Battle map for oriental setting (ancient China)

[mogul76]

Hello!

I've been a member for quite some time but haven't so far posted any maps.

Below you'll find my first digital battle map ever. Please let me know what you think

RPG: Qin - The Warring States (ancient China, around 240 BC).

Scale: 1 square is 1m2.

Mapping software: Campaign Cartographer 3 and Dungeon Designer 3.

Symbols: Devin Night's brand new "Map Objects: Qin Dynasty" art pack (fouruglymonsters.com), CC3/DD3/SS2 symbols, Dundjinni forums, rpgmapshare.com, greytale.com as well as the Gamemaster Syndicate Ruins Pack for CC3.

Thanks,

Mogul76

[Redrobes]

Welcome, and a plug for Devin too. Cool - Man he is ugly !!!

[someguy]

"Drool"

Love it.

[mogul76]

Thanks for the feedback.

Devin is a nice guy and in my opinion a very talented artist.

But let's focus on the looks of my map, shall we?

Here are some of the symbols which I've used: http://fouruglymonsters.com/downloads/qinsamples.zip

I'm sure that there are things which I could have done better.

Any ideas? As I've mentioned, I use CC3/DD3... I'm not a PhotoShop/GIMP expert at all...

[loydb]

I love the maps -- and they caused me to go buy the Qin symbol set as well

[RPMiller]

Is this for a VTT or for print out? The resolution of the pic you posted is badly pixelated and hard to see detail even when zoomed in.

Can you point out what some of the objects are such as the large "stones" or "puddles" that I think the chickens are at. Also what are some of the objects in the rooms?

[mogul76]

@ loydb : Happy to hear that! :-)

@ RPMiller: The links to the following two images should answer your second question:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?tci9qjyzmx0

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?vxoskwilnwc

These are pretty large files... ca. 14 MB... I hope you don't mind...

As to the first question, this is actually a test map and I don't intend to use it in my upcoming campaign.

Devin and I invested approximately 4 months doing this project. I sent him literally hundreds of screenshots from movies, he drew the symbols. I needed to check whether they work well in RPG maps. At the same time, I had to learn CC3/DD3. It was a lot of work, but I took great pleasure in doing it! :-)

If you'd like me to post VTT versions of the map, let me know. You may want to tell what to remove, though ;-)

[RPMiller]

Much better! The larger versions make it obvious that those are puddles of water. I like the little ripples. Nice touch.

I would definitely be interested in VTT versions, but it looks like I'll need to buy the Qin symbol set to make it useful since the majority of the furnishings will definitely need to be removed and probably the animals as well. Pretty much anything that isn't "fixed" in place will need to be removed including doors, and if I could get the roofs of the structures as separate images that would be great as well.

[mogul76]

OK. I will take care of that during the weekend.

If you want to, I could remove the grid as well.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide the roofs as separate files: (1) I created those directly in CC3/DD3 and not in a graphic editing program, (2) I used commercial textures.

It's very hard to find good textures for Chinese roofs. If you point me to royalty-free ones, I could export the map containing only the roofs and a light green background as a png, cut out the roofs and make those available as separate symbols.

By the way, you can find high-quality pictures for oriental / ancient Chinese VTT tokens at:

http://kongming.net/11/portraits/

There are about 250 of them.

[RPMiller]

OK. I will take care of that during the weekend.

No rush on this as it isn't something I would need right away, however, you might want to consider posting it over at the RPTools forums where they will likely drool all over themselves and worship you like a god. Well maybe not that last part.

If you want to, I could remove the grid as well.

Absolutely. Also make sure that the overall map scale is posted somewhere in the form of # pixels = # feet/meters/yards/whatever

Unfortunately, I cannot provide the roofs as separate files: (1) I created those directly in CC3/DD3 and not in a graphic editing program, (2) I used commercial textures.

It's very hard to find good textures for Chinese roofs. If you point me me to royalty-free ones, I could export the map containing only the roofs and a light green background as a png, cut out the roofs and make those available as separate symbols.

Not a problem, I'm sure PhotoShop's selection tools can remedy that just fine on my end.

By the way, you can find high-quality pictures for oriental / ancient Chinese VTT tokens at:

http://kongming.net/11/portraits/

There are about 250 of them.

Those are excellent!! They could easily be used for an Exalted game as well. Thank you for that link. You should definitely post that over at RPTools, or I'll do it for you if you don't want to.