General Mapmaking Tips

I have a passion for making maps for my homebrew setting. But I'm not an artist--I can't draw a beautiful map by my own hand. Instead, I've learned to use photoshop to create maps that achieve the look I'm going for. This does have its own challenges. I've described the general process before in my guide to making campaign maps. That guide, my most popular article on this site as of the writing of this, covers the step-by-step process of how to start with some reference images and end up with a cohesive map. But recently, I grew frustrated with the world map I've been using for the last fifteen years. I decided to revamp that map, and I'm happy with the outcome. 

This map is a recreation of my main continent, Evanoch. When I first started DMing in a serious capacity a decade and a half ago, I had created a very basic map of the continent which I was almost immediately unhappy with: 

The thing is, this older map achieves what I needed at the time. It's functional. It was easy to make. It allowed me to (1) know how to picture my world in a concrete way, and (2) communicate the basics of the location to my players. I don't regret making this map, but it made me sad because I conceived of Evanoch as a beautiful, thriving, diverse place, and the map doesn't show that. It only shows outlines. I wanted something that would capture the feel of my setting, hence the updated map. 

So in celebration of creating this new map, I thought I would share a few general tips on how to make maps like it, things I learned in the process of making this one in particular. I would say that the original region/campaign map article is still the best place to start for learning how to use photoshop to make a map, but this guide will help you take things further and offer some insights on how to focus on a continent map. 

One thing I am very pleased with is the borders of the continent. In the old map, I used just smooth lines to outline the continent, but real coastlines don't look like this. Real coastlines are rough and choppy. When I created a continent map for my wild west setting, I used a real island map and rotated it around to give me a basic shape: 

But Evanoch already had determined boundaries, and I was never going to be able to find a map that looked enough like it to really have a map that looked like Evanoch. So I improvised. I took a coastline map I found online (I searched for "coastline map") and made many duplicates, editing the copies into the shape of Evanoch and erasing overlapping segments. Here's what the process looks like: 

A single fragment of the coastline reference.

An edited addition to created a peninsula on the map.

A mirrored addition to continue the coastline south.

I continued this process for all the map landmasses until I had duplicated the approximate shape of Evanoch as I had already designed it. This is basically an extension of the process I used to create the tree shapes in the campaign map, copying and rotating the reference image until I had the shape I wanted. 

My favorite thing about this is that this new map makes Evanoch look a lot more like a real place. The wavering coastline gives the appearance of a realistic location, and the coastline process was genuinely one of the easiest parts of making this map. I would argue that hand-drawing a realistic coast is difficult, frustrating, and not terribly rewarding for people without the gift of being artistic; duplicating real coastlines to create the borders of your continent is relatively simple, easily customizable, and has a lovely finished look. 

Perhaps my favorite part of the new map is the forest appearance, particularly that of the Liggen Forest in the northeast of the continent. I took a very different approach than I did with the region map because this map's intention is not accurate depiction of geographical features--instead, it's meant to give a sense of the actual appearance of the land there in terms of plant life. So you may notice that each of the several forests in the map have different looks--that's to reflect the different types of trees in each location. Let's talk about the forest appearance. 

 

 

To start, I searched for "forest silhouette" and found this set of similarly-styled depictions of an evergreen forest skyline. I separated each into different layers so that I could work with them individually. This was done so that the look of the trees would be varied and not a repeating pattern that would be visually repetitive or bland. I then selected the pixels of each layer, created a new layer, filled the new layer (still the original's pixels) with black paint, used the "select->modify->contract-> 3 pixels" option, made sure I was selecting the new layer, and deleted the smaller shape. I then deleted the original layer and erased the bottom of the resulting shape, leading to just an outline like this:

This was the process to create individual treelines. But obviously the entire forest had much more, so I repeated the process again and again, adding more treelines on top of the existing one so that the layers together would create the impression of a dense forest. Here are several treelines together to show the collective effect of even just a few:

This is the process I used for all the forests. The northeast for this sprawling evergreen forest, there are rainforest silhouettes in the southwest, the northwest got deciduous forests, and the elven islands of Mishara are signified with mangrove trees, which are genuine to their location.

One thing I did in the map for Ramsey, my wild west location, was created different color schemes for what was land and what was water. In the first large chunks of time I spent on the new Evanoch map, I hadn't done that, and as a result, the map did not look very good. I wasn't sure that I would differentiate the water from the land with a color scheme--I wanted the map to look like a sketch. But this was something I realized needed to be done. Take a look at the difference between the flat one-color map and the water-darkened design: 

As you can see, this is a big difference. In order to create this effect, I did some steps which were simple and others which were more difficult. For starters, I used the eyedropper tool to select the color of the land and then chose a darker color in the same palette (simply picking another color in the same field without moving the color spectrum slider), creating a new layer to hold the darker color and using the paint bucket to fill in the new layer. This was simple. The harder part was getting the actual oceans, rivers, and lakes to look darker than the land. Had I created a design where the rivers attached directly to the other geographical features (like connecting the mouths of the rivers right to mountain ranges, I would have been able to use the magic wand tool to select just the connected water areas. Honestly, if I had created a layer cutting the rivers off (using a copy of the rivers, not the original) with a brush line, I could have achieved that effect. But I was enjoying the detail work process and chose instead to hand-erase all of the water areas from the land color layer, which was labor-intensive and time-consuming, but it allowed me a lot of control over the look of the water borders. Either approach would work and be valid, so it's all about what you prefer. 

One thing I had forgotten about the mapmaking process was how much time is spent re-doing some things. It had been a while since I went for a hand-drawn look with a map, and I had never created a map like that starting from an established design like my original ugly world map, but this map meant lots of finessing. I stretched river and forest boundaries well past the edge of the continent's edges in order to give myself leeway to create borders later on, and that meant that once my coastlines were in place, I needed to do a lot of erasing to make the lines all meet up. With a passion project like this, that's part and parcel of the game. It's better to have to erase a too-long line than to have to extend it later in the process, so know going in that you'll be revising throughout the process. 

