I’ve spent a good portion of this afternoon doing some map work for tomorrow’s game – largely setting up relatively blank canvases that I can use for set-pieces and for random encounters depending on what direction the group goes. With the massive battle last week, I suspect there may be an attempt to regroup and plan, but I’ve been wrong before.

With that said, I’ve also been quietly revisiting some of my older maps and updating them, especially where new updates have added options to ease the process of filling out the spaces with details. In particular I’ve been playing around with the various options to paint things like undergrowth and natural features rather than manually editing things in so much.

So – for comparison here is a map I made when Dungeon Alchemy first launched where I was just trying to work out how all the buildings could be made to work. It’s called Farm Buildings, and had the concept of being a farming community around a pond or small lake:

It’s plain and simple with fields, gardens, various farmsteads and associated features. I think I spent more time trying to work out the rise and fall of the ground so it wasn’t utterly impassable or impractical. There’s no grand design. To be fair, the changes made today haven’t addressed anything like that, but I’ve got a more definite thought about how I’ll likely use it in the near future:

This feels more like a nestled collection of buildings even though all I’ve done is add rock features, trees, and bushes. Oh, I also exported this with a more 3D presentation than the more plain orthographic settings of the original. Its a bit on the large side compared to most of the maps I use in sessions, but it could work well with some larger or more mobile opponents on it to make better use of the space. All in all it feels a more naturalistic space just with these extra details painted in. It would almost certainly never exist in the real world, but it feels like it could.

I’ve a few more of these, so I’ll sprinkle them from time to time – so there’s that to look forward to