As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been playing with Inkscape a bit in hopes of putting together a decent wilderness map for my Forbidden Jungle sandbox campaign. Though not a work of art, I think this is not half bad:

Forbidden Jungle: Click for a full-sized PDF

Can you say “green hell”?

The red star beside the river near the center of the map is the trading post where the PCs will start. That point on the river is the farthest foothold that civilization had been able to establish in the region, and that foothold is tenuous at best.

The green mountains and hills are jungle-covered. The brown mountains and hills are some sort of a horseshoe-shaped plateau that is above the canopy and relatively tree-free. I’m not exactly sure how to show that yet. I’ll continue working on this as things develop but it’s probably as nice of a wilderness map as I’ve ever made.

UPDATE: Updated version is HERE.

Tags: Forbidden Jungle, maps

Bat in the Attic has a timely (for Kilgore) post up on mapping. I’m currently working on creating a wilderness map for my Forbidden Jungle campaign and am badly in need of all the help I can get.

My initial rough map of the region will serve the purpose of being a reference for laying out a more detailed area, but as my saving throw vs. Bad Art suffers from a -6 modifier due to a permanent No Talent curse I’ve decided to try my hand at computer graphics. Now, I have no talent there either, but I feel that I can learn enough to be dangerous get what I need.

After scoping out a few options, I’ve settled on vector graphics using the free Inkscape. The Old School Hex Map Tutorial by Alex Shroeder has helped immensely. I’ve got no background whatsoever using this type of software, but using some of the tips there and elsewhere, I’ve managed to surprise myself a bit.

Right now I’m sort of hung up on how to portray jungled hills and jungled mountains. I want to have trees for the jungle hexes and what I’ve got looks good enough, but I’m having trouble combining them well with hills and mountains. I hope to have a sample up soon.

Tags: Forbidden Jungle, maps