Rokugan-Legend of the Five Rings

[snodsy]

Started a new map, Rokugan - The legend of the Five Rings - a role playing game, although I've never played. Wanted to try my hand at a more illustrative approach, struggled with it for a week or so -my line work is really inconsistent, I'll have to work on that a lot. I attached a PDF of the process. My mountains were mammoth at first, so I scaled them down. I intent to adjust the overall colors some and I'm going to add the civilizations - people will live in a number of areas - I've already added the entry feature into the volcanic tribe's settlement. Border and graphic elements will be added. Iconic Settlements for - The 5 Rings - will be called out on the map - larger illustrations of the villages of each tribe. I've brought it into Illustrator for the text and border (hate photoshops text tool). Hope you like it, comments always welcome.
ROKUGAN ALL.pdfRokugan_06.jpg

[Meriba]

Good start!

I see a couple inconsistencies with the geography of Rokugan and the other empires. Maybe this official map can help you.

[snodsy]

Rokugan_08.jpg
Thanks Meriba, I have that one, this is a later one. I have three of them, all different. Thanks for your comment, I'm starting to put in some civilizations.

[Abu Lafia]

That's really nice looking, snodsy! The landmarks are woderful so far. I recently skimmed through the L5R RPG Rulebook and was amazed by the world and the lovely artwork and layout (btw. my favorite faction were the crab-clan, sooo bad-ass! XD). Are you going here for a completely free depiction of the world? Since i could only recall this nice map of the empire from the book and am not sure wich part it is you are working on here. Keep up the good work.

[Meriba]

Of course, you can depict this fantasy world as you wish. I also like the idea of drawing a map in which USA appears next to China and Hobbiton in Mordor.

I like your interpretation, it's quite interesting.

[Sharpes]

Oh nice snodsy! Funny coincidence but I've been working on a Rokugan Empire map as well (finished the black & white version last year, been thinking of trying to colour though I don't know how I'll do it) though it's not even close to being as good as yours.

[Gamerprinter]

Ah, when I decided to create a fantasy Japan, I invented my own, and IMO, more authentic analog Japan - its an archipelago of islands (not geography that looks more like China/Korea, as Rokugan does.) Not only that, I published it. Its the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG), I designed it primarily in an effort to create a more authentic Japan analog, than anything previously published. Of course I'm half Japanese, so I probably care a bit more on getting cultural and geographic issues correct. (If you cannot tell, I'm not a fan of L5R nor Rokugan). Besides Japanese horror is a setting niche that never existed in RPG format prior to Kaidan, its a first in many ways.

Your map looks good though (despite it not being my favorite location).

This is probably too late to help, but I've created a set of hand-drawn terrain symbols (mountains and stuff) designed to look like Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print art symbols, years ago.

[snodsy]

I like the e ukiyo-e woodblock style, that would have been a good style to incorporate here, maybe Sharpes can take a stab at that. Here is the map I used as a starting point, plus I have the Legend of the Five Rings Companion books with has the map that Abu Lafia posted and describes all the clans, and the geography or Rokugan and it's bordering neighbors, such as the Shadowlands being a darker and mysterious land. I have taken some license with it, my main goal was the illustrative style and line work, which I'm going after. I admit I haven't done all the proper studying for the map that I should have, maybe I should call it Rokugan-Like. Thanks for the comments, love your ukiyo symbols Gamerprint. I follow your illustrations a lot since I use Adobe Illustrator most of the time. These maps were a way of me learning Photoshop and it's really helped and opened up new styles for me, I like the smudge tool and the softness I can get with photoshop. But I could 80-90% with illustrator.rokugan-world-map-iib.png

[Sharpes]

Oh yeah forgot about those ones you did Gamerprinter (did you ever get a chance to put them in one zip/rar and are you still making more of those?).

[snodsy]

Played around with the Look of the Title page graphics - more align with the location/setting of Rokugan, darkened the sea. Rokugan_14-01.jpg