Photoshop and Dungeon Tiles redux
So I’ve said before that I have every dungeon tile set that Wizard’s has put out. I think they are cool, and useful. I even have multiple sets of some of them, for the big 8×10 tiles. But I’ve also said that once I buy something, it’s mine to do with as I please, as log as I’m not breaking anyone’s copyright or sharing on the internet.
I’ve been thinking about maps lately, whether scaling them off Dungeon magazine, or Wizards’ web site, or simply designing my own. I’m liking the idea of designing my own maps from my Dungeon Tiles on photoshop. It works a lot better for my needs.
I came up with this map today. It’s very simple, not a lot of features except for some ruble on the northen corners, and it could have easily been drawn on a grid with dry erase, but I like presenting stuff like this to the guys, rather than a white grid with dry erase.
I call it the Lizard King’s Throne Room. The pool in the middle is a portal to the Shadowfell, where his Shadar-Kai advisors manipulators come from. (Obscure, homebrew campaign related factoid…)
The room is extra big on purpose to accomodate the number of participants in the encounter, 8 pc’s + monsters…
Anyways, I posted this so you see how feasible it is to use computers plus your physical Dungeon Tiles to make some nice maps at home.
BTW, I printed this out using Microsoft Excel. It does in fact tile images into multiple papers when you print them out. My map scaling tutorial uses PDF, but I will edit that out, or make Excel the prefered choice for printing.
Would anyone want me to post this map BTW, at full scale, so you can print out on Excel? I can if you want, if not, I won’t bother….
Maybe I’ll make a map feature on the blog where I post custom made maps…. or take requests…. Hmmmmm…….
There’s a lot of excellent advice over on this thread covering how to create your own dungeon tiles from scratch using Photoshop. Well worth a read.
Paint Shop Pro works really great for this too. Comes complete with rulers, and an automatic grid generator…
CutePDF and Foxit Reader are both recommended as alternatives to Adobe’s bloatware.
Nice Work! Since my game is almost exclusively online, I’m looking after ways to create great digital maps. Did you tokenize individual features to place them from a pallet?
[...] 18, 2009 by fergusfinn Just a quick note: I saw this post from Newbie DM, he demos some really compelling looking maps based on scans of Dungeon Tile sets [...]
Fergus:
I did not, I just look through my stash of digitized things and use the snapshot tool in Adobe Acrobat.
I have Acrobat set to snapshot at the same resolution my document is in Photoshop, and paste it right in.
A pallet would take too much time to create!
Thanks for the link btw!
Thanks for the map layout to the Lizard King’s room!! Will come in handy this Sunday against him. Can you post his stats too? LOL
I’m very much interested in your full-size version. I’ve been making my own tiles and maps for a couple of months now, but sometimes the party just seems to chew right through them so it takes some time to prepare for each week’s session. I use Photoshop to edit the tiles and Illustrator (with a grid) to make maps.
@Nariah:
I will make it available for you. You can print it our fullsize in Excell.
NewbieDM, just came across your blog and really enjoying it. Thought I’d chime in here as I love making maps – battlemaps included, which I draw from scratch in Photoshop. Perhaps I’ll get round to posting them some time.
Anyhow, my reply is to say check out Posterazor for a cool program that takes image files and organises them to print to what ever scale you want over multiple page. Very easy, and free.
Cheers,
Shadowfane
Shadowfane, I have a tutorial on here for printing maps off adventures and dungeon magazine that actually uses posterazor.
Thanks for your comments and for visiting!