The Art And Work Of Ben Ruiz

After playing Privateer Press' popular tabletop game "Monsterpocalypse" multiple times a week for months and months I decided to make my own map, and I quickly ascertained that the smoothest way to do that would be to create tiles that I can arrange into maps. Between re-creating the game's map art pixel for pixel and making my own version of it, making my own version sounded way more fun.

I used a PDF of "Block War" (the defacto Monsterpocalypse map) as a reference point for placement and as a general atlas. Here is a preview image of the tileset I created. It's not even close to full resolution and does not contain all of the tiles I ended up creating, but it's a good general glimpse.

Here's a high resolution snapshot of the objective space tiles to show off the actual size of every tile and also to show off the detail of these spaces. Privateer Press' artists did an amazing job of making all of these different tiles distinct from each other, identifiable at a distance, and just generally charming. So I simply moved forward with my own spin on their already fantastic art work.

Since I was using Block War as reference, I ended up faithfully remaking it using my tileset as a dry run, before I made my own map. Remaking Block War helped me stay focused on creating the tiles (since I wasn't thinking about design) and helped me maintain an index of what tiles I have created and still need to create. Here is image of the remixed Block War using my tileset.

Of course you can't see a whole lot of the low level detail in that image so I went ahead and took the following close-up image. Again, just showing off the detail, and all of the little things I added like cars, streetlights, barricade equipment, decorative medians in the road, discernable junk in the junk piles, etc. I actually took some of that junk from Google Maps...I was looking at nearby construction sites and underdeveloped neighborhoods for inspiration.

With the tileset mostly completed, I spent some time thinking about what made a good Monsterpocalypse map. I took a mental note on a number of things: what is the average number of spawn points? How far into the map are they deployed? What is the average number of building spaces? Of objective spaces? Of neutral spawners? Where are bottlenecks created? Where and why do high-damage conflicts manifest? In what pre-existing maps are units most effective and why? And on and on and on. I ended up creating "Urban Slamboree", a unit constricting, power-move friendly, centralized conflict attracting, high class stomping ground of pain and glory! I wanted to create something that employs the under-utilized speed boosts and has a distinct unit flow from side to side. Since the middle of the map will be so concentrated with units and buildings, there is huge potential for serious damage to both players.

Once it was all said and done and lovingly assembled into the image you see here (except HUGE...at proper resolution and size we're looking at a 312 megabyte Photoshop file) I sent it off to friend of mine who writes software for cutting edge, high end industrial printers. What should of have been an hour long, 70 dollar job at Kinko's was actually a 3 minute, completely free job on my buddie's afternoon break. After having printed out Block War for a gameplay test and a color check (it came out a little dark), I was able to adjust Urban Slamboree's color levels for a BEAUTIFUL printout that looks great on the table...

And even better with a city on top of it getting smashed into the ground by 80,000 tons of monster!

As a personal recommendation, frame your maps! There are some great 24x30 poster frames out there you can buy for 10 to 15 bucks that you can actually tuck all of your maps into if you're crafty enough. It will keep your maps flat and they'll be much more playable because of it. Plus, you can hang 'em on the wall when you're done playing, or slide it under your bed or couch. Here's my maps all tucked in and hanging safely on the wall.

It should go without saying that I have no intention of selling these, ever. I love Privateer Press and I love their products and I have no desire to reroute their hard earned dollars into my pockets. This was simply a work of love and respect and an excuse to do some art AND make my own maps for an incredible game that cannot have enough of them! With that being said, I would actually love to share all of my files with the world so that others can make their own maps as well. However, I will only do this if Privateer Press says to me personally that it's okay. As of now, they have not yet responded to me.