For years I spend hours drawing up my maps, then with the advent of home computers I spent probably as much time making maps that were arguably no better than those hand drawn. I still like to come up with my own maps when its a special pet project in the game but for plain old villages and such Ive gotten into the habit of just googling until I find one that fits pretty well then maybe altering it a bit with a graphics program and moving on. Im not selling the things or anything so I don't think there is a copyright issue but sometimes I feel a little guilty. Still, it is a massive time saver, I would think some you minimalist prepper types would have to use something like this in your games.

Who else takes advantage of the web and is there a place you tend to frequent for good maps?

Cartographer's Guild
Dyson's Delves
Deviantart

Those should keep you downloading for a while.

No artistic talent. I type D&D then whatever map I'm looking for. Tons come up. I've taken to pasting small pics right in the sheet so I can fill them as I play. I DO make use of hexographer for the campaign map, though. Does what I need it to.

"In the practical arts and the fine arts, bricolage is the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available (found things, things at hand, etc)."

Welcome to the club.

Quote from: rgrove0172;925156For years I spend hours drawing up my maps, then with the advent of home computers I spent probably as much time making maps that were arguably no better than those hand drawn. I still like to come up with my own maps when its a special pet project in the game but for plain old villages and such Ive gotten into the habit of just googling until I find one that fits pretty well then maybe altering it a bit with a graphics program and moving on. Im not selling the things or anything so I don't think there is a copyright issue but sometimes I feel a little guilty. Still, it is a massive time saver, I would think some you minimalist prepper types would have to use something like this in your games.

Who else takes advantage of the web and is there a place you tend to frequent for good maps?

Agreed; the various national Architectural Surveys have a lot of really good maps. It's where I got my palace, the original of which is located in Kerala, India.

US Geological Survey has got some good stuff for overland maps. I cannot remember where I found it, but there is a map out there of the Catacombs of Rome that has been pretty inspirational for me.

Quote from: rgrove0172;925156Who else takes advantage of the web and is there a place you tend to frequent for good maps?

I often nab stuff on the Internet. Kruger gave some good starting points,

Cartographer's Guild - check
Dyson's Delves - check
Deviantart - mostly for images of NPCs

Quote from: cranebump;925167I type D&D then whatever map I'm looking for.

Yep, tons of villages, castles, and various buildings for D&D. I also use Pathfinder as a search term though more when looking for character stuff.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;925229Agreed; the various national Architectural Surveys have a lot of really good maps. It's where I got my palace, the original of which is located in Kerala, India.

Yep, there are tons of real live maps and floor plans. Some floor plans even include map keys - though sometimes I have to translate the key into English. Generally I don't go to national sites per se. Instead, I search for specific things e.g. Medieval Castles, Renaissance Buildings, Tudor houses or locations e.g. Ancien Paris, Orlean's city plan, etc. You can also look up by engravers name e.g. Merian for historical maps of different locations by the same person. I yak about this stuff a bit on my blog.

A few years ago when I was running a Raveloft game set in Gothic Earth, I used Google Maps, Paint Shop Pro 7 and Photobucket (when they had filters) to make this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]469[/ATTACH]

I steal maps from the internet all the time.  Most recently I needed a plan for a Caribbean fort for a pirate game, a google and I had one, along with a little bit of history to go with it.

I also find illustrations for monsters, NPCs, treasures, and all sorts of other stuff. My games would be the poorer without image search.

Yes, here tool. I have a bit of artistic talent and used to draw up my own stuff all the time but it just seems silly now with so much available. I can get some great ideas too just from looking at Google images as well.

I use 3DEM software, or I go browse on DeviantArt.

Quote from: Krimson;925531A few years ago when I was running a Raveloft game set in Gothic Earth, I used Google Maps, Paint Shop Pro 7 and Photobucket (when they had filters) to make this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]469[/ATTACH]

I like how you kept various real countries as "Dire Realms". Most of those are suitable.

Quote from: RPGPundit;926999I like how you kept various real countries as "Dire Realms". Most of those are suitable.

Thanks. I may remake it at some point particularly after finding out just how small the Domains of Dread really are. Barovia for instance is smaller than the city I live in. The nice part is you can fit a domain almost anywhere you may thing is a good location. Eastern Europe seems to be a good location for Gothic Horror, having a different and more isolated feeling than Victorian England or the Wild West.

The Ukraine should have a region full of evil radiation.

Quote from: RPGPundit;928141The Ukraine should have a region full of evil radiation.

Chernobyl is a pretty tiny region. I don't think it's more than 2km across. It's even smaller than Barovia. I'm not sure I'd do something like a radiation zone unless I had some tech reason why it would happen in the 19th century. I might be more inclined to make a magic Dead Zone, which would probably be more frightening to characters. I really should make a new map though. Heh, I could try making a hex map and OSRify it.