I’d made this map a while ago but hadn’t gotten around to posting about it yet. After a bit of repair of some things I forgot, I can now post this Wonderdraft remake of another WatabouPerilous Shores map.
The original Perilos Shores Generated Map
I liked the large format of this map, and the great number of trees on it. What would be a challenge is those dead trees, as I don’t have an asset for those yet. I ended up choosing to use regular trees but to color them a sickly brown to indicate dead trees. To create more variation, I also tried to color the other oaks with some yellows and reds to create a bit more of a fall look to the map as a whole.
The other thing that I’m practicing right now is making the labels look nicer. For the region label, I chose a Torchbearer style with orange lettering surrounded by a dark red outline, in a font that is reminiscent of that style as well. For the forests and mountains, I tried using a darker font with a light outline, and to vary with the sizes and spacing to indicate major and minor locations. Overall, I think it came out quite nicely, with lots of detail that doesn’t look to cluttered either.
My Wonderdraft version of the map
I uploaded both maps to imgur, so for large versions you should be able to click the maps themselves.
While I’m still struggling to find a good way to make the full-sized versions of these maps available on this site, I went ahead and made the next HeroquestDungeondraft map. Quest 11 is a happy return to a more cohesive map, as opposed to Quest 10‘s wacky concept.
Interpreting the maps and making decisions
The NL and US maps this week are almost similar, which is quite surprising! Both the number of enemies as well as the number of traps are identical, which hasn’t happened much. In fact, nearly all details in the maps are the same, with the exception of the left-most hallway being slightly longer in the US version (probably for purely visual reasons).
The NL version of Het Chaos BolwerkThe US versino of the Bastion of DreadWhile this time the maps are (surprisingly) almost similar in every fashion, there is only one exception on the top left of the map in the length of the hallway
The maps show an interesting division of labor. There are quite some goblins and orcs on the map, with a few chaos warriors. In most cases, the chaos warriors appear to be in some manner of adminstrative position: there is one near the throne in the center of the map; one in the mid-left next to an alchemy table; one to the right near a cabinet; and one next to the weapons rack. It seems like the chaos warriors here are the administrative or ruling arm of the map. The fimirs, by contrast, are only present in the top-left, in the two adjoining rooms next to the torture room. It seems that the fimirs, then, are used as some kind of muscle or police force. Lastly, the orcs and goblins are spread out throughout the map, so they appear to some form of working class in this structure.Information from the flavor text
This division of labor helps us establish themes for the individual structures. It seems like the three top-left rooms, then, are some manner of policing area. Torture chamber to interrogate prisoners, along with a room for a bailiff or reeve, next to a storage area. The bottom right appears to be a bit of a mix: weapons storage at the bottom-left, general storage top-left, and an empty room bottom-right of that cluster. Overall, I imagine this to be a workspace/storage mix, hence the need for both admin and workers. Lastly, the bottom-left appears to host most of the goblins and orcs. It makes sense, given that this is a bastion, that this is where most of the front-liners would be. So, probably, this is a guard room, entrance, along with rest area. The top-left of that little block would probably be a lieutenant or other such administrator. That, of course, leaves the central room for overall admin and control.
Overall, this map has a very strong organizational feel to me. It’s almost like a central office area to administrate a small municipality (well, aside from the torture chamber, I’d sincerely hope). Overall, I tend to enjoy humanizing these maps in any case, so it might be a fun thing to lean into for this map.
Information from the flavor text
The two texts are mostly the same, being an announcement of a bounty for the murder of multiple creatures in this defensive structure. As always, there are the slight differences due to the trademark change (Chaos versus Dread), but those are largely irrelevant.
Aside from the reflavoring due to licensing issues, the two texts are pretty identical
There’s an interesting word difference between the NL and US version as to what this place should be called. The NL version uses the word “Bolwerk“, which is cognate with English “Bulwark”. In fact, the English “bulwark” comes from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German “bolwerk”, which is itself composed of “bole”, a word for tree trunks, and “work”, to indicate structures or constructions. This is an old word to indicate defensive structures like walls or ramparts. The US version, by contrast, uses “Bastion”, which is French in origin, coming from the Old French “bastille” meaning “fortress”.
