Modern City Expansion Suggestions?

Hello Everyone, I'm the creator of the Meanders Modular Maps series and have been looking at some more expansions. I am planning an Oil Rig, Zoo, Funpark, Construction Yard, Shopping Mall - does anyone else have any Modern City requests while I am focusing on new maps for these sets? Currently I am also working on creating HP Lovecraft's countrytown of Dunwich and other Lovecraftian Cities and Settings that will make their way to the R20 store - with Superhero, Prehistoric and Samurai sets on the way as well. I'd have posted this in my regular thread but I haven't been here for a while and it appears to have automatically closed so I have had to make a new one. Kind Regards, Kris

Hello Kris, would you like the entire laundry list? While there is a decent amount of artwork to be found on Roll20 for Apocalyptic games: Modern/Contemporary assets are lacking in many regards. When I need to throw together a rural farm, or small hamlet in the Ozarks: I can borrow heavily from sets designed for Fantasy settings. But many features need to be either ignored or searched for on the net and manipulated into map. Modern Farm equipment - tractors, combines, trailers. Modern Farm features - grain silos, wind turbines, drying racks, etc. One artist on here asked once, and I asked him if he could convert his post apocalyptic casino set to an operational casino. We exchanged emails for several months and he finally said I should go look for information on the net. I never did finish that casino.... My suggestion to anyone building Apocalyptic sets is to build a usable Modern set right along with it. I don't know the process to make a set but I have taken artwork and "aged/decayed" it to what I was looking for.  A jail? The police are usually involved in situations; why not build out the police station? Then there are cars. Lots of various cars in different art packs. Why not some damaged cars? To show a car accident I basically pile them up and use some other shadowed artwork and things from other sets to make them appear damaged.  One I built from scratch was a "main street" with the shops and signs, etc, along a street. When/if Roll20 gets more layers, it will be nice to have the exterior view completely on the map and then be able to change layers to the interior. For now I just block the view until players enter a certain building. Speaking of roads: it is easy to build a road going past meadows, trees, etc with a cell tower here and there. Building any major roadways with the available sets is time consuming and a royal pain.  Another one I kinda-sorta built was a  truck stop. Could be a good addition to a freeway building set. Throw the ability to build a rest area and then one can build whatever road map desired. Throw some potholes, etc in.  I played in a game where the setting was in a hotel. Elevators, front desk, etc. Later I recreated my own hotel: took borrowing assets from about a dozen packs here on Roll20 and artwork off the net. A "business building set" might be handy. This is all just items that I could have used of course. Hope it gives you some ideas.

Excellent Erich, thanks a lot, just the kind of suggestion list I need - and I will make use of it. My present Modern set is compatible with my Apocalyptic Set, and my Zombie Apocalypse Set as they all share a special relationship and work with each other - but there's a lot of good useful ideas here, I will get to work. Cheers mate.

I'll add a Modern Shipping Yard and Docks to the set.  I agree with you as to the Farmland - I've made dozens of Fantasy maps for Farms and Fields but electric fences, modern farming equipment, tractors etc are lacking - I will work on a modern Farm set as well. A Police Station is a great idea - plus the cars to go with it. I have a lot of damaged cars in my Zombie sets - and as you suggest, the process is exactly as you say, making a Modern Set, and then "wrecking it". My Modern Set has power, shops, working infrastructure, is clean - then the Zombie Apocalypse Set is entirely ruined, the power is cut off, all hell has broken loose, an entire city gone berzerk, smashed glass, blood stains, abandoned cars, furniture used for barricades - essentially, devolving the city into chaos and telling a whole series of new mini-stories with each detail. Then the Post Apocalyptic Set is stripped of most furnishings which would have been ruined utterly or taken at some point in the future, dust and sand has crept in, the buildings are crumbling and stained with decay, fractured and collapsing in parts to rubble. Barbed wire fortifications, dug-ins, strategic ambush points, rusted car wrecks complete the scene - with the three Sets and their Expansions working as individual sets to set a scene in a particular time, and the combination allowing time to progress over long periods.  Speaking of which, I will have to also create Zombie and Post Apocalyptic versions of any new Modern maps I make. I've been working on 60+ Maps for Lovecraft Country with Alpine, Mountain, River, Swamp and Field Roads - I made a lot because Roads are a very necessary part of maps and you need many joins and types for realism and practicality, especially for a modular set and especially so if you want to have your players feel like they are lost among the winding foothills of the Miskatonic in some kind of Evil Dead deadite forest. I will turn my attention to creating a Modern Rural and Suburban Set too, with houses, powerlines, fences, properties. A modern Casino is a good idea too - I made a Sci-fi one that turned out very nicely, that would be a good inclusion, A hotel too - perhaps, will have to think about how to do that one. All that should keep me going for quite some time.

I'd love to see some Residential stuff as well. I own many of your packs, use them for my superhero game and stuff.  More Giant like Interstate and inner city roads without tons of building might be good too for car chases and what not.

Hi Verkal, I greatly appreciate the support you've shown my products then, thank you - a Superhero expansion will be coming soon - but I will most definitely be expanding the roads and residential. For all their perks and problem solving attributes, Meanders, have limitations: i.e. the placement of the roads was set a long time ago, and expansions have to follow that in order to fit with other Meanders Road sections. However - in the new Lovecraft Set my roads now go to new entrances/exits allowing a greater variety of roads: by creating additional special joiners that allow these new entrances to fit to traditional ones I can redirect traffic as it were. I will do the same with interstate.