This is a set of several blog posts of over 60 thousand words, most of which were published at the same time. I intend to keep updating this series, and will update this post (and the child posts) with new links whenever needed.

I wrote this because when I started seriously making maps for my games, I found a plethora of tutorials in a zillion places, few of which were cohesive and anymore than cursory explorations into the topic. Most assumed a significant amount of pre-knowledge, either in skills (Photoshop) or in general cartographic practices. I wanted there to be a place where new enthusiasts could “one stop shop” for techniques without having to deal with a complicated interface. There wasn’t one, and so I made it.

I have broken my treatise up into several sections, each of which has their own sub-sections and pages. Posts are intended to provide usable information and skill practice but are no means exhaustive on the subject. They are presented in a rough order, but feel free to jump around. Even if you know Photoshop backwards and forwards, I urge you to read even the “beginner” posts because I describe certain techniques useful for cartography.

You can access a full table of contents from the sidebar (which you can make sticky or not). If you find value in this, please drop a little something in the tip jar. I am also available for commissions.

General

This section provides an overview of the various types of maps that are used in fantasy gaming as well as covering several aspects of cartographical best practices and techniques, such as how to label mountains or coastlines.

• Fantasy Map Types – A broad overview of the various styles of fantasy maps.
• Fantasy Cartography Best Practices – Information about general cartographic practices, such as label positioning and fonts.
• Library of Patterns – A collection of all patterns used through the series.

Photoshop Skills

This section will teach you everything^* that you need to know about using Photoshop to create maps. You may want to skip this section and come back to it as you need to learn anything.

• Photoshop Basics – A quick set of basic tips for Photoshop.
• Photoshop Shapes and the Pen – How to use the various shape tools in Photoshop.
• Photoshop Layer Styles and Effects – How to make things look cool.
• Photoshop Blend Modes – How to make things look even cooler.
• Photoshop Typography – Managing type and its shapes.

* Not actually everything.

Map Making

This section shows you how to apply the photoshop skills you learned in the Photoshop section to the knowledge you gained in the Overview section to make practical and beautiful maps.

• Fantasy Map Design Basics – Tricks and techniques used in the construction of all map types.
• Designing Fantasy Outdoors Maps – How to design large-scale maps of outdoor areas.
• Designing Fantasy City Maps – Building and designing settlements at a medium scale.
• Designing Fantasy Blueprint Maps – How to make classic-style dungeon maps.
• Designing Fantasy Isometric Maps – Quick and easy ways to make beautiful isometric maps.
• Designing Fantasy Battlemaps – Maps intended for use with miniatures.
• Randomly Generating Landmass – A technique for automatically creating realistic shorelines.
• Drawing Mountains – Several ways to draw mountains on maps.
• Drawing Forests – Several ways to draw forests on maps.
• Managing Battlemap Assets – Obtaining and managing assets for your smallest scale maps.
• Printing Maps – Crafting professional looking real, physical objects.

Battlemap Techniques

This section includes an ever-expanding library of techniques to use for creating battlemap assets and elements.

• Battlemap Techniques Index – Links to everything.
  • Technique: Moss – How to add realistic looking moss to maps. Also works for lichen.
  • Technique: Puddles – How to add puddles and create wet surfaces.
  • Technique: Stairs – How to build sets of stairs.
  • Tree Stumps – How to indicate trees and their stumps.
  • Technique: Water – How to make realistic looking water effects.
  • Technique: Windows – Buildings without windows are dreary.

Special Thanks

Representational elements convey limited information about a thing. What it is and its relational location but are rarely accurate with regards to size or shape. Circles to represent cities, square icons to mark doors in a building, X marks the spot.

Exact elements convey much more detail about the thing shown. These elements will be accurate to location, size, and shape, and may have more or less detail depending on the map’s scale.

The distinction matters and the choice as to where an element falls on the scale matters.

Take for example a large-scale map – a large island. Here, the locations of coastlines are fairly important and are likely drawn accurately (to the fidelity of the map’s scale). However, cities and towns are usually marked representationally, with dots or squares or stars. Their positions on the island are accurate, but you don’t draw buildings. Likewise, this map will include major roads, and while the routes they take may be accurate, the marks themselves are representational (roads are typically not wide enough to appear on large scale maps).

I’ve come up with a handful of broad categories into which I have discovered the types of maps I make fall.

• Outdoors. Large-scale maps that show large areas of land and the geography of an area.
• Blueprints. Small-scale maps that detail the layout of a building or a dungeon. They can be overhead or isometric (angled)
• Battlemaps. Tight-scaled maps that are appropriate for use with gaming miniatures. They often show single rooms.

Outdoors Maps

These are your classical wilderness map. They can have any scale but typically fall into “world”, “continent”, “island/region”, and “city or town” scales. The map should scale to be just larger than the entire area it is attempting to display (e.g., if your city is 7 miles by 7 miles, the map should show 8 by 8).

Outdoors maps use hexagon grids and are almost entirely representational. This is likely true no matter what scale you use: you’re not going to be drawing individual trees, you’re going to draw the shape of the forest. City-scale maps rarely need individual buildings; blocks are often sufficient.

Some things will be drawn at radically increased size because they need to appear on the map (because they’re important, like a major river) but the actual size of the object would be invisible at the scale. For instance, there are no rivers that are 5 miles across, but have to be drawn at that size in order to appear at the map’s scale.

It’s easy to try to get too detailed. That’s a bad path to head down. Zoom in too much and you might as well make a battlemap. Outdoor maps are mostly about showing geographical relationship. The city of Florence is located on the River Arno. The Sierra Nevada mountain range runs along the eastern edge of California. The business district is south-west of the city capitol.

Note that maps of the underground (or “underdark”) fall into this category as well.

There are two tutorials about designing outdoors maps:

• Designing Fantasy Outdoors Maps: A discussion about the design of larger-scale outdoors maps
• Designing Fantasy City Maps: A discussion about designing smaller-scale outdoors maps

Blueprints

These maps show relational space within a structure. They’re for indoor areas and the classical dungeon map falls into this category. They can have many scales (really it’s just the size of the artboard you’re working with), but there are two major types: overhead and isometric.

Blueprints use square grids. Accuracy is of importance but excessive detail is not. For instance, doors must be shown (accuracy) but they should be shown as simple squares (representational). Drawing wood paneling on doors at this scale is overkill.

A blueprint shows room layouts and building structure. They should rarely describe room contents unless it’s important (e.g., a large fountain, statue, or a grand piano) but important structural elements (where the bar is located) may be included.

Blueprint maps are most often “overhead,” where the details are shown in a flat two-dimensional plane. There is another type of blueprint map, isometric. Isometric maps are useful to show two-dimensional spaces in three-dimensions, and use a diamond-shaped grid.

There are two tutorials about designing blueprint maps:

• Designing Fantasy Blueprint Maps: A discussion about classic-style dungeon and building maps
• Designing Fantasy Isometric Maps: How to work in an isometric view

Battlemaps

These are highly detailed, zoomed in maps, intended for printing and use during a game session. Battlemaps can be for indoor or outdoor areas. These maps are intended to show the objects in the area and their sizes and relationships to each other should be as exact as possible. Is there a gap in the wall? It gets drawn. Show where the road’s edge is. Show furniture in rooms.

When you work on a battlemap, you have to be conscious of three dimensions in new ways. For instance, a tree may be a rough circle 20 feet across when seen absolutely from above, but the players are going to be interacting at the ground level, where the tree trunk may only be 3 feet across. In this case, you’d draw the tree’s trunk. If you want to get fancy, maybe add in the shadow of the tree, or a rough outline of where its leaves cover, but usually that’s not necessary.

Because battlemaps have so much detail, it’s good to draw things realistically. This can be daunting if you aren’t possessed of great drawing skills. Never fear! 90% of making a battlemap pretty is handled with Photoshop layer effects and shapes, which are easy and fast to use once you get the hang of them.

There are several tutorials regarding the creation of battlemaps:

• Designing Fantasy Battlemaps: The master battlemap design tutorial
• Making Battlemap Assets: A primer about building individual battlemap assets
• Battlemap Techniques: a collection of multiple techniques for building specific battlemap elements, such as stairs, puddles, and moss

This post describes several best practices when making fantasy maps. I put the word “fantasy” there because fantasy maps don’t have to follow a lot of the Great Unbreakable Rules and have built-in audiences and purposes (this is my disclaimer so that Actual Real Cartographers don’t try to say “well, actually…”).

There are no Photoshop techniques described herein. Much of this information is repeated within individual “Creating Maps” posts, but I wanted to collect it here. Many times, other articles in this series will point you back here (usually about font choice). Some people may find this information dry or may already know a lot of what’s here. I’ll try to be entertaining.

On Information Architecture

Information architecture deals with the organization of information. Whether you’re aware of it or not, you are exposed to information architecture thoughts all the time. If data (of any kind) is presented to you in an organized fashion, there has been some degree of information architecture applied, even if it is as simple as alphabetizing a list.

Information architecture provides hierarchy to the data. More important things are called out differently than less important things. Trivial or non-relevant things are omitted entirely.

Consider this map of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. What does it show? What’s been left out? What’s accurate and what is not? The lines, stops, transfer points, and cities are called out, with the lines being the most visible (because they are the most important).

You’ll notice, though, that the lines themselves aren’t remotely accurate when it comes to distance or direction – they’re scaled to be useful while on the line. Street roads and highways aren’t included, nor are any cities where BART doesn’t stop.

Maps are one of the purest and oldest forms of information architecture that exists. Every map that you have looked at is telling you something and that something is being presented in a specific, intentional way. Even what is not on the map tells you something.

When designing a map, it is very important to know what the information is that you’re trying to display. This information can be derived from the map’s audience and it’s purpose.

Audiences

A map’s audience is the group of people who the map is designed for. This can drive many decisions about what to include or omit. Sometimes it’s good to think of a map’s audience as a kind of role.

When working with Fantasy maps, you have three basic audiences and they will often overlap. Each audience can (and will) be looking for something completely different.

• Players. These are the people playing the game – your local crew. They actively require information from the map to help them make decisions during play.
• Gamemasters. These are the people who run and manage games. Gamemasters need different information than players (usually secret things, like the location of traps, or hidden ruins). They have an active need for information.
• Enthusiasts. These people enjoy looking at the maps for entertainment purposes. They do not actively require information from the map; in a sense, they are just “browsing”.

Purposes

A map’s purpose describes what people are going to use the information it provides for.

A terrain map’s purpose is to show its audience where mountains and hills are. A coastline map’s purpose is to show its audience where shoals and coves are located. A dungeon map’s purpose is to show the Gamemaster the layout of the rooms and where the traps are. A battlemap’s purpose is to show the players the immediate locality.

It’s okay for maps to have multiple purposes. For instance, a well-designed battlemap can serve two masters: the players for game-play and enthusiasts who may be enticed to play the game by the map’s beauty.

(You should always try to think about the Enthusiasts. I know people who buy games just to look at the maps.)

For the most part, though, fantasy maps have a small set of purposes:

• As Illustration
• As Strategic Aids
• As World-Building
• As Story Guides

Illustration

The primary purpose of all maps is illustration. Maps show where things are! It’s that simple.

Players, Gamemasters, and Enthusiasts all use maps as illustration, if only to know where things are in relation to other things.

Hand out maps – maps that the players pick up along the way, for instance – share this purpose. They are used to illustrate elements of the game’s story to the players (this is not the same as Story Guides, below).

Strategic Aid

Players will use maps as strategic aids to plan their activities.

They use outdoors and overland maps to plan journeys (“we need to get to this city, and there are four roads there, and the short one goes over a pass but the long one looks the safest…”) and they use battlemaps to know the immediate terrain so that they can perform well in combat situations.

World-Building

World-building is something that happens naturally when designing maps. This purpose most often makes itself known during the design phase of a map, usually world-scale maps.

Plop a continent down on somewhere and fill it with jungles and places that have cool names. No one is going there just yet, but as the world designer you’re thinking about it. What exactly is the “Black Water”? What is the “Wandering City” or the “Great Tortoise?” Who knows. I just created some cool places.

Put weird things in and eventually you (or your players!) will figure it out.

Story Guide

The Gamemaster is the only one who uses maps as a Story Guide. Story maps are specifically purposed and are intended to be kept secret from the Players because they include details that the Players should not (or cannot) know, but that the Gamemaster must know.

The classic dungeon blueprint map is the best example of this kind of map purpose. Here are the traps, there are the secret doors. This is how high the water will rise when the trap is sprung. Those types of things.

Outdoor and wilderness maps can fall into these purposes, too. A Gamemaster may have an additional, secret copy of an island map that shows where ruins of the Lost City of Arretium are located, or the secret cove where the Pirate Kings of Umbria make lair.

On Titles

A map’s title is one of the most meaningful things to show. The title can provide several key pieces of information to the audience, the most important being what they are looking at. The title reflects its overall purpose.

For general area maps, simply give it the name of the area (“The Island of Atlantis”, “The Free City of Firenze”, or “The Secret Temple of the Dread God Dyoig-Notho”). However, maps with specialized information should call that out (“Trade Routes of Western Terracopia”, “Sewers Under the City of Napoli”, or “Occurrences of Wild Magick Blights between 1200 and 1300 Common Reckoning”).

The map’s title should be large and in charge. It should usually be placed towards the “top” of the map but if space or detail prevents this it can be moved to the bottom.

Additional details that should go into the map’s title can include when it was made (“Drafted in 1345 Common Reckoning”) and any caveats about the information presented (“As Known to the Macedonian Navy”).

(You don’t have to put titles on battlemaps and in fact this is discouraged.)

On Labels

Labels on maps show the audience what a location or object is. How a thing is labeled depends on what it is: road, city, mountain range, river? Desert or sea?

An element’s label, position, and design can reveal additional information to the audience. There are some best practices for this.

Fonts

The choice of a label’s font is very important. Fonts should be readable. You’re trying to impart information here. Some fonts that are great for websites (Helvetica Neue) are not so great for fantasy maps, while others (Luminari) feel right at home. You don’t want big, thick, or complicated fonts (Cloister Black) for labels, and if you use Papyrus or Comic Sans I will hunt you down and drink your blood.

Note that for one-off, very large labels (like the map title) you can use the complicated fonts^*.

^* Except Papyrus. Never, ever use Papyrus.

Serif and Sans-Serif Fonts

The word Serif means “feet”. Serif fonts are those whose characters have little feet on them. Sans-serif (literally, “without feet”) fonts do not. Modern fonts, especially on websites, tend to be sans-serif. Typewriter fonts are serifed. Most old-timey fonts are going to be serif fonts.

This is important as the distinction between serif and sans-serif is immediately obvious to the audience and helps them make mental connections between similarly labeled elements easier.

Typefaces

A typeface (or a “font family”, depending) is a collection of fonts that are similar. The distinction between a typeface and an individual font can be messy to the layman. Individual fonts (“Times New Roman Italic” or “Times New Roman Regular”) are part of the greater font family (“Times New Roman”). Most typefaces have four members: regular, italic, bold, and bold italic, but some have many, many more.

When you select a font from a drop down, you’re actually selecting a Typeface. This is usually the “regular” version of the font. When you set it to italic, you’re selecting the “italic” version of the font.

As a general rule, you should have no more than three Typefaces on your map. This does not include capitalization, bolding, or italic treatments, nor does it include things like font stroke or color^* (I usually stick with Trattatello, Crimson, and Copperplate Gothic).

^*You can make an exception for the map’s title. Title fonts don’t count against your font count.

Capitalization

You can choose to use ALL CAPITALS when defining a label style. This makes that style distinct. Capitalized labels are generally used for large or ethereal things (the labels for states or nations, for instance), to indicate hierarchy (ward names and districts), or relative importance (major thoroughfares vs. alleys).

Alternate Ligatures

Some fonts (like Trattatello) have additional alternate ligatures. Think different versions of specific characters that may have additional swoops or lines or can connect to other letters differently.

These variants are great for adding flavor to your maps and make them pop. Feel free to use them but don’t go overboard.

I’ll discuss how to use them in Photoshop Typography but you should be aware that they exist.

Positions

Hoo-boy. Label positioning.

How labels are positioned depends on the kind of element. In many cases (forests and lakes) the labels should be centered inside the area. For others, the label should be spread and rotated over the element.