One decision I really labored over was showing the lake and river lines. My first draft of this map prioritized forests, which meant that I would draw river lines up to the base of tree shapes and then have the river disappear, reappearing beyond the treeline. But as I continued, I realized this was (1) not realistic since the trees would not grow in the rivers, and (2) fairly ugly because it looked so busy. I ended up redoing most of the rivers in forested areas to address this, and I'm happy with how it came out. But this is another way that revising will enter the equation. I spent about an hour and a half redoing something I spent two hours doing that I decided I did like. I mention this because committing to the finished project, even if it's frustrating, it a part of the process. 

As I did with the campaign map article, I drew up little city icons for each of the ten most important cities in my setting so that the cities weren't just dots on the map. With the campaign map, I was still developing the Eastweald, and the look and feel of cities wasn't already established. This meant I could just use interesting designs that looked good and rationalize that that's what those cities look like. But with this map, I've been building and playing in these big cities for fifteen years. There's a determined character to each one. So I wanted to do something that really fit the city individually. Here are a few examples:

This is Talon Gorge. In my world, Talon Gorge is notable because it was the site of the first serious campaign I ever ran. Talon Gorge is characterized by a high clocktower at the center of seven independent districts. So for the image representing Talon Gorge, I found an image that had a tower, and I added a little clockface while tracing it like I explained in the campaign/region map article. The original image only had two other buildings, so I pulled up another reference image on medieval buildings and traced five more in to represent the seven districts. 

This is Vestry. Vestry is the gnomish capital and the most populated single city in my setting. To represent this, I wanted a really bustling, dense city image. I scoured references for fantasy cities until I found one that looked really populated and architecturally diverse, and I was pleased with this result. I really like the look of this massive city in the middle of the Liggen Forest, suggesting how much space it really takes up. 

This is Torga, another city very important to me--it was the site of Listen Check, the podcast I did in 2010, back when D&D actual play wasn't really a thing yet. Torga is a thriving port city, so I made sure to find an image that had a dock (which I expanded from the reference) and a ship that I could have in the ocean beyond the city. Seeing this simplified dock system and ship with the little city reminds me of all the time spent in Torga's waterfront, not to mention Aurora, a character in my now-current campaign who spent time as a sailor stationed there.

Finally, here's Kruush, the orcish capital. It's worth noting that Kruush is not one of the biggest cities in the world. Even smaller cities which lie between the major cities on the map have more people than Kruush. In my world, a massive elven-orcish war decimated two-thirds of the orcish population, after which a huge diaspora sent most remaining orcs away from the homeland to seek a more peaceful life elsewhere. But Kruush is still the most politically important orcish city and the only real major city in the southwest of Evanoch, so I wanted to include it. You'll notice that the city design is basically just huts and shacks around a campfire to represent the continued tribal tradition of the orcs who remained. 

The finished product of this mapmaking process makes me happy. I spent a decade and a half using a rough, unrealistic, and ugly map whenever my players wanted a sense of the world, and I really hated seeing it whenever I would need to reference it for some geographical issue. Taking the time to really nail down a better version will serve me for a long time, and I'm glad I committed to making this map. Here's the finished version with city labels (they obscure some of the land features, but it's the sort of thing that adventurers might use to get settled in Evanoch):

As always, my big advice here is that spending time working on your homebrew setting always yields rewards. I know that having a visual reference for geography and city feel has helped me connect more with my world, and there's some worldbuilding I got to do as a result. I also realized how dense populated the eastern half of Evanoch is compared to the west--I had kind of vaguely known this, but seeing how tightly packed the east is and then the huge stretches of no cities in the west has cemented that and given me some ideas about how to run things in my world. In any case, having a pretty map to share with my players will make me happy for years to come, and I'm proud of the product of this work. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why open writing is better than closed writing, alternate methods to understanding your character's philosophy besides alignment, and a guide to clans amongst the Faninites. Until next time, happy gaming!

City Maps (and Feirmor!)

I shared the campaign map a while ago, along with step-by-step instructions on how to make one like it. City maps are a great deal different from large area maps like that one, however, and I'd like to share a city map and explain the importance of detail in their creation. As a case study, here is the city map of Feirmor, the first city in which the players met and are performing actual gameplay:

Feirmor, the city of Dez's birth and the campaign's true beginning.

When you develop a city for a role-playing game, it's important to build it with close attention paid to how the people in that city live. Other considerations are important, too: the city's history, rulers, and economics. Each of these factors was part of Feirmor's map, and I will explain how to create a map which reflects these ideas.

The first step with this map was creating the outline. Feirmor is a walled city, so I created the wall which protects the city. It is a simple circle with towers placed at fairly regular intervals. In Photoshop, this was as simple as placing circular towers and connecting them with a curved line. The only structures which I knew I had to include at this point were the palace and the large public square at the city's entrance. Then I set to work drawing in buildings.

The process of drawing buildings on the map is straightforward if time-consuming. I draw in boxes of various shapes (mostly squares and rectangles, but including other shapes which I use as indications of special buildings or as a particular race's style of architecture). The focus in drawing these buildings has to consider two factors. First, the size must be appropriate. I don't use a particular scale, but I try to develop a few of the smallest possible buildings for a rough scale example. When drawing larger buildings, I try to make them no larger than the owner of the building would need or be able to afford, treating the smallest buildings as a comparison of what is truly needed to survive. The second part of drawing buildings, and my favorite part of the building addition process, is placing the buildings in a shape that makes sense for roads. I place the buildings in curves and straight lines to create major streets, then fill in the blocks between major roads with smaller, tighter paths leading to buildings nestled off the beaten paths. The result is a system of roads which allows for transportation to any given building and which illustrates which buildings are likelier to have lots of traffic.

I added two large parks to Feirmor. One, the large park to the west, is called Riston Park. It is a mostly open field with a few trees. It is a marker of a higher class area of Feirmor, and the buildings nearby are the homes and businesses of upper class citizens. The other park is Malator Square, a park filled with statues, fountains, and quiet alcoves. It is near the palace and is named for the current monarchs of Feirmor; this indicates that it is a newer addition to the city. As such, it is still in the prime of its life, and it attracts the wealthier of Feirmor's citizens.

