First time cartographer, longtime cartophile.
Hello everyone!
Three years ago, after 37 years of waiting I was fortunate enough to join up with a local D&D campaign. It was a very fun experience, but after COVID-19 firmly established itself and my wife and I had our second baby I couldn't devote the same amount of time as before while the rest of the group started going their own ways after things started opening back up.
But the bug had bit me! I kept buying RPG systems to scratch the itch and stumbled upon Monster of the Week.
A bit of background - I'm a civil engineer who specializes in transportation with a touch of GIS work here and there. As a kid I used to buy new atlases every year and would ride shotgun with my dad navigating on road trips. I love maps and I love cities and I love weird stuff. So obviously Monster of the Week spoke directly to my soul.
But, no time to devote to actually running a campaign. But then I realized - maps. I can make maps without letting anyone down because one of my kids is sick or my wife needs me to take over for an afternoon.
And so here I am. For the time being I'm still looking at the different software available. And being inspired by the truly awesome talent on this board. Happy to be here and I look forward to meeting folks!
That's quite fascinating!
Cool reason to get into maps.
(Software wise, there is quite a few. Free ones like GIMP (which I use) and Krita. Stuff like that. And Photoshop starts the list on the paid side.
Anyway! Good luck on your journey.
P.s. it gets easier to post after 5
~ Maps-DriveThruRPG ~Free Maps and Assets ~Current Project~
My web novels
Instagram handle: instagram.com/omrihope
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~The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
~ Psalm 19
Welcome. And yes the RPG bug is a lifelong affliction I think.
But if you like and are used to GIS why not just use QGIS?
Mostly because I'd never heard about it before this place. Most of the recommended cartography software when you search "rpg cartography" is like Inkarnate and Campaign Cartographer 3+ kind of stuff. Partially because my professional use of GIS has mostly been about ingesting and analyzing existing linework and datasets. I've never tried to make my own map in ArcGIS (largely because Arc is so painful to use).Originally Posted by Falconius
But QGIS looks like it could fit the bill nicely!
I've been cruising the boards here and see a lot of recommendations for GIMP. I may get there eventually, but my freehand drawing skills are pretty crap and the bit of Photoshop I used in college made me feel like someone handed a caveman a slide rule.That's quite fascinating!
Cool reason to get into maps.
(Software wise, there is quite a few. Free ones like GIMP (which I use) and Krita. Stuff like that. And Photoshop starts the list on the paid side.
Anyway! Good luck on your journey.
P.s. it gets easier to post after 5
Thanks for the suggestion
I responded to this earlier but I may not have understood the message board functionality...
Basically, though, my work in GIS is largely consuming maps produced by others for data analytics with internally generated data. I've never actually drawn my own map and probably would want to throw my laptop off a bridge of I'd tried using ArcMap for such purposes.
But I'd also never heard of QGIS before - it looks promising, thank you!
Thank you!
I appreciate the kind words and recommendations! I'm VERY bad at freehand drawing so GIMP is probably a little further down the road for me, but it's absolutely on my RADAR.That's quite fascinating!
Cool reason to get into maps.
(Software wise, there is quite a few. Free ones like GIMP (which I use) and Krita. Stuff like that. And Photoshop starts the list on the paid side.
Anyway! Good luck on your journey.
P.s. it gets easier to post after 5
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