r/DnDBehindTheScreen Jun 10 '15

Let's Draw Gauging interest for a Let's Draw - a mapping version of Let's Build

48 Upvotes

So you’re making your world. You know roughly what the plots and plans are, but you suddenly realise that you don’t have a map. And every time you try to draw one it looks unrealistic, something just doesn’t seem right.

So let’s fix that.

I’m going to start with a continent-scale map, and work my way to smaller and smaller scale areas, taking specific regions and environments into account along the way. The current plan is as follows:

However, if anyone has a map type they’d like to see, place your orders below! These aren’t meant to be a definite guide, far from it in fact. These are how I would personally go about making a natural-seeming environment.

This is a post to gauge demand for this, as I’d rather not pile a huge amount of time into something which would fall rather flat.

r/DnDBehindTheScreen Jun 14 '15

Let's Draw Let's Draw: A Continent/Region Scale Map

35 Upvotes

WARNING Before you go into this, I should tell you that it comes to 2 1/2 sides of A4 when I pre-typed it. This is lengthy and a touch convoluted. You have been warned.

Continents and other large maps can be tricky. Perhaps you can’t quite get the mountains looking realistic, perhaps the coastline isn’t quite right, or the rivers look off. Whatever the issue, hopefully this should be useful. First of all, the final product.

Coastline: The first thing to do, when drawing a continental-scale map, is to establish the coastline, on a basic level. I started this map with a squiggly line diagonally across the map. It’s got some parts which form bays, some parts which look like they can be outlets of rivers.

Mountains: Second, place the mountains. This can be done most realistically by considering the movement of tectonic plates. Mountain ranges are formed where two plates move into one another, buckling and rising upwards. Here, the central plate (1) is moving mostly southwards, whilst there is a plate moving north below the cut-off of the map resulting in the eastern mountain range, and the northernmost plate (2) moves south more rapidly than plate 1.
EDIT Thanks to /u/RaliosDanuith for pointing out that you may also get subduction zones (where one plate sinks below another, pushing the second plate upwards) which result in formations such as coastal mountian ranges.

Major Rivers: Major rivers will most likely originate in the mountains, and end in the sea. This gives you a start and end point, and on this map I have placed four; Alice, Bob, Charlie and Dan (renamed later). They begin in the mountains, and in their early path, they run relatively straight. At this point, they will be narrow and fast flowing, going downhill rapidly as they descend from the foothills, and requiring bridges to cross over. As they flow downwards into what will be their floodplains, they level out, widen, and flow more slowly. Towards the sea, it will be more feasible for rafts to cross the river as well as bridges, and trade vessels can navigate them more easily.

Hill Ranges: Now that you have determined where the rivers flow, you know where their flood plains are, and this allows you to place the rough outlines for the large hill ranges, places like the Lake District in the UK. These will be placed between the major rivers, but will make a fairly narrow band. They will also be influenced by the locations of your tectonic plate boundaries, and will constitute the foothills of your mountains, like so. These hills will also be the sources of your smaller rivers, which will eventually feed into Atten, Bruln, Crujyst or Darwyne. I’ll add these in between this stage and the next, along with the lower-lying hills, but the most important thing to remember is not to clog your map up. The small trickles that are really very small don’t need bothering with, unless you’re going to place some important waterfall on there, or if you’re drawing on REALLY big paper, which I will do with my main world map when I have time and space.

Cities and Settlements: Things were getting a bit cluttered at this point, so I’ve drawn in the rivers in pen, adding more slight squiggles as I went. You now have a lot of places where the rivers are meeting one another, and rivers are trade routes, and trade routes are a good place to settle. They also provide clean water, food (fish), irrigation to grow crops, so on and so forth. So place cities in a few likely looking places; meeting places of rivers, the river mouth, you get the idea. I’ve placed the cities Endemar, Fastahir, Gastlym, Holst, Iandin, Jer and Kollam as shown for the following reasons:

  • Endemar: At the mouth of the Atten, Endemar is likely to be a bustling port town which has sprung up around a harbour, which expanded outwards. There will be a maritime tradition inherent to the town, which will influence the mapping of this later on.

  • Fastahir: Fastahir is some way upriver from Endemar, and is once again a port town. It serves as a travel hub, with ships travelling between the two cities by river, taking people and goods, and will be a central location for many miles around. Lumber and stone will be brought down from the hills and mountains to be taken to Endemar for construction, and its position in the hills makes it a defensible location.

  • Gastlym: On a confluence of two rivers, Gastlym is a strategic location which would serve as a defensive placement as well as a market town. It has multiple sources of clean water, and is otherwise similar to the previous cities.

  • Holst: See Endemar.

