Quick Dungeon Practice

[arsheesh]

I'm putting together a hex-crawl campaign and was in need of some mini-dungeons to fill in some of entries in the Hex Key. I didn't want to spend much time on these however as I have little time to prep for the campaign as it is. So nothing flashy or labor-intensive. I thought I'd try out a few styles and post'em here. Here's the first quick dungeon which was made using some of Torstan's techniques. For a quick technique, I rather like the way it turned out. Course I will be experimenting with other styles as well.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Lukc]

This looks good. Clear and obvious. Are you going to be printing it out? Because if you're going to be writing on it, the textures might make it a bit harder to read. Another thing is that it feels to me a bit like the rooms are floating above the terrain ...

[Larb]

For something nice and quick, it looks great. I'm not sure how it'd look printed but it'd be fine for any digital gametable thing like maptool.

[jtougas]

Even your "quick" stuff feels like art. This is very good. Looking forward to seeing what else you come up with

[arsheesh]

Thanks for the feedback everyone:

@ Lukec - I see what you mean about the potential difficulty of writing on the map. However in my case, this is really only being used as a reference. I won't be printing it out. But that is a good consideration to keep in mind if at some point I ever do decide to print it out.

@ Larb & JT, thanks, I do like this style and will keep it in mind as I pay around with other ideas.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[arsheesh]

OK, here is an attempt at a more simple, sketchy dungeon. I created a hose brush for the hatch marks. I'm not sure I like this method as much, but who knows, I may play around with it some more.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Lukc]

Looks pretty smooth, if you ask me. A hose brush? So you just go at it in Gimp with a nice bit of graphic tablet? I'm fiddling with some quick maps myself.

[arsheesh]

A hose brush (or image pipe) is an animated brush: basically it is a brush that uses several layers of images. So what I did was use my mouse (still don't own a tablet) to create some circular hatch mark patters (about 5 different patterns), and compile them into a single brush so that I can lay down hatch marks really quickly. Problem was I made them pretty small, so I'll have to create a new larger brush if I decide to continue working with this style.

EDIT: Here's an example of what I mean:

Hatch Marks.jpg

[RobA]

Here is a brush and a seamless hatch I made a while ago...
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...tching&p=41672

-RobA>

[arsheesh]

Here's a homage to the original TSR maps. I think this is the style I'm going to use for the current dungeon I'm working on, though I'll be printing them out in black, rather than blue. This level of the dungeon used to be a human mining operation until the miners accidentally dug their way into Level two, a former Dwarven hall now overrun by goblins. The third level consists in an even more ancient crypt. I'll be adding those latter at some point.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh