Miska's Maps 2020 Summary and Plans for 2021

Hi everyone,

I thought it would be good to write a little summary of the past year and what kind of plans I have for 2021. I'll try to keep things short and to the point. Let's start with what happened in 2020...

Summary of 2020

The last year has been maybe the most eventful year in my history as a Patreon creator since 2015.

Numbers First

At the end of 2020, I had more than 250 released map packs on Patreon. Forty-seven of these were released in 2020. In January 2020 I had around 270 patrons and at the end of the year almost 900. 

Virtual Tabletop Maps

In January 2020 I started focusing on battle maps optimized for virtual tabletops instead of old-school maps designed for paper and printing. 

I decided to use Roll20 standards for making the maps, so with maybe one or two exceptions, all maps since January 2020 have been aligned to a grid (starting from the top left square) with 140 px per square.

I still have almost 50 line art drafts for old school maps waiting to be finished at some point.  For now, I've prioritized new high-resolution maps (the old maps drawn on paper are not very detailed when turned to 140px/square resolution), but when I have some extra time, I'm still planning to release some old-school maps for the old time's sake :D

iPad Pro + Procreate App

In February 2020 I got myself an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil and started drawing my maps digitally. This was a huge improvement for my workflow as a father of five. I draw maps whenever I have some spare time and now I can draw the maps and assets while sitting on the couch.

Drawing on iPad allows me also to draw in a higher resolution which makes it possible to create more detailed maps for virtual tabletops. In practice, my map sizes have grown from A4/letter-sized to poster-sized maps. This also shows in the time used per map. While I could draw an old-school map in an evening, now creating a single map takes around a week. Sometimes even longer. 

Map Assets

In October I started working on my first set of map assets and released a pack of mixed sci-fi assets in November with over 200 unique assets (no color variants included). Since then I have worked on more assets and a new set is coming very soon. 

Foundry VTT Maps

In March Finland went to lockdown and like many other role-players, I had to start looking at virtual tabletops more seriously as an alternative to face-to-face groups. This is when I found Foundry VTT and was impressed by its versatility and customizability. I figured out that I could prepare my maps with dynamic light and share them on Patreon. In June I released my first Patreon-exclusive Foundry VTT map module. 

Currently, I have 42 play-ready maps for Foundry VTT.

Sci-fi and Cyberpunk Focus

Finally, after considering this for several months I decided to focus on sci-fi and cyberpunk maps. Sci-fi is a very broad genre and some clarification might be in order. 

 My sci-fi map focus is going to be mainly on two sub-genres: 

• "Realistic" Sci-Fi with settings like Alien, Avatar, The Expanse, Eclipse Phase, and Firefly as examples and sources of inspiration. 
• Space Opera / Space Fantasy with settings like Star Wars, Starfinder, Dune, Fading Suns, and Traveller as examples and sources of inspiration.

For cyberpunk maps, I use settings such as Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, Cyberpunk 2020/RED, Shadowrun, and Genefunk 2090 as reference and inspiration. 

Plans for 2021

Most plans for this year are adjustments and little updates to the existing model, but there are some new features and benefits I'm already working on or planning to do as soon as possible.

New map standards (small and large maps)

While making high-resolution VTT maps has been very interesting and rewarding it's also much more time-consuming. As mentioned above, my maps used to be one-page in size before, and now they are closer to poster-sized (each square prints out as 1" on paper, so a 30x30 map is 30 by 30 inches – or roughly 75 by 75 centimeters. 

To keep things manageable, until I have more time, I'm setting roughly 20x20 square maps as my new standard. Maps larger than this are goal-based from now on. The next bigger map will an asteroid laboratory with a separate hangar level.  

Mythos Maps 

As I decided to focus mainly on sci-fi and cyberpunk, I still wanted to have an outlet for other maps, but not mix them with the main releases or focus of Miska's Maps. Also, I felt like there are enough fantasy map artists already, and really good ones too! Lately, I've been interested in Call of Cthulhu and in horror RPGs in general, so I decided to focus on this niche and set up a separate Patreon project for Mythos Maps. 

Hero tier patrons will get all Mythos Maps releases and variants in addition to my normal releases.

Foundry VTT Module Improvements

Currently, my Patreon-exclusive Foundry VTT map modules are numbered collections of maps. When I have enough content I'm planning to do separate modules for different themes like deckplans, cyberpunk, etc. 

Improved Map Archive 

I've been looking into making a more detailed and informative Map Archive with preview thumbnails and links to various places. For now, it seems that this would need to be on a separate website as Patreon does not really offer anything like this at the moment. 

Dungeondraft Asset Packs

I've been looking into making an asset pack for Dungeondraft. This just requires some spare time to implement and test. In any case, this is high on my priority list. 

Going Full-time

This is getting more and more current all the time. I would expect this to happen at some point during 2021, but can't tell yet how soon. When this happens, I will have more time to dedicate to map making and work more on new content and new features like animated maps. 

Animated Maps

Animated maps are something I've been looking into, but haven't had the time to properly work on this yet. I've made some testing, but haven't quite been happy with the results yet. 

Tokens & Scene Illustrations

I planned on doing some tokens but realized that I really didn't have time for this at the moment. But, I've been discussing with a friend of mine who has done some illustrations for my RPG books previously and we have something brewing. More news as soon as I know more. 

More RPG content

More RPG content, like location descriptions and adventures, is something I would like to do to complement my maps. This is of course again something that takes time and I've put this aside for now, but I've been discussing about co-operation with a couple of my friends. And obviously, when I would switch to making maps full-time, this would become easier to do myself too. 

Summary

As you can see, there are all kinds of plans for this year and these are just the ones I'm willing to talk about at this point :D There are more plans, but too vague to mention at this phase. 

I really hope I can keep growing and take Miska's Maps to the next level by the end of the year. I believe this all – and even more – is possible with your support and your support only. I'm very happy to have your backing, and I hope you have enjoyed the ride so far :)  

Take care,

Miska