With all of Feirmor's land covered in buildings and parks, I began to create a district map of the city. Each of these districts is indicated by a different color scheme on the map. The Mulrennan District, for instance, is denoted by the color yellow. It is largely a commercial district, noted for its lively tavern and inn scene. At the center of the district is a circle of buildings dubbed "Six Bars." These are the most popular of Feirmor's taverns, and the Six Bars name is a reference to the location known as "Six Roads" in the Eastweald region (which you can see in the western area of the campaign map). I tried with each of the districts to choose dividing lines which offered clear borders between each cluster of buildings. Once the districts were divided, I set to work characterizing each one.

To accomplish this defining of each district, I selected one building from each district as noteworthy institutions. For each district, I tried to create a building which would suggest what sort of citizens and businesses make it up. Six Bars was the representation of the Mulrennan District. The Ostergard District in the northeast is home to the Trogan Center for Economics, an organization which caters to trade and development in and out of the city. The district's proximity to the palace and the presence of the financial headquarters of the city illustrate that it is among the most affluent in the city. Meanwhile, the Kearney Distict in the southeast is home to the Fulmora Orphanage, named for and founded by the late King Malator's wife. Along with the temples located in the Kearney District (shrines to Heironeous and St. Cuthbert, deities committed to zeal and caring for one's fellow humanoids), the Fulmora Orphanage suggests that the district is characterized as a tightly-knit community that does its best to help its neighbors. Paired with its relative lack of wealth (noted by its distance from the palace), this indicates a district which persistently helps those in need, of which there are plenty.

Temples were added along with the noteworthy buildings. I added one temple to each district (a few with more, and a few with less). These temples were placed considering what the people of Feirmor care most about and based on where each temple would find its largest audience. Temples of Chauntea and Malar, the deities of farming and the hunt, are in the district nearest the gates. This represents the interests of the farmers and hunter populations, who mostly live at the edge of or outside of the city. To facilitate the worship of these people, the temples are at the closest possible location for them. Other temples include those to Boldrei (deity of community and home), Olladra (deity of good luck and fortune), the Dalton Church of Pelor (an offshoot of the standard Church of Pelor, founded by the leaders of Dalton, a kingdom of imperialist humans from an island to the east), and the Shrine of the Many (with spaces for the non-human racial deities to worship their respective gods). These serve to illustrate that Feirmor is home to people who care deeply about their heritage and the well-being of their city. The temples each have a small icon of the deity worshipped inside its walls.

Finally, I added docks at the river's edge and a host of farms around the outside edge of the city walls. These show how the city survives, both as a shipping and trading center and as a self-sufficient state. The last step in creating the map was to make a legend in the corner. I used the city's name and population, along with color-coded boxes which show the meanings of each color on the map. For government buildings and temples, the color code was simple. Illustrating the other buildings (the vast majority of the city) was a bit of a challenge. Throughout the districts, I used a brighter, bolder color for all businesses and a lighter shade of the same color for residences. This was difficult to illustrate without words in the key, but I tried to show the lighter and darker variants of the same colors in the key as an indication of that scheme. I'm still not terribly happy with that detail, but I am largely content with the map as a whole.

I mentioned above that it's valuable to consider the way that people live when making the map. To that end, the explanation I've provided above about the locations of roads and buildings, the notable institutions, and the placement of temples answers some of that question. But the other factors I mentioned - the city's history, rulers, and economics - are valuable too.

The city's history and rulers are represented here in several ways. One of the simplest is in the naming of districts and important institutions. Each district is named for a previous ruler, so that citizens live in the domains of their city's past in much the same way that we name schools and streets for those who have marked history. To fill out more in this vein, I created a timeline of rulers for Feirmor, which has become its chronicle of leadership over time. From this roster of kings, I developed a sense of the city's legacy in the Eastweald: Feirmor aggressively expanded, inviting smaller townships nearby to relocate to Feirmor, adding to its wealth and citizenry. Former king Aldo Riston, for whom the large park is named, is commemorated for his pioneering of this policy with the broad expanse of park in the city. At the park is a plaque with his words justifying what many Eastweald residents see as a predatory practice: "There's a baby born in my kingdom every day. These are my people, and I need them to have a tomorrow they can count on. You say I'm ruthless because I compete with other settlements. I say I'm unwilling to let my people go hungry." This sort of detail, which I developed as a thread from the idea that Feirmor expanded in this way, characterizes the city and its aims in the context of the Eastweald.

Economics also come into play with the map. The docks and farms surrounding the city were a late addition; I realized that Feirmor would certainly capitalize on its location at the river's bank and that it would require a good deal of agricultural development to be self-sufficient. The inclusion of the Trogan Center for Economics indicates that the city pays active attention to its financial development, a trait that not all settlements have. Finally, considering all of these advantages and the city's attitude, there is still the matter that it isn't so populous or large as Woodhearth, the Eastweald's largest city. This seems to me to ask the question why Feirmor isn't a bigger competitor to Woodhearth or even bigger cities. The answer, I decided, lies in the walls surrounding Feirmor. It could grow bigger and more prosperous, but the city's growth is restricted by the walls. To underscore this idea, I had an NPC talk to some of the characters about Feirmor's current state; he proudly explained that Feirmor had reached its peak potential in terms of physical growth, confidently saying that it would rival Woodhearth if it were willing to sacrifice the safety afforded by the walls. This idea adds a sense that Feirmor is at an important part of its history. Affected by a plague and filled to capacity, Feirmor is at a crossroads. The characters, of course, will largely determine where Feirmor goes from here.

As you can see from the process I've explained here, there is a two-way relationship between creating the map and developing details about the city. Most of the time, you add something to the map because it is a reflection of the settlement's character. Sometimes, though, adding something to the map raises a question that you must answer, and this answer becomes part of the settlement's character. Obviously, I strive for improvisation in this campaign, but I think that making things up on the fly often yields the most entertaining and best results. Don't try to determine too much in advance when you create a city - the process of diagramming its skeleton, guts, and skin will give you every opportunity you need to create something rich in detail and consistent with your vision, whatever it might be.