Settlement labels use special rules and have a hierarchy:

• Settlement labels should never cross a shoreline, river, or boundary line.
  • If the boundary is to the left of the settlement, the label goes on the right.
  • If the boundary is to the right of the settlement, the label goes on the left.
• Settlement labels should almost always be horizontal. Never curve a settlement name.
  • An exception is for highly detailed, zoomed maps where labels can be placed at angles if the situation requires it.
• For settlements inside the land, the label should be placed in the following order, given available space:
  • Top right, left aligned
  • Right, left aligned
  • Top left, left aligned
  • Bottom left, left aligned
  • Bottom left, right aligned
  • Left, right aligned
• For coastline settlements, the label should be located in the water, and to the top or bottom corner as makes sense given the coastline.

Sizing

Labels for elements should be sized according to their relative importance. Larger cities or islands should get larger font sizes. Seas and oceans should have very large fonts.

It’s best to pick the smallest font that you’ll be using and work upwards.

Curves and Spreading

Labels can and should be curved and spread to follow along an element on the map if the element warrants it.

• Labels for Roads should not be spread out but should follow the path of the road.
• River labels should curve and spread along the river. Do not spread the label over the river’s entire length; instead use multiple labels.
• Mountain Range labels should curve and spread along the length of the range, if possible.
• Sea and Ocean labels should be large and spread out to as much space is allowed. The size and position of the label should give a rough indication of its area.

Direction

In nearly every case labels should be read left-to-right (or right-to-left in languages like Hebrew or Farsi). The main exceptions to this rule are for rivers, seas, and mountain ranges, but also for some things like plateaus. Rivers have special rules; see below.

In the case of mountain ranges, seas, and plateaus, the label direction should be as much as “left-to-right” as possible. This may mean rotating the text in one degree or the other. The text should not be “upside down”; you should still be able to read it (this may be unavoidable, though, so be kind to yourself). Consider the center of your map and rotate around that.

The exception to this rule is for rivers and other running water. With rivers, the direction the text flows imparts additional information: the direction the water runs. The start of the text should be towards the river’s source (e.g., the mountains) and run towards its mouth (usually the sea).

Color

You’ll define the color of your labels when you define the style of them. Colors should be readable. If there is a chance it won’t be, add a stroke to it.

Use the same color for the same types of elements. If you pick #222222 for settlement labels, then all settlements should use that color. This is not a hard and fast rule; for instance, settlement labels on land can be dark, but over water maybe you want to use #dddddd. Consistency is the key: if you make a change, make sure it’s applied everywhere (e.g., don’t set all of your labels over water to a light color except one).

Natural vs. Created Elements

It is important to understand the distinction between natural elements and created elements. Your font treatment should be different between the two and consistent within the type.

• Natural elements are those that were not created by human (or dwarf, or elf) hands. Forests, mountains, islands, rivers, seas, deserts, lakes, and the like. Lakes created by dams also fall into this category.
• Created elements are those built by people. They did not come into existence naturally. Cities, buildings, ruins, roads, and bridges all fall into this category.

Classically, natural phenomena are labeled with italic fonts and created elements are labeled with non-italic fonts. This has blurred a lot in modern times, so that specific rule doesn’t apply. That doesn’t mean you are off the hook, however.

What you should do is pick one of your font families for each type. The font families should not be similar; they should be obviously distinct. You can (and should) use different treatments (italics, bold, all caps, etc.) for different things as well.

I label my natural elements using Trattatello (a handwritten style font) and my created elements with Crimson (a good serif font). I label settlements in Crimson Semibold Italic, while roads are labeled with Crimson Roman. Both fonts are in the Crimson family, but one is a fleshy oblique font and the other reads more like a typewriter font.

You may be asking yourself, “Self, I’m allowed three font families, but he’s only described using two! Where’s the third?” Good question!

Use the third font family for ethereal, informative things that do not have specific locations. Things like state or nation names (This is where I use Copperplate Gothic).

Alternate Names

Some places have multiple or alternate names. This is most common when a place is known commonly in one language by one group of people and in another language by others. These are called “Alternate Names”.

Alternate names should be placed below the main label and de-emphasized. They are usually surrounded by parenthesis or brackets. You can de-emphasize an alternate name in several ways (or multiple ways):

• Using a Smaller Font
• Reduced Opacity (tricky with the Type tool; you’ll have to make two labels)
• Using a Different Color
• Using a Different Font
• Using Different Layer Effects (tricky; you’ll have to make two labels)

On Compass Roses

A compass rose is that part of the map that shows which direction to orient the map. They are incredibly important for all maps except battlemaps (which don’t need one).

Like everything else on a map, the compass roses should provide meaningful information. The most minimal bit of this what direction to orient the map.

Compass roses also point to the principal winds or directions (North, North-East, East, South-East, South, South-West, West, and North-West) using color and size on the points to differentiate between major and minor winds (some societies used different names or had many, many more winds). Advanced roses can show the difference between true north and magnetic north.

Compass roses can take many forms. The most basic of them simply point to the North. A single north pointer is sufficient for blueprints and battlemaps, but you may want to get more elaborate when it comes to outdoors maps.

Compass roses can be part of your mythology. The one I designed for my Terracopia fantasy setting includes hints to some of the deeper secrets of the setting in its design, for instance (a style choice that required a significant simplification of the rose). Other times, you’ll want a more “standard”, multi-point star.

On Key Maps

A key map is a map-within-the-map. Key maps are useful to provide a greater context for the map’s audience. They show a larger scale map with the area of the current map highlighted for context.

Key maps are most often used for sections of a larger world map. They are of negative value with battlemaps, so don’t use them there.

This article discusses some basics that apply to all maps types. Where there are deviations, they will be noted in the individual “Creating Maps” articles.

On File Resolutions and Dimensions

The size and resolution of your map drive many things. It is important to understand these two concepts and how they relate to one another. First, let’s talk about resolution.

On Resolutions

The resolution (or dpi) is the number of pixels that appear per inch in the document (“dpi” stands for “dots per inch”). There are two common resolutions for images: 72dpi and 300dpi. 72dpi images are intended for viewing on screens: televisions, computers, phones, etc. 300dpi images are intended for printing.

There is a paradox here, in that 72dpi images are rarely shown at 72 pixels per inch; the concept of an “inch” doesn’t mean a lot with computers anymore. However, 300dpi for printing absolutely means a lot. When you work for print, you know exactly what’s going to print and where.

Have you ever found an old digital photograph, or a graphic on the web and then printed it out? It probably came out either really, really small (a 72dpi image printed a a 1:1 pixel ratio) or it came out really blurry and pixelated (a 72dpi image that was automatically scaled up to 300dpi). Scaling images – pixel images, that is, which is what gets sent to a printer – will always result in blurring. This is true whether you’re printing it or re-scaling it inside of Photoshop itself.

The inverse is not so true: scaling an image down in size will cause pixels to merge and become smaller. If you have a 20×20 pixel white square, if you size it down by 50% you’ll have a 10×10 pixel square. Pixels get merged: not just left-and-right but also top-and-bottom. Downscaling by evenly divisible amounts always works better than odd amounts, and clearly scaling in 50% increments works best.

When creating new maps, always use 300dpi, even if you don’t think you’re going to print it. It costs you nothing and you will regret it if you ever have to upscale.

With most maps, altering the size and resolution can be done after the fact. You want to add more detail to your island? Up the scale, clean some edges, no problem. However, with battlemaps, it is important to start knowing the size of the map. Battlemaps must always be made at 300dpi. Don’t make me come after you. If you set battlemaps to lower resolution, it’s not my fault, and you can’t blame me.

On Dimensions

When choosing the actual starting size of your map’s canvas, it helps to know if you’re going to be printing it or not. I suggest that you always assume the answer to that question is “yes” because if you decide not to print it, you’re out nothing. It costs no extra time or effort to work with a file that is prepared for printing versus one that isn’t, and if you ever decide to print a non-print ready file, you’ve got some problems.

Trust me on this.

Accordingly, you should always set you file size to match. Now, the actual size (x by y pixels) is not as important as the relative dimensions of the file (the x to y ratio). A file that is 2400 x 3600 pixels in size has dimensions of 2 by 3. 2 by 3 is the magic ratio so always use that.

I always like to print my maps out to posters at 24 inches by 36 inches. However, you’re not dealing with super-accuracy, so you can select smaller canvas sizes (indeed, I suggest this because working with large documents can become slow). For large, world-size maps, I select 4000 by 6000 pixels but for most others I stay with 2400 by 3600 pixels. I find that they print just fine scaled up or down with that.

Note: With a battlemap, you must know ahead of time how big you plan to print it and set your canvas size to that exactly. If you’re going to print at 11″ by 14″, set the canvas size to 11 inches by 14 inches, with a display resolution of 300dpi. More information about battlemap sizing strategies can be found in Designing Fantasy Battlemaps (see, it’s so important that I’m repeating myself already).

Photoshop has some default canvas sizes you can pick from that may meet your needs but honestly just create a new document of any size and then resize it immediately.

Scaling Grids

Nearly every map will want to have a Scaling Grid grid. This is an overlay layer that displays a grid of hexes or squares, where it is known that the distance between the two sides is consistent. Spoiler alert: This tells the viewer the scale of the map.

• Outdoors maps use hexes
• Overhead Blueprint maps use squares
• Isometric Blueprint maps use diamonds
• Battlemaps can use squares or hexagons, depending on the game

You may be asking yourself, “Self, why do some maps use hexes and others squares?” Go you! You should congratulate yourself for making such an astute observation. The answer depends on the purpose of the map and the most useful way to display distance.

A Hexagon is the same distance from edge to edge on six sides and give a much more accurate depiction of distance within a 360 degree arc (a total of 6 directions are accurate). However, while hexagons stack very neatly, they are not as useful for defining architecture (no truly “straight” lines to follow) and they’re impossible for use with a grid coordinate system.

A Square is the same distance from edge to edge on four sides and gives only 4 directions of accurate distance. This is extremely useful for blueprints. They stack neatly, but diagonal distance is almost impossible to calculate easily. They are very useful for defining architecture, and are perfect for coordinate systems.

Basically you want to use hexagons when the fidelity of distance must be preserved over larger areas (islands) and squares when the fidelity is important over small areas (rooms and buildings). For accuracy’s sake, in the really real world, distance between places on maps was determined by using a protractor and if a map had a grid, it was a square grid with lookup entries. But games do not require perfect fidelity.

In some games, especially those that use miniatures, the game’s “playing field” is defined by the use of hexes over squares or vice versa. If your miniatures rules use hexagons, use hexagons even if squares make more sense.

When using hexagons, you have to make a choice to use vertically stacking or horizontally stacking hexagons. It doesn’t really make much difference but the choice determines the initial hex layouts.

Here are several grid patterns (1 each at 1000, 500, 300, and 100 pixels). They are a default grey in color. If you want different colors, there are ways to do that with color overlays (which I’ll explain later) or you can save them off and change the colors manually and re-import them.

Applying a Scaling Grid

You’re going to make a master grid layer and then duplicate it several times. You will want to have a version that will be useful even if you have layer effects turned off, for one. Other duplications may come about if you choose to include multiple grids.

Make an initial, “master” grid.

Setting Grid Scale

Here’s where you have to do some math. The patterns I provided are scaled at different pixel resolutions (this is so you get less blurring if you scale up or down). You’ll have to choose which pattern to use and what scale to use it at.

If your map is 3600 pixels wide, and you want that to represent a distance of 500 miles, and you want to show hexes where each hex equals 100 miles, you’re going to want 1 hex to show up every 720 pixels (3600 / 5 = 720 pixels). The closest hex to that size is a 1000 pixel hex (always start larger). So you select that one as your pattern and you set the pattern’s Scale to 72% (72% of 1000 equals 720).

It’s usually best to stick with whole numbers, to be quite honest, but we do what we must.

Scaling Grids Without Layer Effects

Now, this grid will only be visible when you have Layer Effects visible (see Photoshop Layer Styles and Effects). Since you’ll probably be working a lot with them turned off, you want a grid that remains.

Now you have a “working” grid. Turn the visibility of this layer on or off as required.

When it comes time to finalize the map, you’ll end up doing a lot more with this grid. I’ll discuss that later, but for now you have something you can work with.

Sub-Grids

When working with grids (especially with hexagons), it is often desirable to break a larger grid up into smaller bits. You’ll want one large grid, where a hex equals 500 miles, and then an interior grid, where a hex equals 50 miles. Generally, the smaller-scale grid will be the “main” grid and the larger-scale grid will be used for, well, scale.

This is easy to do. Just create another layer and apply a new grid, with a different size and scale. If you’ve got a “large” grid that uses a 1000 pixel pattern, make a smaller grid using a 100 pixel pattern. Make sure to use the same pattern “type” (e.g., don’t mix and match vertical hexes with horizontal hexes).

You’ll want to give them different opacity values until such time as you apply layer styles or colors to them.

Pen Tablets

I absolutely recommend that you get yourself a pen tablet and learn to use it. Drawing things is infinitely easier and faster to do with a pen than with a mouse. Tablets can be expensive, however, so they may be out of your budget.

If you do decide to get a tablet, I recommend one with pressure sensitivity. You won’t be doing a lot of pressure-sensitive work, but when you do, oh boy does it make a difference.

Compass Roses

Most maps can be improved with the inclusion of a Compass Rose. I talked about compass roses in Fantasy Cartography Best Practices but didn’t describe how to make one.

Compass roses can take many forms. The most basic of them simply point to the North. A single north pointer is sufficient for blueprints and battlemaps, but you may want to get more elaborate when it comes to outdoors maps.

Compass roses can be part of your mythology. The one I designed for my Terracopia fantasy setting includes hints to some of the deeper secrets of the setting in its design, for instance (a style choice that required a significant simplification of the rose). Other times, you’ll want a more “standard”, multi-point star.

I always design and build your compass roses in separate files so that I can easily pull it into a new map. I also try to keep the rose as a single shape – but that won’t be possible with more elaborate designs. Where possible, use shapes instead of pixel layers so that it can be resized and retain its fidelity.

Legends

If your map has a legend you will want to add that. There are two kinds of legends that maps normally have: numeric legends and icon legends. Legends have two parts: the legend key and then their corresponding icons or numbers on them map. Legends should be readable and easily discoverable, so place it front and center.

Numeric legends are the kind most often associated with dungeon maps. They are often numbers placed within rooms, with a master key that explains what they are. Icon legends match icons to their corresponding labels, explaining what certain symbols mean.

Numeric Legend Keys

If your legend is entirely numeric, creating the key fairly straightforward.

Bam! Now you’ve got a legend key. See below for styling tips.

Icon Legend Keys

Icon legend keys are a bit more complicated to create because you have to account for the icons themselves. In this case, the process is the same as above except you’ll need to resize the text area inwards to account for the icons you’ll be adding.

Make copies of all the icons you use and pull the copies into the Legend Key layer and align them next to the associated text. Use the alignment tools to center them, etc.

Legend Numbers

If your legend is numeric, you need to place the numbers where they go. You’ll need to create a ton of new layers for this.

Styling Legend Keys

You don’t want you legend keys to look like crap. Apply some styles to them. I usually end up having styles on individual layers within the Legend Key group and then one that applied to the group. Here are my favorites:

• For the Backing, a dark stroke around the entire thing with a color overlay to give it some oomph
• For the whole Legend Key group, a drop shadow and a noise pattern set to Linear Light

Styling Legend Numbers

Legend numbers need to be readable, so choose a good, readable font, size and color. You may want to add strokes or other effects to help call the numbers out.

Scale Marks

A Scale Mark tells the viewer the map’s scale. You’ve already determined that when you set the map’s Scaling Grid but that information needs to be imparted to the user. This can be done very simply: “1 Square = 10 Feet” or “1 Hex = 50 Miles”. I like to include icons to indicate this, but there are nice line styles that can exist as well.

Scale marks aren’t usually necessary on battlemaps as the scale is assumed by the game (e.g., “5 feet per square”). When writing numbers, use the number itself and not a word for it (“10 feet” versus “Ten feet”) as humans recognize numbers faster than words.

You can place your scale mark wherever feels natural and is easily findable. I like to keep mine associated with the Legend Key or the map’s Title. Humans are trained to look in the bottom left and bottom right corners if the scale isn’t immediately visible, so those are also places.

Map Titles

A map’s title helps people create the context for what they’re viewing. This is especially important if there aren’t any other identifying marks on the map. A random island shape without any title could be anywhere (which may make sense for pirate treasure maps). So mark a Best Practice: Always include a map title.^*

Titles can convey other information besides what you’re looking at (“The Island of Tuscan”), such as the time period that the map is viable for (“c. 1256 Pompeii Reckoning”), or implying that the map is imperfect (“As Known to the Kraith Oligarchy”).

There is additional information that should be shared in the title are if it is not included elsewhere, such as the Scale Mark.

