Battlemap Cobblestoning (Campaign Cartographer)

The first set of my Vallaki maps had grey streets, suggesting a paved surface that just didn't work.  They were quite bright and made the town feel too modern I think.  I changed that to a more appropriate brown aiming at a dirt (mud since, you know Barovia) surface.  That's the form I published the whole set with, dirt or mud streets and paths.

Then Reddit user PrideComprehensive37 asked about an alternate rendering with cobblestone main streets.  I hadn't tried that, so I took a stab at it.  I like the result, so I am redoing the whole set with cobblestone roads as well as adding mist and generally gloomifying things. 

This post outlines the steps I'm going through to cobble the roads. 

Original Image

Cobblestoned Image

Battle Map Gloomification (CC3+)

The most common complaint about my series of Barovian maps is that they are too bright, almost cheerful looking, which is really wrong for the setting.   I made the maps with the Dungeons of Schley (SS5) using the sheet effects pretty close to standard.  That makes for bright, easy-to-read maps that are, in fact, rather out of character for Barovia. 

Above: Original "Bright" Image

My first attempt at fixing this was to use Photoshop as a post-processor where I reduced saturation and darkened mid-range and dark colors to make it what I called Gloomy.  While that worked, at least after a fashion, adding a post-processing step is something to be avoided.  I just don't want to add extra steps to what is already a time-intensive task. 

My current approach is to set some global effects inside of CC3+ to achieve pretty much the same thing without the baggage of a trip through PhotoShop. 

This post shares the settings and shows the results in the two snips of the Mourning Gate area in this article. 

Adding Mist to a Campaign Cartographer Map

 Recently, I have been drawing a lot of Barovian maps.  That land is heavily misted, it's a major story element that really could use more presence on the maps I have drawn.  

Initially, I ignored this element as the mists are going to change dramatically over time and not showing any, maximizes visibility for the battle map at the cost of flavor.

I decided I had to have mists in the bathhouse that I located on one of the maps so I muddled through and developed a technique that works for me. Allowing a quite misty appearance without necessarily obscuring all of the details.  

At the request of a fellow CoS DM, I have taken on the task of updating the maps to have cobblestone major roads.  While I am at it, I have opted to add some misty areas to the maps.  This post highlights how I am going about that.

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Undead Fortitude (Roll20 Implementation)

 Undead Fortitude is one of those niche abilities that can occur never or often in a game.  As I have been running Curse of Strahd, I've had it occurring a lot.  The math is easy, but I'm lazy and want as few button clicks as possible.  Well, my laziness has been rewarded thanks to a thread I discovered on app.roll20.net.

A user by the name of keithcurtis posted a macro that enables a 1 click, 1 data entry path to displaying the actual DC and the relevant saving throw.  Pretty nifty!