A larger version of the US text
The Bulwark of Chaos
The eastern provinces are plagued by plundering Orcs and Kobolds. The King has ordered a group of brave heroes to journey there and destroy these robbers. The orcs are holed up in a strong underground fort, named The Bulwark of Chaos. They are led by a small group of Chaos Warriors. Ye must fight your way inside and kill all monsters that you meet. You will receive the following bounties for this: 10 gold pieces for any slain Kobold, 20 gold pieces for any slain Orc, 30 gold pieces for any slain Fimir or Chaos Warrior.
My translation of the NL text
The core meaning of both texts are pretty much identical: the King sends out adventurers to collect on a set of bounties placed on bandits’ heads. A curious difference, though, is that the US text makes sure to note that the bandits have allied themselves with Zargon, which should give an excuse as to why the heroes are fine to go out and murder all of them in cold blood. The NL text, however, makes no mention of alliance to Morcar. For the NL version, the heroes should just be motivated by pure greed and bloodlust. Yikes!
The text does confirm our interpretation of the map, as it explicitly lists that a group of Chaos/Dread Warriors lead the others. So, interestingly, while this is a group of bandits, they have a formalized administrative structure, as well as a fortified base of operations. So, unlike previous bands of roaming orcs that we’ve featured in maps, now we’re dealing with a far more militaristic operation. This will be good to translate into the final map!
Translating into a final map
I was very much looking forward to making this map, as there were so many good ideas to put in there. I loved the idea of on the one hand making this a militaristic operation and on the other hand humanizing it through some basic office features.
The militaristic nature of it can be seen in a few places: the group of rooms at the bottom-left are quite functional in nature: the entrance room is dark and defended, because the creatures of the dark will have the advantage over heroes sneaking in from above. There is a small guard room to the right, and a rest area to the left, to facilitate shifts. Similarly, the area on the bottom-right is functional and spartan: storage and organization form the key here. The top right is also filled with administrative items to emphasize the utility.
Each place, however, is also tinged with office life. The rooms on the botom-left have guards slacking off and playing cards in the middle room, and there’s some flags from somebody’s birthday party two months ago still hanging in the rest area (an office staple, that). The top-left area has a little roped-off waiting area where you have to register before being allowed to see the bailiff, who can interview you before you’re allowed in to the prison area. Similarly, the central room has some snacks laid out for all those late afternoon planning sessions in the throne room. Somebody has to prepare those snacks, so of course you’d have the kitchen nearby to the right.
Giving this little map some life has been tremendously fun by bringing in those little details. I also took some cues from previous map, and I laid in some stones and moss here and there to bring a little variation in the hallways to break up the monotony. The only thing I was wondering about was whether I should put torches in the hallways at regular distances, but when I thought about it I realized it would distract from the rooms themselves. On top of that, since most of the creatures in here would see fairly well in the dark, I figured it wouldn’t be that necessary.
The final map for The Bastion of Dread. I chose to keep it relatively dark to make the map feel more oppressive. I’m quite happy with the fun little details in this one!
It’d be a shame to miss all these little details, so for a larger version of this map, you can look at the Reddit post about it:
I’ve been continuing my Watabou Hex Map practice every other day or so, and I’m really pleased with the Wonderdraft tricks I’m learning from doing this. Perilous Shores gave me a basic outline of the Anthir Lakes, a region that is oppressed, dark, and dangerous. I took the prompts to really focus on creating a grungy, dirty-looking map.
I’m very happy with the dark, grungy nature of this map. It looks like a terrible place to live but a great place to adventure
The entire map is shaded with a brown tone, and I focused on getting greens in the map, including in the water tone, so that the two colors combined would create a gross-feeling tone to the map as awhole. Among all the places on this map with their dark themes, I love that the central village is called “Rabbitway”, a bizarrely friendly-sounding name.
Another aspect I enjoy about this map is the brown color I’ve given to the pines that were marked as dead trees on the Watabou map. Without having a dedicated dead tree asset, I think this was a nice compromise that ended up adding to the dark nature of the map as a whole.
This week’s DungeondraftHeroquest map was quite a challenge. I felt as though I was hamstrung by the nature of the map, as I couldn’t use my usual methods to form a larger whole. So, it turned out to be quite an educational exercise!
Interpreting the maps and making decisions
This week’s map is downright barren; what a challenge! A set of loose rooms with no particular flavor to them, and only a few numbers to indicate random connections based on a die-roll. Oof!
The NL version of the map for Het ToverkasteelThe US versio nof the map for Castle of MysteryThese maps are more empty than any have been. The one difference is that Room 10 has a “Ring of Return” in the US version.