Pick a nice, dramatic font that is readable at a couple of sizes as your title may consist of multiple weights. I liked to center the paragraphs, but this is totally up to you. You’ll want to have a contrasting font color (unless you apply a good stroke to the text).

I always apply a light noise pattern, a bold stroke, and a shadow or outer glow when I stylize these. Again: your map, your style.

* An exception to the best practice here is with battlemaps. In these cases, the narrative of your story will usually provide the player’s the context they require, and if you’re building a whole dungeon as a battlemap, you don’t want them to know that the room they’re entering is called “Pit Trap Room.”

Finalization

There will come a time when you realize that you’re just noodling on the map, moving pixels for pixels sake, for instance, or doing nothing more than dollhousing. This is when you’re probably done and it’s time to finalize the thing. There are a handful of steps here but none of them are overly difficult.

Different map types have different finalization needs. These difference are elaborated on in the individual “Creating Maps” entry for the map type.

Scale Grid Finalization

Battlemaps have special concerns for finalizing the Scaling Grid. See Designing Fantasy Battlemaps for more information.

Pick a blend mode for your grids. Overlay usually works very well, but play around with it. You may want to experiment with applying a color overlay, rasterizing that, and then selecting a different blend mode, even.

If you want to re-color the grids (for example, you want to have red large hexes and blue small hexes), you have a couple of options. The first is to “Rasterize Layer Style” on a grey grid and then apply a color overlay to it. The second is to put the grid inside of its own layer group and apply a color overlay to the group.

Place the grid layer in the stack where it works best. You probably want the grid “high” in the stack but below the title, compass, and any legend boxes, certainly. Depending on your various blend modes, you may want to re-order other things.

Designing an outdoor map is a process of layering in detail. You can’t know where your cities are until you know where the rivers are, and you can’t know where those are until you know where the mountains are, and you can’t know where the mountains are until you know the shape of the landmass.

For this tutorial, I’ll be creating a small island map with a few mountains, rivers, forests, and towns. The process of creating an outdoor map for larger areas (regions, continents, or even the whole world) is the same, however. It probably won’t be a fully finished and fleshed map when done, but this is a tutorial, so what can you do?

Considerations

A Quick Note on Realism

Large-scale outdoor maps do not lend themselves to realism in any way. They are designed to convey information about vague geographical relationships and rarely if ever are intended to be used as the final word on a matter.

If the scale of your map says that 1 hex is equal to 10 miles, and the actual size of a hex on your map is 50 pixels, then a mile is 10 pixels wide. Most rivers are less than a quarter of a mile in width, so they might show up with an accurate scale (but appear very spidery). Roads (being roughly 30 feet wide) are simply too small to appear at that scale.

Further, it’s rarely possible (or desirable) for complete accuracy with regards to forests, mountain ranges, lakes, or rivers. You’ll have to make a lot of editorial decisions and accept a significant degree of vaguery. As your scale gets smaller, smaller objects can start appearing.

Note also the ephemeral nature of some things. Trees can be cut down. Villages can be burned. Nation borders change. Some things simply aren’t worth mapping.

Printing and Sizing Strategies

Make sure you’ve read the sections “On File Resolutions and Dimensions” in Fantasy Map Design Basics.

As a general guide, the larger the surface area you’re trying to show, the larger the map canvas should be. If you plan on printing your maps (and why would you not?), starting with a template canvas that matches the dimensions you are going to print at is a good idea. You can always scale down if you feel like working at the larger size is burdensome.

For this island, I’m going to size the map to 2400 by 3600 pixels at 300dpi. This will allow me to work with it easily but it will still look good when printed at a poster size.

Scaling Grid

Outdoor maps use hexagon for their Scaling Grids. Scale them accordingly, as described in Fantasy Map Design Basics. The larger the map, the more it will benefit from having two grids.

Label Organization

I highly recommend keeping your text labels in their own layer group. Place this group in the layer stack above all visual elements in the map – including your Scaling Grids.

I further recommend making sub-folders within: “Water”, “Settlements”, “Territories”, “Mountain Ranges”, “Forests”, etc. This way you can bulk-apply layer styles by just working on the folder.

Design Steps

1. Create Base Water Layer
2. Add Landmass
3. Add Mountains
4. Add Water
5. Add Forests
6. Add Verdancy
7. Add Other Terrain
8. Add Settlements
9. Add Roads
10. Add Title, Scale Marker, and Legend
11. Finalization

Create Base Water Layer

First, you need a base “water” layer. There’s no point in having land without water, as it were. You just want something blue for now; you’ll style it later.

Do this even if your landmass will cover the entire canvas. I have found that the best method does not add water (e.g., you’re drawing a blue river overtop your land), but removing land (you erase it to show the water beneath).

Add Landmass

Once you have the Water layer, you will want to add the landmass. There are several ways to do this and each one has its benefits and drawbacks (for this tutorial, I’m going to use a randomly generated landmass).

You will find that you’re going to be constantly coming back to edit this layer. You’ll need to clean up a coastline, or move a river, or add an island. Thus, it’s good to allow for easy editing: which means pixels.

Making Landmass With Brushes

Starting from whole-cloth with brushes is can be daunting. Coastlines are randomly fractal and humans like to think in patterns and symmetry, so intentionally creating the chaos of a coastline is difficult.

I find that this is a sub-optimal method for mass generation, but the only acceptable method for continual editing.

Bam! Landmass. Edit it to your heart’s content using the Brush and Eraser tools.

Making Landmass With Shapes

You can draw your landmass with the various shape tools – especially the Free-Form Pen tool. Doing so allows you to keep fidelity of shape if you ever resize the map, but at the sacrifice of detail and ease of manipulation. No matter how good you are at creating and working with shapes, it will not be as fast as working with a brush and an eraser.

Create your landmass layer (called “Landmass Shape”) as normal. Fill it with white (#ffffff). Add, remove, and merge shapes as needed.

(Note that you should absolutely work in shapes for everything when designing a Battlemap.)

I’m serious, though: Don’t do this. You will regret it almost instantly.

Making Landmass via Random Generation

Another way to create landmass is by random generation. This technique provides very realistic looking coastlines but can be labor-intensive. It is also worthy of it’s own sub-tutorial, entitled Randomly Generating Landmass, so go read that. I’ll wait.

Landmasses generated in this way are pixel layers and thus are edited using the Brush and Eraser tools.

We’re going to use a land-mass generated via this method for the rest of the tutorial.

Making Landmass via Tracing

If you want to make a map using an existing landmass as a template, tracing is the way to go. When I started designing Terracopia, I began with a map of Europe as my starting point. Maybe you want to create a mythical version of England and need your map to match its shape. Who knows? Either way, you’re starting from a template.

Ta-da! You’ve got a landmass to work with. Feel free to edit it (with the Brush and Eraser tools) as needed.

Cleaning Up Landmass

Now you need to go around and clean up the landmass. Now, depending on your Photoshop skills, you can mess around with Sharpness filters or try to do things by modifying selection sizes and the like, but I’m going to tell you to just skip to the end of that horrid process and break out a brush. You’re going to get here anyway; might as well start there.

We’re going to go around the entire map and redraw the edges. It’s tedious, but it makes it look great.

After you’ve run the sharpen filter, you may want to apply a dark 1 pixel stroke to the layer. Doing so will show you where things are wonky or don’t have full opacity. Spot edit those places.

In many places, this won’t do much. In others, it will do a hell of a lot. I absolutely recommend using a Pen Tablet for this because while it is possible to do this with a mouse, it will be hella tedious.

Coloring Landmass

Right now, your land is pure white (#ffffff). While this is good for early contrast, it’s not that great when you go about applying layer effects (you can’t apply a useful color overlay while also adding a texture, for instance). This is all about color math and the colors pure black (#000000) and pure white (#ffffff) leave nothing for the math to play with.

Just color the landmass entirely.

Every pixel that was white should not be tan, with edge fidelity maintained.

Styling Landmass

Right now it’s just a big blob of tan. You’ll want to make it look like something. I find that the best way to start is by applying some simple style effects to make it pop. I’m going to go over these effects independently.

Stroke the Shorelines

You should always place at least one stroke on the shoreline, if only as a defininging separator. I like to have my shores extend outwards. In the example shown, there are a total of 9 strokes. Exactly none of them are set as “Overprint” (try it and see what happens).

Texture

I like my maps to feel like they were drawn on parchment. You may want a more realistic flavor. Again: it’s all about your personal style.

Pick a good, grungy texture and apply it as a pattern overlay on the Landmass layer. Play around with the blending mode and opacity for this to see what kinds of effects different textures produce. You may very well decide that “Normal” is the best way (and it often is, for certain patterns). The point here is to make it visually interesting beyond its outer shape. Adding texture does that.

If you want to use a parchment pattern, I would recommend finding a very large one that has lots of variant textures – ideally one that is bigger than your canvas. A great trick is to use the same pattern on your land and your water (using the same registration point) to create a more seamless visual experience.

Try that.

You can try other blend modes for the water layer! Some will make it darker, others lighter. You may want to change the color of your water layer, or apply some graident overlays to it. Experiment and play around with it. You’ll find that the way various blend modes interact with their base colors can change drastically.

Labeling Landmass and Islands

Landmasses and islands are a natural phenomenon. Pick your font accordingly (see Natural vs. Created Elements).

Labels for islands should be placed near the island they represent. The label should readable and straight and should be sized relative to the island’s size. The best thing to do is find the smallest size label you’re going to use and go upwards from there (otherwise you may find that your smallest labels are unreadable).

Add Mountains

Once you’ve got the shape of your coastline, you have to figure out where the mountains are. Mountains (and hills) drive the location of everything else: rivers flow out of mountains to the coasts, and people live on the sides of rivers.

Landmasses – especially islands – are created with mountains. Islands are just the tops of mountains whose bases are at the bottom of the water. Mount Haleakala, on the island of Maui, is the tallest mountain in the world, if measured from its absolute base deep beneath the ocean. The large island of Gont in the Earthsea Stories is a single mountain.

Mountain Considerations

On Plate Tectonics

Mountain ranges are created wherever two tectonic plates collide (plains are created where glaciers once slid). Looking at your landmass shape, think about where your mountains might be. Mountain ranges run more-or-less in a single direction. There may be spurs outwards, but for the most part they work in a line (the mountains around Mordor are an impossibility).

Here’s an illustration of how plate tectonics work:

Get a thick quilt and lay it out flat on the floor. Now get a couple of books. Your copies of the Dungeon Master’s Guide and the Player’s Handbook will work perfect. Set them both down on the quilt, about ten inches apart. Press down firmly on both – firm enough that the quilt will move with the book – and slowly push the books towards each other. You’ll notice that the quilt will start bunching up between them into folds. The folds will usually be straight.

This is how mountains are made: tectonic plates slide together and push the land between them into the air. Mountian ranges will only “bend” at sharp angles when more than two plates are intersecting.

On Mountain Ages

In geologic time, the younger a mountain range is, the taller and sharper its peaks will be. As Bilbo Baggins learned from Gollum, time “beats high mountain down,” so the oldest mountain ranges (like the Appalachians) are sometimes no more than foothills.

Rainfall, wind, and rivers wash away mountains over time through the process of erosion. This, too, is something you should think about when designing your mountain ranges. If your world has suffered a cataclysm within the memory of its inhabitants, the mountains created by the event will be new: tall, wide, and very pointy.

Determine Mountain Paths

You want to lay down the areas where your mountain ranges run. This is basically a sketch of lines; you aren’t drawing the mountains yet. You want to have an idea of where the tectonic plates collided.

For larger mountain ranges, you may want to increase your brush size so that you have an idea of their relative size as you work.

You now have a rough map of your mountain ranges and the forces they exert. This is where you’re going to draw your mountains.

Drawing Mountains

Drawing mountains is a big task that requires its own tutorial. Please jump out and read Creating Maps: Mountains before continuing.

Create a layer group called “Mountain Ranges” and place it above your Mountain Sketch. Draw your mountains in layers inside of the Mountain Ranges layer group.

Labeling Mountains

Mountains and their ranges are a natural phenomenon. Pick your font accordingly (see Natural vs. Created Elements). Mountain ranges are labeled different from singular mountains.

Labels for mountain ranges are drawn along the range. Use the Type tool options to spread the name of the range out and bend it to follow the range’s path.

When calling out a specific mountain, use a triangle shaped icon (point up) placed at the mountain’s peak. This is the anchor for the mountain’s label, which should be below and to the left or right, depending on what else is there. Obviously, those positions may not work, but try to be consistent.

Labeling mountains is often tricky because depending on the way you’ve drawn them, they can be messy or detailed. You will want the labels to be readable. For ranges, I will typically pick a dark color for the font itself and give it a light stroke around the outside or center to draw it out. For peaks, I will stick with a solid color if I can, and add a stroke only when necessary.

Add Water

When you’ve got the mountains in, it’s time to add water. Or, more precisely, it’s time to subtract the water from the landmass.

Rivers flow outwards from mountain ranges and either go to the seas or pool in lakes. When seen at a high enough scale, they rarely go in straight lines, instead meandering in S shapes around subtle (and not so subtle) hills. Only the mightiest of rivers (think the Mississippi, Amazon, or Nile) can overcome the forces of gravity to run in straight lines.

Rivers rarely split. They may flow around small islands from time to time but they do not fork very often. Small rivers and streams will join larger ones. Again, these always flow away from high ground, seeking the lowest ground possible. Further, they nearly always start as streams or smaller tributary rivers that start in mountainous regions (unless the source for the river or stream is a naturally occuring spring).

Take a look at where your mountains are. Does it look like there might be any lakes in the valleys they have created? If so, “add” them. You may need to edit your mountains to accomodate (e.g., move their edges, or erase parts that will overlap your lake – the method required depends on how you’ve drawn your mountains).

Labeling Water

Oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, and streams are a natural phenomenon. Pick your font accordingly (see Natural vs. Created Elements). Moving waters (rivers and streams) are labeled different from still waters (lakes).

Labels for rivers and streams are drawn along the path of the river. Use the Type tool options to spread the name of the river out and bend it to follow the water’s path. The direction the text flows is important here as well as it indicates the direction of the river’s flow: the start of the text lies towards the river’s source and the end of the text should go towards the river’s mouth.

When two rivers join, they can form a new river (with its own name) or they will take the name of the larger of the two tributaries. For example, the Ohio river is a tributary of the great Mississippi river. The water of the Ohio ceases to be called the “Ohio River” once it merges with the Mississippi, which is a much larger waterway.

Labels for lakes are generally centered within the lake area itself.

Special water elements (like magnificent waterfalls) require an icon. I like three vertical lines. This is the anchor for the waterfall’s label, which should be below and to the left or right, depending on what else is there. Obviously, those positions may not work, but try to be consistent.

Seas and oceans are labeled similarly to mountain ranges. The text should spread out and the font size should be increased to serve as an indicator for the size of the body of water. Curve and rotate the text accordingly to fit the available area.

I have a preferred style for water labels.

Add Forests

Depending on the style of your map, adding forests and other vegetation may or may not be important. For the sake of the tutorial, I’m going to assume that it is.

Forests show up where trees can grow. This usually means “not in deserts or tundra or plains”. The world is filled with trees of all kinds: huge swaths of land are covered in them. Most places are actually forests (even cities: take a look the next time you’re in a plane). Even plains have forests or orchards. That said, not every forest should be shown on your map.

Add the forests that would be visible according to your scale. A general rule to follow is this: Only include a forest if it takes up more area than a full hex or space on your map.

Drawing Forests

Drawing forests is a big task that requires its own tutorial. Please jump out and read Creating Maps: Forests before continuing.

Labeling Forests

Forests are a natural phenomenon. Pick your font accordingly (see Natural vs. Created Elements). Labels for forests are centered and placed within the forest area itself. Depending on the font contrast, you may want to style them with a stroke or not.

Here are several examples of the same basic forest label style applied to multiple styles of forests. As you can see, it works better in some styles and not-so-great in others. Develop a label style that matches your map’s overall zeitgeist.

Add Verdancy

Verdant areas are places that have natural vegetation that isn’t a forest. Plains, grasslands – anywhere that isn’t a desert or too cold. You may or may not want to call them out – it’s your choice. Remember that everything on a map should serve a purpose. Verdant areas can only appear over landmass, so you’ll want to constrain them to the landmass itself.

You are going to paint verdancy in with the Brush tool.

You may ask yourself, “Self, why don’t I just select all the pixels in the Landmass area, fill it with a paintbucket, and then set the layer’s opacity to 20% or so?” and sure, you can do that, but you’ve now limited yourself to a maximum opacity of 20%, regardless of how thick or thin you want to make your verdant areas.

