Ask us anything - our answers (Patreon)

Thank you for all of the questions you posed yesterday - we’ll try to answer as many as we can here. We’ve grouped questions roughly by type and have combined a few where appropriate. Be warned, the post is very long!

Map-making process questions

Q. Do you use stock art to create parts of the maps, or draw it all?  What kind of programs do you use to create your maps?

A. We use photographs for the basis of many of the textures we build into our maps, but they’re heavily modified and often combined and blended with other textures and effects. We source these images from online libraries but also take our own at places like castles and churches. When we need to though, we draw things directly.  All the art work is done using Photoshop (CC2017 currently) but processing and creating the pdf is done using InDesign and Acrobat.

Q. How do the two of you separate the process between you, or is it a free-for-all? Do you ever "trade jobs" when working on something, if you do separate duties?

A. We have very separate duties really!  Sarah designs about 95% of the maps (sometimes Joe gets a wild idea and insists on drawing it), names everything (an overly complicated process usually involving researching etymology and toponymy), writes and puts together the adventure supplement, does the boring financial stuff and has the final sign-off on the maps. Joe does the long, long work of creating and putting together all the textures and objects in Photoshop to create the artwork for the map, all the processing work (creating the pdfs and different file versions and uploading the products) and for the adventure supplement; the monster stats and sketches. We discuss the exact look of things throughout the Photoshop creation process and we’ll both do research when necessary.

Q. Do you plan on doing any kind of tutorials or a full video of how you create a map?

A. It would be nice to do more of that sort of thing and we will consider putting something together for patrons in the future. 

Gaming and inspiration questions

Q. I know you got started with Heroquest. Do you have any fan created rules or classes you like to use in your games? Do you still play Heroquest?

A. So, for those that don’t know, this is how we got started making maps. We both had Heroquest as kids and picked up a copy on eBay for nostalgia reasons. Also because Joe is a nerd who likes to spend hours painting things. We played the campaign book a bit then wrote our own stories and started modding the game. Joe was inspired by things he saw online to make a massive polystyrene dungeon set. Four of us set it up to play for the first time on the floor one day. It was an absolute joke and was impossible to get around to move minis etc. Joe’s next idea was to make Heroquest-style boards but with different layouts, using polystyrene tiles glued to hardboard, carving the layouts and dry-brushing. He wasn’t very happy with those though and it eventually occurred to Sarah that Joe could deploy the skills he had picked up from many thousands of hours formerly spent on Photoshop making WWII plane textures for Il-2 Sturmovik (a flight sim) and just make maps to print for our games. Meanwhile, our modding of Heroquest had morphed into us creating our own ridiculous game – there were coloured tokens for HP, MP etc – which we quickly abandoned in favour of playing Pathfinder. Although we don’t play HQ anymore, it took us a little while to move our maps on from being quite ‘game board’ style, no doors etc. 

Q. What are some of your personal favorite RPGs and campaign settings? How have these influenced your map designs?

A. All of our campaigns are homebrew creations and are actually often influenced by the maps we have made. For instance, our recent Pathfinder campaign went on a rambling nautical adventure using our ship The Auspice (which some rude party members renamed The Horse Piss) after we had made a batch of pirate maps (such as Fort Crabclaw).  Our biggest source of inspiration is actually places we visit, but we also get lots of ideas from reading fiction, video games and movies – it’s hard to get through a fantasy or sci-fi film without saying “ooh we should make that!” for at least one or two settings. Our group is keen to play some sci-fi soon so we are building up maps and minis for that.

Q. Do you actually use your maps in your own games?

A. Um, we only use our own maps! That should make more sense in light of the explanation above on why we make maps in the first place. If we don’t have something that we need for a game, we just make it.

Product questions

Q. What is the first map you ever started selling?

A. Oh dear. It’s Greystone Dungeon 1. It is one of our Heroquest inspired maps (see above) and we have come a long way since then. We recently had a conversation about whether we should remove some of those very early maps from sale, but most of them still sell a copy or two each month, so they are useful for someone’s game!

