UnderWorld Map / Mapping

[jnmj]

G'eve,

I searched for quite a while here and looked around. There are some fantastic dungeons and a few cave areas that are interesting.

The thought comes to mind of mapping a region of the Under(insert favorite name here) Not room details, but regional details. For example the entire realm of Moria would be interesting to see a best guess as to what it looks like.

The reason I bring it up. My own campaign (not RPG) has an UnderWorld to it. I've been thinking it would make more sense to actually have something of a multi level / 3D mind set to it. If there are Mountains above ground then there are likely to be caverns in a good percent of them. Even large bodies of water, chasms, and other such random thoughts at the moment.

Thanks for your time.

[robb75067]

Actually I'd love to see it done too. I only have 6000 projects going right now so I don't have time to give it a go but I'd love to see what others could do.

[mathuwm]

dito

I too am interested
also anything I have posted here could be used for this

[jnmj]

Well, here is what I'm going to do for starters.

Going to grab an old copy of the Dungeoneers Survival Guide for they have a great write up in there about creating the maps by hand and the world below ground regardless.

Then what I'm considering may be easiest is to create a batch of symbols already generated which fit that map style. In CC3 they can be resized, rotated and messed with.

Also I took a good look at the Forgotten Realms UnderDark map. They drew more regions with an explanation of distances travelled to locations and such. I'd like to get a little more detailed than that but I don't think its necessary to draw every single thing.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one interested in this type of thing. There is another discussion on the forums talking about Isometric drawings. Its in the neighborhood and is helpful to read.

JJ

[jaerdaph]

This sounds really cool. The original I6 Ravenloft module had beautiful blue & white isometric maps of Castle Ravenloft. I seem to recall there being an old school blue & white isometric map of a dwarven mine cavern or some such in one of the original Dragonlance modules as well. I'll have to dig out my Dungeoneer's Survival Guide now.

CC2 Pro has an add-on called Perspectives Pro which allows you to do isometric maps. It's been updated to work with CC3. I've always wanted to try doing something with that.

[HandsomeRob]

I'd like to see a brush or something for photoshop that I can use to draw crinkly subterranean passageways and chambers. I am envisioning a black background, and the passageways colored with a gradient going from white to a medium brown, with white passages being at the highest elevation and brown passages at the lowest. This way passageways could pass over each other on the map and the relative level would be clear. But I don't want to spend the time drawing all of those corridors and rooms, I want a tool to make that easier.

By the way if I do maps for the underworld of Sorol I would be using a scale of about 40 miles to the inch.

-Rob