Family Farm

[loogie]

Hey guys, well.. for my b-day, my wife actually bought me a wacom bamboo (small 5x7 tablet)... and I love it! I've been playing around with it for awhile, but my main reason for wanting one was to be able to create maps quickly for use in maptools, and being able to make objects and such quite quickly...

Farmhouse

Heres my first attempt at a map, for my first campaign in maptool, beginning next week.

it is a farmhouse on a farm, built so that i can import each building separately into a maptool map. (if I'm correct this should make it a bit less resource intensive).

many of the items in the house may be exported individually, and put in maptool as objects, so they may be manipulated... besides this farmhouse there will be a barn, which I've yet to complete.

The story (or as much as I'll divulge at the moment) is that a fledgling knight, gets word that his parents are being harassed by bandits, and upon returning find his home being ransacked. After defeating and chasing off the bandits, he will come across their leader, who has just mortally wounded both of his parents... like every good story, the bandit leader will escape to live another day, leaving the hero to vow revenge.

not only am i looking for c&c, i DEMAND it! I'm always looking for new ideas and ways to improve.

as it is, this was a good experiment, simply because i built this map fairly quickly (in about 2 hrs of cumulative work) and that to me is paramount.. being able to build a significantly illustrated map quickly with a uniform look and feel. As i go i hope to build a collection of map objects as well, to further hasten my map making.)

[Badger]

I like it

[Arkkeeper]

"It no- verry com-ortabl aint it? Nee mor stuffs id doezz. Lik ah nis Cabine foll o' Ale"

[torstan]

Looks good to me. A few comments on using this map with maptool. You're definitely right in thinking that it's best to have a library of objects to drop on a map to build it up quickly. This will look great on a tiled grass background with a bit of a dirt path.

I'd make the table and chairs independent objects that can be dropped on the map. The way to build it up would be:

New Map -> grass
Drop the house as an object onto the background layer.
Drop the tables, chairs, bed etc as objects on the object layer.
Place butchering bandit tokens on the token layer.

If you create a separate roof image you can place that over the house as a token (use right click->Arrange->bring to front to place it over everything else) to keep the contents hidden before the players explore it. Then hide it from players and move it when they venture inside.

I'd also stick to non-directional shadows when creating objects or buildings for use in maptool. You'll find you want three or four farmhouses on a map and you want to rotate them to make them look less uniform and suddenly the shadows will all look out of kilter. A universal drop shadow around them will make them stand up from the background without presupposing a directional light source.

[loogie]

good tips torstan, i indeed exported all the insides as individual objects, and started building a library for myself, dropped all the buildings in on a grass bg, then the objects and tokens, but didnt do the roof... tho i ran out of time... the session went well, got some macro's and properties to work on getting finished so it can make things a bit faster.

i'll be making another map soon, not sure what yet, but i will make it soon

[torstan]

Come on, you can't tell us all that and then not post a screenshot. Fair trade - C&C for screenshots!