Thanks for reading, and best of luck in your games. Look out for session two recap notes and more information about creating documents in coming posts. Happy gaming!

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The Campaign Map and How to Make One Like It

It took about fifty hours of work, but I finally finished the region map for my current campaign. Fifty hours is a pretty steep amount of time to dedicate to something like a map, and I readily concede this. I certainly don't think that such an investment is required to create a visual representation of your game world. As I discussed in an early post here, the important thing is to characterize a place through the map, and depending on what you're trying to say, it may be worth it to spend plenty of time refining that characterization. For this map, it was worth it to me to create something that was visually striking, and I'll go into why shortly. First, though, the map:

This is a massive image file, and it's shrunk down pretty small on this page. You can see the full-size version here.

The region in question is called the Eastweald. It is the densely wooded area in the eastern central part of my main homebrew continent, Evanoch. As you can see, there are a great deal of settlements scattered throughout the Eastweald, and the majority of the land is thickly forested. Each of the settlements has a fairly unique appearance, which I intend to illustrate that each of the cities and towns was built in a different way.

A city like Whiterose in the northeast is composed of wooden expansions onto one large structure. With limited space to expand without clearing large swaths of forest, the citizens of Whiterose chose to build up rather than out. Over time, the superstructure has taken on a bizarre shape as each subsequent addition was built. The region's biggest city, Woodhearth, on the other hand, grew from ornate stone structures into the forest itself, building homes and businesses onto the side and into the branches of large trees.

Whiterose (above) and Woodhearth (below).

Other settlements are characterized to show that they depend on different industries. Splitaxe, for instance, is a city in the southern part of the map which is represented by a smithy with a forge. This is because Splitaxe is a mining and smithing powerhouse, despite its small size. Cloud's Landing, another small town in the south, is shown as a lumbermill, which reflects its dependence on forestry and processing lumber.

Splitaxe (left) and Cloud's Landing (right).

Part of why this map took so long to complete was that I have fairly limited artistic skills. (Remember that first map I showed back in this post?) At a loss for the ability to just draw the forests, the settlements, and the paths by hand, I had to find images that would achieve what I wanted and then adapt them for my purposes. From here, I'd like to explain what that process looks like, using the Eastweald map as a case study.

Note: I use Photoshop when I create maps, and I think that the variety of tools it offers are perfectly suited for the kind of work I do when creating a map. The advice I'll be giving is all based in Photoshop, and I recommend using it even if you're unfamiliar with the program. I taught myself how to use Photoshop several years ago, and I think that most computer users can do the same with a little bit of time and effort. There are always guides out there for learning, and it's a useful tool to have under your belt for lots of purposes.

Step One: The Rough Sketch

The first thing to do with a map is to get a sort of thumbnail of where things go. This doesn't need to be pretty. The goal is just to have a framework for what will be where in your image. It's especially important to have a sketch ready when you use reference pictures to create the bulk of your map; otherwise, the references will be more or less useless. Features to consider when making your sketch:

• Scale - How large an area are you mapping? How far apart should settlements be? How long does it take to get from point A to point B on foot / mounted? I think it's generally fair to assume that towns are separated by about half a day's journey on foot (so that people can make the return trip after visiting a town; remember that non-adventurers usually make the trip from their home to a neighboring settlement in order to get supplies and then go back home). You may use a different gauge, but be sure to consider distances when developing your map.
• Geographical features - Where are the bodies of water? Where the rivers and streams flow? Where are the forests / deserts / mountains / hills / canyons / valleys? How will these impact the people living around them? How will they influence where and how people build settlements? 
• Settlements - Where are they? How big are they? How do they interact with one another? Why might a settlement have popped up at a particular location? Along bodies of water and halfway or so between major settlements are the likeliest locations, but be creative with this. It's always fun as a player to encounter a town which is thoroughly bizarre or geographically improbable.
• Roads - What kinds of roads have people built between settlements, if any? Are they paved, cobbled, or simply worn down from travelers' journeys? If the road cuts through a forest, why would it be worth the time and energy for people to chop down trees for a road? If it crosses a river, stream, or canyon, why would people put the effort into building a bridge? I generally rule that if a road or bridge connects towns to major cities or trade routes, it's likely that people would work to create one. Similarly, if a few small towns are relatively isolated or have friendly relations, they probably share a route to connect them. 

For the Eastweald, I first took a zoomed-in image of the region from my continent map (the ugly one I keep posting a link to for some reason). Then, I outlined the forking river and drew in where settlements would appear, followed by the roads and bridges linking them. 

Continent sample (above) and rough sketch (below).

In this image, three of the four biggest cities occur on the river, and the fourth is roughly equidistant from the other three. This allows all four to thrive as trade cities. The smaller settlements around them are scattered across the region, none too close to one another, and many as the half-day's journey between larger cities. The settlements which are not connected by roads are bandit and barbarian camps, which have strategic interests in being near cities and roads, but not too close. Bridges only exist next to major cities and to cross the river in the southeast, where there is no nearby route to another bridge. 

It's worth noting that I've placed several of the smaller cities just off the main roads, not as stops along them like the major cities are. I did this to show that they either sprung up after the roads had been built or that they were not important enough at the time of building to have been included along the road. I also made sure to include roads that go off the region map in the direction of major cities, in this case to the north, west, and southeast. These details are minor, but I think that they reinforce that the Eastweald, while a fairly large geographical area, is still a part of a larger world. 

Step Two: Reference Pictures

Obviously, I don't want to give my players the rough sketch. It's basic and not very pretty, and it certainly doesn't characterize the area like I want this map to. This is where I find a workaround to my lack of artistic ability: I find reference pictures that have the kind of feel that I want to work towards. I'm going to present the images I found as references for my map and then show how to turn them into something I can use for my map.

