as the March Annual style so I can show off a little more of the work.
The guys at Profantasy used the style to recreate the world of Caera map for the Dungeonslayers free RPG. It’s surprising, and flattering, to see my work in some else’s map. Click the image for a larger version:
Edit: Looks like the image is no longer available.
I’m really pleased with the results they’re getting with this tileset. If you download the annual style let me know how you get on!
Give a man a dungeon and he’ll kill PCs for a day. Give a man the tools to build his own dungeons and he’ll happily be killing PCs for a lifetime. Continue reading “Tilesets!”
I was approached by the Open Gaming Network about creating a map for their online browser based fantasy role-playing game Dark Warriors. Here’s a low res version of the result:
The map needed to highlight a collection of different towns that the players progress through, Continue reading “Dark Warriors by OGN”