You may want to play around with the fill opacity of the Verdancy layer when you’re done. I like to apply a pattern overlay as well (the Noise – Seamless pattern at 50% opacity with an Overlay blend mode) but you do you.

Wait! There’s more! Depending on the blend modes you set for your forests, they may be picking up the color bleed from your verdant areas and are looking kind of weird or possibly even mottled. I have a solution for you: deleting the forest shapes.

Remember this trick for clearing verdant areas. You’ll repeat it over and over again, with roads, settlement icons, mountains, and other things.

Labeling Verdancy

Most of the time you won’t be labeling verdant areas. The exception is when the area is a well known plain or plateau or something similar.

Verdancies are a natural phenomenon. Pick your font accordingly (see Natural vs. Created Elements)). Labels for verdances can centered and placed within the verdancy area itself or they can be stretched and contorted (like labels for mountain ranges or seas). Depending on the font contrast, you may want to style them with a stroke or not.

Add Other Terrain

You will find that you may have additional terrain types that you need to call out, like deserts or tundra or badlands. These areas are drawn similarly to verdancy, but with a much higher opacity.

I’ll describe how to make a desert. The same technique works with all special terrain types; you just pick different patterns and effects in the end.

Now you’re going to want to add some styles to your desert because that looks janky.

There are lots of good seamless sand and desert textures you can find and use, of course. As with all patterns, some are better at certain scales than others. You can also create your own “stamp” patterns (see “Bonus Take: Patterning with Tree Stamps” in Drawing Forests for an idea of how to do this).

Labeling Other Terrain

Terrain types are a natural phenomenon. Pick your font accordingly (see Natural vs. Created Elements). Labels for these types can centered and placed within the area itself or they can be stretched and contorted (like labels for mountain ranges or seas). Depending on the font contrast, you may want to style them with a stroke or not.

Add Settlements

Settlements of any size need lots of things to survive, even in the most fantastic of worlds. The two most important things, however, are fresh water and a food supply. The absolute size of any settlement is going to be driven by the availability of these two things.

Water is the most important. The larger the population, the more water is required. It’s needed for drinking and for crops. It’s needed to power mills and transport goods.

Tiny villages (fewer than 50 people) can make due with a well to the groundwater. Small towns can survive with a few decent sized streams or a smallish river or fresh-water lake. Major cities (those with a population of 2000 or more) will need to be located on a large river or a large fresh-water lake – streams and wells will not cut it for that many people.

You can’t realistically plop a city of 7,000 people anywhere. It has to make sense.

Port cities will be near shipping lanes – usually on the outside edges, rather than inside deep or large bays.

Settlement Type Icons

Settlements need icons to show that they exist. Most often this is done with filled or styled circles. Region or nation capitols will often contain a star shape. This is the most simple way to handle this.

You can give each settlement a different icon depending on its basic type or size with a different icon treatment. I recommend placing these icons within a circle, however.

Some settlement types that might be distinguished using thier own icons:

• Capitol Cities
• Ports
• Small Villages
• Large Villages
• Walled Cities
• Mining Towns
• Lumber Towns
• Farming Villages
• Pirate Havens
• Ruins
• Other Points of Interest (temples, etc.)

Of course, you can always get fancy and give each city its own icon that represents it (a crest, perhaps) or even mark settlement locations with flags or other icons.

For each settlement icon, I highly recommend turning them into Smart Objects (see “Smart Objects” in Photoshop Basics for how to do this). Doing so will reduce your overall CPU usage and you’ll be able to make mass-edits easily.

Keep all your settlement icons in their own layer group called “Settlements”. Name each icon the same as its label. I recommend adding further groups as needed. For instance, if you have a lot of islands with a lot of towns, group them by island or perhaps by nation or state.

Make sure to keep a copy of each icon type if you want to include them in your Legend Key (see “Legends” in Fantasy Map Design Basics).

Labeling Settlements

Settlements are a created phenomenon. Pick your font accordingly (see Natural vs. Created Elements).

The placement of settlement labels should follow these rules:

• Settlement labels should never cross a shoreline, river, or boundary line.
  • If the boundary is to the left of the settlement, the label goes on the right.
  • If the boundary is to the right of the settlement, the label goes on the left.
• Settlement labels should most always be horizontal. Never curve a settlement name.
  • An exception is for highly detailed, zoomed maps where labels can be placed at angles if the situation requires it.
• For settlements inside the land, the label should be placed in the following order, given available space:
  • Top right, left aligned
  • Right, left aligned
  • Top left, left aligned
  • Bottom left, left aligned
  • Bottom left, right aligned
  • Left, right aligned
• For coastline settlements, the label should be located in the water, and to the top or bottom corner as makes sense given the coastline.

Add Roads

If your map is at a scale where roads would be visible, you’ll need to add them. This will be done with the Brush tool. I recommend using a pen tablet for this.

You may find that you can’t see your roads because they are obscured by other elements, such as forests or verdancy. The solution here is to delete the road’s shape from those layers (this is why I said to keep a “full” copy of each of your vegetation layers).

You’ll want to style your roads. I like to use a dark stroke (1 px inside, #222222, 70% opacity, with a Multiply blend mode) and a color overlay (#b2a685) set to Normal mode. You can experiment with patterns if you like but I don’t recommend it.

Roads that cross water will likely have bridges. You can draw a bridge and put it beneath the Roads layer if you like.

Labeling Roads

Roads are a created phenomenon. Pick your font accordingly (see Natural vs. Created Elements).

Like rivers, labels for roads are drawn along their paths. Use the Type tool options to spread the name of the road out and bend it to follow the roads’s path. There is no special information imparted by the direction of text with a road label (roads go both ways).

Roads are often labeled multiple times along their paths. When roads converge, they typically take the name of the larger, longer road in much the same way that rivers do.

Add Title, Scale Marker, and Legend

Make sure to add your title, scale marker, and legend as described in Fantasy Map Design Basics.

Finalization

There isn’t a lot of finalization to be done with outdoors maps. Mostly you will need to ensure that your layers are stacked correctly and that your scaling grid has the right type of effects, overlays, and transparencies to be pretty while still visible and not overpowering.

When you’re done, you’re on to Printing Maps.

These are basic questions you will need to have answered.

City and town scale maps are created very similarly to other outdoors maps. Make sure you’ve read Fantasy Map Design Basics and Designing Fantasy Outdoors Maps before diving in here because, like my father, I don’t like repeating myself.

Considerations

Scaling Grid

With most outdoors maps, you want to use hexagons for your Scaling Grid. This idea holds true when creating city-scale maps as well.

However, it is sometimes desirable to use a square scaling grid and do cross-section coordinates. Many atlases use this method. If you do so, along the top (or bottom, or both) you should label each column with a letter (A, B, C, etc.) and along the side (left or right, or both) label each row with a number (1, 2, 3, etc.). This will provide a coordinate system: any one square can be identified with its letter and number (e.g., square B4, or square C9).

Whatever you select, you’ll want to have a single grid point to be equal to about 1/10th of a mile. Any tighter than that and your map may lose its value, or you’ll find yourself making a blueprint or a battlemap. I highly recommend using a dual-grid strategy (where you have a grid where 1 hex equals 1 mile, and another where 1 hex equals 1/10th of a mile).

Basic City Design

You need to know a lot about your city before you can begin to lay pen to paper, I’m afraid. There are a handful of things you need to know before beginning, and I’m going to go over them now, and then tell you how to include them in the map later.

• What is the terrain like around the settlement?
• Does the settlement have walls?
• What are the important buildings in the settlement?
• Where does the settlement obtain fresh water?
• Where does the settlement obtain food and other resources?
• What are other industries that the settlement engages in?
• Does the city have districts or wards

What is the Terrain?

Most cities are not built on flat, featureless land. Rome is famously built on “Seven Hills”, for instance, and Florence’s biggest feature is the River Arno. You should have an idea – at least a sketch – of the highlands and lowlands as this defines the flavor of those parts of the city. Cities have rivers and streams and the knowing where the highlands are will help you know how the water flows.

The city’s terrain also helps you know where the city’s districts and wards are going to be.

Highland areas are going to be more residential in nature. The highest hills will be claimed by defensive structures (watch towers and forts) or by the super rich (palaces and estates). Generally: the higher up you live, the richer you are. Since it is difficult to bring heavy goods up hill, they will rarely be locations of commerce.

Lowland areas are going to be working districts. Your bazaars will be in lowland areas, as will your docks and warehouses. Poor residential areas will located here as well.

If your city has a river, be aware of its flood plane, if it has one. Larger cities will have built up walls around the river to prevent flooding, but smaller ones will not have. People do not often reside in flood planes and those that do are generally the poorest to be found. Knowing what your fresh water sources are is super-important, period, as you will see below.

Do not make the mistake of assuming primitive engineering. Humans have known how to move and control rivers for a long, long time. It’s backbreaking work but it can be (and was) done – especially if the government has a supply of slaves and peasants.

Are there Walls?

A common question with regards to cities is whether or not there are walls. Not all cities will have walls and those that do are generally larger and require defenses.

Walls are great defenses and are much desired but they are expensive to build, maintain, and man. Walls will only exist with larger cities – those that have both the economy to support them and the need for the defensive capabilities they provide. A reasonable population requirement is around 4,000 inhabitants before the wall becomes economically viable.

Older cities may have multiple sets of walls, radiating outwards, added as the city grew organically. City walls rarely if ever surrounded local farmland. The largest of cities will have whole wards and regions of growth outside of the walls, along the roads inward.

You may want to hold off adding city walls until you’ve figured out where your important buildings are (see below), but you want to have them in place before you start adding lots of buildings.

What are the Important Buildings?

Before you lay down roads you have to know where the important buildings are. These locations (along with the terrain) will drive how the roads are laid out. These buildings define the center of a ward or region, and the important ones will have larger roads to access them.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of important building types. Some of them (mills, for instance) will be more important to call out in smaller villages, while others will only exist in a larger metropolis.

• Palaces
• Forts, especially star-shaped Bastion Forts
• Major Temples
• Colleges
• Government Buildings
• Military Barracks
• Embassies
• Prisons
• Large Monuments
• Large Estates
• Banks
• Shopping and Trading Bazaars
• Town Halls or Town Squares (for small villages)
• Shrines (for small villages)
• Mills (for small villages)

If your city’s government is democratic or republic, there will be a town hall or a government capitol. Is the city run by a king or dictator? They’ll have a palace or a gigantic mansion – and likely a large acreage of land associated with it, filled with gardens, mazes, and even private hunting forests.

All cities of size will have a police force. They need to have a home – probably several. Does your world have hospitals? Are there more than one? Where are they? Is there a kindly wizard who protects the place but is hermit-like? She’s got to have a tower somewhere.

Where’s the Food?

People have to eat. Most of the food will come from nearby farms, but settlements of any size will have a greater variety of food sources, including hunting, fishing, trading, raising sheep and cattle, and so forth.

Food production requires a lot of real estate. Most of that real estate is going to be located outside of your city proper, and whether or not you want to include it in your map is up to you – but you have to know where it comes from.

Where is the Water?

A settlement of any size requires a dependable supply of fresh water – even (and especially) if it lies on a coast. Sea water is poisonous to humans (and probably all other land-based creatures), so they need a plentiful supply of it.

Fresh water can come from several sources:

• Ground-water wells
• Streams
• Freshwater lakes and ponds
• Natural springs
• Rivers

The larger your settlement, the more water it needs, not just for the populace but for crops and other systems (such as mills). Tiny villages can possibly get by with a single well but they’ll likely want a couple of ponds or streams nearby. Large cities – anything with a population greater than 1,000 people – will need a large lake or a river.

Once you know where the water comes from, you have to know how the citizens get it. Is the water automatically moved around to parts of the city? If so, how is it moved? Canals? Aqueducts? Free streams? Pumps? Dams? Or do people have to carry it in buckets from the well or a stream?

It’s important to know now if you’re going to have canals or aqueducts (or both) as this radically changes how your terrain and roads will be laid out.

Remember that water is driven by gravity and thus flows to the lowest places, but aqueducts are driven by money and thus flow into the richest parts of town.

Stinky Poo-poo

Does your city have sewers? It’s good to know that now. You won’t necessarily be drawing them on your map (or maybe you will make a sewer map later), but it’s good to know that such things exist. Sewers will behave like aqueducts except in reverse: shit will flow to the poorest parts of town.

Other Industry

Does your settlement engage in other major industries beyond food production? Is this a logging town? Is there a quarry? Is there a port? Do major roads come through, meaning trade wagons?

If there is a port, does it have a protective sea wall? Is there going to be chain defense across it? How large will it be?

It’s possible that smaller settlements are devoted to a single industry (the silk dyers of Lorbanery in the Earthsea stories, for instance, or Deadwood in real life) and if so all other industries are set up to support that one.

Thinking About Wards

Larger cities (and even small ones that have grown organically) will have wards or districts. These divisions may or may not be “official” but they will be exist. Over time, “unofficial” wards will become “official” wards, though perhaps with different names.

In my Terracopia setting, the poorest citizens of Firenze officially live within the “North Ward”, but they call it “Shit-town”.

You don’t have to know where these places are right now. Their locations will arrive organically as you work. You’ll discover that you have an area with lots of small dwellings, and realize that’s the poorer part of town, for instance.

It is common for cities to declare certain regions as being districted for certain activities and no others. A “Merchant District”, for instance, may not have any permanent residences, and the “Docks District” may be heavily guarded and have restricted entry.

Learning and Stealing From Reality

A great way to learn about the design of older cities is to study antique maps of real cities. When I set out to create the map of Firenze for my Terracopia Game Setting, I located an actual map of Florence from the 1500s and traced major parts of it for my fantasy version. The “real” Florence isn’t located on the sea, but I adapted.

For this tutorial, I’m going to make the Terracopian version of Napoli, so I’ve downloaded an old map of Naples from 1800. I’m going to size it to my canvas and steal a lot of its coastline and structure – though I am definitely going to deviate from “reality”.

Design Steps

1. Answer Your Questions
2. Draw Terrain
3. Draw Important Buildings
4. Draw City Walls
5. Draw Canals
6. Draw Roads
7. Draw Bridges
8. Draw Buildings
9. Draw Other Areas
10. Draw Vegetation
11. Draw Wards
12. Add Labels
13. Add Grid, Title, Legend, and Scale
14. Finalize

Answer Your Questions

Make sure you’ve answered all the questions posed above under “Basic City Design”. I will assume that you have.

Draw Terrain

You’re going to draw your terrain through the techniques described in Designing Fantasy Outdoors Maps. Make a “Water” layer and then add your “Land” layer using whatever method you find best.

Draw in (or at least know) the high lands and low lands.

Use the Eraser tool to draw your rivers, lakes, and ponds as normal. If your city has canals, do not draw them yet. That will happen later.

Many, many cities – especially port cities – have built-up shorelines or structures that extend out into the water. Know where those are but don’t worry about being too exact. Later on, when you draw the docks or sea walls (either as additional terrain, roads, or city walls) you’ll duplicate those layers and merge them into your landmass.

In my example, I’m going to be working off an old map of Naples. I put the map into its own layer and resized it to fit (mostly). Since I’m worried about the coastline right now, I’m going to delete everything that isn’t coastline and create a new “Land Mass” layer from that. I’m going to add a river, since it needs one (I’m going to go ahead and “canal” the last part of this river).

Once you have your landmass shape, go ahead and add some styles to your Water and Landmass layers. Draw in your elevations or at least sketch them in on a throwaway layer. Don’t worry about getting them perfect or beautiful at this point; you’ll go back and mess with them again later.

For my map of Napoli, I’ve drawn in some cliffs and highlands. I modified the river to flow between two hills. I’ve also scootched the landmass down on the canvas so that I have more space to work with (the map I traced had too much water). I’ve also made a sketch of where I want various wards and walls to be (Napoli is the capital of an empire, so it’s going to be defended).

Draw Important Buildings

Now you’re going to place your important buildings. The larger the city, the more important the building should be for you to draw it here. Important buildings are centers of activity for the citizenry. Draw them in now so that you know how the city has grown.

Note that not all “important buildings” are actually structures. A bazaar, for instance, will be a wide, open surface.

Create a layer group called “Structures”. Inside of the Structures group, create another group called “Important Structures”. This is where you’re going to store your important buildings.

If you’re tracing from an existing map, place the Trace Map or the Working Map at the top of the layer stack and give them a lowish opacity (so that you can see through them. Work underneath what you’re tracing.

In my version of Napoli, I’m going to create a bastion fort at the top of the central hill, the Imperial palace, a harbor fort, the Senate building, and a ziggurat temple.