[Note: I'm going to begin with the forests on my map. Not every map needs such a detailed process to create a forest, but I use the same method to create rivers and roads, which I discuss in Step Four below. Use this section on forests as a detailed guide for the process, since I just refer back to here to explain later.]

The first image I tracked down was the one for the forest. Since the Eastweald is mostly wooded, it was important to me to find an image for the forests that felt like the region. I found that inspiration in a "how to draw a map" search on Google images. This is what I started with:

The starting point for the Eastweald map.

I knew as soon as I saw this map that I wanted to use its forested areas for my map. I copied and pasted this image into Photoshop and began the long process of forming the fragments of treetops from this map into the shapes of forest in my map. I made a great deal of copies of the shapes of trees in this reference picture and placed them alongside one another in the shapes I needed my forests to take. To get the exact curves and angles of my forests, I would place the treeline where it needed to be, then selected the portions that needed to move with the lasso tool. Then I rotated the treelines so that they took on the shape I needed, taking care to make the small curves and bends in the reference have a smooth, natural-looking edge. After several hours of this process, I had an image that looked like this:

The basic sketch was the guideline for where the forested areas needed to go. 

As you can see, the basic shapes are correct, but the space in the middle of the forests is missing. The places where the pasted treelines meet are also choppy, matching in shape but not in color or texture. Still, this is the first (and very necessary) step in achieving what I was looking for.

The next step was to merge all of the forest outlines, making them into one large shape rather than many small ones. This allowed me to perform the next step, which was to smooth the color and texture of the edges and fill in the open spaces. To smooth the edges, I used the spot healing tool, which automatically blended the color and texture where necessary. The spot healing tool is a fantastic resource, but it doesn't always do exactly what you want it to; to this end, I added a green that matched the most common shades in the tree reference image (via the eyedropper and then brush tools, respectively) and used the spot healing tool again to smooth it. To fill in the empty spaces, I highlighted the empty spaces with the magic wand tool (which selects all of an area that is judged as identical or close enough to matter) and then used the content-aware fill tool (which borders on outright magic). Content-aware fill samples an area's color and texture and makes educated guesses on how to fill in open spaces. This tool works perfectly for something like filling in the forests, and I used the spot healing tool again along the edges where the treelines met the new filled-in areas. That process gave me this:

The forests are almost finished, but still have some cleaning up to do. 

Finally, to finish the forests, I did a bit more cleaning of textures and made sure the general colors of the forests were consistent. The last step in creating the forests was to carefully erase the extra color that existed outside of the treelines' outline. This was a very long, arduous process. The magic wand tool will often eliminate steps like this, as it can select everything outside of a fairly solid line. But in this case, the outline of the forests was relatively small, and the color on the other side of it was basically identical to what was inside of it, so the magic wand tool couldn't help me. In any case, I finished erasing and had my finished forest image:

Crisp, clean lines and uniform color. Lots of time, but I think it was worth it.

For a map that doesn't include so much forested area, finding a reference and going through this process probably won't be necessary. But because it's important to me that the Eastweald look like a lively area, choked by thick forests and full of greenery, I wanted to use the lovely woods from the reference picture I had found.

The more valuable use of reference images for most fantasy mapmakers comes when drawing in settlements. It's fairly easy to draw a box with a triangle on top to show that a house is somewhere, but it's not just the trees that thrive in the Eastweald; there are bountiful, rich communities scattered throughout which flourish in the bounty that natures offers here. I wanted images which show the wealth and variety of settlements in the region. And so I found a handful of pictures, again on google image search, that looked like what I was aiming for. I generally use phrases like "fantasy town" or "medieval city," and there are countless beautiful pictures that come up, but specifics always help.

[Side note: I recommend that game masters who find themselves in a creative rut do searches on google image search or specialized gaming boards for images of towns, characters, monsters, etc, and saving anything that strikes the imagination. You can find things which inspire you and add something special to your campaign, and those images can come in handy the next time you're putting together a map and just don't know what sort of settlement to put in it. I used to worry that looking for inspiration in this way meant that I was failing to be creative or that I was cheating my players by taking others' ideas, but I find that I'm more often inspired by just an image with no additional information, as I have fun filling in the blanks with what truly is all my own creation.]

So, when it came to settlements, I tracked down about 25 different possibilities, ranging from the very small (just one building) to sprawling cities (the image for Feirmor comes to mind). It's important to note that it doesn't matter what art style or level of detail the image is fashioned in. You're just looking for pictures you like. The next step of the process will take care of all the other details. Here are a few of the reference pictures I turned up for this map that I was the most excited about:

Reference pictures for settlements. From upper right, clockwise: Feirmor, Ragnir, Mason's Ford, and Blackleaf Falls.

As you can see, these images are each drawn in very different styles. Some are pencil sketches, others illustrations, and some are fully-rendered computer images. The important thing, though, is that they characterize the settlements in the way that I wanted them to. As I described above, I chose these pictures based on how they would represent the towns and cities (and bandit camps, for that matter). In the case of Feirmor, the walled castle in the upper left of the image above, I wanted an imposing, densely-populated city. For Mason's Ford, the small town in the lower left, I was looking for a small, friendly, content little place. With Blackleaf Falls in the upper left, it was important to find a building that looked sharp and kind of sullen (which is for story reasons which will become clear in time). And Ragnir, the warehouse in the lower right, was chosen because I liked the idea of a barbarian tribe taking over an industrial site and using its tools for terrorizing and torturing unfortunate nearby people.

Once you have your reference pictures, it's time for the next step, where we'll turn each reference picture into a settlement with the same art style.

Step Three: Tracing

One of the beautiful things about Photoshop is that it makes tracing an image incredibly easy. Keep your reference picture in one layer, create a new layer on top of it, and start drawing on the new layer. In no time, you've got a reproduction of your reference picture that removes all of the shading, linework, and coloration that make the source picture look so unique. Now, I know that what I just said in that last sentence basically sounds like the opposite of what you might want to do. Why be excited about taking all the personality and defining features away from the image that inspired you in the first place? I have a very easy answer:

Because this is ugly. 