Our only information is that the players’ starting point is at the bottom left in Room 2/12, the chest marked “A” in the NL version and “B” in the US version in Room 8 is their goal, and that’s about it. The US version has an additional treasure in Room 10, marked “A”, which is a ring held by one of the monsters there.
Normally, this is where I would try to glean information from the composition of the map to see if there are natural or logical flows of architecture or use. Now, though, all we know is that the rooms are randomly connected. I have to say, I was drawing a blank here! Since the only thing I could think of is that the rooms might as well have been floating in space, I figured to make them literally do that. So, I know the background will be space or chaos but what does that make the rooms?
Information from the flavor text
The two texts are largely the same, though there’s a few interesting diferences this time, thankfully.
For some reason, the NL text takes some pot shots at Ollar.
The Dutch version calls the map“Het Toverkasteel“, meaning “The Magical Castle”, which has somewhat ephemeral connotations to it. It’s a word you’d use in a fairy tale to describe the giants’ castle up in the clouds or the dark castle or the evil witch. I like the US version’s naming, though; “The Castle of Mystery” suggests that, in principle, it’s a normal castle, except it baffles the mind of all who enter. What is this castle? Who built it? Why is it there? To me, that is much more evocative and grounded than the NL naming.
A larger version of the US text
The Magic Castle
Long ago, the insane wizard Ollar found the entrance to a gold mine. With his magical powers, he built a magical castle on top of the mine to protect the gold. The castle is provided with many magical portals and is guarded by a set of monsters who are trapped in time. Can ye find the entrance? Others have gone before you but all their attempts were thwarted by the castle.
As far as the flavor text itself, though, I prefer the NL interpretation of what happened here. The US version is quite matter-of-fact: Ollar, a wizard, finds a gold mine, decides to build a castle on top of it, and traps some monsters in a magical portal maze at the bottom to protect the source of his wealth. What a capitalist! The NL version, by contrast, wastes no time in labelling Ollar as an “insane” wizard. In Dutch, “Waanzinnig” actually might mean either “mentally disturbed” or “incredibly good” (in the US sense of “crazy good”), but in the adjectival form used in the Dutch text it’s clear that the pejorative sense is meant. It’s connected to the more medical term “waanzin“, indicating “a state of delusion” and is related to “waanbeeld” (directly meaning “delusion”).
While the US version states that it’s only the lower chambers that has many magical doors, the NL version suggests the entire castle is a maze of portals. Coupled with the wizard being identified as disturbed in some manner, I decided that the rooms should likely be a very curious mix of locations. The monsters are said to be “trapped in time”, so I decided that the rooms themselves should be trapped in time as well. What if the portals didn’t just transfer you through space but also through time?
Now I had a better view of what I would do. There’d be only two rooms in the “now”: the starting point and the mine. The other rooms would be links to different points of time in the same geographical space. Once I’d decided this, I took a little inspiration from the NES classic Chrono Trigger and decided I wanted rooms ranging from neolithic to post-apocalyptic times. Finally, something to go with!
Translating into a final map
In one way, this map was somewhat easy, as I had some separate rooms that could each be their own thing. On the other hand, that made the map incredibly complex as well. I couldn’t rely on my usual methodology of making sense of the structure as a whole, or indicating some environmental storytelling in the relationship between spaces. I was just limited to single rooms and what I could do in there. On the one hand, I wanted to make filled spaces but on the other hand the more I would fill a space the less useful it would be for players to move around in. Given how much more claustrophic these spaces would already be, I chose to keep the rooms relatively sparse, so as not to overload the players.
I picked some distinct and contrasting themes for every room. I knew I wanted a lava room to suggest a more primordial period, and I’d want to contrast that with a fully frozen-over room to suggest the final days of the planet. There’d have to be a room of the castle at its height, so a clean little throne room, as well as a room of the castle in its decline. That tiny little room, I felt would be amazing for an unsettling scene: a single chair, a table, and a book is all that accompanies a single person trapped forever in a tiny room. An unopened crate sits across from that chair; perhaps the prisoner felt it more interesting to have a mystery there, so that the room had at least some possibility in it?
To distribute the other rooms, I looked at the inhabitants. There were rooms with zombies, mummies, and skeletons, so they seemed perfect for the apocalyptic rooms. The skeletons, having lost all their semblance of life, would go into the frozen apocalypse. I’d decided the room with the mummy would be the old, decayed castle, whereas the room with the zombies would be a flooded, overgrown space.
