Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Fallcrest Map



Herewith two versions of Fallcrest; one for players, one for dm's.

39 comments:

Superhero Necromancer said...

Amazing work, Crazyred. How many hours does it take you to put something like this together?

töff said...

That's fantabulous!

I think I might like to see some short of variation in the beige color, maybe, in the middle where the cliff face is, to better distinguish the highlands from the lowlands.

It's really beautiful. Did you use an underlying perspective grid? or did you just freehand it.

brandykruse said...

Thanks Necro! as for how many hours.... I really should keep track of things like that. A month of lunches?

Thanks Toff! You're totally right about the shading, so I threw some on, quick-and-dirty like. And yes, I used a separate layer for a grid which I slid around underneath the drawing.

töff said...

It's a wonderful piece. What size is the original?

brandykruse said...

It's a photoshop drawing, so the 'size' is around 20 megs and about 2300 pixels. I did the roughs on three pieces of legal paper, taped together, then scanned.

Anonymous said...

Crazyred this is amazing and inspiring. Can you describe your process in more detail? I would like to try my hand at developing some similar illustrations for the 4E D&D game I play with my kids, but I really have no idea where to start.

brandykruse said...

Sure thing Lunar! Email me, and I'll be happy to bore you endlessly.

Douglas Bowie said...

ROCK! It's really amazing. My players really go wild for these. The 3d relief helps them envision the city the way it should be.

Thanx,

Doug

Amy said...

You've outdone yourself!

brandykruse said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Very nice! I showed this, along with the Winterhaven map, to my players and they were all very impressed.

The only problem I had with it is that of scale - everything seems close together and it doesn't seem like a city you could fit all the occupants into. I just mentioned to my players that everything they see should be mentally padded out by a few hundred houses.
I understand the limitations of the canvas and on your time, though, so it's still very awesome!

brandykruse said...

Yeah, it seems a little off doesn't it? Even with, say, 5 people per residence, you'd have-- what? -- room enough for 500 citizens?

In my defense, my main goal was to create a map familiar to everyone who owned a DM guide. While not an exact recreation, I followed the Fallcrest map pretty closely. In order to cram in another hundred shacks and hovels, I would've had to make some major revisions.

However, I take comfort in that there are lots of weird things about Fallcrest: Three gargantuan temples in a town of 2000? A 'secret' cave that's pretty much up where everyone can see it? a 150 foot high bluff which people scale just to get to the market? It's a nutty place.

Thanks for the comment! =)

töff said...

Re population 500 ... you could assume a large hinterland of rural folk who would travel regularly into town, maybe even daily, but not live there, so their residences would not show here. I mean, look at Manhattan.

Unknown said...

WoW that looks amazing, I'm using it in my own home brew game :)

Are you working on any other maps in the nentir vale?

Maps like that just make the game more fun.

Thank you so much

brandykruse said...

Thanks Iyar!

I'm coming off an extended vacation, but have been thinking a bit about Hammerfast. Probably not a true map (at least initially) but I'll be posting some of my roughs soon.

Geek Ken said...

I think the map is lovely. Teeming with enough details to inspire players to point on it and say, 'I want to go there.' I think you've inspired a lot of DMs to revisit Fallcrest. Thanks tons for working on this.

Greg Johnston said...

So, what are the heraldry supposed to represent around the edges of the map? Available guilds in town?

aglimme said...

These maps really are so cool, it's so much fun to hand them out to the group. Is there a tip jar around here somewhere?

Falke said...

Already been said, but:
Amazing!

brandykruse said...

You guys are too kind; all I did was dress it up a little bit.

@Brother; the heraldry, let's see -- the stag I was thinking would be the Marklehay family crest. The Owl could be for a crest for the wizard in the tower, the blossom I took from the Wiki page on war of the roses I believe -- intended to stand in for whatever imperial state has replaced the Nerath empire. The wheel over the water is the badge of the Porters, the only non-noble organization represented (there's power in a union!).
Up top is mostly b.s. Perhaps the hammer is some house from Hammerfast? I'm rereading "The Winter King", so the foxes are for the traitorous king, Gundleus.
The rest I think I swiped from the cover of "the world of Greyhawk" at random.

Corey Macourek said...

Fantastic cartography style from a fellow cartographer. I do the Game Mastery maps for Paizo Publishing. I'd love to see these little vignettes in the gutters and white space of Kobold Qtrly or any D&D publication. I do love the perspective and the call out of darker tone detail for the key adventuring spots. I agree with the comment to differentiate the higher ground to the lower ground. A nice digital overlayed color ramp might be a subtle trick. Keep up the great work!

Rotxo said...

I like your drawings, it´s quite well!!!
We actually play in Fallcrest and If doesn´t mind you I´m going to publish those drawings in my blog http://eld20rojo.blogspot.com/


THANKS
Best regards from Spain

brandykruse said...

Thanks Rotxo! Naturally, feel free to use/repost any of the stuff you find here, the pleasure is all mine. =)

Unknown said...

Simply amazing work! I've just discovered your site (better late than never) and I'm blown away.

Your maps remind me of Sergio's Groo the Wanderer comic books I read in my youth. If I was wealthier I'd commission you to do all my campaign mapping for me.

Your latest fan,

Sid

brandykruse said...

Thanks Sid! I'm a big Sergio fan myself and make a point to rip him off whenever I'm stuck. =)

Noumenon said...

I think the half-open tower in the upper left is much more evocative in the version where the "fallcrest" logo isn't covering it up.

brandykruse said...

Great criticism Noumenon, I think you're right. I appreciate any way to make this stuff clearer and more appealing (evocative, great word). Thanks!

robtheman said...

Incredible! Thank you!

Unknown said...

Very nice work. Thanks for making this available.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful - WOTC should hire you.

Berliad said...

This is rather after the fact, but thanks so much for this. It's spectacular and brings the town to life in a way that the wotc sketch did not. It convinced me to use Fallcrest in my campaign, simply because of this drawing!
-B

Jackademus said...

This map is ABSOLUTELY beautiful, Brandon. As an artist myself, I want to try my hand at doing my own for later campaigns, but I hope you don't mind us using this one for our first trip to Fallcrest.
Absolutely fantastic work, I love it!

Unknown said...

Hi, this map is ... WOW ... unique. Today I will introduce some kids to our rpg hobby with help of this map. I am wondering if you tried to do night version?

Anonymous said...

I love your work (and have purchased both Mistwyk and Woodmuir from RPGNow. I just wish you were still drawing. Not only in the Nentir Vale (I'd love to see you branch out into something like Thunder Rift too), but also your Call of Cthulhu stuff was truly amazing. Please come back and start blogging again!

Adventurer said...

Hi do you do commissions?

I would be interested in hiring you to do a map of Brindol in the Elsir Vale in this style

:)

Adventurer said...

Returning to check if anythings changed. What I said above still goes...

brandykruse said...

Hi Adventurer! Sorry for the delay. I just HAPPENED to see your comments after reblogging some of my dungeon23 stuff. I'm pretty busy these days, but keep in touch. I'm much more likely to catch you on twitter (if you're okay with that platform), so you can reach out to me there. who knows what my schedule will be like in the future! :)

PJ said...

any chance of getting this drawing with no numbers at all?

PJ said...

by the way, the map is gorgeous