April Challenge Entry - gooseneck ridge WIP
Okey dokey this is post one of my first challenge
the basis of the challenge "Climactic battle scenes take place across memorable terrain "
this takes place in a world i've been thinking about for the past couple of months either as a novel or a screenplay
Senerio
The old world died. No one knows what happened but the old magiks of mathematics, chemistry and physics failed and died, sorcery took their places.
In the chaos powerful mages struggled for control... these people were know as world builders for they took the earth, the flora and fauna of the 21st centuary to pieces and rebuilt it to their own desires.
One world builder, in love with a mortal woman, created a stronghold for unchanged humanity, a region of craggy mountains and fast flowing rivers where free humans might defend themselves and survive. In the final cataclysm all of the worldbuilders destroyed themselves leaving the world to itselfgooseneck ridge 1.jpg. A thousand years passed and the outside of Manhold the world became like a 15th century version of Hell.
Finally the legions decided to turn on Manhold. They sent their armies up the river valley where they will meet the armies of mankind...
but this is not our story
Our story is of Prince XXXX, the third son of the king who is sent with a small troop of elderly, cripples and failures to defend the gooseneck ridge against any possible attack by the legions
This is the battleground... WIP #1 edition.
Hi Guys, Wip#2... And a name change
A bit of advice could be handy. I've never played RPGs, the closeest i've come was 1/300 and 1/72 table top WW2 at high school so I'm not sure exactly these should be presented...
So I've added a legend and indicative signs of cover from balistic weapons to the map
gooseneck ridge 2.jpg
Last edited by Southern_land; 04-07-2012 at 05:58 AM.
Hi SouthernLand. I love your terrain and its a great concept for a map. I probably shouldn't offer advice considering that my own map-challenge map is not going very well at all, but I'll try to give you some ideas.
1) Your difficult terrain red blobs are not great - it would be better if the actual map terrain differentiated between the cover/difficult terrain squares, and ordinary squares. You can do this by placing boulders on those squares which you marked with red blobs. On the attachment below, I have circled two areas where you drew in some boulders. If you moved these boulders to those squares that you wanted to give cover to, the map terrain might be more intuitive.
2) I take it you are depicting a narrow ridge of high terrain, with steep cliffs to either side (if this is not the case, apologies and ignore the following). It is not immediately obvious from the map that there is a steep fall to the north and south - in fact it almost looks like the ground rises or is covered in clouds. I propose two alternative ways of showing this in the attachment below:
a) sky-blue with clouds.
b) google-map screenshot (this one is just south of my house in dublin) and you can add clouds.
gooseneck ridge 2.jpg
Either way, what you really need to work on, in my opinion, is the cliffside edges. It should be clearer on the map exactly where the edge of the cliff is.
I hope that is helpful.
Thanks for that. yeah I was worried the 'red dots of safety" might be a bit off.
I've tried to make the ridge something I've actually crossed where the ridge was crumbling rock to a knife edge instead of sheer cliffs (Somkething I've actually crossed here in NZ carrying a heavy pack; scared the $%#* outta me which I guess is why it made such an impression). I might have to revisit that idea and see if sheer cliffs are easier to depict
Following the old principle of "when in doubt; cheat"... after several flawed attempts I've gotten rid of the cliffs and added a lava field.
### LATEST WIP ###
gooseneck ridge 3.jpg
WIP-Ensmallened for your viewing pleasure Opps no I didn't, forgot to save the 1/2 size image doh!
Last edited by Gidde; 05-02-2012 at 05:33 PM.
That is COOL!I like it with lava. It's less common.
Yes, I'm colorblind. But my pink fields and orange forests are avant garde!!
The lava is good, the lava defines the risk and the colors are cool! Nice map!
My Battlemaps Gallery http://www.cartographersguild.com/al...p?albumid=3407
I agree - it looks wonderful now. I really like how you have done the lava - the red/orange colours are just right, and muted by the dark grey smoke which retains the maps coherent colour scheme. Excellent. And very cinematic.
Yup - just beware: your legend still speaks of "red dots".
Hi guys, thanks for your kind words. Unfortunately RL has been crazy busy of late and there's been little time for this aside from tweaking the lava to give it a higher proportion of dark crusty bits nearer the 'shore'. hope to make some more advances before deadline but I'm not holding my breath
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