By contrast, the rooms with the orcs I wanted to reserve for the more primordeal times. They’re in the lava room, representing the oldest time period; the jungle room, for the early life; and also the central room, which is the more settled time before the castle was built.
All in all, I think the map works, though it certainly was the toughest to build. I think for the map to work out in play, backstory would have to be hinted at by the referee to bring home the reasoning behind the maps.
The final map for this dungeon. I tried to emphasize the difference in the rooms with various lighting options, though it’s interesting to see that in the small map this doesn’t come out as well.
A larger version of this map is available over on the Reddit post I made about this:
I’ve made another Wonderdraft version of a Watabou Perilous Shore map. This time, setting it for a medium-sized land area with highland features. That resulted in the Bassland:
The original Perilous Shores generated map
Every time I’ve been doing this, I’ve gotten faster at the basics of map-making—experience paying off! Previously, I’d exported the Watabou map and worked with the .png file as a reference; this time, however, while I did export it, I kept the Watabou-generated map up as reference. This helped me discover a cool little feature in Perilous Shores: there are actually more named areas than the legend would suggest! By clicking around the map, I discovered that most little areas actually were named.
That gave me more opportunities to inidividually label mountains, forests, and a few mountain peaks directly, and experiment with the placement of titles like those. It was quite interesting working out what I would want different in naming a large mountain range such as the Mountains of Crosses versus a small range such as the Strong Ridge. On top of that, two peaks had individual names: the Hill of Stones and the Sand Peak. So that gave me three total types of mountainous areas to label differently. Another interesting challenge to explore is that the Outer Forest and the or Woods differ so massively in size, so their titling would have to be differentiated somehow. In the end, I made sure to use the same fonts and colors but differentiate in size, spacing, and outline thickness for clarity.
My Wonderdraft version of the map
A thing that I hadn’t figured out how to add comfortably to this composition is a compass rose. The map is so filled with elements that the only place to reasonably add it with some visibility was in the top-right corner just above the Dunes of Savage Fear and to the left of the Whispering Downs. However, that put it on such an odd spot in the map that it seemed disruptive rather than cohesive. As I’d already wanted to add the measurement to the bottom-left, I didn’t really have much other map real estate left to put it, so I ended up leaving it out altogether.
If you want to have a look at larger versions of these maps, you can take a peek at the Reddit post I made about it:
Another week, another Heroquest battlemap made in Dungeondraft! It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been doing this for over two months now but I’m happy that I’ve kept up with it. Every single map is helping me improve my skills.
Interpreting the maps and making decisions
This time around, the maps are mostly similar and once again rather sparsely filled. As far as composition goes, this one might be a bit tricky because there’s so much empty space to the top-right of the map. I suppose it could be a prompt to start learning some post-processing, even if it is just to crop the map purely to the active area. However, I think I’ll leave that skill to learn later and rather will end up using some text to fill that space or otherwise some fun little ground elements like skeletons hidden in the dirt.
The NL version of the map for Wedren Tegen de TijdThe US version of the map for Race Against TimeCuriously enough, the US version of the map conaints a whole extra room behind a secret door!
As has become common, the US map has a few extra monsters on it; what’s more unusual is that it also has a complete extra room behind a hidden door! Mark C indicates that that trapped chest contains an Elixir of Life; so, essentially, the addition of this room involves two sources of resource investment (HP loss to a trap and/or to a monster) and one resource recovery (the elixir), making it a net zero room.
What is interesting about this map is that the players start in the room marked “A” at the bottom-right of the map. With three doors visible, all peopled by a bunch of monsters, it feels a little trolly that the real door is the hidden door in room A. It’s clear that the designers wanted quite some resources sapped just at the start so that the rest of the retreat would become more of a scramble. In the US version, even if the players were to directly run to the exit, they’d still face six monsters (compared to only three in the NL version).
None of the rooms here suggest a clear intended purpose other than this being a trap followed by a gauntlet. I could see the grouping of four rooms at the bottom right as sharing a function, and the grouping at the bottom-left as well. The bottom-left set has a fireplace and a table in the grouping, so that might be a food area. The top-left grouping seems more of a general entrance or introductory area.
Even though there’s little to the content of the rooms itself to give me indications of what to do with this map, figuring out groupings like this at least help me try to form some indication of what I want to do here. Still, with such a bare map, I’ll absolutely need the flavor text for more input.
Information from the flavor text
The two texts pretty much agree on what happened: the players are led through an underground structure by a guide who betrays them by abandoning them in the dark surrounded by enemies.
