Map Help with the "Old World Style" set from the marketplace

Basically I am trying to make a city thats in a cavern right on the edge of a frozen cavern. The details aren't that important but its supposed to have a mixture of insane and regular buildings so I decided I could use the OWS 'other world' set to help accomplish this. But I'm having trouble actually figuring out how to place the buildings of the OWS set. As you can see I tried to start with some mines connected to the city, the tracks didn't sit well in the caverns and I couldn't figure out an easy way to place them but thats not important. When I went to place the buildings, I couldn't figure out, how I'm actually supposed to place them. I figured there would be some tracks leading from the caverns to a large open space surrounded by buildings and warehouses and stuff. And I wanted to get the buildings dense. No roads just alleyways. But I can't even figure out how to set two buildings beside each other. They look wrong when I over lap any, but when I don't overlap, they look artificial.

Russ has a bunch of tutorial videos on his facebook website, have you watched those? &nbsp; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/gaminggeeksindiana/videos" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/gaminggeeksindiana/videos</a> I know he frequents the forums so will probably see this post and jump in.

Hi Devlin, First be sure to turn OFF any grid (even an invisible grid), under Page Settings, for while making this kind of map.&nbsp;I'll help answer about the buildings from this set (advice applies for a lot of art packs that have perspective buildings that aren't directly from the top-down view). Start at the furthest-back point on the row of buildings you want; start at the top-left-most building. &nbsp;(This does not necessarily need to be the top-left corner of your map, to learn the technique make it the top-left building of a city-block that would be in the middle of your cavern.) &nbsp;After placing that first building, add your next building as one-closer-to-the-camera, so the building next-door to your first building will be 1 bit lower on the screen, usually lower and slightly to the right. &nbsp;Put your 2nd building graphic down on the map and scoot it up until it slightly overlaps or touches with the 1st building. OK? Now it should start to look like a row of houses. Keep going by placing these buildings from TOP moving towards Bottom of the map. &nbsp;If you mess up & go out of order, it is possible to fix it by right-clicking on a building and choose "Move To Front", but it can get complicated because we don't have full layer control, just Move To Front and Move To Back. For this reason it's highly recommended to start at the top (back of the city) and place the buildings going down the page so that the layers are naturally piled up in right order for overlapping. Additional commentary, I think the row-houses and Inns would look best side-by-side in rows as described in this technique. But some of the strange buildings certainly can be set-off on their own and won't look weird once you fill up the city more. &nbsp;Another important thing to note with this pack style is, "Roads" can be formed from the gaps between the buildings. It is not necessary to draw roads as lines. &nbsp;Simply fill up the areas that are "not road" with buildings, and it will naturally start to look good as rows and alleys to walk between the buildings. Hope this helps! The artist Russ Hapke may see this thread and offer other tips. p.s. Hopefully Russ will transfer those "Facebook" videos onto his YouTube channel

Hi Devlin! Aaron sent me the link for this thread. I have sent you a PM and I will be happy to help. I can already see from some of the items you have listed, I may have to create a few new items and share them...can't believe a warehouse was never included...hmmm... Gold - the videos are actually housed through my YouTube channel but I need to review what links I can and cannot put up in agreement with the content creator contracts. Excellent instructions on using the Roll20 editor with the lego style set!

The tutorials don't cover city making.&nbsp; Which seems to be significantly different than making a world map. But thank you Gold, I'll try starting from the top instead.

Okay I went and did my best to achieve a final product. Hopefully this will illustrate my problems where words fail me.

That looks great to me, good job! Just remember that unless you do all of the art yourself you'll never quite get that 'image in your head'... but given your description in the OP I'd say what you've pulled together there serves the purpose beautifully :)

Oh, thanks. I guess I was comparing it to the example maps I see made with the OWS which are really pretty. And felt wanting.

That's a problem with these pesky marketplace artists, they REALLY know how to best represent their product ;) We mere mortals can only ever hope to come close and I'd say you've done a fine job! Short of downloading the full set and putting something together in an external program and then sacrificing some of your library space uploading the full image I don't see what more you could of done =D

That is not too shabby at all. It's awesome. I would play or GM on that map readily. It should look pretty neat when the players are Zoomed-in a little bit too. Here is one more technique. Don't forget that in Roll20 or a graphics program you can use "Flip horizontal" to turn a row of houses facing the opposite way. Anything else specifically that you are trying to achieve?&nbsp;

Nicely done, Devlin! By clustering the houses and buildings, you've effectively created roadways. I like how you've used the bell towers to really define the 'don't go here unless asked' areas. You've created a very intricate and complicated map that is easy to understand. Nice! If you wanted to do a little more variety, you can resize in the editor as well to very the buildings or storage areas to make them feel more massive.&nbsp; And you are right, Devlin, I've not done a tutorial on creating cities or towns. I shall rectify that as soon as possible. Hopefully, it will happen in the next couple of weeks. Aside from a cities and towns tutorial, are there other video tutorials that would help?

@Gold, no I guess as long as it looks good I'm happy with it. I guess I just needs to learn to work from the top down instead of starting at the points of interest and working outwards. Thanks! @Russ Those are bell towers? I thought they were like watch towers with open walls for vision. Oops. And glad to hear. :) And hmm.. well perhaps not a tutorial but I am curious as to how you do the scroll edges right. By the way you make some of the best stuff for non-dungeon maps.

Devlin, those towers are what ever you want them to be. hahaha. I just remember seeing old spanish bell towers in S. America, so that is what I called them. PM me on teh scroll edge question. Not sure what you are meaning by that.

Devlin M. said: @Gold, ... I guess I just needs to learn to work from the top down instead of starting at the points of interest and working outwards. Thanks! Yes. There are some tips and techniques that can help. First is just planning your districts -- you did that -- and some subtle background colors, floor or textures, you did that. You can then overpaint large blobs for neighborhoods (it will later be covered up with detail and becomes just a part of the ground color). &nbsp;Secondly, plan the rest using plain squares for the buildings and delete them after planning; you would not need to place-map-features from the top down if it was an overhead map (non perspective). So you could plan / pre-draw your city as an overhead view just to get the arrangement of important building locations and work out from points of interest. Once you've made note, delete and over-draw with the Russ buildings now working from top-down so they stack nicely but following your plans. &nbsp;Granted there are some limitations of using Old World Styles to attempt to precisely recreate a plan of streets and grids, the town buildings in this are best-suited for 2 angles (regular way & Flip Horizontal way). They tend to form streets that X across the map, rather than cardinal directions. So these are best used for neighborhood density (in the way you used them) and also for Symbolic (where 1 building isn't = 1 building, but instead means something like "small village here"). I agree with Russ that you got the nice feeling of streets in your map, without drawing streets, just the gaps between buildings, and the sections that are almost too dense to pass through are intentionally impassable. If you're still editing, I would say you could make that stalactite temple on the left, even larger. Make it looming, because that would look cool, unless it's too outrageous for your setting. @ Russ "those towers" have been used for several places in my game... off the top of my head they have been a Church steeple, a Magic tower, a Knight's keep, the Ruins of an old keep, and stations along a city wall. One time a major magic artifact was stolen from that token when it was a church steeple (had a magic bell). Another time the party spent the night in the Ruins crumbling version of that turret and got ambushed by orcs inside & outside it, an assassin snuck in through the window. Another time the Dawn Priest got turned to stone in an underground dungeon and they took him as a statue to the top of one of those towers & let the morning sun hit him which turned him back to life.