How do YOU draw maps?

[sunbeam60]

I have downloaded the entire world yesterday, and while I haven't had much opportunity to study the world in detail, the map does look extremely impressive.

And in fact, that map was part of the reason why I started this thread, so your advice is highly appreciated...

Well in that case

Here is how I started it up:

1. Draw the coastlines on a sketch
2. Scan the coastline in
3. Fill in coastline with pencil tool (or whatever equivalent)
4. Draw swamps and other "low" terrain types. Drawing these first will later cover them over with other terrain, which seems to give the best result.
5. Draw mountains (I usually draw these in the middle of the contininents/islands, as these will tend to "bulge" up from crust shifts.
6. Draw forests
7. Draw rivers (they will flow on top of mountains, forests and all other terrain
8. In order, do roads (goes over rivers), icons (cities, fortresses, places of interest), names and place names
   
   Generally I have a layer for each, which is quite memory intensive, but it makes it easy to delete from something without touching the other stuff.
   
   In PSP, which is the program I use (and I am sure CPP has something similar), I can lock transparencies in a layer. This means that the "alpha" value of each pixel in that layer will remain constant, ie. you cannot draw new stuff, but you can draw over old stuff in this layer. This allows me to copy-paste large patterns over the forests, mountains, deserts etc and not having to worry about the edges of these terrain types.
   
   The patterns I do in some other file and then just copy it into the map-file.
   
   Now I know a lot will use CC2, but I am really no fan of it. I was really used to PSP, so if you feel the same about CPP, then just stick with that, IMHO.
   
   Last ingredient: Patience. Mine took 3 years and it is still not complete. Instead of dropping out of the project, I just went back to it whenever my RPG itch was getting to me.
   
   Also, if you do really large maps, then break them down into smaller files. As the amount of layers grow, the memory requirements get steep. I started mine on a 64 MB machine and had to use really small segments. This made it somewhat hard to join the segments together to align roads and rivers perfectly, so if you are serious, then invest in memory. Which goes for all graphic work, I think.
   
   Hope this rant was useful
   
   Cheers
   Toft
   
   [/list=1]

 

[rounser]

I can't believe no-one's mentioned:

Autorealm - Really intuitive open source RPG mapping program, great for world maps and cities especially. You'll probably be able to figure it out in minutes, and it's very powerful.

Arr-Kelaan Software's Hexmapper - Elegant and utterly simple to use hexmapper for your wilderness...just point and click. Making your own hexes out of bitmaps is fun, too. The other progs on this page are worth a look as well.

Both are free. Along with Dungeoncrafter, you'll have a freehand/vector/fractal/object mapper (for urban areas and world map), a hexmapper (for wilderness) and a tilemapper (for dungeons), which pretty much covers it. I'd also suggest trying out a copy of MyInfo, which is great for storing your campaign notes in a way that keeps them at your fingertips.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I am a big fan of CC2, I know people say it is hard to learn and that price is too much but if you like to draw maps and you take the time to use the program nothing is better.

NBOS is a good program too.

 

[Kyramus]

I tried using CC2, but it would take days/weeks to learn the whole cad type program. I went and bought fractal mapper v6.

you can go to www.geocities.com/kyramus
it's my homebrew world and has a few maps that I used that program to make.

As for actual mapping on paper.
1) think if the land has forests, hills mountains.
2) situate where they are supposed to be
3) is this in the middle of the island or not . Middle of the island, don't worry about borders. east or west side, make a coastline border.
4) major cities
5) small cities, towns, villages that the pc's know
6) photocopy and make a DM copy with the actual location of ruins and such.

 

[Psion]

If I am worried about making the maps look good at all, I use CC2.

For continent/region maps, I start with Fractal Terrains (not the same thing as Fractal Mapper) to generate the world, and export the regions I am interested in to CC2, and add rivers and terrain symbols to taste. It doesn't get any easier than that for generating nice looking overland maps. For smaller regional maps, I just copy pieces of the big maps and add more details.

City maps are harder, but CC2's city designer add on is the tool of choice here, since you can draw roads with it and it will automatically place random buildings on either side of the roads. There is not a comparable tool out there for this.

Indoor/Dungeon maps, I usually just draw on graph paper unless I am obsesssed with making it look good for some reason, e.g., Building floorplans and starship deckplans, which I'll use CC2 for.

IMO, CC2 is NOT that hard to learn. You just have to do the tutorials (which does not take "weeks", sorry) and don't expect the click-sequence to work like a standard windows program.

 

[WayneLigon]

Usually I start with notebook paper. I'll do sketches, fill in things as I think of them. That's usually where it ends. If it's something I really get interested in or want to play with later, I'll try to duplicate it in CC2; most of the city maps I envision are too complex for me to actually draw (stuff like the giant cliff-cities in Dinotopia), much less put down in CC2.

 

[arwink]

I use Autorealm for world maps, but tend to do dungeon, buildling and city maps freehand. Or I just steal liberally from whatever supplements are laying around. I'm not fussy.

 

[alsih2o]

steel nibbed quill, waterproof ink, watercolors.

take a shet of graph paper, project it onto a larger peice of good paper, pencil(hb) in shapes to scale, set on a flat surface, and watercolors for areas, ink in.

it is a slight pain, but MAN do maps made this way look good.

 

[Patrick-S&S]

I am a big fan of CC2, I know people say it is hard to learn and that price is too much but if you like to draw maps and you take the time to use the program nothing is better.

Being a user of CC2 Pro as well as Freehand, Illustrator, and Photoshop (have tried half a dozen others at least as well), I must say that CC2 was the hardest to learn even though the others are deemed more "professional". With CC2 you can make great looking maps for a small price (compared to the other three I mentioned CC2 is almost for free) but you will only get vector maps that falls short compared to a pixel based software. This is only partly true of floorplans where my personal taste is B&W vector maps (Freehand maps FH8 are my favorites).

But when it comes to maps of villages, areas, and worlds Photoshop is unbeatable. The quality speaks for itself even if people prefer to work with other mapping aids. Nothing is as good looking as a true Photoshop map with shades and transparency. But I also use CC2 when I want to make fast maps since you can make a decent map in less than an hour or two. For new mappers I would recommend CC2 over any other since it is a complete package for decent money.

 

[Zander]

FWIW there's a fairly long chapter in Gamemastering Secrets (2nd Ed) about drawing maps. It's published by Grey Ghost Press and edited by Aaron Rosenberg.

IIRC there was a section in one of the 1E books about drawing dungeon maps in perspective. In think it was one of the survival guides.

Hope that helps.