RPG Encounter Map

[nmsheldon]

My WIP below is an encounter map for an RPG adventure. I would like ideas and suggestions on how to make this look better. My biggest problems are the large hill and the grass. The hill is supposed to be a 40 foot high man-made structure. The grass is a "forest" of 10-12 foot tall grass or bamboo. I've tried several different ways to represent both, after looking around this site for ideas, and have settled on what you can see below. It still seems off. Opinions on the rest of the map are also welcom.



Edit: I should mention that this is done in Inkscape, in case anyone needs to know.

[Arimel]

This looks rather good at representing what you wish to me. There are two things though that might help a bit. First, I am not too clear on what the white part of the map is. Is it just an emptiness to make the map more legible or ??? Having it in the legend if it is something different might help though.
Second, you have shading for the hill but none of the other upstanding features on the map. I assume the two huts at the bottom of the map would also cast shadows and the monoliths themselves. Adding shadows to them might help with making the map feel more uniform.

I just came up with another actually. Your map is in a top-down view yet your depiction of the grasses/bamboo is a side-on view. While this view is a lot easier to depict, it breaks with the style used in the rest of the map. Of course, what you use will come down to personal style and the map would get very, very complicated and busy to go with a top-down bamboo style but that may be what was bugging you.

I hope this helps!


and welcome to the guild, this is an excellent WIP start and am looking forward to the final product!

[nmsheldon]

Thank you Arimel. Yes, the white space is supposed to just be empty area (shorter grass, or maybe stomped down). I don't really want to put that in the legend, but maybe I should give it a light coloring of some sort. Thank you for the shadow idea -- the shading was just supposed to be shaded relief, but it makes sense that at the scale of this map the stones and buildings would have shadows too.

I think you hit the nail on the head with the side-view vs top-down view on the grass, that's where the biggest problem is. I was going for something like they do on some topographic maps where they use a green "w"-ish shape scattered an area to represent marshes or grass. But that's for a different scale of map, so it doesn't fit. I'm not great at drawing naturalistic features, but I'm going to have to figure out how to represent grass from the top.

[Arimel]

Depending on how dense the grass/bamboo is you could do something like this. It is, at least in every way I can think of, easier to map with deciduous trees like in that than bamboo but something more spiky might look like bamboo from above. Here is a map with junglely forests that perhaps could inspire a pattern in the same design as Lerbwic. This is much more zoomed in than that but with shadows and enough spikeyness it might work out.
This is, of course, just an idea though. Others here - yourself included - can easily come up with something else (and I am unsure of how effective this idea might be). I am merely meaning this to be a possible inspiration/example.

[nmsheldon]

I've attached an update below. I found some other ways to do the grass. This wasn't quite as abstract as I wanted, but I'm happier with these results. I'm still not for sure if the longer grass looks quite right. What do you think?



(I'm not sure what the etiquette is on this forum, if I should have started a new topic let me know.)

[Arimel]

This looks really good to me. I can -I think- fully understand what you are depicting. Without covering the rest of the map in the grass lines I think you will have trouble representing what you wish (that is always an option of course but the image will look a lot busier).

And it is perfectly normal to continue in the same thread like this. Normally people will have a single Work In Progress thread, like this where they will post the progress updates etc. and then, when they think it is done, they will start a new thread in the Finished Maps section to showcase the work.

[Simkin]

You did a good job. I can see only one little detail, that the line for the hill is too strong respect the others natural elements that are lineless. You can try with a brown line or a thinner one.

[nmsheldon]

Thank you.