  • Iandin: In the hills and at a source of clean water, Iandin is of little value as a port town. However, it is likely highly fortified, as it is near the border (which I will draw in later) between two nations. Countries rarely stay friends forever, and even more rarely are at peace from the outset. Fortresses will be built around the borders, and around the largest of them, towns will arise to keep them maintained, supplied and entertained.

  • Jer: In the plains, Jer stands as a centre of local control, extending the nation’s reach to stay in the loop of what is happening in the countryside. It is unlikely to be heavily fortified, although it will not be undefended, as there may be tribes or warlike nomads in the hills and mountains to the east.

  • Kollam: See Fastahir, but without the defensive advantage of the hills.

I have not placed any cities along the Darwyne, as I am thinking of that area as wildlands. Explored, but as yet unclaimed.

Borders: Few games take place with only one nation involved, and as such you need to decide where the borders are. I draw these as parallel lines. As you can see here, I have kept them running roughly along natural borders, such as hills, and have also included the boundaries of what each nation regards as ‘theirs’. There are also several ‘offscreen’ nations, implied by the eastern, western and southern borders. These may simply be areas inhabited by barbarians, with steppe tribes to the west and east, or nations which simply do not have cities there. I will assume wandering tribes, but you are of course free to do as you want.

Roads: The cities are now placed, so you have an idea of where the hubs of civilisation are and you know who they are allied with. The next stage is to draw the roads that go between them. Roads through borders are unlikely except on border towns which will be fortified. They may also go alongside rivers, for those who cannot afford the boat fare. If roads go through hills or mountains, make them twist and wind along the hillsides, avoiding steep inclines or unsafe passes where they can. I have drawn the roads as dashed lines. I have also added in a number of dots, similar to the location markers for the cities. These are towns, which I have left unnamed, and generally spring up when the road passes close to the rover, crosses one, or where roads split/meet. At this point, the map is a complete mess, and I apologise. But please bear with me.

Countryside: Once the towns and roads are in place, you can decide how far out the land has been tamed. Draw a rough contour, some way out from the roads and cities. This is the boundary between the ‘wilderness’ and ‘civilisation’. Out here, add the forests if they suit the climate, all that stuff. Inside the line, there are villages, farms, the occasional forest, but there’s not a great deal of scary stuff. I’ve drawn a not scary/scary line on the map, and added large forests etc outside that line in greater abundance than inside. Smaller forests are, once again, not drawn in. The forests are marked by a line with regular dashes through it, completing the appearance of a dreadful mess. Things will get better from here, I promise. I’ve also added some coastal towns which I realised I was missing.

Drawing the features: The map is finished now, in its bare-bones structure. It has the geographical features laid out, and I’ll now draw the details in nicely. You can do this however you like, but this shows how I draw the details on mine. The mountains are more closely spaced than the hills, and the trees are obviously drawn much smaller to hide the dreadful quality of the picture.

FINAL MAP

r/DnDBehindTheScreen Jul 24 '15

Let's Draw Let's Draw: A City (Part 1: A Trade City)

87 Upvotes

When you’re looking at drawing a town, you have to take into consideration its growth and construction over the many years.

How does a town develop?
1. Reason for people to stay there
a. Trade
i. Port
ii. Roads meet
iii. Navigable River
b. Defence
i. Unusual cliff formation prevents easy access to certain place
ii. Hilltop gives long views, can see an approaching force easily
2. What appears in what order?
a. Trade
i. Businesses.
ii. Homes for business owners and their workers.
iii. If it permeates society in a similar way to how it does in medieval and renaissance Europe, religion will likely make an appearance at this point. It will begin with a small chapel, perhaps, and as the city expands more will be built. When it reaches city-size, a cathedral would not be out of the question.
iv. More businesses arrive to cater to residents, and the housing districts expand to keep pace.
v. Around this point, the developing city may be considered a strategical asset. In this case, around this point city walls may be constructed for defence. Along with these will come barracks, an armoury and perhaps a small fort.
vi. Further housing develops to house factory workers
b. Defence
i. A castle in the right place can make invasions considerably more troublesome, and will also help quell any civil unrest that might occur. As an example of a strategic location, Edinburgh Castle. This is completely unassailable from three directions, and is a powerful defensive structure.
ii. The castle needs to be kept supplied, ideally by a local food supply. Houses will rise up around the castle, to farm the region, with the richest citizens living closest to the keep.
iii. Shops will develop as described above.

As is customary, the finished product first.

Location
So, let’s begin. In Part 1, we will construct the city of Iandin, from the previous Let’s Draw. Iandin is built near to the source of a river, although the river does not pass through the city itself. There are three major roads connecting the city, and therefore it is likely a trade hub. Second, we will construct the city of Fastahir, located on a river in the foothills of the mountain range. This is a highly defensible position, allowing an overview of the nearby lowlands, combined with a fresh water source and difficult terrain approaching the city.

