Free Battlemaps (Forest Paths and a Cargo Ship)

[Cunning Cartographer]

So on one of the other forums I go on for tabletop RPGs someone mentioned they wished there were more forest path maps available as the number of times their party went through wooded areas and got ambushed it would make them really handy. I originally planned on making about a dozen of these as a purchasable map pack, but as this style of battlemap is no longer something I wish to pursue (am now focusing on hand drawn maps) I didn't want to start selling it as my style (maybe one day I'll do the same again but as hand drawn maps ).

And so I have five maps made that folk might find useful; these are 50sqx50sq with the grid version (there is a grid and no-grid version available for download), designed at 300dpi for those who might want to print them. The trees I can't take too much credit for as they are a free to use element from RPGMapShare.com, the dirt, grass and shadowing etc. was what I achieved when putting it all together.

As these maps are so big (about 65+mb filesize each) I can't upload them here, so I have doctored up an example as an attachment so you can see roughly what they are like. If you are interested then you can DL them from my DeviantArt profile (http://yospeck.deviantart.com/gallery/35468665).

forestshot.jpg


Second one is a map I made for the campaign I started which was run on a VTT, so the print quality is only at 72dpi. Again, taking a few elements from RPGMapShare.com and making up a few of my own (pretty much the ship itself) the original was used for an attack by a ghost pirate ship in a fogbank, epic encounter Again, a little large on the file size, but available from my DA profile (http://yospeck.deviantart.com/art/Ca...Ship-326527656).

shipshot.jpg

[inzeos]

Great ship! Care to lend some tips on how it was created and or links to tutorials if you have them?

[Bogie]

Nice work Yospeck, thanks for sharing.

Interesting bit of trivial coincidence, some of the barrels on your ship come from pictures I took at a maritime shipping museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

[jtougas]

Nice work Yospeck, thanks for sharing.

Interesting bit of trivial coincidence, some of the barrels on your ship come from pictures I took at a maritime shipping museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

I've been to that museum many times. There is a lot of neat stuff in there. Great job on the ship and I really like the forest paths tiles.

[Cunning Cartographer]

Thanks for the comments guys (not been around the past month). Good job with the barrels then Bogie Had no idea where I got them from as they went in my "Oooo, I bet I'll use them at some point!" folder a while back, so kudos!

@inzeos: This is actually one of the simplest maps I did. First I started by doing a little research on the rough shape and length of a caravel (went for a three masted) and then found a nice plank wood grain (probably google) and turned it into a tileable pattern. I cut out three shapes: long rectangle for the main deck, trapezoid shape for the aft deck (back of the ship) and and oval with the edges straightened off to make the bow (front part of the deck). With the bow and aft shapes on separate layers ABOVE the main deck layer, I could throw the pattern on all three layers and then do a drop down shadow on the aft and bow so they looked like they were above the deck.

From there I just threw on some items and did some drop down shadowing (normally I do shadows by hand but I made this pretty quickly), for the stairs it is a series of rectangles with the same distance/density of shadow on top of each other for each step, then putting the pattern on a layer over the top and doing a layer blend.

The whole thing sits on a parchment texture with a blue wash overlay for the ocean, and I think I probably flattened the entire ship and did a layer blend on that as well so it clung to the page a little more.

That's about as detailed a tutorial I can give really as it's a while back since I made it unfortunately

[titou01200]

very good thank you

[Lonewolf147]

These are awesome and part of what I'm looking for to fill out my campaign maps. Thanks!

[wdmartin]

Oo, like those forest paths. I may find a use for them. Nice job!

[BlakEagle]

I've been looking for a good forest path, thanks!