After three weeks trekking into the mountains your party has made it to the remote temple. Well, almost... the monks who defend its sanctity will not be easy to pass by. Roll initiative.
The picturesque beach ahead looks serene, but several locals went missing here while swimming recently. What lurks beneath the waves or in the rocks that would leave no trace?
Watch your step! Just a couple feet off the road is a twenty foot sheer drop into frigid water.
Past the small opening, the cave opens up into a large chamber. It's freezing inside, but the air is still. Who or what might have made this their home for the winter?
The road ahead winds past small cliffs nearby. This area is known to be dangerous, it's all too easy to hide in places like this, and brigands take advantage.
This isolated, walled homestead looks closed for the winter. Snow is piled high on the roof. You wonder if anything of value was left behind.
Even the water appears to glow here. The falls are beautiful, but it is hard to tell how deep the water is.
Based on the number of votes, these cavern maps aren't as liked as outdoor ones. Don't worry, winter maps start again tomorrow ;)
The ceiling above stretches into the distance, and it is hard to tell if the glimmer of light above is an opening to the outside or another light source. In front of you, a portal hums resonates with power. To what place or plane does it go?
Huge luminescent crystals occupy this massive subterranean space, filling it with light. The massive chamber stretches into the darkness ahead. How many of your party have Darkvision?
Along the path, the catacombs you were told are off limits are already opened. It's unnaturally dark inside. Ready your torches.
This small settlement in the woods doesn't look as inviting as you had hoped, and you don't see tracks from recent activity despite the lights still being on. Worry creeps in that something awful has happened here recently.
Artificially made with Midjourney. Tbh the drone-looking-down perspective what I aim for.
P.S. these are made with Midjourney (AI). I want to make the best maps I can with it, and want to work towards better layout/perspective control. It's pretty limited and I discard a lot of maps that aren't close enough or whose layout is poor, but I'm still learning.
They work best for VTT and random encounters throughout the world, as opposed to boss fights where you want to be more careful with mechanics. For this one, 24x24 works pretty nicely. It varies from map to map. I do want to get better at provided pre-gridded versions at the correct grid scale and am working on printable PDFs as well. Though as noted, VTT works best when it isn't perfectly top-down and grid-aligned.
To me map style is a spectrum. On one side is essentially no graphics--grid paper maps, and fully focused on the mechanics. On the other is almost full 3d and even animated, and sometimes the mechanics side suffers a bit for style points.
There isn't one, but that's too good of an idea not to do. Midjourney was not helpful this time, so I added it by hand haha.
Midjourney's coin
If you open in a new tab and look close enough... :P
This is the last map of the desert pack from patreon.com/maunamaps. Next up: Some autumn-themed maps!
This is neat! I've been using Midjourney, but it's looks like I need to diversify 🤯
It is something I'm interesting in exploring. There are multiple challenges in AI map generation. I think it will be a lot of work to get right. In particular, maps are made up of many parts, and their image names alone do not describe the parts of the image, and often time are colorful and don't even describe the map in a specific way.
For instance, a tavern map might be named "Weary Tavern" but how can the AI model know which parts are tables, chairs, stairs, bars, and so forth, so that they can be produced from a prompt?
I'm not sure how tagging parts of images for training works in stable diffusion but it's on my list to check out when I have the bandwidth.
Aye, many map makers publish gridded and ungridded versions. I've started with just ungridded since I figure it's easy enough for someone to add one if they want, but I can always add them too if it is wanted.
Also these maps fall into a more environmental style, where elements don't conform strictly to a grid system (but one can still be used). These tend to feel more natural and thematic but if you're a stickler for a grid to be clear on which cells are cover, etc, then you'll use maps that starts as a grid and the art is drawn into it.
Very cool work. I just saw this on my twitter feed too. The perspective use is super interesting. Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections - Trying to find a useful way to represent something that doesn't always fit well in just one perspective.
That would be nice yeah. I discussed briefly in another post, I make these with Midjourney and retouch with GIMP. Midjourney is not great with exteriors. Heck even getting this was difficult. I'll see what the best interior ship I can make with it and post here so you can see the types of results it puts out. It won't be good.
I write the flavor text. Maybe the text was bland because the ship isn't that great. It is sort of generic with no particular style i.e. race or banner.
Bit of self-promo: Check out the full sized version of this map and 8 others in the Seaside Maps pack in my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/MaunaMaps. Each pack includes 4200x4200+ resolution maps, gridded, non-gridded, and printable PDF versions.