Other than the US text clarifying what the victory condition is, the two texts are pretty similar.
There’s only minor differences in the NL and US versions: the structure is either a maze or a dungeon, there are dark corridors but perhaps also dim pathways, and the US version makes sure to emphasize that there is a stairwell that represents safety.
A larger version of the US text
Race Against Time
A guide has bought you to an underground dungeon that legends say hides a great secret. He has led you through dark passages and past dim pathways and now ye stand in a room with three doors. Suddenly, the guide extinguishes his torch and ye hear him laugh in the black darkness. “Farewell, my heroes,” he mockingly calls out as he disappears. Ye have been trapped! Escape, or die in this forgotten hole.
My translation of the Dutch version of the text
What is interesting to me is that the players are guided into this structure by a guide with a torch. So, apparently, they would have seen the route here. If that is the case, then how come the players would assume there is only a room with three doors if the only actual exit is a secret door they must have come through to get in? Moreover, if they came in through the stairwell, why wouldn’t they know the route back? Let’s just chalk it up to the Heroes being a little complacement and depending too much on the guide; I guess that’s why the US version chose to call it a maze, so that we may assume that the Heroes got lost.
In any case, we now have a number of prompts for our map: it’s underground, a dungeon or a maze, there’s dark passages (and potentially dim pathways), and it’s a dark, forgotten hole. All of this speaks of neglect to me. So, perhaps this is a map of a long-abandoned dungeon. I like the idea, because the map itself is called “Race Against Time”, and theming the map around a long-abandoned and decayed dungeon seems quite fitting for that—this dungeon lost that race.
A dim and dark map is a bit of a challenge for me. I love the idea of it being pitch-black but that only works well for use in a VTT. If it’s just the visual of a map itself, then having it dark just obscures things. Normally, I’d add a bunch of torches and lights but that wouldn’t make sense for an abandoned set of ruins. This is a place where a bunch of monsters have set up an ambush for the players, so it should be mostly empty. The only means to deal with it would be to keep it dim rather than fully dark.
Translating into a final map
This map was quite a challenge because I’d set myself the idea of having an abandoned and ruined underground structure. Normally, I tend to go far with decorating rooms and setting up their uses, and working on a little storytelling through the environment. This time, though, I would have to be quite barebones with it. On top of that, the Crosshead Studios assets I use don’t have too many broken items in them. It would’ve been nice to include some knocked-over bookcases and so on but I’d have to improve a little.
This time around, the fill in the map would have to come from sets of rubble and plantlife, as well as smudges, dirt, and holes. A few areas I chose to put some more intact items but very quickly that already seemed in too good a shape for this long-abandoned place. What I ended up doing was scaling down a lot of full-sized bushes to almost miniature size to suggest they are slowly growing based on what little light they can get. Fortunately, there were a few fern-like plants in the pack that would make sense in low-light conditions.
The other thing I wanted to make sure to try out was some different lighting options. So far, I’ve been using the standard few lights (a three-tiered wavy light, a standard light, and a fuzzy light) but Krager’s Shadow and Light Pack comes with quite a few more options. So, I figured I wanted to have spots of light in the map to indicate holes in the ceiling, as well as a beam of light or two to vary things up. It would also make sense for those to be there, as the plants would need some light to grow! Overall, I like the final effect, though I think I can improve on those little spots of light and particularly the light streaming in from the stairwell.
In any case, with a little experimentation, I came to this final map:
The final map for this dungeon. Since there are few lighting effects, I kept the map relatively light. However, I picture the map as being quite dark with a few beams of light from the surface, through pockets and gaps eroded away over time.
As usual, I have a larger version of this map available over on Reddit:
I’ve been enjoying making Watabou Perilous Shores maps into colored versions using Wonderdraft, so I figured to do another attempt. This time, Watabou gave me the map for Theron Lakes:
The Watabou original randomly generated map
A lovely little map with an interesting amount of marshlands, which is just perfect! I’ve been struggling with the look of marshlands, so having them aplenty will help me experiment with coloring.
A crucial thing I learned this time is how to properly overlay the hex grid. Last time, I wrote about having to resize the canvas and carefully moving around the image so that finally the hex grid would fit, because I couldn’t figure out how to move the grid. Well, as it turns out, you just click and drag with the grid tool selected to move the grid. Duh! So, fitting the grid to the right space was much, much easier this time.
