Making dungeon tiles for online campaigns

[Yora]

I was thinking about running an online campaign next winter and when playing online a map really helps a lot to keep track of things, even with games that usually work perfectly fine without them. To be more flexible I wanted to start with making a set of 30 or so small maps with caves, ruins, river crossings, and the like to have something to pull out for random encounters happening on the road. You can mak the indoor ones with multiple entrances and block the ones you're not using, turn them with other sides facing up, and when you populate them with different innhabitants in different rooms they won't feel the same even with repeated uses.

However often you need much larger dungeons that should be unique and I was thinking that maybe you could also make small tunnel or corridor pieces with which you can connect two such map by just pasting it on top.
But why stop there? There was a D&D videogame 14 years ago called Neverwinter Nights which looked butt ugly and I think the story was awful, but it had a level editor that was fully based on tiles and which let even people with no previous skills make large levels very fast. It was a really ugly game and the tiles you could pick from led to absolutely ginormous rooms because you still had to be able to click all the characters in a fight. But the principle is solid. And when you do it in top down 2D it becomes all much easier to make the tiles fit together. You don't have to have to have the doorways of each tile match up perfectly with those of all other tiles. You can give each room solid walls and simply put a door symbol on top of it wherever you want it. It takes a bit of practice with something like Photoshop or GIMP but it's really very simple once you know the small handful of functions you need to use.

The simpler the art style the more flexible you get as there is less detail that needs to match when connecting tiles. It also means you can make new tiles and connectors more quickly.
I am a big fan of Dyson's black and white maps (https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/maps/). This still is relatively easy to make and highly flexible compared to other styles with lots of colors and textures. I also think they have a wonderful balance of providing just the right amount of detail to inspire the viewer to imagine what the place would look like if you're there. Enough detai to inspire, but not so much that you start thinking you're pushing around figures on a model terrain. In my own experience it really doesn't take a lot of detail to make me treat the map as the game instead of a visualization aid.

Now the question: How many styles of different environments do you think I should make and what kind of special features should there be that can be placed on the floors of the rooms? Things like ditches, pallisades, pillars, and so on?
Any other ideas what I should keep in mind when drawing a well stocked folder of rooms?

[Ninja_Prawn]

Now the question: How many styles of different environments do you think I should make and what kind of special features should there be that can be placed on the floors of the rooms? Things like ditches, pallisades, pillars, and so on?
Any other ideas what I should keep in mind when drawing a well stocked folder of rooms?

My first thought in all this is that a map is nothing without monsters. I don't know if you've read Angry's 'kickass combats' articles (http://angrydm.com/2014/10/the-angry-guide-to-kickass-combats-part-3-lets-make-some-fing-fights-already/), but the ideas there seem relevant.

So, if it was me, I'd start with a matrix. One axis would be environments, so forest, urban, mountain, aboard ship, etc. and the other would be enemy type, so solo flyer, melee horde, combined arms, etc.

Then at the intersection of each, I'd do a super-quick meditation on how to make the fight challenging. Maybe the urban/solo flyer one would have lots of rooftops and ladders to get the party jumping around.

One simple gimmick for each map is enough, and if the matrix covers all the scenarios you need, that tells you straight away how many maps you'll have to make.

Also, make sure you have a 'campsite' map, for when the party gets ambushed at night. That's always useful.

Edit, because I forgot about the loose furniture. I'd let that fall naturally out of the map designs. So, say you've got a map that is a kitchen in a manor house. That's going to need some kind of cauldron, tables for preparing food, a wall rack for pots and pans... all of which invite player interaction and might turn out to be useful on other maps.

[Yora]

That comes later when assembling the pieces. I am still at a very early stage of making the pieces. But pieces for trenches, barriers, pools, pits, and so on are quite important to have. Without them any dungeon you make will be somewhat bland.

Here is the first paper prototype I made today:

http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/P_20160831_132001_2-e1472645333260.jpg

I think it looks very promising. The cave shapes don't look like they are made from blocks. When using digital tiles the seams should be almost invisible. That's the big advantage of using very little textures. The shaded areas will be transparent in the digital tiles so you can use whatever background color or texture you want for the inside of walls.
An advantage of having walls transparent and floors solid white is that it becomes much easier to add tunnels by just pasting tunnel tiles over walls.

I am currently working on the first set of digital tiles but unfortunately that computer has no working internet connection right now so I can't show a picture.
Very plain looking as of now, but already functional.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Very plain looking as of now, but already functional.

They do look pretty good. What do you need help with? Just some lists of environments and furniture?

[Yora]

General ideas for content, I'd say. It's an early idea I've not tried before and I'm looking for input what others think about the idea and how it could be improved.

Here are my two templates for the Caves and Mines tile sets. The Castle and House sets will require different types of tiles as they don't usually have these huge walls. I will also make special connector tiles that show a smooth transition from one tile type to another.

http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/blank-cavern-tiles.png
Small tiles are 4x4, large ones 8x8.

http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/blank-tunnel-tiles.png
Narrow tunnels are 1 square wide, medium tunnels 2 squares, and wide tunnels 3 squares.

