I'm planning on making a map of the main town for my newest campaign that my players can view and figure out whats near to them. Does anyone know any ways to make it look old and worn?
I have done this in the past for a Pirate Party at my house... I wanted to make "authentic looking" parchment-style documents... Here are a few images with a list of things I did....First: I suggest doing a practice run on some paper that you don't care about....
(1) For the big map I hand drew it onto a huge sheet of newsprint paper... Then I spray-glued a second sheet of the newsprint to the back to make it thicker. For the smaller document I printed it on parchment style paper (just the stuff you can get at the office store).
(2) Wrinkle them up a bit... ball them up roughly... then un-ball them.
(3) Make "coffee".... But you want super dark coffee.... Use regular coffee grounds and a LITTLE bit of hot water.... You want really dark coffee... You can experiment with two densities of coffee too.. One that is really dark brown.... and one that is really REALLY dark brown.... (You DO want to FILTER OUT the coffee grounds themselves.) For the super dark coffee I actually added some INSTANT coffee to the coffee to make it crazy dark and sort of thick.
(4) For the edges I rolled up the page then DIPPED one end into the coffee "dye". You probably want to rotate and dip all four sides of the pages.... Dunking the whole map in clean water first (or spraying it with clean water with a mister) will have the added effect of "drawing" the coffee edges inwards and making the transition smoother. (In my examples I got the whole, big map wet... but the smaller document was not treated this way... so the coffee dye on the small document had fairly sharp, distinct edges, while the big map had smoother smearing of coffee dye.)
(5) Spread them out on the ground in the sun.. (best to do start this in the middle/earlier part of the day so that sunlight can shine on them for a few hours to let it all dry). Then "Paint" and/or "drip" the coffee onto the map.... You can drip multiple layers of coffee as the documents dry.... Also might use some actual DIRT and or rocks to lay on top as they dry.
When I was young I would create fake "leather" for drawing pictographs on by crumpling up pieces of brown paper bag into very tight balls, then uncrumpling them, getting them damp, and very carefully smoothing them out a bit. Then leave them to dry until they're safe to draw on. You could use this to make fake vellum I think, since that's essentially thin leather that people wrote on.
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I'm planning on making a map of the main town for my newest campaign that my players can view and figure out whats near to them. Does anyone know any ways to make it look old and worn?
I have done this in the past for a Pirate Party at my house... I wanted to make "authentic looking" parchment-style documents... Here are a few images with a list of things I did....First: I suggest doing a practice run on some paper that you don't care about....
(1) For the big map I hand drew it onto a huge sheet of newsprint paper... Then I spray-glued a second sheet of the newsprint to the back to make it thicker. For the smaller document I printed it on parchment style paper (just the stuff you can get at the office store).
(2) Wrinkle them up a bit... ball them up roughly... then un-ball them.
(3) Make "coffee".... But you want super dark coffee.... Use regular coffee grounds and a LITTLE bit of hot water.... You want really dark coffee... You can experiment with two densities of coffee too.. One that is really dark brown.... and one that is really REALLY dark brown.... (You DO want to FILTER OUT the coffee grounds themselves.) For the super dark coffee I actually added some INSTANT coffee to the coffee to make it crazy dark and sort of thick.
(4) For the edges I rolled up the page then DIPPED one end into the coffee "dye". You probably want to rotate and dip all four sides of the pages.... Dunking the whole map in clean water first (or spraying it with clean water with a mister) will have the added effect of "drawing" the coffee edges inwards and making the transition smoother. (In my examples I got the whole, big map wet... but the smaller document was not treated this way... so the coffee dye on the small document had fairly sharp, distinct edges, while the big map had smoother smearing of coffee dye.)
(5) Spread them out on the ground in the sun.. (best to do start this in the middle/earlier part of the day so that sunlight can shine on them for a few hours to let it all dry). Then "Paint" and/or "drip" the coffee onto the map.... You can drip multiple layers of coffee as the documents dry.... Also might use some actual DIRT and or rocks to lay on top as they dry.
Here are some photos:
(Source image)
(Source image)
Final Product:
(source image)
"On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place." - K.A.
Thanks so much this is really helpful!
You could also try drawing a map on leather.
Great tips above, one thing I've also done is singed the edge with a lighter, just be careful you don't torch the whole thing :P
When I was young I would create fake "leather" for drawing pictographs on by crumpling up pieces of brown paper bag into very tight balls, then uncrumpling them, getting them damp, and very carefully smoothing them out a bit. Then leave them to dry until they're safe to draw on. You could use this to make fake vellum I think, since that's essentially thin leather that people wrote on.
"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"