I’m getting relatively practiced with making the maps themselves, so I’m quite pleased with how easily that goes. The coloring is quite interesting this time as well. The more I went on, the more I realized how grungy and dirty this area would be. It has so many marshlands that it’s a tough place to live in the first place, and then there’s towns like “Midyanglink Town” which sounds quite Lovecraftian but the main city is called “Suncaster City” to contrast this with. The longer I went on, the grungier I wanted to make the map look. So, this time, I applied a strong vignette, shifted the colors on the entire map a little to brown, and made the water color a bluish green. The end result is a sickly-looking area which looks quite oppressive to my eyes.
The one thing that I’d want to improve is the coloring of the oak trees: they just look a little too light green to me. However, the unofficial rule I’d put to myself is to accept these the way they are and move on. If I keep fiddling on the same map constantly, I’ll just get stuck on the one thing. In this case, I’d rather practice with as many varied maps as I can.
Well, without further ado, here’s my version of the Theron Lakes:
Since I’ve been making so many maps lately, the blog has shifted a bit to a much more visual medium. Originally, the images I put on here were just photos to illustrate electronics projects. Now, though, the images themselves at times are the center stage.
The format that I have for images right now keeps them far too small, though, to nicely host and display something as intricate as a solid map. I’ll have to work on the blog and figure out if I can adjust those settings (and figure out how much hosting space I have, because these images can get big quite quickly!).
If you have any ideas or advice, I’d love to hear it.
Like I did on Monday, I wanted to experiment some more remarking a Perilous Shores map in Wonderdraft. After some rerolls, Perilous Shores gave me the following wonderful little hex map:
The Watabou Perilous Shores map
This time, I learned how to better fit an overlay image to the map and vice versa. For one, since Perilous Shores produces square maps, I just made the canvas square—easy win but quite worthwhile. Because both maps were the same shape, it was much easier now to rescale the overlay image to fit the canvas exactly, making it must easier to faithfully adapt the map compared to last time.
This did make me face a new issue, however: previously, all I did was adjust the size of the hexes in Wonderdraft to fit the overlay image, and then moved on from there. Now, however, since I was trying to exactly lay the overlay image on to the canvas, I couldn’t get the hexes to fit up neatly. The way Perilous Shores and Wonderdraft lay out the hex grids differs and I couldn’t find a setting to offset the grid in Wonderdraft, so I was left with a grid that I couldn’t match. Fortunately, I figured out that I could resize the canvas selectively (i.e. in specific directions), which ended up resolving the problem. What I ended up doing was resizing the hex grid in Wonderdraft until all the hexes were the same size as the Perilous Shores hexes, and then I lined both hex grids together, and just readjusted the canvas until it was the same size as well as the same position as the Perilous Shores overlay original. As a result, I could get a much more faithful recreation than I got on Monday.
Coloring remains something that I want to practice more with (hence this very exercise), and while I’m not fully there, I do feel I’m starting to move in the right direction. This time, the marshlands look far more accurate to me. The teal coloring of last time seemed quite out of place, and just using a darker green coloring portrays the same feeling but looks more natural to my eyes. I can imagine adjust it slightly with a blue to make it more marshy but I’m already pleased with this look.
Another thing that I think worked better was labelling the regions. What I changed was to make them more transparent but slighly larger than other labels. That way, they fade more into the background of the map, almost “sinking into” the terrain. For colors, I picked a similar color to the terrain itself but shifted the font a few shades lighter and the outline a few shades darker. The end result has it fit a little more into the map. It worked quite nicely on the marsh, though I think for the font on the mountains it came out a little off. This time I eyeballed it, so I think that next time I’ll use the dropper tool to have a more stable basis for the color.
Lastly, I chose to not differentiate the label for the village and the town but to introduce the difference in the dangerous location. As you can see, what I did was have settlement labels be white-on-black whereas the dangerous location is black-on-white. What I like about this is that the font is the same, making these places feel equivalent, yet the coloring suggests an inverted relationship. In retrospect, though, I do think next time I want to differentiate the villages and towns from each other to more clearly indicate size differences. That might also immediately help me signify the size of dangerous locations, if I keep that consistently inverted as well.
My recreation of the Perilous Shores map in Wonderdraft
I’m quite happy with how faithfully my map recreates the Perilous Shores map even down to the very placement of the trees themselves. I feel like it’s an important skill to be able to create an accurate representation of something else. When I can faithfully recreate these types of maps well, I suspect it will also help me create my own maps better.
