Inkscape for Rapid Mapping

The other day, I posted this picture of a castle and lamented that I didn't have a map. 

With Inkscape, it's easy to do a map or at least block out areas for a map. 

I took the photo and imported it into Inkscape. My next step was to decide what size I wanted the image to be. I picked about 8.5" by 11". This gives me all of the white space around the castle to build the exterior areas which might be important to the user. 

So, how does Inkscape help build a map from a photo of a drawing? 

Geometry. 

My first step was to make a series of rectangles the same size as the tower bases in the image. As I did each rectangle, I duplicated it and turned the duplicate 90 degrees. I did not adjust for the depth-wise adjustment of the towers. I could have but didn't want to make it too complex. 

The corner of one rectangle met the corner of its duplicate, leaving an open square. Once I had done that for every box, I tried to do the same for the central palace-like area. 

Once I was done, I put a red box or rectangle in that open space between the two grey rectangles. This allows me to map out a proportional arrangement of the structures with no measuring of anything. I deleted the grey rectangles and roughed out the walls between the towers. This is far from a perfect match, but it is very close. 

On the right-hand side of the map, you can see that I moved one tower very significantly. I just thought it looked better. Also, the drawing shows a series of buildings that divided the structure in half. I removed them so there would be an open space inside. 

Of course, some of my towers are circular. I simply replaced a few squares with circles. The trick here is to make the circles slightly larger than the squares they replaced. 

The final step was to connect everything together using the Union tool. 

In some cases, I think I made mistakes. The two front center towers are far less imposing on the map. In other cases, I ran the union process only to realize the pieces didn't mesh up, and I had to undo it so I could make adjustments. 

This is far from a perfect process, but it's good enough to get a general idea of the arrangement of the map. Later, I will dress up the Castle and then cut it back to show levels and interior spaces. 

Lighter Reading - What I Do on Wednesdays

I'm reading for my next couple of reviews. I like to print stuff out for reading. Today, I fired off The Lake of Abominations -- Hex 17.23 by Third Kingdom Games (Todd Leback) to the printer. Since I have Mr. Leback's Into the Wild coming in the mail, I was going to use this as a model for a hexcrawling module. 

Yeah... I don't know about a hexcrawl module, either. 

Anyway, this funny thing keeps happening. My printer insists that blue is a grey scale color. 

I should have printed in color, because the whole thing is packed with color maps. But in grey scale, my printer keeps coloring the black lines of the art in blue. I couldn't do that if I tried. I actually like it a lot.  

Wacky technology. 

Anyway, back to the module idea. I'd like to revamp both my Kobold's Folly and Compass Rose Inn mini-setting maps into full blown modules. It will probably take months.

I also have a third idea for a map of Miledown, another setting placed in the middle of my Peninsula of Plenty map. Miledown is a small town in a valley. I already have the cover art ready to go. It's just a matter of writing... you know... a description, a story and an adventure.

Little things.  

Let's hope this comes out
less phallic looking.

Of course, since I am going to need maps, I am updating the Peninsula map to a standard 6-mile hex map. When I started out, I was just blue skying and didn't have the scales right. This will fix that. I have an area 150 hexes by 60 hexes planned. About the size of Italy, which the campaign is based on.

One upside to this is I now have a name for the Human Capital: "Rhoom". I wanted run with a counter-factual idea that Remus instead of Romulus survived the foundation of the city. 

Guess what? That doesn't work because Rome was named before Remus and Romulus and "Romulus" means "a man of Rome". Crazy ancient mythology. 

I decided to just steal from Shakespeare: 

That her wide walls encompassed but one man?

Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,

In Shakespeare's time, "room" and "Rome" were pronounced differently and rhymed, making the pun complete. So with a little poetic license the capital is now called "Rhoom".  

I started with the Lake Potamus area and moved out from there. This lake is squeezed between forests, mountains and savanna lands. It's named for the Hippos that live in the region. 

This detail allows me to have chains of forts and fortified houses on the plains. They are fortified against the wildlife and not actual invaders. It's kind of handy because it keeps the Rhoom Empire and Elven Dwarven Combine in a cold war in the area. It's hard to travel the savanna without encountering beasts. 

This is the valley of Miledown.  

It's less thought out right now, but coming along nicely. Since it is a hidden vale, they don't have many visitors. It doesn't look unusual to visitors but it does have several mysteries.