Q. How well do the printed map cards do for you? Are you likely to make more of your products available that way?

A. They don’t sell many. Once we have made the template for a particular map size (20x20, 30x30 etc) they don’t take too long to produce from an existing map. The biggest barrier is the availability of suitable sized cards on DrivethruRPG, but for us, using their system is convenient as they deal with all stock issues. We are slowly working through the back catalogue, and do want to make more available, but it’s not massively high on our priority list for obvious reasons. 

Q. I see you are now adding small file size versions to be more easily VTT friendly. Which map did you start doing that with?

A. We started doing the VTT-sized files with Harwenna’s Tower, and have included them on every map since. The plan is to eventually try and go through the back catalogue and add the VTT ready files for those too.

Q. Will there ever be a full back catalogue bundle for those of us that learned about your maps not too long ago?

A. Sadly not. When we hit 100 products a few years ago we put a full bundle together and DrivethruRPG informed us it was too big and couldn’t be sold. A technical reason to do with server demand. We should probably have a look at making some more smaller bundles.

Q. Have you ever considered doing overland maps, like hexmaps for exploration games?

A. Yes, and Joe likes making overland maps for our own games. However, their quality isn’t at a place yet that we’d feel confident selling them alongside our battlemaps. It’s something we’d like to explore though in the future.

Future plans

Q. Are you going to develop a really large island?

A. Tell us more about what you have in mind and we might!

Q. I own several of your early maps that have no doors or furniture. I have the free door download that allows me to add doors to the buildings, which is great. I was wondering, would you ever release a product containing just your furniture so we can furnish those early maps?

A. The effectiveness of the objects is highly dependent on lighting/shadow effects, and are tweaked in situ so that they fit with the map. They don’t really work that well in isolation, so it’s always something we’ve had reservations about doing.

Q. Do you ever take commissions? Specifically, there have been some really cool map ideas in the alternate map of the month polls that would be exciting and useful to see. Would you consider commissions for making a few more alternate versions of the monthly maps?

A. Argh, we agree about the alt suggestions! When we make the shortlist we get a good feel for what each map would look like and feel excited about them, so it is quite sad for us when some of those don’t win. It is a topic that is on our minds.  We do take commissions so get in touch (email/message) if you’d like something.

Technical questions

Q. On some of the modular tile sets are there any tricks you’d recommend to get them to line up in a VTT? For whatever reason, I can never get them seamless from tile to tile. I’m guess they aren’t optimized for grid-snapping but I figured I ask if there might be a trick to save me a little time, like with the sewer set.

A. We’re not sure there’s an easy answer. We don’t use Roll20 (or any other VTT) much, so we are not that experienced in getting tiles to snap together. When we have used Roll20 we just built the tiles together in Photoshop into a single image, and imported that, so there was no issue for us. It’s something for us to look into though.

Q. How do you print on of images on A4? Basically what software can be used to print posters and how?

A. The pdf we produce has the map chopped into sections that fit on A4 (the international standard), so you can print directly that way. Almost all files can be printed on US Letter size paper instead. Any modular tiles that don’t have much space around them can be scaled down to 1” grid size to fit letter paper (instructions are in our pdfs). You can also get the full jpgs printed, chopped into whatever sizes your printer can handle. We always get our maps printed at a professional print shop (and not at home), chopped in Photoshop to fit on A3 paper. There are various free third-party programs (such as Posterazor) that will chop a large image into smaller sections, and you can even specify an overlap etc.

Q. Do you have any comments on sticking digital map files together? Any recommended picture editing program?

A. We do all our work in Photoshop, but something like the free program Gimp would work. Also, Map Forge (a recent Kickstarter that’s due out soon) is built around the concept of sticking digital tiles together and generating a large poster for printing. Essentially, you just want an image editor that can handle layers. Move the tiles into the arrangement you want and save the whole image as a jpeg.

Thanks everyone – we will do another of these in future as it gave us a lot to think about. If you made it to the end of the post, please go and enjoy a drink and a lie-down now!