As great as the source images are, they don't work together. But the solution is simple. You trace the outline, which keeps the shape and character of the town. Later, you'll color it in (if your map is multi-colored, and it certainly doesn't have to be), which will give it a chance to regain some of the unique look it lost during tracing. And tracing gives you another benefit that's easy to miss: you can simplify or remove parts of the original image that might not work terribly well for your purposes.

Tracing is simple, but I'll give a quick explanation of the process I use. In the example pictures below, I've kept an untouched copy of the original next to the traced version so that comparison is easier.

1.   Create a new layer and put it on top of the reference picture. (Remember to do this, or you'll be forced to do all the tracing again when you realize you're working on the wrong layer. I promise it will be very frustrating.)

2.   Select the brush tool and set the size to the right thickness for the line you want. I try to go about as thick as the biggest lines in the image go, but you also don't want to go so big that you can't do relatively fine detail. It's also important to remember that you should trace all of your reference pictures using the same width of brush so that it looks consistent. Begin by going over the main lines, especially outer edges and bold lines. I find it very helpful to click on a corner to place a dot, then shift-click to draw a perfectly straight line to the point I've clicked on. I would estimate that about 98% of the lines in the Eastweald map were drawn this way. Here's Blackleaf Falls with the major lines traced: 

The tracing for this example is very simplified. That's because you don't want to get too hung up on the details of reference picture. Part of why you can't use the original is that it's too unique to mesh with the other images, and the some details are just too different to work well. With a few more lines in for detail: 

3.   Adding color is the last step, if you wish to do so. For this example, I'm coloring the image with different colors than the region map uses since Blackleaf Falls has a history. (It was burned to the ground in a tragic and mysterious raid, then rebuilt by the paladins who helped save the small handful of survivors of the raid. The colored image will represent the town before the raid.) So with the paint bucket tool, the final image looks like this: 

One of the unfortunate side effects of coloring in Photoshop is that outlines become much more faint. That's why when I colored settlements for the map, I went back over the image, redrawing the outlines. It make for a much cleaner, crisper image. 

This image is much better, but still rough-looking. That's because at some point between saving examples, I started coloring over a different layer, making the color from the paint bucket a little wonky. This is exactly what I was talking about back in step 1; be careful of which layer you're working with. Since this was just an example for illustration of the process, I didn't bother cleaning it up much more, but you can see what the end result is when you pay attention and focus on the small details in the map image of Blackleaf Falls (the newer, rebuilt one): 

This image still has the original's character and unique architecture, but it has the uniform art style of the rest of the settlements on the map. Both colored versions are somewhat distinct from the original (and certainly from each other), which shows that you do really get some choices when it comes to tracing; it's not just a matter of reproduction so much as it is making something inspired by the original. 

Step Four: Filling in the Rest

For the Eastweald map, this step consisted of adding the rivers, bridges, and roads. The rivers and roads followed the same process as the creation of the forest: find a sample, make copies, shape the copies, and clean up the colors and textures. For example, see the image below. I found a sample image of a path that I liked, made a bunch of copies, and shaped/curved/bent those copies until they followed the trails of my original rough sketch. 

After I had the shape I wanted, I smoothed the textures wherever the pieces of the road met, making sure that the colors blended well. Then, to make sure the paths would appear well on the larger map, I took a very small brush and outlined the paths to differentiate between the path and the grass next to it. [It was especially important for me, since I am colorblind and the green and brown in the reference image look almost identical to me.] After smoothing and outlining, the path looked much cleaner. To fill in the area on the ground, I took a color sample with the eyedropper tool from the grass and just filled in the whole map with it. To give that some texture, I added little bursts of darker green where the grass was visible between the paths and the treeline. 

Left: Not very pretty, but you can see how it looks with everything else visible on the right. 

So for the river and paths, I used the same process as the forest; for the bridges, I use the same process as I used for the settlements. Find a reference picture, trace it, color it. Once you've done it a few times, it's just a matter of putting in the time and effort to get it to look the way you want it to. 

Step Five: Finishing Touches

The last things to take care of with the Eastweald map were pretty simple. First, I took a good look at everything I'd worked on and made sure it still looked good with everything else. I checked to see if there were any details I'd missed. Then I set about labelling the map. Each settlement and general landmark got a layer of text with its name, and I added a few labels for the rivers and one for the whole region. Adding names seems like an easy thing, and it really is, but there are a few considerations I advise taking when you do:

• What kind of map is this? If it's a map you're designing to be purchased by a player, or it's been designed by a character in the game, that's a much different map than an authoritative out-of-game map. In-game maps may include details about settlements, a signature from the mapmaker, or even advice (perhaps the mapmaker thinks you should stay away from a bandit camp, so they add a skull and crossbones next to it). An out-of-game map shouldn't reveal anything about the area that you don't want your players to know, which might include certain roads of hidden settlements (I strongly considered keeping a couple bandit camps and the ghostly site called "Clfdrlph" off this map for similar reasons). 
• Do you need to include map features like a scale or compass rose? If you do include a compass rose, is "up" not going to be "north" (because if not, you probably don't need it). If you are going to add a scale, remember that it adds a lot of consistency that you need to maintain when making other maps in the area or of the larger area that this map exists it. (As you can see in the Eastweald map, I didn't include either a scale or a compass rose because north is up and I prefer the "day's journey" standard over a discrete distance value.) Maybe the side of the map should include a note about what significant features or settlements lie outside its boundaries (I almost added notes about where the roads going off the map headed to, but decided it would be unnecessary clutter). 
• What names might a settlement go by to different people? When I created the map for Ramsey, my western D&D setting, the players began in a very small town called Hart Springs. But when they left that town, they found that other Ramsey residents don't call that town Hart Springs. Instead, they call the town "Fool's Landing," since it is the first point that many sailors encounter when sailing to the island, but it is not a major trade hub and it functions as a small commune with little place for travelers. Maybe the mapmaker uses one of these less-universal names when referring to a settlement, especially if it's a rival settlement to where the mapmaker lives. 