I’ve already deviated from reality, so I’ll have fix my coastline in some places (select the shapes of the building layers and use the Paint Bucket tool on the shapes inside the Landmass layer).

Hint: To create a quick bastion fort shape, use the Polygon tool, set the side count to 6 or 8, and in the options menu check “star” and set the “Indent Sides By” value to between 10 and 15%.

Styling Buildings

When styling your structures, you’ll want to apply any styles to the highest parent layer group (in this case, Structures). I’m going to warn you now that you never want to style individual buildings if you can help it.

The reason why is that I’m going to show you some techniques later about crunching these layers, and to do so well you’ll need to be able to flip on and off styles across all elements quickly.

Feel free to add some styles now so that your buildings stand out. Don’t go crazy yet.

Draw City Walls

When adding city walls, the quickest way to do so is with the Line tool, which can be found in the Shape tools menu. The Line tool allows you to set specific widths and will create a shape layer for that. You can draw your walls with the Pen tool but you’ll likely get inconsistent widths. City walls are rarely wider than 20 feet, so set your line width accordingly.

Lay out each wall segment and make sure the ends overlap. Don’t worry too much about sloppy anchor points – we’re going to cover them in a moment. You’ll discover that the Line tool wants to make new layers for each line. That’s fine. It helps you move them independently until you merge all the shapes together.

Make sure to leave gaps where the gates to the city will be. Walls will sometimes go out into waters, but not far unless the land has been built up around it. Walls can cross thinner rivers, but will typically have large grates to allow the water to flow through unimpeded (if they didn’t, they would be dams).

When you have the basic wall structure, it’s time to cover up those unsightly corners. We’ll put towers there. Using the Ellipse tool, add circle layers over top where the walls connect and bend. You’ll want to use circles of the exact same size for each. These are guard towers (you can, of course, just fiddle with the points so that they match up if you want corners without towers).

When you’ve done that, you have to add gatehouses. Gate houses are usually weirdly shaped as they are designed to have multiple doors open and close as a defensive measure. I recommend building these as their own shapes (in the standard axis) and then rotating them into place.

When you’re satisfied, merge all the shapes together into a single layer called “City Walls”. Don’t forget to “Merge Shape Components”. Give the City Walls shape a dark color for now (say, #222222).

If you know what you’re doing, you can draw your walls with a brush and then convert the pixel layers into a shape layer (this method is explained below in How to Draw Roads) and goof around with the points. This is what I did.

My version of Napoli has grown over the years so it has several sets of walls. Additionally, it is the Imperial capitol, so it has a lot of defended roads and gatehouses. Wards and districts are heavily drawn and security between them will be tight. There are a lot of gatehouses.

Draw Canals

At this point you’ll want to draw your canals, if you have any. There are two kinds of canals: free-form and directed. Directed canals will have straight edges (think Venice); free-form canals can twist and turn (they’re more like lazily directed streams). Directed canals will be bounded by brick or stone for their entire length; free-form canals will have such bounds when the natural flow of the water requires re-directing.

You “draw” canals with the Eraser tool, just as if you were adding rivers to an outdoors map.

You will draw over these with roads later to indicate where you need to set bridges.

Draw Roads

When you’ve figured out where your main areas of traffic are (important buildings, wards, gatehouses, etc.) it’s time to add roads. We start by drawing the major roads and then add in sub-roads and eventually we get to arterial paths. It’s best to think about a “road” as a thing that is treated as such: it’s cobblestoned or at least paved with gravel. We’re not going to worry about walking paths unless we’ve got a tight scale (village level).

We lay down roads with the Brush tool.

I know what you’re thinking: “I can’t possibly draw a straight line to save my life!” Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered with the magic of the <shift> key.

Roads have three basic widths. You’ll have to pick the size of your brush based on how well it matches your map scale.

• Major roads are between 50 and 100 feet across. These roads often define the boundaries of city districts or wards.
• Normal or Secondary roads are between 20 and 40 feet across. These roads provide connections between major roads and each other.
• Minor roads are 10 to 15 feet across. These roads are alleys and pathways, and delve between normal roads.

Voila! You now have a straight line. Repeat the process, adding in your major roads. Feel free to draw roads freehand if you can! Roads that come into a city are rarely straight so keep that in mind.

When you’ve got your major roads laid down, decrease your brush size by 25% and start adding in secondary roads. These roads will branch from the main roads and often connect them. Normal roads often lay out in a grid pattern.

Once you’ve got your secondary roads, decrease your brush size again and add in all your minor roads. These ones will run between normal roads and often result in dead-ends.

When laying down roads, remember that some of the oldest and most used roads probably began life as hunting trails. Eventually these paths became formalized and paved with gravel and eventually cobblestones. This can make your roads look like a rat’s nest but that’s okay. Consider the mess that is the city of Boston.

If your city has canals, know that roads often run right alongside them. Where there will be bridges that cross canals, streams, or rivers, draw the road over the water way. You’ll add a bridge underneath it later.

If your city has walls, know that roads also often run alongside those as well. Feel free to draw into the areas that the walls cover; your concern is coverage and not fidelity right now. You will obtain fidelity when you turn them into a shape.

For my version of Napoli, I’m going to start with 15 pixel roads and work downwards. I intend for the harbor and wharf areas to appear as “roads” but I’ll merge that in when I get to drawing the harbor. For some places – the road up to the palace, for instance – I created a shape layer with the pen and then rasterized it and merged it in with the roads pixels.

Converting Brush Roads to Shape Roads

Okay! You’ve got your brushed-in roads. They’re probably pixellated in place. You won’t want to use them as they are; we want sharper edges on them. The sharpest edges come from shape layers. You’re going to convert your Roads layer to a shape layer, do some fiddling with it, and then use that going forward.

You’ll notice that the transition to a shape form may have caused your roads to behave funky in some places. Go over your roads using the various Anchor Point tools (especially the Convert Anchor Point tool) and the Direct Selection tool to clean them up. This will likely involve a lot of converting anchor points. I recommend putting a 1 pixel stroke on the inside of the Roads Shape so you can see what you’re doing.

This part is really tedious and comes with a lot of eye-strain but in the end you’ll thank me for it. Once you’ve modified a single point on your Roads Shape layer, you can destroy your original Roads layer as it is no longer the Source of Truth for the city’s roads.

Now you’ve got a Roads Shape shape layer. However, it’s going to make your map a pain in the ass to work with because it’s got a zillion new anchor points. Duplicate it as Roads Pixels, copy its layer style, clear the layer style, rasterize it, and re-apply the layer style.

You will find that you have to come back to your roads shape fairly often and fix minor errors as you go about painting in your buildings. Simply trash your Roads Pixels layer, fix the Roads Shape layer, and then re-rasterize a copy of Roads Shape in to a new Roads Pixels.

But I Really Want Trails!

Alright, you’re working with a smaller-scale map and you want to include hunting trails and the like. You don’t want to elevate these paths into roads, so you want to display them different. For this, we use the Pen tool or the Freeform Pen tool. However, we’re not going to be creating solid shapes with it.

You’ll likely want to draw multiple trails in multiple layers. Merging them may have… unintended consequences.

Special: Aqueducts

Aqueducts tend to follow roads but are raised high above them. They are tricky to represent because they can obscure your road. The trick here is to draw them with different opacity values and strokes styles so that they are visible but not overpowering. Depending on your visual style, you may end up with multi-stroked canal-like aqueducts or simple shapes.

I recommend laying out your aqueducts as shapes, in a manner similar to that of how you create city walls (described above). This allows you to keep perfect corner fidelity, which you will discover is a problem with brush-drawn roads.

Draw Bridges

Draw bridges as if they were important buildings. Do them as shapes, drawing them on the 0,0 axis and then rotating them into place. Do one layer for each bridge, and store them in a folder called “Bridges”, set below the Roads layer in the layer stack (you want the road to cross the bridge).

Draw Buildings

There are several techniques you can use to draw buildings and whichever one you choose depends on your map’s style and the amount of time you have available. Drawing buildings can be brutally time-consuming or it can be fairly painless.

If you want to draw detailed buildings, replete with hatched roofs and the like, feel free to pull out your pen tablet and go to town. If you’re the type that can or will do this, there’s nothing I can teach you here – via con dios – though I recommend using Overlay for the blend modes.

I’m going to teach you a method for painting buildings with a brush. This method is similar to the sparse forests technique in that you will deal with brush shape dynamics, but that’s about the extent of it. I originally learned this technique from Fantastic Maps, which is a site you should fully read cover to cover. My way is a bit different, though.

First, you need to create a “Buildings” brush shape. Don’t worry! Creating a brush is actually very easy. Any complexity comes with playing around with your brush dynamics, but – and I swear to whatever deity you hold dear that this is true – the hardest part is saving it.

Now you have a brush that can paint buildings. Goof with the brush settings whenever you want differences in size, scattering, density, etc. Maybe even save those changes as presets as well.

Paint some buildings. You want to do this in a layer above Walls and Roads, but you don’t want to draw over the roads or through the walls. Don’t worry if you do – you can always delete the shapes of the roads or walls from the buildings – but it’s best to set one of them (the Roads) as a cage.

You draw buildings through the magic of the <shift> key.

You cannot create such beautiful chaos by hand. I find the randomness produced by this to be excellent, especially for old-world cities and areas where buildings were erected quickly and haphazardly.

You will probably want to go through and spot-fix lots of places with smaller, round brushes and the Eraser tool. Fill in areas with denser buildings. If your district has larger buildings (say a dock warehouse area) just increase the brush size. If you’re working in slums, make it smaller and decrease the spacing.

For my version of Napoli, I decided that it was thick with buildings and that people are living in areas that extend far beyond the boundaries of the map. I was originally planning to put farms there but I realized that they’d be much further out than the walls of the city proper, so I built it out that way.

Optional: Crunching Buildings into Shapes

This is an optional step that you really should only go into if you’re preparing this map for publication or have been given a commission. It’s very tedious and reeks of masochism. I will warn you: Once you start down this dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

If you’ve got your buildings mostly laid out, you may find that they end up being a bit goofy around the edges in some places. Cleaning up those areas with a brush, pencil, or eraser can create unsightly halos and opacity issues.

As with roads, you can to convert your buildings into shapes and then fiddle with them.

Your computer is now groaning because of the sheer number of anchor points you have.

Anchor Point Strategies

When you convert your pixel buildings into shapes, you’re going to find yourself with a couple thousand new anchor points. This is going to be problematic as you work because your machine is going to slow down something severe.

I recommend splitting your building shape layer into several layers, each one representing a single ward. Duplicate the main building shape layer as many times as needed and then delete all the buildings from the ward’s layer that do not belong in the ward. Then you can go about manipulating the shapes of the buildings there more easily if you turn off visibility of all other wards.

Fiddling with Building Shapes

Now that you’ve got your buildings laid out as shapes, you’ll want to fiddle with them in the same way that you worked on your Roads Shape layer, above. This will be even more eye-burning and frustrating than the roads, I’m afraid.

I recommend putting a 1 pixel stroke on the inside of the buildings so you can see what you’re doing. You may also want to temporarily move the buildings up in the layer stack so you can see them over the roads while doing so.

When you resize and reshape your buildings, feel free to pull anchor points into the area occupied by the roads. This will look really funky as you go, but don’t worry: you’re going to rasterize and clip them later.

Rasterizing and Styling Buildings

When you’ve got your buildings set out the way you want them to be, you will want to rasterize, clip, and style them, especially if you’ve manipulated your buildings so that some of them have edges that cross-road boundaries.

You turn off all styles on the shaped buildings, rasterize them to pixels, cut out the shape of the Roads and Walls layers, and then re-apply your style.

You may be asking yourself, “Self, why do I want to clip my buildings if the Roads layer is above them, and already clipping them?” That’s a good question, and the answer is styling. If you apply a stroke to the building layer, the stroke will continue under the roads, and you’ll get a weird pattern effect. Clip the buildings, and your stroke will appear uniform. This only works for inside strokes, however; outside strokes will be hidden.

If you don’t want your buildings to go right up to the edge of the roads, you can increase the area the roads shape will clip by going Select -> Modify -> Expand and setting the value to about 2 to 4 pixels. This will increase the clip size of the roads layer, but be warned: you will likely end up with some rounded corners.

There are also ways to do this using layer masks, but that is outside of the scope of this tutorial.

Draw Other Areas

In addition to buildings, roads, canals, and bridges, cities have other features as well that you will want to block out and draw. The design and drawing method for each of these can be different but typically you will want a shape that you can then apply styles or patterns to.

A non-exhaustive list of other areas can include:

• Bazaars – wide, open places that are paved with stone and have small kiosks.
• Corrals – open places surrounded by fences used for containing livestock.
• Docks– wide, open places that are paved with stone. Docks can be drawn as wooden shapes or be constructed from stone.
• Gardens – smaller areas with heavy verdancy and trees.
• Graveyards – open areas with verdancy and tree clumps, or maybe just raw earth.
• Parks – wide, open areas with heavy verdancy and clumps of trees. These may also have small plazas as well.
• Plazas– wide, open places that are paved with stone and do not have kiosks. These areas often have large statues or shrines in them.
• Quarries – sunken, blocky shaped areas that you will flesh out using techniques described in the drawing mountains tutorial.

Create these layers above your Roads layer since they may overlap. I like to keep all my area types in their own layer group. You may find that you need to merge the shapes of your new areas in with the Landmass layer; the best way is to select their pixels and paint in the Landmass layer.

For my version of Napoli, I have blocked out docks that are built from stone. I have merged these shapes into the Roads layer so that they are seamless. I’ve also added a few plaza areas and marked out the palace grounds (a layer with a stroke but 0% fill opacity). The central anchorages are heavily monitored, so I’ve also added several smaller docks, either for private use (to the west) or for poorer fisherfolk and smugglers (to the east).

Draw Vegetation

Cities are filled with vegetation even though we don’t often think of them that way (just look at any city from the air; they look like gridded forests). Trees and verdant areas are everywhere. Of course, if your city is located in an arid region, there won’t be a lot of verdancy or large clumps of trees; there will, however, be lots of scrubby plants and bushes that are difficult to kill.

Lay out your verdant areas before you add your trees so that you have an idea of where vegetation wants to grow. When laying out a verdancy layer, use the technique described in the outdoors map tutorial except lay it in about twice as heavy. As usual, you will end up clipping your verdant areas (Buildings, Walls, Roads, and eventually Trees). Set your Verdancy layer directly above your Landmass and Elevations layers (the ones where you drew cliffs or mountains, if any).

You remember how to draw forests, don’t you? You’re going to do that now. You are likely working at a scale where individual trees may be seen, so you want to use the sparse forests technique. Your Trees layer goes above Verdancy and below all buildings and structures.

Paint trees where trees grow! They grow between buildings – the block interiors – but sparsely. They will grow thicker along city walls that don’t have abutting roads and in areas where there is no construction (cliff edges and steep inclines). Know where the trees will be cut back as well. Secure areas will not have trees. These are the insides of castle walls, fortifications, or military parade grounds, or close to walls that may lay up against secure areas. Dock wards and districts are unlikely to have trees, nor will areas of pure commerce. Trees grow thickest in lands owned by the wealthy and thinnest (and sickly) in the slums.

Lay them in lightly inside of blocks and then when you’re done, set the scattering and spacing on your brush to pretty high values and then just run around the map dotting in areas. Once you’re done with that, clip the Trees layer: remove Roads, Walls, and Buildings. And then clip your Trees out of your Verdancy.

Draw Wards

If you want to mark your city’s wards or districts, now is the time to do so. City wards are nearly always bounded by walls or flowing water of some kind. Areas outside of a city’s walls are often named or thought of as “wards” but are rarely considered to be so “officially” so you don’t need to mark them.

Create a new layer group above everything and call it Ward Bounds. You’ll define each ward shape inside of here. This is a multi-step process that involves creating the ward shapes and then deleting segments from those shapes so that you are left with partial paths. You’re going to use the Pen tool and some shape options to mark them.

Add Labels

Labeling Wards

Wards and districts are a created phenomenon. Pick your font accordingly (see Natural vs. Created Elements). Use a nice, simple font that can be readable at low opacity and large size. You want to decrease the opacity of these labels and make them large. You don’t want them to be overpowering, but you need them to be useful.

Ward names tend to be very generic and often have historical context. Wards are often named for geographical features (“River Ward”), position (“South Ward”), or function (“Merchant’s Ward” or “Docks Ward”). Further, as the city grows, the name of the ward may lose its original meaning. The “North Ward” may end up being surrounded by additional wards to the north, but it’s name won’t change.

