I’ve been promising for a while now to share some of the posters I use in my terrain and give credit to the sources where I can. Today I start off by looking at the simpler posters and give some suggestions on what you can do to make your own.
The easiest way to embellish terrain is with signposts, for most of my posters and boards I use MS Publisher to help me organise it all ready for printing but using Text boxes allows you to produce signs in less than a minute, be it street signs, address signs or simply the buildings purpose using the same template can bring a city together. Alternatively using different signs and formats can make the city look less uniform, by giving individual building names instead of designation or making other changes you can make hints at the government type of your city.
Once I’ve decorated the outside of a building with signs and addresses it’s time to look at the inside. When I know what a building is for I use MS Excel to help me produce the types of charts, diagrams you would expect to see. The titles on these charts are often just big enough to read and so can help fill out the story and give a feel for what the place was before war came and the building was ruined.
Along with the charts I used some tiny memos that are totally illegible however as you can see from the larger versions they contain text and actual letters. I find that writing these helps to inspire me and give ideas for the carts that will accompany them. For instance the accident Memo helped me with the ideas for the three charts. Productivity is showing a significant rise perhaps caused by a war effort push. More shifts, harsher conditions then lead to accidents and finally a narky memo about the results goes out. A small story but one none the less, by spreading these charts around Manufactoriums and Administratum buildings it shows that there are links between the buildings.
The other Memo discusses arrest results for traitors and heretics and how an inquisitor has been called in. what better way to show this than having the statistics charted.
The two sets of data beg the question. Did the push for production lead to harsher conditions and so drive more people to do dark things or perhaps the other way round and rebellion lead to a push for production? Either way your terrain is hinting at a story as to what happened in the city before it was ruined.
With a story hinted at with basic stuff the quickest way to fill it out is by searching to see what other people have come up with, last time I was looking one of the first places I found was at Eternal Hunt
These are perfect to round out the story from above. Recruitment and inspirational posters deified, leaflets outright declaring rebellion and a proclamation declaring heretics, perfect to go with our theme. He’s also got a couple more imperial posters on is post about terrain along with lots of simple advise for terrain making.
Next time I’ll look at some of my more complex creations and ponder what a city was like before War came.
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