Creating the Village Maps

I never explained my method of how I create the village maps and Robert, a commented asked so I figure I'd give a proper answer. I'm about done with village maps for now anyway. I consider them 100% public domain by the way. They started that way and although I value my efforts but I don't think I added enough to get precious about it.

What I did was find some wonderful 18th century maps of the areas around London on David Rumsey historical Map Collection and replace the existing (and to my mind ugly) black buildings with white footprints that popped out a bit better. I used white buildings that matched the common medieval buildings that I covered earlier on the blog (3-Bay Hall House, Open Hall house, and Saxon Hovel to give three levels of wealth. I expect some day to do bundle them all together and include GM maps using the Floorplans in the map (the way the Citystate of the Invincible Overlord did) and at that point I'll charge something for but the price would be low. Anyway the GM maps part was more work than I was willing to handle at the moment.

Specifically I create the maps using Photoshop. I adjust the contrast of the 18th century map. Remove any distracting and unwanted type using the stamp tool and generally clean things up. Then I add the footprints in another layer. Once you've got your basic footprints its a matter of copy/pasting and rotating and mirror imaging occasionally. Not particularly hard stuff.  I don't like the way Photoshop handles text so i'd add my own text using Apples Pages.

The images of the NPCs all come from the Nuremberg Chronicles, one of the first printed books which I think is kind of cool.

That link to David Rumsey's collection above goes to the composite map of the London area by the way, once you are on that site you can select the Author on the left and search by that name and get the submaps as well. Be careful as a map lover can spend hours searching on that site and most of it is old enough it should be in the public domain.

So Richard Parr, the actual cartographer in 1747, deserves most of the credit for the maps. I just picked areas that appeared more medieval and added village names, NPCs, and village details.