For my Napoli map, I’m using a 16pt Crimson Bold Italic font with the color set to #910000 – the same color I’m using for the ward boundaries. On the layer group that contains the layers, I’m setting that to a Multiply blend mode with a 50% fill opacity and applying a 3 pixel outside stroke of #eadcbc in Normal mode. That way, the stroke color is solid and strong but the text itself multiplies into the map.

Labeling Roads

Label roads exactly the same as you would do with any outdoors map, as described the outdoor map tutorial.

I don’t tend to label roads inside of city maps because I find that they add a great deal of clutter. You do you, though.

Labeling Buildings

Don’t. Unless your map is of a certain scale, building labels will get lost. Instead of labeling important buildings, use a legend and numbers.

Labeling Water

Label water exactly the same as you would do with any outdoors map, as described the outdoor map tutorial..

Add Grid, Title, Legend, and Scale

Add your grid, title, and scale marker. If you are using a coordinate grid system, remember that you can drag the grid pattern location around from inside the Pattern Overlay effect dialog. This is useful to set your 0,0 point to somewhere deeper in the map.

It is sometimes difficult to place titles, legends, and compasses in a way that does not obscure parts of the map’s drawing. You can try resizing these elements if you like, but don’t make them too small: they still have to appear strong and visible. If you can’t avoid overlapping elements in your map, don’t worry: it’s a problem all cartographers have had. Just do your best; I’m certain it will end up looking great.

Finalize

You’ve drawn all your drawings and you’ve set your grid and legend up! You’re done! As with other types of outdoors maps, there isn’t a lot of finalization to be done unless you’re using a lot of glows and need to re-rasterize them. Make sure your layers are stacked correctly.

When you’re done, you’re on to Printing Maps.

For this article, I’m going to create a small shrine with a crypt that has been dug into a cliff side. The shrine needs an ante-chamber, the shrine room itself, a crypt room, and a small room to house the shrine’s caretakers (who have long since abandoned the place), and a well. We’ll include a secret treasure room as well.

Considerations

Sizing Strategies

Since blueprint maps are designed for use by Gamemasters, they usually aren’t printed out at high resolutions or on large stock. You’ll find that your home laser printer is going to be your weapon of choice. In this case, you’ll nearly always want to create maps on a canvas of 8.5 inches by 11 inches, at 300dpi.

If your dungeon won’t fit in that area, or it has multiple levels, you have a couple of options: you can resize your scaling grid down, or you can use multiple pages. You don’t need multiple documents; just create each level of the dungeon in its own layer group (for structure) and with its own layer comp (for display).

If you’re going to be all fancy and do a lot of painting, you may want your maps printed professionally. If so, I still recommend printing them at 8.5×11.

For this article, I’m going to be using smaller canvases to make things easier for example visualizations.

Visual Style

You should decide on the visual style that you want to use for your blueprint maps. Your style will fall along a spectrum between classical style and a painterly style. This will affect how things are constructed.

Painted maps are going to end up in pixels. They almost always require that you have access to a pen tablet. Classic maps are vectors and can be drawn entirely with Shape tools. Somewhere in the middle lies a medium where details and flair are added with pixels via brushes overtop a skeleton made of shapes.

If you’re not comfortable using pixels or drawing tools, just stick with vector shapes. The Pen tool is easy enough to use.

I don’t recommend using a painterly style for blueprint maps. The reason for this is two-fold:

1. It’s much, much faster to stick with a simple blueprint style
2. The audience is going to be one person: you.

Of course, if you’re building this map as part of a commercial product, you’ll want to make it look great, so painting may be on the table then. In general, though, if you find yourself wanting to apply excessive detail, just make a battlemap.

For this article, I’m going to work in shapes.

Color, Black and White, or Greyscale

You have the option to go straight black and white (everything is either #ffffff or #000000), using multiple greys (anything between those two), or color (any color).

The use of excessive color in blueprint maps is discouraged. These maps are not intended as works of art and they typically have an audience of one person: the Gamemaster. If you decide to use color (for instance, if you want to use the “classic” blue style), you should still treat the map as if it were greyscale.

Black and white prints easiest. Greyscale looks best.

Font Choices

Since blueprint maps favor readability over visual style, you’ll want to stick with a single simple, sans-serif font (say that three times fast). The “classic” fonts are Helvetica, Futura Book,
and Century Gothic.

Scaling Grid

Scaling grids in blueprint maps can work slightly differently than with other maps. Blueprint maps often have two versions of the same grid: interior and exterior. Both grids match (have the same 0,0 point) but can have different visual treatments.

The interior grid is going to be one that shows up inside of the rooms proper. The exterior grid will be one that applies to the “negative space” (which may or may not be real space). Depending on your design, either one may be more or less visible. These grids will be applied with layer styles, both in the background (the exterior grid) and also on each room (the interior grid).

Blueprint maps use a square grid. Unlike other map styles, the base scaling grid is placed at the bottom of the layer stack, above any background layer, but below all other layers (this is the “exterior” grid). You will be drawing on “top” of this grid.

You should size your grid according to what suits your game and style. Dungeon maps are usually either 5 feet or 10 feet to the square.

Note that it is also possible to create additional sub-grids of larger scale for context.

Shapes vs. Pixels

The choice to work on blueprint maps in shapes or with pixels is going to be one of personal preference and the ultimate style of the map you want to produce. “Classic” style dungeon maps naturally lend themselves to vector drawings.

My recommendation is to work in shapes as much as possible, even if you’re ultimately intending on a more visual map. The reason is that you can always turn shape layers into pixel layers easily, but doing the inverse (a technique described in Designing Fantasy City Maps) is complicated and results in a loss of edge variation (but a gain in edge sharpness and fidelity).

If your map is a “natural” dungeon (e.g., a cavern), then using the Free Form Pen tool will help create more organic shapes. You can also just block in areas crudely with the Pen tool and then convert them to pixels later for finishing.

Design Steps

1. Initial Set Up
2. Set the Grid
3. Create a Templates Folder
4. Draw Floors
5. Draw Walls
6. Draw Doors
7. Draw Stairs
8. Draw Pits, Traps and Other Details
9. Draw Additional Levels
10. Add Title and Legend
11. Styling
12. Finalization

Initial Set Up

Create a new document of your selected size and resolution. The background layer is white; rename it to “Base” and change its color (with the Paint Bucket tool) to something off-white or even grey, say #dddddd or #999999). This is so that you can have your room floors be visible until you can add walls.

Turn on Photoshop’s grid (<command>’). You’ll be switching it on and off constantly.

Set the Grid

Apply a square grid pattern to your Base layer. This will be your exterior or negative space grid. You’ll use this grid as your markers when drawing the rest of the map. You’ll want it to be visible right now but not overpowering (lower the pattern overlay’s opacity). If you use a dark grey background you’ll probably need to change the blending mode of the pattern as well.

Do not check “Link with layer”. You want this grid to be set with 0,0 in the document’s 0,0 spot.

In this case I’ve chosen to use “Square – 50px”, so that one 5 foot square equates to 50 pixels on the map.

Create a Templates Folder

You’re going to be doing a lot of duplication of layers. You’re also going to want to have a single go-to place to pull styles. You’re going to make templates for doors, secret doors, windows, stairs, furniture blobs, you name it. Many of these things will be smart objects.

Create a layer group at the top of your layer stack called “Templates”. Keep this at the top of the layer stack. Turn its visibility on or off as you want.

Now you want to do draw a “template” room. This is a room that you will set some layer styles on and can then copy and paste them as you go. You’ll also set an initial style of on the shape to display a grid that you can see (otherwise it’s going to be a white shape).

Draw the Floors

Got your Template Room sorted? Great. Now you’re going to draw the Floors of your dungeon. Just think about where people are going to step. Don’t worry about elevation changes, doors, or stairways yet. You will do this with one of the Shape tools or preferably the Pen tool and probably in multiple layers, so you’ll want to make every room a layer within a layer group called “Rooms”. Apply the layer style from Room Template to the Rooms layer group.

Now draw each of your rooms with shape tools or the pen. You should think of each room or corridor as a “segment” that you can move around as needed, so make sure each segment is on its own layer. Name these layers as you wish, but try to be descriptive (e.g., “main temple”, “antechamber”, etc.). Don’t forget to draw the outside, if there is one!

Butt each segment up against each other so that they connect and form a unified shape.

Since the layer style is applied to the Rooms group, each layer inside of it automatically gets the grid.

You should now have a basic layout. All of the rooms are on their own layers, though. If you’re a gambler, and you like to live on the edge, feel free to merge all those into a single shape (don’t forget to merge shape components) but I wouldn’t recommend that. You may find that you need to alter the layout as you go.

Draw the Walls

When you’re happy with the layout of your dungeon its time to add walls to it. There are three main strategies you can use for this but they really only vary in degrees of tedious-ness in application.

Approach One: Let the Background Speak

This method is terribly simple. Just let the background color serve as your walls. This has the benefit of being really quick to implement but it has a drawback in that unless you left gaps in your floor shapes, all of your walls and doorways are going to be really thick (e.g., 5 foot doorways). Don’t worry! I’ve got a solution for this which will be explained later.

This method works best for things that are completely surrounded by stone or earth. Maps of structures (like a castle or an inn) don’t cotton to this method well. This also uses a lot of ink when printing.

Approach Two: Using Strokes

You can fake walls using strokes. This has the advantage of being quick and appearing more realistic, but you can find that your walls don’t meet where you want them too. This, too, has the problem of door position fidelity, but I’ve got a solution for that, which I’ll explain later.

This is my preferred method, mostly because of its speed.

Approach Three: Drawing Walls with a Pen

The most tedious method of drawing walls provides the highest fidelity. I don’t overly recommend using this method because it’s terribly, terribly slow and requires a lot of patience. However, this method gives you a great deal of control over the styles you can apply to the walls (such as those used when creating battlemaps.

You’re going to draw the shape of your walls with the Pen tool.

So. Tedious. But you’ve got your walls now.

Draw Doors

Doors are important! You’re not making a battlemap, so you really only need an indicator of where the door is. However, there is a lot of detail that you can show in the iconography of a door simply by changing its shape or fill.

For each type of door you have in your dungeon, you will want to create a template. Remember that Templates folder? Here’s where it really starts to shine. Make several layers and layer groups within, designing the types of doors you will have.

Common door types are:

• Normal wooden doors (just a square)
• Iron doors (a square with an interior stroke set)
• Secret doors (a square with an “S” set in it, or just an S)
• Locked Doors (one of the other door types with a lock symbol)

It’s your choice as to whether or not to turn these into smart objects. I recommend not; if you clone the layer groups, you can modify the wall edges later if you need to when placing them.

Once you’ve got your door templates created, it will be time to place them in the map.

Draw Stairs

If your map has stairs, you’ll want to add them as well. Like doors, you’ll be creating stair templates. Stairs are easy to draw; the most difficult part is the tedium that comes from making the “step” lines.

Stairs on blueprint maps usually have an indicator as to the direction the stairs run. There is a “bottom” and a “top” of a stairwell. There are several ways to indicate this:

• With a triangle shape. The “fat” part of the triangle indicates the top of the stairs.
• With an arrow. The arrow points “up wards”.
• With a “u” character placed at the top of the stairs and a “d” character placed at the bottom
• Multiple combinations thereof

If your stairs are shorter than 2 squares, you’ll have to cut them down when you place them, which is why I don’t recommend turning these into smart objects.

You can get much more complex or fancy with your stairwell designs. Add shapes, play with opacity values, duplicate things. The important thing here it to make sure it’s easily readable on the map.

Once you’ve got your templates, clone and drag them into place. Cut them down if you have to (if the stairwell is less than 2 squares) and double them up if need be (the stairwell is wider than 2 squares, or longer than 2, etc.).

Draw Pits, Traps and Other Details

Now is the time to draw and add in other details. For unique items, it’s probably okay to skip making a template, but for things that appear multiple times you’ll want to make one.

For my little shrine, I’m going to need:

• A well, which is just a circle shape (color #555555, with multiple exterior strokes to draw the edges).
• Several statues for the antechamber, which are stroked circles surrounding star shapes.
• Several sarcophagi, which are going to be stroked rounded rectangles inside of stroked rectangles.
• The shrine itself, which is just a set of platform shapes with strokes on them.
• A small pit trap in the crypt chamber, which is a square shape with no fill and a dashed stroke shape attribute.

Draw and place these objects as needed. There isn’t a great need to get too detailed. Excessive detail is the enemy. You want just enough of a sketch to serve as a reminder to the Gamemaster about where things are.

Draw Additional Levels

If your structure or dungeon has additional levels beyond the main one, add them in as well. Ideally you can fit multiple levels of a place on a single canvas.

If you can’t fit everything into the single canvas, start putting each level into its own layer group and use layer comps to switch between them. You can probably re-use common layers, like the Base layer.

The process for adding additional layers is the same loop as above, except that you’ve already created all your templates. Haven’t you?

Add Title and Legend

Add your title in a decent, readable font. It can be anywhere on the page. Include a simple scale mark.

Aren’t you glad you made a Templates layer? Use that to construct your legend. You’ll probably have to make individual text layers for the legend labels in order to get them to line up properly.

Also remember to add in any room labels or numbers. These should be placed where they are readable, ideally in the center of the room. If there’s an object in the center (say, a pit), offset it to the top, right or left as much as you can where the label does not blend in with other objects.

Styling

With most blueprint maps, you won’t be doing much styling beyond that used in the construction of the map (strokes and grid patterns). If you like, you can add some outer glows around things but honestly too much styling becomes what Edward Tufte calls chart junk: extra details that do not serve to provide information but instead muddy things.

Before applying any style effect, ask yourself “does this provide information?” If the answer is no, it’s probably best not to use it.

If you want to give your map the “classic” style colorization, you can easily do so.

Finalization

Blueprint map finalization is pretty straight forward: there isn’t anything special you need to do to finalize these beyond making sure your Templates group is no longer visible (and it shouldn’t be). Just go and print it.

I believe that isometric maps can be some of the most beautiful things created. They invite exploration and discussion. They stoke curiosity and imagination. They can be enjoyed as art.

The idea of making an isometric map is far scarier and boring than it actually is. You may have a vision of yourself tediously moving around anchor points, burning away your eyesight, trying desperately to get them to line up with each other while maintaining that ever-present 30 degree angle system that your grid is providing. You may even get desperate enough to futz around with Photoshop’s grid settings, trying to get its points to align with the isometric grid.

Never fear! I am going to show you an easy method that can convert any standard blueprint map into an isometric map quickly and painlessly. It’s so stupidly simple that you may decide to use it for everything going forward. I call this method Isometrification. I didn’t invent this technique; I learned it from a tutorial on Fantastic Maps.

Considerations

Embrace Mistakes

If this is your first attempt at an isometric map, the most important consideration you must have is embracing mistakes because you are going to make them, my friend.

You will spend an hour building a thing and then suddenly realize that it’s not going to work because you laid out shadows all wrong, or your carefully constructed object isn’t rotated right. Maybe you need to change rasterized patterns. Maybe you need to merge whole sets of layers differently. You may get all the way to the end and discover that the entire thing needs re-doing because the canvas is too small. You’re going to vow not to make the same mistake twice and then you’ll end up doing it 10 minutes later.

These things happen and they are discouraging to be sure but they are also learning experiences. I could write six hundred pages about the mistakes I’ve made and how I have corrected for them going forward and I would still barely scratch the surface. The only teachers here are practice and experience.

So: Don’t get discouraged if you screw up. Just take a break, come back later, and fix it.

Sizing Strategies

Isometric maps tend to favor horizontal space, even though they are designed to show vertical space. The reason for this is that when the levels are rotated, they take up more horizontal real estate than they did before but less vertical real-estate. Your long dungeon will end up becoming wide.

You’ll need to adjust your canvas size accordingly, and, like as not, you’ll be modifying it all the way up until you’re done.

Further, unlike normal blueprint maps, isometric maps may have a larger audience than just the Gamemaster. Isometric maps are beautiful constructs, begging for people to ooh and ah over them. You may want to print them out nice and shiny, especially if you go the full color and texture route with your visual style.

Visual Style

I love isometric maps. I love to spend hours being clever with my object creation and adding details. Because I am a narcissist, I enjoy showing them off. This means I will often pick one of two styles: a full “classic” greyscale mode (if I’m feeling nostalgic) or a full-on painterly mode (especially if it’s for consumption beyond myself). My underground city, for example, is intended more as a player aid to stoke imagination than for tracking player location.

You are definitely going to want to go color or greyscale for isometric maps. You will want to show variants in things with different colors or shades of grey.

