Barovia WIP

[Jeff_Wilson63]

And with the towns representing between 50 to 100 people each

It's a personal failing, but this causes me to wince. A settlement with 50 to 100 people isn't a town. It doesn't have enough people to support a grocer, a market, or even a tavern. It could be a settlement, a village, an estate, . . . , but it isn't a town.

Sorry for the nitpick.

[voidgere]

Coyote, I have this supplement and when I saw you were looking for the original maps to work from I tore apart my house. I simply cannot find the box that contains it. If I do finally stumble across it (as now its a personal vendetta), I will scan it in and post it for you.

*EDIT*
...and the map looks superb. You could not have picked a better map to spark a little nostalgia. Memories.....

[Coyotemax]

Jeff: If you are at all familiar with the setting in question, you will understand why I chose that population level. So call them settlements, collection of houses, whatever you like. For purposes of the WIP thread I am referring to them as towns. It's semantics as far as i'm concerned.
[edit] upon reflection i realize this may come across as harsher than I intended it to read. I appreciate the nitpick, and if I was going to place a legend in the map explaining the markers, i would certainly take that into account. but as the markers are rather obvious, there will be no legend (there isn't a legend on other maps of this style) and in terms of working notes, I'm not going to overly concern myself with wording. that's all.

voidgere: thank you for your efforts I'm okay right now, I believe i have a version that's either the original, or close enough so as not to matter. I won't turn down a scanned copy, but really, don't go out of you way

[Coyotemax]

Ok, pending any glaring errors, I'm almost ready to call this one finished.

I'm going to nap on it first though

If anone notices something that's not already covered, feel free to point it out.

There is no compass on this one. Looking through other Blaeu maps, many if not most appear to have no compass (i'm supposing the general consensus for these is that north is always up, plus the lattitude markers would support that).

I did a bit of reasearch into town names for Ravenloft, and I've included all the ones referenced in the campaign setting as well as any books written in the setting. Anything outside Barovia proper was named after a location from Transylvania

I also left off the road marked on the original map, this style doesn't tend to portray roads at this scale.

[Ascension]

I love the underpainting of the colors. The only thing I might tweak is that the city names are kinda hard to read because the letters are scrunched together...maybe set the tracking out a lil bit, 25-50 or so. Also use a small stroke (3-5) of a color similar to the parchment so that the various lines don't bleed into the text. Looks pretty cool, though, otherwise and very authentic.

[voidgere]

The reason you will not find a compass on maps of the Demi Plane of Dread is that there are no cardinal directions. You could travel for weeks going "west" and find that you end up in some "northern" town. The Dark Powers that govern the plane decide where your travels take you. It was a powerful gaming device for DM's so that the horror story could flow where he needed it. Especially if you went to sleep in a tavern and woke up in a cave in some far off wilderness or in an entirely different realm altogether!!

[Coyotemax]

Oh, I'm quite familiar with the setting. yes, quite - started running my players through it the day it hit the shelves My compass comments were in reference to the style of the map itself, other antique maps done by any of the Blaeu's (there were three of them! Father and 2 sons who followed in his footsteps). There are a few of those that have compasses, but rarely.

Ascension: noted. It was a bit of a hassle getting everything properly readable, as I resized everything after getting it properly placed. I was trying to avoid needing to use the outer stroke, i'm actually going to go through and erase/modify the layers themselves. On the paper map, i don't get background coloured ink

Incidentally, that's something I determined i will need to adjust with my final process for the paper map.. in order to get it lookng right, legible, and not overly clutterd, 'm going to need to approach it opposite to my usual methods. Place the names first, then the rivers, etc.