The room tiles will be in three versions each and the tunnel tiles in two. That should provide a lot of variation so people won't notice the same segments of wall all the time.
I will also do a few special tiles that are more complex and have smaller details than can be arranged with the 4x4 tiles, but no plans how many of them as of now.

The first obstacle that I noticed is that my photoshop skills aren't quite up to the task yet. To hide the seams between tiles the lines for the walls have to be exactly the same width and shade. Going with a 100% hardness brush works but it looks awful. I'll have to figure out a good way to deal with that.

[Ninja_Prawn]

General ideas for content, I'd say. It's an early idea I've not tried before and I'm looking for input what others think about the idea and how it could be improved.

Content as in tile sets? Or tile types? Or furniture? ...all three? I'll throw out some thoughts on all three.

Forest/jungle. Walls could be dense undergrowth, hedgerows, fallen trees. Might be difficult to draw.
Badlands. Walls would be rocks, cliffs, crags, ruined walls.
Temple complex. Similar to castle, just with a different flavour.
Maybe you could have some with a discontinuity in them? Like, exits on both sides, but no path between them. Or a crossroads that only allows you to go one way.
Also 8x8 ones that go straight across. You could fit a lot of interesting details into them that you can't on the 4x4 ones.
Most of this is stuff I've used on Roll20 at one point or another.

Sources of light:
Torches, wall sconces, braziers, campfires.

Actual furniture:
Tables, benches, chairs, stools, shelves, racks, cabinets, pallets, boxes, bins, bags, barrels, beds, bedrolls, torture devices, chests, coffers, bridges, doors, tents, barricades, rugs, shrines, altars, doors, gates, portcullises, junk.

Statues.

Plants:
Potted shrubs, wild trees & bushes, herb planters, flower beds, moss patches, giant fungi, vines.

Natural features:
Stalagmites, water pools, crystals, loose rocks & rubble.

Spell-like effects:
Grease patches, entangling vines, grasping tentacles, webbing, bloody smears.

Animal things:
Bones, carcasses, refuse, dens, kennels, cages, coops.

[Yora]

Tiles are really most useful for walls. I think for outdoor areas it's probably more practical to start with a white surface and add individual tree symbols, building symbols, roads, and so on. Pools and rivers could be done tile based and those could also be placed on the floor inside large caves.

With placable objects (I find myself falling back to NWN editor terminology) I would stick to using them sparingly. My intention is to make visual aids that inspire to visualise, not create a top down view on a miniature model landscape. So I think it's best to stick to the essentials, which is stuff that becomes important in combat situations. To me that would be fences, palisades, pilars, pits, and fireplaces. Maybe also tables and large stacks of crates but I would not put small moveable things into the map file or printout itself. Chairs, chests, and smaller stuff can better be left to the GM describing the place.

But awesome idea, part 2: I plan to use the maps in Roll20 myself, which lets you put images on top of the underlying background map. I used that method in the past to hide secret doors on my old fancy full color maps (which took way too much time to make for regular use). Instead of making the roof symbols part of the map image they can be used as removable objects. Under which you put the inside of houses made from house tiles!
When the players enter you just remove the roof and you can move inside without changing the map. All this requires is to have roof tiles so that you can quickly make custom roofs that fit the shape of the house.

I already have four ideas for special tiles. The deck and inside of a junk and a schooner. Because those are the two common types of ship used in my setting.

[Âmesang]

I tried making an online map (https://www.schadenfreudestudios.com/dnd/map/map.php?game=scap&map=cathedral_feathers_underground) once… though I still haven't finished it, actually, but the game's long since ended so that's irrelevant. :smalltongue:

Obviously I was really, really cheap when it came to making tiles and tokens, but then I was more focused on coding the drag-n-drop function. Still, looking through an image editing program's tile/pattern list helps for coming up with tiles on the fly.

[Yora]

I want to make it as user friendly as possible. I don't think the makers of graphic software had 560x560 pixel patterns in mind with the pattern tools, but it could probably still work. HexGIMP even lets you do a hex based tile map. Which I used to make this (http://spriggans-den.com/?p=153).) Making it work with square tiles should be easy.

I also figured out how to make consistent lines. (Eitherwith the Select Area tool and having the computer make the outline or with the smooth stroke option for the brush.) So work can commence today and I might have some first actual results to show later.

Here is prototype #2:
http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Screenshot_20160901_121310.png

I used only the most plainly shaped tiles so the caves both look very featureless. It's at 50% zoom, in Roll20 they would be twice as big.

I also used only 4x4 and 4x8 tiles and none of the 8x8 tiles and as you can see these are pretty big caves even though the smaller one is made up from only 14 tiles. I think 4x4 might be better as large tiles and 2x2 more practical for small tiles. It also needs more decoration. Straight black line as walls doesn't look inspiring at all.

The good news is that you probably can't see where the edges of the tiles are. I made the tiles and I made the two caves and I still have to count out the squares to find where the seams would be.