You do you. For the examples, I’m going stick to greyscale.

Font Choices

Even though isometric maps may be intended to be pretty, you’ll still want to stick with simple, readable fonts.

Scaling Grid

During the initial map construction, you’re going to be using a square scaling grid because you’ll be building your maps in an overhead view first. However, when you move to the isometrification phase, you’ll want to add an isometric scaling grid – either to the entire map, or to just parts of it.

It is important to note the difference between actual size and distorted size of your grid squares. Isometric squares are roughly 125% wider than their corresponding square versions. The distortion is real.

The isometric grid patterns I have provided are named for the width of the square they represent, not the width they show on the map. A 100px square is 100 by 100 pixels; the corresponding isometric square is 125 by 73 pixels (if you try to do the math your head will hurt so don’t). Just remember that they’re labeled for grid size not file size.

As with most blueprints, you will likely want to work with 1 square equating to 5 or 10 feet. Work within that. The 100 pixel grids are probably right for most work of this nature.

If you somehow want to have an isometric hexagon grid: via con dios, my friend. You can do it, but it’s a hack, and I’ll explain how to do that later.

Shapes vs. Pixels

Build your isometric maps in shapes as long as possible. Work in pixels only in the last stages or when rasterizing layers for automatic scaling.

Design Steps

1. Initial Set up
2. Layer Structure Strategy
3. Design Overhead Levels
4. Isometrifize
5. Post-Isometrifize
6. Greeblize
7. Include Call Outs
8. Include Labels
9. Style
10. Do Brushwork
11. Apply Grids
12. Finalize

Initial Set Up

The initial set up for an isometric map is no different from that of a standard blueprint map.

Create a new document of your selected size and resolution. The background layer is white; rename it to “Base” and change its color (with the Paint Bucket tool) to something off-white or even grey, say #dddddd or #999999). This is so that you can have your dungeon floors be visible as you’re working.

You won’t use the grid except when you’re building levels in overhead view mode.

You’ll want to create a layer group inside of each level called “Shapes Backup” and store duplicates of all your working shapes here.

Layer Structure Strategy

You’re going to be duplicating your work a lot and you will need a way to easily revert to previous states, or to re-do fragments of work at a time. You should keep a very well-organized layer structure. At a minimum, I recommend something like this:

• Templates – a layer group for storing template objects
  • Isometric Templates – a layer group for storing isometric template objects
  • Overhead Templates – a layer group for storing overhead template objects
• Labels – a layer group for storing all labels and other ephemera, like the Compass Rose.
• Isometric Levels – a layer group that contains the isometric versions of your levels
• Overhead Levels – a layer group that contains the overhead versions of your levels

Within each level’s group, create an additional layer group called “Shapes Backup”. Store raw, unstyled copies of your major shapes for the level in here. You’ll be pulling them out and duplicating them often in order to create effects. You’ll be using these differently between the isometric and overhead views as well.

Never throw anything away.

Design Overhead Levels

For each level in your map, design it as if you were building a blueprint map but with a handful of modifications. Unsurprisingly, most of these changes involve making sure that you use shapes for everything.

Create these levels inside of the Overhead Levels layer group. You’ll clone them into Isometric Levels later.

Don’t be an idiot and try to edit all your levels at once. Turn them on and off as you’re working. You should align them so that they stack correctly in the vertical axis (e.g., the stairwells should match up).

Use Shaped Floors

Did you draw your floors in pixels? Sorry, Charlie! Better luck next time. Build your floor layer entirely in vector shapes. You will also find that you want to keep the floor segments (rooms, corridors) as distinct shapes at this time (don’t merge them yet, ya shmuck).

If you know a part of your floor will be raised or lowered from the base floor level (a sunken chamber), make sure to keep that area as its own shape, especially if you’re going to apply a pattern to it.

Use Shaped Walls

You will also want to build your walls as shapes. These you can go ahead and merge, as it’s unlikely that you’ll be using them in the final map. They’re more of a mental guide than anything else.

Door Construction

Don’t draw your doors into the walls. Use icon shapes entirely. Don’t bother with any special door types (locked, etc.) but do worry about double doors. Create a single, simple rectangle shape and use that. As much as possible, try to use the same one. Don’t use a smart object.

Stairs

If you set a pattern on these, you’ll want to rasterize them (see below). If you created the step effects with shapes and icons, what you’ve done may work perfectly or it may shit the bed. Don’t worry either way. If you can, duplicate these layers so you have spares; you can apply a stair texture later.

Object Construction

If you have raised objects (such as platforms, structures, pillars, etc.) draw them as just the base shape – the area it covers on the floor. Keep them as individual shape layers.

Rasterize Pattern Layers

If you want to use any kind of pattern overlays on a layer (say, you want a nice cobblestone effect on your dungeon floor), you will need to rasterize a version of that layer to pixels. This will be the version that is displayed on the final map.

The reason you want to rasterize it to pixels now is that the conversion process will automatically scale and rotate the pattern correctly. If you use the converted shape layer with the pattern, the pattern will still be on the vertical axis.

Isometrifize

You approach the process of isometrification on each level of your map as a whole. Parts of the level may be higher or lower than other parts, but you will deal with that in the Post-Isometrification step. Basically, if a series of rooms are connected and do not overlap, they should be thought of as a single level.

You’re going to clone each level and then operate on the duplicate. The reason why is that once you’ve got a look at your map in full isometric mode, you may very well need to make changes to its layout. If you have to do this, it is infinitely easier to work in the “overhead” view of the map rather than the isometric view, so you trash the isometric version and go back to the overhead version, and then re-isometrify. It’s a process of editing.

Rotation and scaling must be done as independent operations. Don’t try to do them both at the same time. You will not achieve the desired effect if you do.

Duplicate and Back Up

When you’re roughly satisfied with the layout of your level in overhead view, it’s time to duplicate it into the Isometric Levels folder.

Rotate

You’re going to rotate the level by 45 degrees. “But hey! The isometric grid is at 30 degrees, not 45!” I know, I know. The magic of scaling (next step) will solve for that.

You can rotate by 45 or -45 degrees, but you need to pick the same one for every level.

The layer should now be rotated but still appear “standing up”.

Scale

Now you need to scale the level. Isometric levels will be 57.7% as “tall” as their overhead versions. The process of scaling the level will cause the edges to fall along the 30 degree isometric grid.

The layer should now be rotated and scaled, aligning on the 30 degree plane. Rasterized pattern layers will have been scaled appropriately.

Move and Place

Drag the level around on the canvas until it’s placed correctly. This doesn’t have to be perfect right now; you’ll be making lots of minor tweaks to position as you go. What you’re really trying to do here is make sure everything fits correctly. You want to isometrify every one of your levels and place them to see if anything needs tweaking.

If something does require editing, delete the isometric version of the level, go fix the overhead version of the level, and then repeat this process. Do this until you’re absolutely certain you aren’t going to mess with the level again.

That said, always keep your overhead versions. Always. You may need them for something else later, or even in the same map. You may find that you later want to change a pattern and need to re-isometrify only a single layer and replace it in the iso versions. You never know. Don’t throw anything away.

Post-Isometrifize

Once you’ve achieved satisfaction with your level, it’s time to work on the post-isometrification process. This is where you do things like add vertical texture, stairs, etc. There are several things to do in this step, and not all of them may make sense for your map – or your map’s style.

For instance, on a map of a dwarven city, I might include a “level lip” but maybe not in a dungeon map. My style may warrant that all doors are “isometrified” or not. The two things you will definitely want to do are level adjustment and duplicate your base shape layers.

You probably don’t want a “Walls” layer anymore. You can turn that off in your Isometric version of the level.

Level Adjustment

Are there areas (not objects) on your map that are higher or lower than the main floor of your level? I’m talking floor surface only. Not even raised platforms. The actual floors. You will want to raise or lower these.

You want to set the depths correctly on both the shape layers and any rasterized pixel pattern layers. You can’t easily nudge pixel layers and have it look right. You have to treat them as separate layers already.

Duplicate Base Shape Layers

Now that you have your shapes correctly oriented vertically, you need to copy and merge them all into a single, cohesive shape. This shape can be used for all sorts of things, not the least being the construction of a “Level Lip” (see below).

One thing you can do with your Base Shape is use it to create faux walls as a stroke around the entire level, if your layout is conducive to it. Just copy the Base Shape above the floors, set a stroke on it (centered, probably) and your fill opacity to 0%. Bam. Instant walls.

Greeblize

Greebles are details added to things (usually blocky) that add texture and detail and imply greater complexity than may actually be there. For example, all the tubes and struts and piping that you see on the outside of the Millenium Falcon or a Star Destroyer are greebles.

Adding such details is called greeblization (a similar process of adding details to battlemaps is called dollhousing). Greebles are fun things to add to isometric maps but (like everything else) it can be overdone.

You may be tempted to add three-dimensional representations of everything in your map. Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, this may or may not be a good idea. Excessive greebling can block details from the map.

For my isometric map of an underground city, I greebled up the buildings vertically so that they stood out. This was not so much a bad effect if all of the buildings were the same vertical height; the layout of the streets between them was still visible and understandable. However, if the buildings were of different heights, this detail was lost. A different, but similar problem appeared on a level where canals ran between the streets: they were lost entirely, and I had to include a call-out.

The answer to whether or not to greeble a thing depends on the map’s purpose and the information that is both gained and lost by doing so. In my city’s case, the purpose was more about producing an impression rather than accurate fidelity; the audience was the players. I felt that the layout was sufficiently described and that the impression of building height was of greater importance.

Rebuilding Objects

Now that the floor plan is mostly set, it’s time to start working on the objects it contains. This part is 100% chicanery. You’re creating an illusion of depth but it is no more real than a movie set.

Note that you don’t have to do this. Your map may be perfectly fine without it. In fact, this little dungeon looks great as is – I just had to fix the stairs (see below).

How this works is you duplicate the object you’re building as many times as it has visible “sides”, slightly changing the appearance of each of those layers, and then adjusting the anchor points of each one to create a three-dimensional version of the object. Each visible “side” of an object is going to be its own extra layer.

Ellipse objects are the easiest because they only have one visible “side”.

For objects that aren’t rounded, the process is pretty much the same except that you create a layer for each “side” and color them differently.

Styling Stairs

It is entirely possible that your stairway already look how you want them – especially if you rasterized them. If they look like crap, however, you can apply one of these patterns to the stairway and it should work out. Pick the right pattern for the direction that the stair runs in.

You may find that your stairs are part of a larger corridor shape (as in the case of my dungeon). In this case, you’ll have to clip out the stairs into their own layer and then style them.

Rebuilding Doors

If you want three-dimensional, isometric doors, you’ll build them in the same way that you build an isometric object (described above). You will want to only create a handful of doors (one for each orientation) and then turn them into a smart object templates.

Clone specific door templates and place them where ever you need to.

Making a Level Lip

If you don’t like the way your rooms and corridors look floating in two dimensions, you can make them three-dimensional fairly easily – even if you’ve applied a pattern to them that you’ve rasterized and already scaled. Level lips are “vertical” – they are slices of the floor.

You do this by duplicating the base shape layer twice, shifting one down by 10 or 20 pixels, and then deleting the “top” one. You can then apply the same layer style (the one from the “overhead” layers) and it will lay out vertically.

If you edit the layout of the floor layer later, you may have to rebuild your level lip.

Water Elements

Water elements can be tricky to get right if you’re trying to apply several styles to them – especially if you want to crate shorelines. You will nearly always need to rasterize them to pixels before isometrification in order to get the correct visual distortion.

If you want interior shorelines, you’re in for a rough time. While it’s easy to create them using strokes on the outside of a layer (as described in the outdoors maps article), inner strokes always overprint one another. The solution is to make a second shape, larger than your lake or waterway, duplicate the water shape, cut it out of the larger shape, and then apply strokes to that.

You’ll want to rasterize the stroke later before isometrification. There will be cruft; just delete that with an eraser.

Include Call Outs

Isometric maps can often benefit from call outs which describe similar things in a different way, or show exploded versions of the map. A call out can be an overhead view of the element in question, for instance. This is when you add those.

Don’t allow your call out markers (the lines that point to things) to obscure details in the map. You may want to create them in two layers so that you can use different blending modes to avoid this problem if you absolutely must run the line over some map details.

Include Labels

Add your labels, legend, title box, and compass to the map. You may or may not want to isometrify labels; this is often dependant on the label’s function. Labels for individual levels should not be isometrified, but labels on objects inside isometric levels should be.

Style

At this point you should have a mostly serviceable map. What you want to do now is go over it and do things like add strokes, glows, gradients, and shadows to things to create depth (or the illusion thereof) and to pull out important features.

As with all maps, being subtle is probably more useful than being heavy-handed. Less is more and all that.

Do Brushwork

If you have a pen tablet (or a lot of patience), feel free to go over your map and add details here and there as you feel are needed: vertical seams on level lips, for instance, or water flow lines in canals and the like. Again: less is more. You’re transmitting information first and making pretty second.

Apply Grids

Say you want to have an isometric grid on your levels. This is easy to do. Pick the right pattern and apply it to either the top-most layer, or duplicate Base Shape with a fill of 0% and place it. You may have to move it around in the layer stack to avoid unfortunate clashing with things like stair patterns.

You could, of course, rasterize a square grid layer inside of your overhead version of the level and it will automatically scale and size for you. I don’t like this method, however, as it can have some unpredictable effects. If you use an applied isometric grid pattern, you can turn off “link with layer” and the grids will all sync up.

Isometric Hexagon Grids

You may find that you want to apply an isometric hexagon grid in some places. This is doable, but it’s not easily done via patterns. The reason why is that, like the surface of your map, the hexagon grid will distort as it goes. Isometric grids are on a 30 degree rotation. If you rotate a horizontally stacked hexagon grid 30 degrees, you get…<drumroll> a vertically stacked hexagon grid.

To get a proper isometric hexagon grid, you’re going to have to rasterize it and then isometrify it. You’ll need to make the initial grid shape larger (at least taller) than the area you’re going to apply it to. It’s best to just do this on a layer that’s the size of the entire canvas, unless you’re going to apply the grid everywhere, in which case you should do it on a layer that’s twice as big for safety’s sake.

Finalize

Isometric map finalization is pretty straight forward: there isn’t anything special you need to do to finalize these beyond making sure any Templates are no longer visible. You will want to re-rasterize any outer glows or drop shadows (or actually turn those on instead of rasterizing; you’re finalizing now). You likely applied your grid in an earlier step so you’re good to go on that front.

Just go and print it.

Battlemaps require much more time to create than other types. This is because you’re working at a level were small object detail is viable or even important. This leads the mind towards wanting to make things as realistic as possible, which tends to take a lot of time.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to make a battlemap for a small, simple inn, such as might be found in any fantasy setting. This is a long post, but there’s a lot of information here.

It is possible to map out an entire dungeon as a battlemap. In fact, I have done so! It took a lot of time. I recommend against doing this. Instead, use a blueprint and a dry-erase battlemat. You can buy battlemaps in all sorts of shapes and sizes (I prefer ones that fold up) and that already have printed grids (usually squares on one side and hexes on the other). You can sketch out the walls and important areas of a room quickly and easily and then erase them when they’re done.

If you actually make full battlemaps for only parts of your dungeon, the players will know combat approaches when you pull out the battlemap and lay it on the table.

Considerations

A Quick Note on Realism

I want to warn you: Do NOT fall into the “Realism is better” trap here. It is not. Maps are meant to convey information. While they can be beautiful, they are not works of art. If you want to make a painting, make a painting.

Battlemaps convey local, immediate information to players. It is highly likely that the players are going to be involved in combat in the area. This means that they will want to know exactly where other things are in relation to their characters: walls, doors, enemies, other player characters, cliff edges, fires, furniture, and difficult terrain are all things that they need to know at a glance. Playing on a battlemap helps people pick targets because they know how far away they are and helps spell-casters not blow up the entire party with a fireball.

When a battlemap looks too realistic, these important details (how far away is the door?) get lost. I’ve seen maps that are absolutely gorgeous, hyper-realistic, and completely useless. Of course it’s darker in the lowest deck of the ship; I still need to know where the ladder is. It will be tempting to blend the Player Grid (see below) to the point where it’s too subtle to notice and your players suffer eyestrain trying to determine the number of squares between X and Y.

For this purpose, you should feel free to ditch “realism” in many places and enhance the map with additional keys. For instance, wooden doors set into wooden walls may not be recognizable as doors without squinting. A solution: add a non-realistic and easy-to-read stroke inside the door itself to help distinguish that it is a functional object.