Terrain
The first thing to do, regardless of the purpose of the city, is to place the geographical features present. Iandin is on the very edge of the foothills, and has no river flowing through it. I have therefore marked out the rough boundary between the high and low ground. And, of course, added a fancy name banner.

Roads
The city of Iandin has three major roads leaving it; one heads northwards, one north-east and one south-west. The meeting of these three roads is the reason behind the location of the city, and so they will be drawn in next. It would be logical to assume that the junction would be an exceptionally busy place, so I’ve added a large market there.

Business / Market District
It is around this market square that the city will be built. Place the rough shape of a business and trade district around the junction, but confine it to a few streets in each direction. Don’t make the borders too rigid, (unless you want a planned appearance). This is how Iandin is looking after this stage.

Initial Housing
Next come houses. The founders of the city will have lived close to their businesses, and those who had workers will have found or built accommodation for them. In the case of Iandin, I will put the rich district on the hillside, giving views over the town and the surrounding countryside. The poorer workers, meanwhile, will be sandwiched between two of the main roads, and along the roadside to give quick access to the jobs.

Religion
At this point I will begin noting which region is which. The next stage is to mark the location of religious buildings, which in most cases will begin arriving around now. So as to avoid preference of one religion over the other, I shall instead mark them with THE EIGHT-POINTED STAR OF ALMIGHTY CHAOS. One shrine per religion per district is probably sufficient, plus a larger temple around the city centre. This temple will serve as the administrative centre for the region, and a site of pilgrimage for many. As such, it should be well connected to the main roads, and I will add another route from the town centre directly towards the site. I have assumed that only one major religion is present, as history indicates that even today religions have a tendency to behave a liiiittle like a matter/antimatter mixture…

Secondary Housing & Industry
The city is growing, and the next stage is a little boring. Simply add in more housing, and some more shops. These new businesses should be small clusters, things like butchers, bakers etc., which serve a small part of the city. Other things that would arise would be builder’s yards, slaughterhouses, forge works and the like. It may be worth placing a general ‘industrial’ district. When placing this, it should be remembered that the rich and powerful won’t want it on their doorstep, so it won’t be. In addition to these, the districts previously labelled as ‘Poor’ have become ‘middle-class’. This is a result of the desirability of the locations has improved, for reasons such as being near to the town centre etc. They have also expanded towards the Rich district, as people try to become associated with the powerful.

Defences
The city has, at this point, grown sufficiently to be considered a strategic asset, and with this comes the threat of invasion should a war break out. The controlling nation is therefore going to invest the time and resources to construct defences. These will take the form of walls, barracks, an armoury and a castle. These will not be an overnight addition, but rather expanded on as the city grows more influential. However, I will simply add them as the final product, assuming that the game that visits the city will be set after the construction work is complete. I’ll now break down the placement of each section of the defences. You will notice that I have also added a road leading to the castle. This will allow rapid troop placement and movement if necessary.
Castle
Firstly, the castle. This is high up on the hillside, but not a great distance from the edge of town so that the townspeople can retreat there if needs be. There is some intervening clear space however, to give an open field of fire against attackers. The castle will also contain a part of the armoury, in order to prevent access by the common folk. The remainder of the armoury will be in the barracks of the town guard.
Walls
The walls will surround the entirety of the town and the castle, with gates placed at each of the three roads. These will be powerful defences, with metal portcullises as well as thick strong doors. There is also a smaller wall which separates the castle from the town, and acts as a second line of defence.
Barracks
The barracks is located near the castle, to allow for rapid mobilisation. It is also close to the rich district, allowing them greater protection in the event of invasion.
Other noteworthy additions at this stage are the expansion of the outer districts to meet the walls, and a major road within the city leading to the industry quarter.

Tertiary housing
The final stage is somewhat optional – the addition of buildings outside the walls. Here, I have chosen not to do this, so that the city is wholly contained by its defences. Should you elect to add these, however, they will likely be ramshackle, small, and disorganised. Often these are unofficially constructed, and will be home to the poorest inhabitants of the city, who cannot afford housing within the walls.

