Ancient Greek/Roman temple

[JonPin]

I always rant that rpg battlemaps are architecturally implausible, so I wanted to do a realistic layout. I took some time to study Greek and Roman temples and decided to use a ancient roman layout. The problem is, there has to be a 5 foot grid, so a few compromises have to be made. Keep in mind that ancient architecture rarely falls nicely on a square grid.

The map still needs some detail. What do you guys think? Plausible?

Temple_wip2.jpg

[Larb]

My architecture book says that is a prostyle greek temple layout so it seems perfectly plausible to me. It looks nice too!

[Bogie]

Excellent map JonPin, the stairs are very well done. Is the heavy black line representing a wall or the roof above? If it is for the roof, can I suggest using a 50% transparency so you can see what is under it as that is where the game play will occur. Also, in case anyone was going to print this to play on, could we get a higher resolution / larger version of the map? This is a little small even for MapTools / Roll20 type VTT. Thanks

I also agree that a lot of the commercially prepared maps are not realistic. I have been remaking a lot of the old D&D game maps and I sometimes get very frustrated by the mapping errors.

[JonPin]

Thanks, Bogie!

When I finish the map, I'll upload the high res map.

The blacks represent the section cut. It's a typical architectural presentation. The model is horizontally cut 1 meter (or about 3 feet) from the floor, and is then hatched or blacked out on the parts cut. I hope these pictures make it clearer.

prostyleTemple.jpg prostyleTemple_section.jpg

[Francissimo]

excellent work on textures! Maybe you can add a drop shadow effect to show the transition between the temple floor and the grass like you did to represent the temple step?

[JonPin]

So I think this is almost finished. I don't like the shadows much, cause they don't match with different game tiles, or battle maps people might use. But hell, I can't imagine this problem coming up much... This is now uploaded in 150dpi, that should be enough for virtual tabletops. Thoughts?

ancient-greek-roman-temple-temple_wip5.jpg

[Bogie]

Looks fantastic, especially at the higher resolution! And I like the shadows!

[cyderak]

Very Cool........Simple and very useable.

[Falconius]

Honestly the whole 5 foot grid convention drives me nuts because in terms of physical measurement and realistic representation it is highly inconvenient. It causes things like representing common doors as five foot wide monstrosities. Which is why meters and yards exist as they are far more natural measurments. I would prefer if the grids were based off that, but I guess that is wishful considering the momentum 5 foot grids has in popular gaming now. All that is a long way of saying I appreciate where you coming from on this project

Looks very plausible to me. I hope you develop some more complex structures with this philosophy.

[Bogie]

Just because we use a 5 foot grid doesn't mean the doors have to be 5ft wide. My maps frequently have 3 to 4 ft wide doors.
The 5 ft grid evolved partly because of the size of the miniatures. If we used a 1"=3ft grid, then a 6ft tall warrior would have to be 2 inches tall which would have greatly increased the cost of metal figurines. Plus the maps would be enormous. A current map that is 100ft by 200ft is 20" x40" and can be printed on 12 pages, at 3ft scale it would be 33" x 66" and require 28 pages to print, not to mention how much easier it is to measure distances counting 5, 10, 15, 20 than it is counting 3, 6, 9, 12, etc. No system is perfect but 1"=3' is not a better size.