Printing and Sizing Strategies

Make sure you’ve read the “On File Resolutions and Dimensions” section in Fantasy Map Design Basics.

With most maps, altering the size and resolution can be done after the fact. You want to add more detail to your island? Up the scale, clean some edges, no problem. However, with battlemaps, it is important to start knowing the size of the map.

When starting a battlemap, know ahead of time how big you plan to print it and set your canvas size to that exactly. If you’re going to print at 11 inches by 14 inches, set the canvas size to 11 inches by 14 inches, with a display resolution of 300dpi.

Always use 300dpi, even if you don’t think you’re going to print it. It costs you nothing and you will regret it if you ever have to upscale.

Photoshop has some default canvas sizes you can pick from that may meet your needs but honestly just create a new document of any size and then resize it immediately.

Sometimes you will want to create a single map that is in chunks – like a dungeon, where you want to reveal a room at a time. This is a great strategy and I’ll go in more detail about that below, but if you plan to do so it’s good to pick a uniform size for each section. Further, you’ll want the size to be an even number (so 11×14 and not 11×8.5). The reason why is that when you apply the Scaling Grid you want the grids to match and when the size isn’t divisible by a whole inch, things get funky.

For the inn, I’m not going to go big. I want to be able to print this at home cheaply, so I’m going to set the canvas size to 8.5 inches by 11 inches at 300dpi (it’s going to be a single page, so I’m not worried about the player grids matching up). Set the color of the background layer (the dirt) to a brown color (#603913) by double-clicking it to make it editable and then filling it using the Paint Bucket tool.

Scaling Grid

A hallmark of battlemaps is the Scaling Grid. This is an overlay of squares or hexes that represent a single “space” on the map. In many games, a single “space” on the battlemap represents a 5 foot square area.

The choice to use a square or a hexagon player grid depends on the game. Most character-based role-playing games will use squares, while most tactical war games will use hexagons. Either way, you should always use a “1 inch” grid pattern (measured in inches, not pixels). Battlemaps do not typically have sub-grids.

When it comes time to finalize the map, you’ll end up doing a lot more with this grid. I’ll discuss that later, but for now you have something you can work with.

Design Steps

The steps to to creating a battlemap are:

1. Draw the Base
2. Add Walls, Doors, and Other Objects
3. Add Basic Style
4. Dollhousing
5. Add Ground Detail
6. Finalization

Draw the Base

Ideally you have a vague idea of how the map is going to be laid out. Sketching on paper ahead of time can save some headaches, but don’t import that paper. I will often create a layer called “sketch” and draw on that using a tablet. Either way, you’re going to have to start laying down elements.

Start with the floor. Make a shape (color #dddddd) that will cover the entire floor. Don’t worry about walls just yet. I like to use the various Shape tools to draw in large areas, one layer per room, and then merge them all together (remember to “Merge Shape Components” if you do this!). When I’ve done that, I’ll then futz with the anchor points on the edges to size it how I like, or to make angles, or whatever.

Whatever you end up with, call this layer “Base” (or whatever you like, but I’ll be using the term Base).

Feel free to modify this as you go. Add, remove, reshape, whatever. That’s the point of using vectors here.

The inn isn’t going to be that big: a large room for a bar, a kitchen/storage area, a large common room for sleeping, and a small room for the owners to sleep in. All the walls will be made out of stone and the floors out of wood.

Once you have a floor, you may want to move on to the walls.

Add Walls, Doors, and Other Objects

When it comes time to add walls to a set of rooms, you may think to yourself, “Self, I’ll just copy the Base layer, re-size it by 20 pixels on each side, call it Walls, and then subtract a copy of the Base from that! Simple-dimple!” You’d be right! This is a great starting place. Do just that, and make sure your Walls layer has a color of #222222.

Resizing a layer is easy: hit <command>t to activate the resize controls. Holding down <shift> while resizing constrains the aspect ratio, and you can see how many pixels your increasing the layer by. If you want 20 pixels on a side, increase it by 40. When you’re done, hit <enter>t and then re-center the layer.

Alternatively, duplicate the Base layer and then using the Direct Selection tool select the outer anchors for each wall and nudge them outwards by however large you want (30 pixels is good). Remember: holding down <shift> while doing so moves things by 10 pixels at a time.

But that’s simply going to give you a box around the floor, with no internal walls. How do you make those easily? The Pen tool. Create a new layer called “Internal Walls”. Hell, you can create a lot of these layers. Maybe use a different color for these (the colors will merge later). Draw your walls with the Pen tool. You may want to make sure that they overlap your main Walls layer where they intersect it (you’ll fix this later).

Go back over your interior wall anchor points. Make sure they line up with your exterior walls (either perfectly on the grid or overlapping). Nudge areas around to make sure they’re the right width. At 300dpi resolution, if one “inch” (the size of the grid) stands for 5 feet, then a single foot is 60 pixels. Doorways are often around 3 feet wide, sometimes less, sometimes more. Exterior walls for small structures tend to be a half-foot thick (30 pixels) while interior walls are smaller (20 pixels). Exterior walls for castles and larger building will be even thicker.

When you’ve got them laid out and futzed with them enough, merge all your interior wall shapes with your main Walls layer. Don’t forget to Merge Shape Components. Now you have your walls as a single layer.

Note that if you have different kinds of walls (some stone, some wood, say), that you’ll want to have each of them be their own shapes because you’ll want to apply different patterns to them.

Got some doors? Make shapes for them, too. Place them and rotate them into where you want them. You should keep your doors that run left-to-right on a different layer than the ones that run top-to-bottom because when you apply patterns to them you want them to run the right direction (an alternative – and frankly, better – solution is to create a single door as a template, get your patterns right, rasterize it, and then place them, but you’ll figure that out when you get there).

You may find that you need to make some holes in the walls for your doors. Do that now. You may find that you need to resize the widths of your doorways or increase the size of your Base layer. This is why you use shapes.

Got a stairwell? Just make a shape to block it in for now (there’s a separate set of instructions for them – see Technique: Making Stairs).

Add a Walkway to the inn’s door (maybe use the Freeform Pen tool!).

You’ll want to develop a consistent color scheme for your objects. What colors you use probably won’t matter (unless you apply patterns in modes that bleed the color through), but you want them to be distinct (so that you can work on the map with Layer Styles turned off). I use these colors:

• Background: #603913 (brown)
• Base: #dddddd (super-light grey)
• Walls: #222222 (super-dark grey)
• Doors: #c7a13b (yellow ochre)
• Water: #00aeef (blue)
• Vegetation: #008740 (green)
• Roads/Paths: #c69c6d (tan)

Add Basic Style

Right now your map probably just looks like some shapes and not very different from a blueprint map. Now you can start applying layer effects – especially pattern overlays – to the elements.

Is the map in a cave? Find a good stone texture and use that as the overlay for the Base layer. Are you walls made of wood or stone? Apply the right pattern. Patterns can be found lots of places; I recommend signing up or joining a site like Sketchup Texture Club to find them. Any pattern will do; seamless patterns are the best, however.

Add and remove layer effects as you see fit. Give your walls a subtle outer glow (Blend mode: Multiply, Opacity: 75%; Color: #222222; Technique: Softer; Spread: 0; Size: 20) to simulate depth, or add slight strokes to emphasize things if needed.

You may want to call out interactive objects differently. I like to put a 2 pixel yellowish stroke on the inside of doors to distinguish them, for instance. Purely realistic battlemaps aren’t overly useful: Maps are meant to convey information at a glance.

For the inn, I’ll set the floors to a light wood, the walls to a stone pattern, and the doors to a darker wood pattern. The Walkway gets a flagstone paving treatment and I’ll just apply a simple “dirt” pattern to the outside for now (I’ll revisit this later). Add a layer for the kitchen floor and give it a stone treatment (kitchens were made on stone floors to help prevent fires).

Here are some of my favorite patterns for floors and walls:

Dollhousing

Dollhousing is the term I use to describe the process of filling the battlemap with objects and dressing to give it “life”. Tables, chairs, desks, beds, and other furniture are required to fill out a battlemap. Desks need papers and books, kitchens need barrels and onions and chickens and ham hocks.

Fill your battlemap with these things as need be, either by using pre-made assets images or by creating your own objects. I prefer to make my own assets, but that’s me. I find the process soothing. I recommend making a separate file that contains a library of battlemap assets.

You can search the internet for “Battlemap Assets” or something similar to find packages of pre-made objects like chairs and tables. Be warned, though: these assets may not be set to the scale you’re using, and resizing them (especially enlarging them) will dilute their fidelity.

The section on Making Battlemap Assets goes into greater detail about this process. I highly recommend you work in a separate library for “common” items (chairs, tables, beds, etc.) and pull those into your map from there.

However, it is nearly always true that specialized assets will need to be constructed for individual maps. In the case of the inn, I’ll have to create a specialized Bar.

Create a new layer group called “Items”. This is where you’re going to put all the layers for the dollhouse items. I like to create sub-groups for each room as well (“Kitchen”, “Storage”, “Main Room”, “Common Room”, etc.). This way you can turn on or off all the items at the same time.

Placing an asset is very simple.

You’ll want to give subtle shadows to your assets. Do this with an Outer Glow layer effect: Blend Mode: Multiply; Opacity: 75%; Color: #222222; Spread: 20 pixels; Size: 20 pixels. Objects that are “taller” (have a top surface higher from the ground) may want a larger sized glow, while smaller objects (especially tools set on tables and the like) will want smaller glows.

Much of the time, creating an asset is straightforward. A table is a shape made with the Rounded Rectangle tool, a pattern of wood or boards, and a dark grey shadow or outer glow to indicate depth. Maybe a stroke or two. You’ll probably want to rasterize it if you do rotation so that the pattern doesn’t rotate with it.

Other times, you’ll have to create an object out of multiple layers, each one with its own function and style. A simple bed, for instance, may require several layers: a base, one for the cover, one for the cover’s “tuck down”, one for each pillow. When you create a complex object, make sure to do so within a containing layer group so the object can be manipulated as a whole.

If you have a pen tablet and know how to use it, add layers for shadows or details that you can add with brushes. I like to keep a layer for “Lights” (set to Screen) and a layer for “Darks” (set to Multiply).

Start populating the inn with things. The kitchen needs a stove and a fire pit as well as some sacks and chickens and cutting boards. The store-room needs barrels and crates. The sleeping rooms need beds and chests. Add whatever details you feel are necessary. Do some research about what kinds of things would be there.

Creating the Bar

Inns serve food and drink. That means that they have bars. You need to put a bar in the inn. The bar is going to serve both as a place to order drinks and as a gateway to the kitchen. Since barrels and crates will have to be moved through it, it will need a lifting door. The bar area itself will need casks and barrels (obviously) but for now just concentrate on making the bar itself.

Start by creating the shape of the bar itself.

So far so good, but it doesn’t quite feel realistic yet. Add some hinges to the bar for the lifting door.

You should now have a rectangle where the hinges are supposed to go. Next, you’re going to add some details using the Brush tool. Don’t worry! You won’t have to know how to draw at all, just how to click on the canvas. You’re only using two colors.

Now add a subtle shadow to the hinge using the Brush tool.

Next, add a subtle highlight in the same manner, except using the Highlights layer and the color #dddddd:

You’ll notice that if you don’t click exactly in the center that the lines will be larger than 1 pixel. That’s fine. Trust the layer modes.

Now add in the hinge marks. For this, use the Pencil tool as it draws perfect lines. The process is similar but you’ll be doing this multiple times.

Play around with the opacity of these layers. The Hinge Marks layer may want to be at 75% opacity, for instance. Use your best judgement.

At this point, you should have a fairly decent bar shape! You can add more details as you desire (spills, cups, etc.) but the heavy lifting has been done. Now you may want to rasterize it so that it doesn’t eat up a lot of CPU power simply being drawn (see “Tip: Temporary Rasterizing” in the Photoshop Layer Styles and Effects article for details).

Throw a couple of barrels underneath it. Bars need barrels. Add some chairs underneath it as well.

Add Ground Detail

You’ll notice that the outside looks kind of… plain. Time to spruce it up. You do this with a technique that is simple but uses the brushes. You’re going to paint texture over the ground in a several places.

First, you need to import some textures. For this tutorial, I’m going to be super simple here and use a single grass texture and a gravel texture.

Add some grass.

You will use this painting technique a lot. If you have a pen tablet with pressure sensitivity, use a brush with pressure sensitivity set to opacity.

Add some gravel around the path to the inn’s door.

That doesn’t look quite right, though. The path is difficult to discern since it’s similar in color to the gravel. So change the color of the gravel.

The edges of the walkway should now look much better!

You’re mostly done with the basics now. It’s missing a lot of things that should be accounted for, though. The place is probably pretty dreary without windows, for instance, and there don’t have any assets for cups and crockery – but this is good for this tutorial.

Finalization

Finalization of a battlemap has a few extra steps beyond the normal finalization routines.

Cleaning Some Effects

Sometimes you’ll find that there are shadows or glows cast by some objects that are creeping into places they don’t belong. The shadow of a table crossing through a wall, for instance. In these cases, rasterizing the objects makes their shadows “solid”, so you can then remove or trim them using any standard tool (select and delete, or an eraser, or whatever). I usually have to do this with doors that are casting shadows into their containing walls, for instance.

Cleaning the Scaling Grid

By default, your Scaling Grid will be covering the entire map. That may not be necessary or desirable. As such, you may want to reduce the grid’s coverage to only the “playable” areas on the map. You’re going to delete sections from your grid layer to do this.

I typically delete along these lines:

• The inverse of my floor or base layer (so immediately only the playable area)
• My various “wall” layers (so that the grid lines don’t show up in the walls)
• My various “door” layers (so the lines aren’t inside doors)

Scaling Grid Finalization

The display mode you select for a battlemap’s Scaling Grid is different from other maps. With battlemaps, the Scaling Grid imparts essential information so it shouldn’t take much effort to pick out.

Pick a blend mode for the grid. Overlay usually works very well, but you should play around with it. You may want to experiment with applying a color overlay, rasterizing that, and then selecting a different blend mode, even. With the inn, I’ve set the Scaling Grid to Color Dodge with a 50% opacity.

Place the grid layer in the stack where it works best: Below any legends, markers, and labels (game information), but above any room contents or details (location information). If you’ve “cleaned” it, you may not need to move it at all.

This post is about a specific technique to randomly generate landmass. Other techniques (like using brushes or shapes) are discussed in Designing Fantasy Outdoors Maps.

This method is great for drawing natural looking coastlines using Photoshop’s own randomization mathematics. It’s great for when you don’t already have an idea for the landmass’ shape in mind or want to add a bunch of randomness to an existing shape. This method requires some patience but it is rewarding.

Generating Randomness

What you do here is generate a layer full of random coastlines. You will then selectively pick the shapes and edges you like from the randomness and paste them into your master layer.

Generate some randomness some using the Clouds filter and apply some Posterization to it.

This creates a layer filled with random, fractal looking shapes. You’re going to transfer sections and stitch them together in another layer but first you should decide which shapes look cooler: the black or the white. Your mind will naturally see the black pixels as “water”, but feel free to think inversely. Delete the color you don’t want.

Using Coastline Sources

It is time to choose bits or even whole cloth sections fo inclusion in the landmass. This will involve a lot of cutting, pasting, and layer merging, so create a new layer group called “Landmass Working”.

For my example, I’ve picked out an area in the Coastline Sources that I want to use as my primary island shape. I’m going to use that as the “base” shape and resize it to fill the area.

If you zoom in, you’ll notice that the edges are blurry. Don’t worry about that right now.

Spot-Welding Coastlines

At this point there’s a lot of cruft. You’re making an island, not a peninsula. Clean that up by deleting what you don’t want. Use the Marquee Selection tool or the Polygonal Lasso Tool to select large areas for deletion, and one of the various Eraser tools for finer detail. The Block eraser tool is good for this, as is the Pencil. Avoid using brush erasers at this point because they can be… fuzzy.

You’ll notice that there are now some stark edges. It’s a good thing you didn’t throw away your Coastline Sources layer! Fill in those edges with patches from the sources layer.

Now that the patch layers are in with the base landmass, move,rotate, and scale them into place like you did earlier using the Transform tool (<command>t). Once you’ve got them in the right positions, select all the layers inside of the Landmass Working folder and Merge Layers. Delete any cruft that you don’t want.

At this point you should have a respectable looking island. Its edges are going to be blurry in places but you’ll be manually fixing that with brushes later.

I will often use this method to create the coastlines for islands or areas that I have already designed at a larger scale. Just cut and paste sections from your cloud layer, move them into position, re-size and merge.