modular Venice tiles

[cowboyleland]

I'm thinking about setting a Savage Worlds game in late medieval or early Renaissance Venice. Does anyone have suggestions about tiles I could use to represent a variety of places in the city? I need canals and bridges etc. Gondolas would be good too.

[Sirrob01]

Himmelviel from WWG has canals and bridges, you could look at garden of stone speakers as well.

[cowboyleland]

Thanks Rob. I'm going to keep looking for stuff less fantastic than Himmelvil, but I'll keep it in mind. Where do I find "Garden of Stone speakers?"

[Sirrob01]

Garden is another wwg product so it might be little to fantasy as well

[Tommygun]

Take a look at SkeletonKey Games at RPGnow.com, they may have some things you can use.
Also look at these two sets. They are for sewers, but they might work for canals?

e-Adventure Tiles: Sewer Chambers and Ptolus e-Adventure Tiles: Sewers

[BilliamBabble Inked Adventures]

Like above, I was just about to suggest using sewer tiles - the wider the better.

[cowboyleland]

So I'm thinking now if I had various widths of water, some curved and some straight with a couple styles of intersection I could just lie various thicknesses of cobbled walkway beside (and over them for bridges) and be ok. What I'd like for flavour is some top down views of renaisance buildings that would be a bit like the walls on Billiam's tiles. I'll have to do that myself, wont I?

[BilliamBabble Inked Adventures]

Call me insaaaane....

But perhaps there's way of taking some photo samples from Venice streets - via screen captures of Google Earth, then compressing them into strips with GIMP or photoshop using a perspective sheer?

(I'm sorry haven't got as far as producing anything like 3D/2.5D exterior walls for buildings ... yet...)

[Tommygun]

I can across this freeware map tile editor.
It is designed for computer games, but if you can find a way to print the maps at the right scale it may prove useful.

www.mapeditor.org/

[cowboyleland]

Billiam: that thought had crossed my mind. Which means we're both crazy. But maybe crazy like a fox. I'm gonna give it a try and see what happens.

Tommy(gun): I'll definitely look into that link.

Thanks to all who have pitched in. Feels good to have my "problem" taken seriously. ;D

[cowboyleland]

I spent a couple of hours with google earth and gimp but I have not been happy with the results. I think I'd be better of "old school" pencil and paper and maybe some water colours if I get ambitious. Google earth is a great visual reference.

Not to abuse the brain trust, but who has a suggestion for a boat I could bash into a gondola?

[Parduz]

Here's a Gondola paper model (it's old: 1957 ).
ilfavolosomondodicartaditoto.blogspot.com/2010/11/la-gondole-decouper.html
I guess it is simpler to start from here than from some different boat models.

Some inspiration links (plans or bigger paper models to look at):
www.veniceboats.com/it-modelli-kit.htm
capasoblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/paper-model-gondola-step-3.html
About Gondola asymmetry
fabycae.blogspot.com/2010/01/iuav-gondola-dalla-carta-al-3d-digitale.html

[cowboyleland]

Thanks Parduz! This will certainly get me off to a good start. I'm really intrigued by the gondolier too ;D

[afet]

If you are just looking for 2D tiles, I would recommend WOTC's new City set. It has modular canal pieces and a canal bridge. If you're interested in going 3D, Fat Dragon's Dragonshire Deluxe set, has a lovely narrow stone bridge, and the street tiles would be easy to convert into canal tiles. The look of Dragonshire is less fantastical than Himmelveil.

Here's a water tile that you could use as the image to turn the Dragonshire streets into canals.

[cowboyleland]

hey Afet,
I'm leaning 2d and I much appreciate the water. I think someone in my group might have the WOTC stuff, so I'll have a look at it before I buy. I also want to wait until they realise that the Canadian Dollar has been trading about par for months!!!

[afet]

Hi,
Here's an example of how you could easily turn the street tiles from FDG's Dragonshire deluxe into canal tiles. It would be quite simple to make narrower (10') canals this way. I may just start this as a project over at the FDG forum.

Cheers,



canalTintersection

[Parduz]

Nice, but you should make the water more.... muddy.
I think that Venice did not see clear water in the canals from centuries

[cowboyleland]

I was thinking the same thing. I'll add a layer of brown.

[afet]

Nov 29, 2010 14:19:24 GMT -9 cowboyleland said:

I was thinking the same thing. I'll add a layer of brown.

I agree. I'll have a look at some pictures of Venice and experiment with the colors. Since these are modifications of Fat Dragon textures, I've started a thread over at the Fat Dragon forum to work on this:
fatdragongames.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=fan&thread=1723

Cheers,

[cowboyleland]

I just tried to log in over there. Once I get the key email I'll check it out. BTW do you have a use for these things yourself?

[afet]

Nov 29, 2010 16:42:41 GMT -9 cowboyleland said:

I just tried to log in over there. Once I get the key email I'll check it out. BTW do you have a use for these things yourself?

Absolutely, I'll use them. And so will many others. Canals are a great transition to and from a waterfront. I asked Tom (the owner of FDG) to produce a canals set for Dragonshire last year, but at the time he held back so as not to compete directly with WWG. I have the WWG canals, and they are beautiful, but they don't really match the style that I was looking for. Now Tom's busy with other things, so I'm going to just take the bull by the horns and mod some canal tiles for Dragonshire myself.

[afet]

So I've finished the first set of canal tiles, based on FDG's Dragonshire Deluxe street tiles. Attached is an example of what they look like. You can find them all as pdfs here:
fatdragongames.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=fan&thread=1723&page=2#21654

Cheers,

[cowboyleland]

I did a quick mod of the "vintage" gondola that parduz linked above. It needs some tweeks, but I'm also thinking of just doing a flat boat "tile.


gondolatile by cowboyleland, on Flickr"

What do you all think?

[cowboyleland]

Parduz, I'm especially awaiting your critiques.
Afet, Do you think it fits in?

[Tommygun]

Do you think you could resize and mod one of Grendelsmother64 Viking ships into a gondola?

[afet]

Dec 8, 2010 16:32:49 GMT -9 cowboyleland said:

Parduz, I'm especially awaiting your critiques.
Afet, Do you think it fits in?

It looks reasonably good. Does it need to fit minis? I was thinking the same thing about modifying and resizing the viking ships.

[cowboyleland]

I scaled the plans from the site Parduz gave about asymmetry. So it is a little narrow for figs, but making it wider could make it look "pudgy". I'm afraid it is too long to get around some canal corners, but if I shorten it, it is either even narrower or even pudgier.

[Parduz]

It's hard to say something....
About place for miniatures (i guess that the base is the problem) I see not so much solutions:
1) Make it pudgy and live with it. It's even better than a flat tile
2) Build a sort of "chair" so that you can put the miniature base on it and have it go over the gondola borders. A bit of artist license, in this case. Or cut an horizontal slide on the gondola sides so you can inserts the base in them.
3) if your paper minis have removable bases, build slots for the minis tab and insert the mini in it putting the base aside.

Remember that Gondolas are very long (11 meters). They can turn in narrow canal just 'cause they have not so much "belly" in the water: the tip and the tail can "rotate" around the center, instead of just describing curves like other boats do.

Sorry for not being so much useful.

-edit-
I just want to add that the more you go back in the time, the more the gondola was shorter and larger. The actual proportions was adopted in 1800, but the Gondola exists from 1500 and it was not so thin and elegant.

[cowboyleland]

I'm leaning towards pudgy myself. (I mean making the gondola pudgier, I don't generally share observations about my waistline )