Finally, I'd like to add a note about the appearance of the labels. I'm more than a bit obsessed with fonts (I have somewhere over 600 installed on my computer, if that tells you anything). I think that the shape of the letters are just as important as what they spell out. I highly recommend both DaFont and 1001 Fonts for starting your own collection; both offer a wide array of easily-installed fonts in categories, and both offer those fonts for free (you may be surprised just how expensive some can be, many selling for upwards of $40 and many more for much larger prices). I have a great many that look like handwriting (which will prove their usefulness when I put up the first post about creating in-game documents) and quite a few which are medieval in appearance. 

I mention fonts because I think that they can just as easily characterize a map as building appearance and other aesthetics do. For the Eastweald map, I chose a simple, elegant font which is vaguely medieval. I think that it suggests something mythical about the region while still retaining some simplicity to make it seem earthy and natural. For the sake of illustrating why I think fonts are important, here are several different appearances for "the Eastweald." 

Six different fonts, each displaying the same words in unique ways.

When it comes to placing text in Photoshop, there are plenty of features which make changing the appearance of the text fairly easy. The only thing that I find really lacking about Photoshop's text features is the relative difficulty of adding an outline around the letters. Here's my shortcut to nice, clean text outlines:

1. Type your text. 
2. Right-click the box in the text layer (the one that has the uppercase "T") and choose "Select Pixels."
3. Create a new layer.
4. Go to "Select" in the menu bar, then choose "Modify," then "Expand." 
5. Choose the number of pixels you want the outline to be. I generally go with somewhere between 3 and 5, depending on the size of the text.
6. Choose the color you'd like for the outline, then use the paint bucket to fill the expanded text outline.
7. Place the outline color layer under the text layer.
8. Highlight both the outline layer and the text layer and choose "Link Layers."

That's the process that gave me the outlined names for all the settlements in the map. It's a little tedious when you have to do it repeatedly, but it creates a very nice effect which helps the text stand out from the rest of the map. Here's the finished product again: 

So there's everything it takes to make a map like the Eastweald map. As I said at the beginning, this map took me about 50 hours to make. But the sheer size of the map, the level of detail I insisted on maintaining, and the little nitpicky things like using only one color (but various shades of that color) for the roofs in each settlement are what led to that time investment. And especially that forest, which was probably a full half of all time spent on this project. But I'm very proud of the result, and I hope that for those of you who want to make something you're proud of, even with limited artistic skills, these tips will be helpful.

In a future post, I'll describe the process I use for making city maps, which have a much different feel, look, and purpose than regional maps do. I've also expanded this guide with some additional tips aimed at overall setting maps. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming!

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For Starters: The Map

The first time I made a map for my D&D homebrew setting, the result was . . . functional, but not very attractive. And by "not very attractive," I mean that I cringe when I see that thing now. It doesn't look like a fantasy map. It looks like a square with some colors and words on it. Witness the ugliness here: 

My first homebrew map.

Obviously, I'm not very proud of this thing. But it was very important to me to have a map. [Edit: Nearly 10 years later, I have a beautiful replacement for this map.] I needed to have a place that I could visualize, somewhere for the adventures I was trying to create to be able to take place. I think most every game master relishes the opportunity to develop a map, and I'm not an expert at either the design or the geography, so I'm not in much of a position to give advice about it. That said, I want to talk about something important I've learned about maps.

First, let me share another map. This one was created for the campaign I ran on the radio. Like the continent map above, it is lacking in visual appeal. I needed this one for a different purpose, one which gets me closer to my important lesson about maps. For this map, I took a simple map of the city in which the campaign was set and divided it up into districts. Here is the map for the port city of Torga:

Torga, broken up into its ten districts, plus nearby ruins.

Because this campaign was run on the radio, the visuals were not so important (which is fortunate, because I probably couldn't have managed it if I'd had to). However, it made clear to the players looking at it that Torga was not just a city to explore. It was ten distinct places which together made up the city. Within each district, they found shops and people and sometimes murderous ghosts and once, a blind barkeep who thought all animals were goats. And I have to say, I was absolutely pleased when the players could fluently communicate about each of the districts. They had come to know the city by its component parts, its individual flavors. That made the city seem larger and richer. 

One important detail about that campaign: the player characters were all members of a criminal outfit which largely focused on nonviolent crime. The slang-like names of the city's districts helped to color their language with the sort of vernacular we're used to in crime movies and shows. Details about the districts added to that feeling—the district known as "The Field" was so named because it was a largely flat area, but also because it was the most wealthy part of town. Thus, to the thieves in their gang, "The Field" was also where they did most of their work. (You work in your field, was what I was going for.) This sort of characterization of the city helped cement the criminal status of the players. 

The districts accomplished another goal: the city's population was extremely fragmented. I tend to include political struggles in my campaigns, and Torga was no exception. Keeping the city broken up in terms of districts and people kept the feeling that Torga was a house divided. Torga also had an extremely strict police force, which served to make the players feel persecuted and oppress much of the city's poor population. The players' statuses as criminals in a city which seemed oppressive added to the feeling that they were righteous in their rebellion. (That sense of being right even as they committed crimes regularly opened the door for lots of fun philosophical issues throughout the campaign.)

Finally, the ruins scattered around Torga achieved something else important. Three of the ruins around the city had been abandoned generations before to form one larger city which the earlier inhabitants had hoped would become more prosperous. But the abandoned towns hadn't fallen apart right away, leaving mostly intact towns around Torga. In the case of one of those towns, Trass, the ghosts of hundreds of orcs killed in their beds for refusing to join the conglomerated city kept living in the ruins, which weren't ruined at all. (This allowed for some great horror scenes, as the player characters explored a town which was perfectly intact and haunted by tortured souls.) But the important thing that the players learned from these ruins which were always visible on the horizon was that even Torga's past was fragmented. Hell, Torga's warring political factions named themselves after the abandoned towns around them out of loyalty to their ancestors' values—and the map, showing one city split up and surrounded by ruins, reinforced all of this. 

