Hi!

[Laklod]

Hey everybody, I'm Laklod. I got into tabletop roleplay games around highschool, and the more my group split up, the more we found excuses for playing online. As the designated gamemaster (ttrpgs are not popular where I'm from, so I wound up teaching a dozen people how to play just to have gaming buddies), it was up to me to "put on a show", as it were. This, of course, meant sourcing or coming up with battlemaps, regional maps and such. I've gotten by with free or paid content so far, but the idea of making my own stuff is very enticing, and I'm keen to develop my skills as an artist.

So far, I've dabbled a bit, cheating (okay, it's not REALLY cheating) with programs such as Wonderdraft and Photoshop to put together a more detailed regional map for the setting of the games I've been running. Mostly set in Pathfinder's Golarion, here's the region I expanded upon as a before and after:




This is nearly 100% premade assets but I just needed it to serve my purpose, which it does! There are so many things I'd do differently were I to remake it today, and I still haven't figured out the roads for good, but really, just for getting together with some friends this is perfect.

I don't remember how I found out about cartographers' guild, presumably browsing for inspiration for my games, but I've been in love ever since. The work you guys do here is endlessly inspiring and I'm really looking forward to the conversation, the learning and the sharing. I hope you all have a great week! :)

[Redrobes]

Hi and welcome to the guild. Nice maps and using premade assets are definitely not cheating. In fact we have a section on the guild called mapping resources where we place made icons, stamps or whatever else the apps call them. There has been some discussion about the new AI generated stuff and whether that is cheating but I think its all a tool to use so long as its not merely pasting in bits of other peoples work.