Joel Pigou

Your question made me realise that I don’t seem to have a go-to base for setting up a map at the moment. I just went and got out all of the maps I’ve made recently for the campaign I’m running, and each one is completely different, with a different starting point! I’ll try to explain each of them starting clockwise from the 3D model:

3D Model - I made it from this book (”Make This Medieval Village" by Usborne Cut-out Models) and omitted or added features relevant to the story in this town. This is actually still waiting for the next session, so I haven’t tested it yet, but it’s very time-consuming, so not something I’d imagine is possible for every session.

Book - How to Draw Fantasy Art & RPG Maps - this is so good, I just bought it last week and I’m really enjoying flicking through the tips and ideas!

Map with burned edges - This was the end result of me playing around with these cartography Photoshop brushes (by @joelpigou). I like how quick and easy it is to drop these down and create a whole landscape in a short amount of time. 

Rivermeet Map - I was messing around on this site which generates town maps. It’s a really useful tool that lets you input basic info, and toggles for it’s appearance. I played around until I got a shape I liked, then printed it out and traced it by hand to give it a bit of my own style.Isometric Dig Site Map - Shout out to r/IsometricDnD/ for inspiring me to give my own iso map a shot. I printed out an iso grid from Google and drew out the area in pencil until I was happy, then went over with pen adding details. This is quite time consuming, and I was frustrated that there were large areas you couldn’t see because of the view angle.

Top Down Map - This was the inside of a cathedral/monastery the players were visiting. This I drew on top of a dotted grid I also printed out from Google, and went over in pen for the final details.