"Hand Drawn" style maps...

[Zeldor]

You can get FX-Foundry for GIMP. Sepoina Graf-ix from Artistic menu has nice effect [but you'd probably want to mix it a bit].

Sepoina Graf-ix



Sepoina Graf-ix + Oil Paint



Sepoina Graf-ix + Oil Paint + Split Tone

[lch]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Sepoina Graf-ix + Oil Paint

That's nothing more than a bevel filter effect.

[Gandalf Parker]

Are those images the results against an already hand-drawn map?
Id rather see the results against a generated map. Maybe lowering the colors way down, or taking it to greyscale, and then running those filters against it.

[Edratman]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Are those images the results against an already hand-drawn map?
Id rather see the results against a generated map. Maybe lowering the colors way down, or taking it to greyscale, and then running those filters against it.

I recognize that map. It is "Silent Seas", one of the maps that comes with the game.

[Lingchih]

Yes, it is Silent Seas. But a few of those look better than the Silent Seas that ships with the game.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Lingchih

Yes, it is Silent Seas. But a few of those look better than the Silent Seas that ships with the game.

I'm not sure about better, but I think I'd rather play some of those maps than the same old Silent Seas. I've played it quite a lot.

[Zeldor]

Yeah, all are modified Silent Seas, I just wanted to show it based on the very popular [mostly for tests and duels] maps. You can surely get better effects, I just played 5 minutes with random options - you can do that with every random map to give it more unique feel.

[Edratman]

Zeldor,

Could you do one of the game randomly generated maps? They are not as attractive as Silent Seas and would present another perspective to these tools.

[Zeldor]

I must admit that effects on redoing Silent Seas look better

But I think that even for random maps redone versions are much nicer:

Different settings of Sepoina:



Added Split Tone:


Some extreme example:



But yeah, I guess you need to spend some time and look for good options that will work well with random maps [and it may be a better idea to use that scripts against maps made in other editors, for example homm].

[Stavis_L]

Well, if you want "hand drawn look" without hand drawing skill...

AFAIK, the "gold standard" in fantasy maps is ProFantasy's set of tools.

See their example gallery here:
http://www.profantasy.com/evidence/gallery.asp

You can get anything from the kind of maps that they use in Dungeon mag to the kind that are in the Lord of the Rings books. However, it's not free (by a long shot, depending on how many of their tools you want), and it's based on CAD software, so there is a bit of a learning curve. I played around with it a bit when I was doing a lot of PnP RPG mapping, but eventually decided that it was easier to just search for things on the internet

However, it does do pretty "hand drawn" style maps.

There's also a product from NBOS software:
http://nbos.com/products/mapper/mapper.htm

...that lets you put vector graphics down on top of fractal based maps, and some of it looks quite similar to the Silent Seas map. Again, not free.

Then, there is the free option, AutoREALM, also inspired by CAD software. Not as nice and not as full featured, but it may float your boat. Here's an example from their SourceForge page where someone created some "Lord of the Ring-esque" style maps (and other things as well.):
http://autorealm.sourceforge.net/mapsROY.php

It'd be great to have some other map style options roll out of the auto-generator, but I'm guessing that the coloration options that Semi-Random and such gives (or at least makes accessible) are about as good as it's going to get.