ZEITGEIST Zeitgeist Battle Maps [WIP]

[Terraism]

I'm gearing up to run a Zeitgeist campaign, probably starting in early September as my gaming group has a different major event going for someone every week of August. On the upside, that means I've got a large bit of lead time to get some work in preparing. We game via MapTool, as we're spread out across half the USA, and I'm a graphic designer, so I love being able to take advantage of the digital format to have some fairly detailed maps of the encounters.

Which means that my spare time lately has been spent, in large portion, working on putting together full-scale battle maps for Zeitgeist #1. I've made progress on a few of them, but right now, the one coming along best is the Royal Square for the very first encounter. I know, for a fact, that I've spent far more time on it than it really warrants, given that there's at least a chance of not even having a combat (okay, this is my group, so no, there isn't), but it's just caught my fancy and I keep coming back to it. In any case, I'm going to go ahead and just post the battlemaps as I finish/reach good WIP breakpoints for them, starting with the Royal Square.

As a general rule, I do most of the mapping using Photoshop, with a combination of a lot of textures and homemade pieces in combination with copious amounts of user art from the Dundjinni forums. At the end, I apply a further chunk of post-processing for lights and the like.

 

[Terraism]

The Royal Square

Click for the larger version:


Though it wasn't the first map I started on - that'd be the wonderful steamship Coaltongue - the Royal Square is the map I've come the furthest on. There are still a number of places to fill in, as well as a lot of minor details to add in, but at the moment, I've gotten antsy to share where things are at and get some feedback.

I used the map from the adventure as a base, unsurprisingly, just converting it to a fully detailed top-down map. I'd say that right now it's about 60% completed, and what you're looking at in the larger version (linked to the thumbnail above) is actually slightly less than 1/3 of the actual size I'm working in. When I'm done, I use a 72px/inch scale.

The one thing that drove me nuts about the existing map was the scale of many of the buildings, especially on the southern half of the map. Given the legend on the map, it appears many of the buildings were right around 100 square feet. Especially near what I took to be a reasonably nice section of town - Royal Square, the Royal Docks, that sort of thing, and you don't let the *real* working class live and work right around Royal anything - things just didn't need to be that small. Which is why buildings have been sized up as I found appropriate and, more importantly, to a size that won't make my players wonder who lives in the shoeboxes.

Anyway, I'll update again when I've made more progress - either on this one, or with a new post for a different section of the adventure. Let me know what you think!