Now I'm going to show a map which tries to do something very different. I spent a lot of time preparing a campaign which was going to be a Western-horror story built into my D&D world. Brief background so that the Western-horror thing makes any sense in a D&D-world: I developed an island dominated by a desert which was somewhat rich in precious metals. This meant that the inhabitants of the island had to live without much agriculture and predominantly on herd animals and mining. Quickdraw archers became the stand-in for gunslingers. And the horror component arose as the campaign's archenemy altered reality in disturbing ways and sent waves of undead against the island's settlements. Unfortunately, we only managed about three sessions before the group disbanded. But I still had spent many long hours working on the details of the island, its inhabitants, and especially its map. 

The map of my Western-horror setting, drawn by an NPC in the story.

When I made this map, I put far more effort into visual appeal. I wanted my players to see the map and be genuinely excited that they would get to explore it. The things I discussed above about characterizing the campaign through the map are active here too—I tried to name each town in a way that sounded both Western and fantasy. As a result, the towns have names like Hangman's Slab, Hart Springs, Red Hawk, Ruby Range, and Sunset Ridge. 

There are a couple features on this map, though, that do more than characterize the place. As you can see, the top of the map is labelled "Our Island of Ramsey." I had this map printed and gave it to my players while in-character as an NPC who had called the island home his whole life. The NPC who created the map had been a ranger for most of his adult life, riding the island to fight back against outlaws and marauders; this gave him the opportunity to create his own map of the island during his travels. Like this NPC, the player characters were lifelong residents of the island. With a large title calling the island "our island," I tried to give the player characters (and the players themselves, for that matter) some ownership of the place. That was especially important given the archenemy's goals, which targeted the entire island. Similarly, in the lower left corner of the map is written, "To my friends, with the best of luck." This is a minor detail, but it reminded the players every time they referenced the map that back home in their little town of Hart Springs was a community that supported them and needed their help. 

One last note about the Ramsey map: while I had always developed my cities in detail before getting down to mapping, I decided with Ramsey to try something new. Instead, I developed only the small town the player characters began in, then mapped the whole island, and finally finished by figuring out what those other towns were like. This gave me as the DM a few benefits which I want to share here.

• Creating the town's profile—who lives there, how many people live there, what industries the town relies on, what the government looks like—after building the map allowed me to factor the geography and location of the town into what the town is actually like. Fort Weaver, for instance, is nestled into the mountain range so that only one side of it is open to easy attack. From that point, I was able to decide that the city cared deeply about defense, even to the point of paranoia. Fort Weaver became a sort of police state fueled by constant fear. Hangman's Slab, on the other hand, ended up characterized by its access to geographical assets. Its close neighbor, Hyder Bend, lies at the meeting point of the ocean and Ramsey's only significant river. Hyder Bend is also one of the two ports which face the larger continent to the west. But Hangman's Slab lacks the ease of shipping associated with a river, and it has nothing to attract sailors from the west. It became a penal colony over time, using its relative geographical isolation to keep prisoners from the rest of the island. Using these kinds of details about location can make it far easier to develop interesting details about cities.
• I'm pretty terrible at coming up with interesting architecture. To me, buildings are mostly just buildings, and I envy those game masters who throw impressive, unique structures into their campaigns. To address this deficiency, I look for interesting building designs in fantasy art. The internet is chock full of amazing artwork in fantasy realms. I avoid outright stealing others' ideas by trying to combine several inspiration pieces or coming up with my own additions to what I find. To bring this back to the map discussion, take a look at some of the drawings of what the cities on the map look like. Each settlement has a distinct look, whether in terms of building shape, layout, or what kind of defenses the city has, if any. As noted in the bullet point above, I developed the city's profile after creating the map. So I chose those images for the towns and then challenged myself to explain why each settlement used the kind of buildings they did. Hyder Bend, for instance, features tall towers. I decided that Hyder Bend was a powerhouse in the stone and masonry industries, which allowed the city's inhabitants to create massive stone towers cheaply. I also decided that the city had only a small stretch of land which was stable enough to serve as foundation for buildings, making it even more important to make the most of the limited building space. As a result of these details, Hyder Bend became a tight, bustling, city more like New York City than the settlements around it, which resembled ranches. And despite my lack of architectural talent, I had a handful of cities with distinctive building styles by working backwards from inspiration. 
• I won't necessarily say that I think my Ramsey map is pretty, but I'm certainly more proud of it than I am of my earlier maps. I spent at least twenty or so hours in Photoshop working on just that one big map, and I was proud enough of the outcome at the time that I printed an extra copy of it to hang up or frame. (I'm very pleased to say that the map I'm working on for my current campaign—the one this blog revolves around—is far better than Ramsey in every way. Look for details on that map in an upcoming post.) I think that what excited me so much about my Ramsey map was that it did something none of my previous maps did. It conveyed a tone visually. The continent map above—the first one—gave enough of a place to work with so I could build my world. The Torga map with all of its fragmented districts conveyed a tone which was important to the campaign. But the Ramsey map took tone one step further. It looked like a map someone living there would make. It looked like it had lots going on at the same time (this has always been important to me as a DM; even if your campaign revolves around your players, the world does not). And most importantly to me, it looked like it was a place ripe for adventuring. I think a map should answer questions, but ask a few too. And the Ramsey map told you most of what was out there and where it all was, but it didn't tell you some of the things you wanted to know. What happened to Old Paradise, and why did they need a New Paradise? Who would want to live in the Boneyard Marsh? And what is the deal with Red Hawk, nestled into that dark forest? The tone I wanted with Ramsey was that there were lots of stories and adventures waiting out there, and the visuals of the map suggested as much.

The mantra for today: maps create tone. Be careful to create the tone you want. 

I'll be posting some images from my nearly-finished map for my current campaign soon, along with some how-to advice that's been helpful to me. Other upcoming news will include a basic rundown of the campaign setting and a look at the three custom classes I've created with my players for the campaign. 

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