2012-11-28 Mapping using Inkscape

I recently decided to “publish” my high level module Caverns of Slime. To the right, you can see the various stages my map went through. And you can see that the entire process started out with map. The map was the backbone of all subsequent activities.

Caverns of Slime

It all started with the first map at the top. Things that made it from the very first draft to the very end:

1. the ring like structure with a water flow leading to the Ooze Lord in the center

2. the lab of one of my former player characters, Gar

3. Shroom Lord (I wanted some continuity with the level above)

4. orcs on landsharks throwing bottles of green slime

5. Prison of Dis

6. Aranea city

7. Eternal Swamps

8. ghouls

Gar

Things that got lost:

1. were rats (boring unless transformed in interesting ways)

2. poison flowers (what’s interesting about poison flowers? the Eternal Swamps ended up being not so evil...)

3. sauro-eels (but giant eels remained)

4. “sulfur levels of clockhouse wheels” – a kind of evil Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus (the evil fusion of men and machine reappeared in the Fortress Dam of Ix)

5. refugees of the fungus forest (the level above didn’t seem to have any refugees)

6. rock giant with moss (I feel that giants don’t fit thematically)

7. dread mages of the shroom kings (which kings? what’s interesting about dread?)

Also note how I abandoned my detailed isometric map in step two. As I drew it, I kept dreading the moment where I’d have to key it and I kept thinking that at higher levels, the party would be flying, teleporting, gating, or pass walling anyway.

As for the final map: I just drew it all using Inkscape. I wanted to write more about it, but in the end, all I did was draw lines, using a lot of Ctrl+L to simplify the paths and then editing the nodes using F2 to make it look better. Every section was on a different layer so that I could lock the rest. The most important decision was to work on paper for the longest time.

Inkscape

#RPG #Maps #Inkscape #Caverns of Slime

Comments

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I do most of my maps in Inkscape, sometimes by first sketching them out, but often just playing about with it.

– Simon Forster 2012-11-28 11:46 UTC

Simon Forster

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So you’re saying that you don’t doodle on paper before you turn to Inkscape? I only remember a few maps that I did in Inkscape directly: those were maps I did for Fight On! where the author of the adventure had already provided the doodle—such as this one:

Fight On

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– Alex Schroeder 2012-11-28 13:50 UTC

Alex Schroeder