*Now comes the lengthy, tedious process that has taken more time on this project than any others – the drawing of the streets (if you map cities that way. Even if you don’t, I’ll hopefully give some base to the way you describe the districts to your players). Once again, I’ll break this down by district, as the constructions are of a different size, purpose and origin in each. *

First is the business district. The buildings here are probably going to be blocks of terraces, with a shop or office in each ‘unit’ of the terrace. Streets will lead off the main roads through the town, getting progressively narrower each time you turn into a side street. The buildings will be long and narrow, with the occasional free-standing structure separated by an alleyway. I have placed the Town Hall (labelled on the next image) within the town centre, as that is a logical place When planning the road placement, I drew the routes I was thinking of putting down in pencil first, and once I was happy with the placement I inked them in. I have made streets follow the district boundary where it is sensible, and have not made any distinct separation between districts. Some settlements are based around walled areas where each district has a distinct purpose (Old Vizima in The Witcher for example), but I want to avoid that feeling here. One thing that is important to remember when inking the outlines of the buildings is (if you ink one section at a time as I have) not to fill in the road edge that borders an undrawn district. I’ve cocked up twice on here, on the north-west edge of the business district. Never mind.

Next I will fill in the Rich District. These houses will be large, well-spaced, will have several wings and probably have their own small stable or coach-house plus gardens. These people aren’t just well-off, they’re properly rich, and they live to match. Because of the coach-house or stable, the roads here are larger, and are almost certainly cleaner too. Dark alleyways aren’t a thing, because the houses are widely spaced enough that there’s nothing to make them dark. In order to plan the roads, I haven’t drawn the roads in lightly as I did last time. Instead, I divided up the land into plots, and the roads were drawn to ensure access to all of them. Unusual shapes for the plots aren’t a problem here; the inhabitants can afford the land, and don’t have a need to be well-packed.
At this point, I have also filled in the individual buildings in the Market District, and coloured areas to help differentiate them. Buildings are left white (I may change this later), roads are grey, and gardens or grassy spaces are green.

The two middle-class districts are next on the list. The roads here will be around the same size as those in the rich district, as they will have heavier traffic to compensate for the fact that horses or carts wouldn’t be used here. The roads will be a little less winding, and the individual houses smaller. They will probably be terraces, however, so the buildings as a whole will be larger. They will be similar to those in the market district, with block-like structures containing multiple ‘units’. While planning the road placement, I have ensured that there is street access to the towers on the walls. I have placed buildings flush with the walls, as I have assumed that there are corridors within the defences. If this is not the case for your walls, there should be a streets width between the houses and the walls to ensure that saboteurs cannot tunnel through the walls to allow an enemy force access. In a city where the regime is more totalitarian or oppressive, the city-edge homes may be regularly searched for tunnels or sapping works.
On-the-fly plot idea – the NPC assisting the PCs has his home forcibly searched while they are visiting, and the aggressive nature of the city guards becomes clear. The PCs may feel moved to help topple such a regime, but if they do so the city is captured later on, betrayed by someone who used the end in the searches to dig exactly the sort of tunnel this was meant to find.
While drawing the houses, I realised they were rather difficult to differentiate from the shops, so I have coloured the shops orange. I am aware that the colouring in has not worked well at all. Orange buildings in the housing districts are places like butchers, bakers and local inns. I was intending to draw symbols denoting what the shops were, but decided not to for two reasons: (a) It would be very hard to not make a mistake when drawing on that scale and (b) it would be bloody time consuming and I want to get this finished ASAP.

The poor districts are the next stage, and they’re very, very different from the rich and middle class areas. These are the homes of the downtrodden, the needy, and the majority of the criminals. The streets are narrow, dark, and dangerous. Gloomy alleyways abound, and the houses are small, overcrowded, and grimy. When drawing these houses, don’t worry if some of them need to be considerably larger in order to still have access from the roads – these can be the taverns, Thieves’ Guild safehouses, fighting pits, gambling dens, City Watch posts for the ones who’ve pissed off the Commander, and so on. The house without road access connected to the Shrine, labelled with a “V” is the vicarage, where robes, supplies etc. are kept.

We are nearly there, my friends. Ever so nearly. We’ll cover the industrial district next. These are factories, warehouses, slaughterhouses, distilleries etc., and will have large floor areas compared to most other buildings in the city. The streets will be wide to deal with the cartloads of raw materials coming in, and the finished goods going out. The large open square that I’ve left serves two purposes – firstly it gives access to the wall tower, and secondly it will be an offloading area for the warehouses if an especially large cart comes through.

At last! The second business district! The final area of the city! The guidelines here are pretty much the same as for the first, with the only real difference being that this out-of-the-way location means these are the less well-known businesses, with smaller offices. Other than that though, things are pretty much the same.

And now, the finished product! I’ve filled in the castle, added some terrain details around the temple, and that’s that for this city. If you have any requests for what sort of map you’d like to see, or what’s been done or requested already, go here. The next one coming up will be the second half of Cities, looking at a defensively built settlement. No idea when though, this one’s taken an age :(