Town of Hightop

[arsheesh]

Hi everyone, life has been busy at the moment and I haven't had much time for mapping. However I manged to carve out a night to crank out this quick town map that I'll be using as a player handout for an upcoming campaign. Hightop is a small town built on top of a tell of a much more ancient civilization. Conveniently portions of the ancient city's underground complex survive and one of the entrances to this dungeon can be found within town.

This town was a location that appeared in an earlier hex crawl adventure that I wrote (and am now campaigning in). Here's the entry key:

The town was built over the remains of a ruined city. It began as a small farm village, but gradually many adventurers, attracted by the prospect of riches that lay beneath the town moved in. Merchants soon followed suite, setting up shops that catered to the needs of the dungeon delver. The Golden Feather Inn advertises the fact that it sits upon one of the few known entrances to the dungeon, a fact that it exploits to draw in business.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Straf]

I like that. It's simple and uncluttered yet when you look closer it has quite a lot of detail, sometimes because of what's not there if you know what I mean.

I did think the top-down view of the thatched spire was actually a guy with a HUUUUGE sombrero sitting on the roof My eyes are aging rapidly

[ThomasR]

I really like the layout and I love the subtle shadow cast by the hill !
A little comment though. It looks like you did the linework with a low opacity brush and where the strokes overlap, there's a darker spot. Maybe you can avoid this by duplicating the line work layer(s), merging them then lowering the opacity of the resulting layer. It's not a critic, just a remark, it make the map look like it was drawn with colic like marker, great hand drawn feel to it.

[Abu Lafia]

The town is very nicely laid out around the hill, and i love the linework. Also, that's a pretty fine idea for the lazy DM... the dungeon right beneath the inn!

[Josiah VE]

Beautiful simple style!

[Greg]

Great work on this Arsheesh! Simple but effective! I wish I could make something as beautifully done as that in just an evening!

[Daelin]

Nice little map. Clean and crisp, perfect for a DnD setting. Now with color, please!

[arsheesh]

I like that. It's simple and uncluttered yet when you look closer it has quite a lot of detail, sometimes because of what's not there if you know what I mean.

I did think the top-down view of the thatched spire was actually a guy with a HUUUUGE sombrero sitting on the roof My eyes are aging rapidly

Ha ha, the sombrero comment gave me a good chuckle. Now I can't look at this map without seeing it myself

I really like the layout and I love the subtle shadow cast by the hill !
A little comment though. It looks like you did the linework with a low opacity brush and where the strokes overlap, there's a darker spot. Maybe you can avoid this by duplicating the line work layer(s), merging them then lowering the opacity of the resulting layer. It's not a critic, just a remark, it make the map look like it was drawn with colic like marker, great hand drawn feel to it.

Thank you thomrey, and thanks for pointing the brush issue out. I used Krita to do this piece and I have noticed that the hard round brush has slightly different characteristics in this program than the one in PS Elements (at least with the parameters set to default). I will have to look into this more.

The town is very nicely laid out around the hill, and i love the linework. Also, that's a pretty fine idea for the lazy DM... the dungeon right beneath the inn!

Thanks Abu. Yup, I'm all to happy to simply things.

Beautiful simple style!

Thanks Josiah!

Great work on this Arsheesh! Simple but effective! I wish I could make something as beautifully done as that in just an evening!

Thanks GLS, and FYI, it was a "long" evening

Nice little map. Clean and crisp, perfect for a DnD setting. Now with color, please!

Thanks Daelin. I have done color maps in this style but decided to stick with B&W for this piece. For one thing, this is intended to be printed out as a handout. For another all of the maps for this campaign have been B&W so far, so I decided to keep that aesthetic.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Bogie]

Yup, definitely a good map to inspire gaming ideas!

[jpstod]

That is my Kinda City Map.....Small and crispy and clean....Enough Detail to peek the Interest of the PCs...