Encounter Maps- feedback please

[Krome]

I have two encounter maps made for an adventure I am writing. The first, is set in an disgusting alley (those are dead rats- hard to tell at this resolution- and that is a manhole cover). The second is supposed to be a trail through the forest.

It wasn't planned, but both encounters have the PCs entering from the bottom of the maps.

Many items came from Dundjinni, and textures came from where ever I found them, some Dundjinni some who knows where.

Feedback is encouraged so I can improve.

[Midgardsormr]

There's an awful lot of food set out for an alley containing a dozen visible dead rats. I think I'd replace the food with some crates and trash. You could also grunge it up some—make it look real dirty.

Check out http://www.cgtextures.com/content.ph...ame=blendmodes for a tutorial on how to use Photoshop's blendmodes to apply textures. The Darkening blendmodes one is particularly useful for grunges. And they conveniently have lots of free textures on that site for your use.

[Krome]

The food with dead rats is on purpose. Sort of a thing to make the PCs wonder about the quality of their food. The two buildings are taverns and that is the food waiting to be used for dinner.

The rats on the other hand, were not all dead until very recently when a goblin got bored and started using his sling to pop them. The goblin lair is through the pile of bones under the pumpkins in the upper left of the alley.

I did a little Multiply on the alley itself, the crates and the buildings after you mentioned it and it looks dirtier now. I don't imagine such establishments as being very clean at all. I also don't imagine many PCs will just pick up and start eating on an apple. lol

Thanks for that, I like the dirtier look much better.

[Feralspirit]

You might consider adding a little more grunge to the red roof (which, while a bit dirtier than your original post, still looks fairly clean). Also, you could try a gradient overlay on both roofs, which struck me from your first post as just a little flat.

Your forest is very light (as in very few trees), is this your intention?

[Krome]

The forest has to be fairly open for a combat to take place. Too many trees and there is too little room to maneuver. Especially with horses. I looked over the forest map and realized that horses will make me have to add at least double to the map. Also that is a well traveled part of the forest, right at a main trail.

I COULD make the trees more dense I think, especially if I double or more the size of the map. But I want to make sure and leave plenty of room for horses to maneuver if needed.

I LIKE the idea of the gradient to the roofs. Makes sense as well. Currently I am running on two hours of sleep, so will tackle that when I wake back up! lol I'll post the remade forest map (expect it to be much bigger) and the revised alley.

Originally, I had wanted to restrict my maps to 8x10 inch maps, if possible for the adventure. But that forest map, I just don't see any way around expanding it. The biggest problem with expanding the forest, is I now HAVE to increase the number of monsters.

The plan was the 1st level PCs stumble into a trap and ambush by some kobolds. Now, 4-8 little kobolds could be a threat on a single 8x10 page. I expect I will need 4-8 kobolds per page now, to manage the combat.

And yes, I wanted the PCs to run into both goblins then kobolds in these two encounters. Seems to me, PCs should face classic foes at lower levels, and what is more classic that goblins and kobolds! lol

Actually my tired brain is figuring out ways already to keep them on one map, but extras might be nice to have, just in case! Nets are good at stopping movement! Now, back to Paizo to ask help on a technical rules question this raises!

[Krome]

Dang! Tired old mind couldn't go back to bed! Had to work on that alley way.

I noticed something else that was bugging me. The building I used with the red roof, had shadows built in for the chimney and pipes that were cast the wrong way. So I switched sides for the buildings. Lighting is coming in correctly now (Light should be coming from the left of the map).

So an updated map with a gradient on the roofs so the bottoms are in shadow. A little dodge tool work to create a few subtle highlights on the red rood slate. And switched sides.

Next, work on that forest.

[Steel General]

These are coming along nicely...

[Ascension]

That shading really made those roofs come to life and gave some depth to them. So I'm thinking that maybe a similar treatment of the trees would make then look less flat as well. That alleyway is lookin really swell now.

[Krome]

Okay, that forest map was driving me crazy. So I went back to the drawing board, and started over from scratch. New textures for the forest floor and hills. Same texture for the trail.

I applied some drop shadow to the trees and some gradients for depth. Applied an inner shadow to the trail to make it appear slightly recessed. Brightened the hills somewhat.

To me, the whole scene looks like the trail could be a small dried up stream bed between two hills.

Again the top left is supposed to be empty. The next map I work on will be located there. A small underground ruin.

[Ascension]

Lookin sweet, I like that stream bed idea and the trees have some depth.