FLAGSTONES
A TrueType Font by S. John Ross
Copyright ©2000-2008, All Rights Reserved. Documentation Version 1.4 Font Version 1.3
With special thanks to Ezekiel DeLameter, Lensman at Large (a.k.a. Edwin Dean) and James Swainson

Important: Before you read or print this documentation, install the Flagstones font itself. If the font is not yet installed, the document won't look right! If you're not sure how to install a font, check the Help file for your operating system. While Flagstones is a specialized graphic font, it installs just like an ordinary alphabetical one!

Flagstones™ is a TrueType font for gamers - a graphic-design aid that can be used in conjunction with any paint or illustration program (Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, and more) as the basis for creative RPG art projects. Just add colors and textures; the artwork is already done!

You can also use Flagstones in a word processing program as simple as WordPad to create sheets of game-ready combat maps. Print sheets of neatly-gridded dungeon floors and cut them to any desired shape. Lay them out on your gaming table to create endless, easily visible floorplans. Best of all, Flagstones works with your roleplaying game system: With the help of "half-tile" characters, both hexagonal and orthogonal grids are supported!

!abcd1 abcde
abcde bdcac
1abcd! cbade
abcde bdcac
1abcd! cbade

In the examples here, the tile arrangement on the left supports hexagonal play: every square is surrounded by six other squares. The arrangment on the right supports the traditional orthogonal grid.

Note: Flagstones is designed for the U.S. or U.S. (International) keyboard configurations. It will work with other keyboard layouts, but some keystrokes may differ.

Floor Style One: Flagstone

Letters A through E are five different "flagstone" tiles, useful for representing well-built, organized strongholds. To create hexagonal staggers, flagstone half-tiles can be created with the "1" key. An alternate flagged half-tile can be created by hitting the "1" key while holding down SHIFT.

abcde1!

Floor Style Two: Open Stone

Letters F through J are five different "open stone" tiles, which are ideal for clear visibility for low-light gaming (only a few cracks around the edges to indicate age). Suitable, in particular, for courtyard tiling or the floors of a villain's monster coliseum. To create hexagonal staggers, open stone half-tiles can be created with the "2" key. An alternate open half-tile can be created by hitting the "2" key while holding down SHIFT.

fghij2@

Floor Style Three: Cobbles and Black Earth

Letters K through O are five different "broken cobbles" tiles, with shattered, random stones and fragments against a dark background of the earth beneath. Great for abandoned mines, seaside caves, and other places untouched by man or ruined by neglect. To create hexagonal staggers, broken cobble half-tiles can be created with the "3" key. An alternate cobble half-tile can be created by hitting the "3" key while holding down SHIFT.

klmno3#

Others: Trapdoor, Stairs, and Heavy Lines

Flagstones includes eight stairway characters (two styles, rotated in each cardinal direction). Spiral stairways are mapped to the numbers 4,5,6 and 7. Straight stairways are mapped to the same numbers, but hold down the SHIFT key. Number 8 contains a "trapdoor/hatchway" symbol scaled to match the standard grid. The "underline" key produces a thick, hand-drawn line (not shown) in "rough-hewn" style that can be applied easily in a paint program to define the texture of walls, or to create barriers within a room.

4^5
%8&
7$6

How Do I . . ?

Print Out Sheets of Dungeon Floors? Just type in a bunch of the appropriate letters in any WYSIWYG word processing software (like the program you're reading this in, right now)! Do a Print Preview to see if you're filling the page the way you want, and hit print! It's that easy . . . scale it any way you like, and cut out rooms and corridors with scissors. When laid on top of a black tablecloth, the effect is especially dramatic. Try using one floors style for corridors, and another for rooms, to provide easy visual cues. Printing on colored cardstock or parchment can also make the table more attractive.

Use The Font in a Painting Program? It depends on your tastes and choice of software, but the possibilities of Flagstones become endless when combined with graphics software, since it lets you skip the tedious part and get right to the fun part: adding texture and color and lighting effects. The full-color graphic on the Flagstones webpage was created in Adobe Photoshop in about ten minutes. I began by creating a (black-on-white) grid of flag-style tiles, and saved that as a grayscale PSD-format file. I then created a new image - a featureless expanse of brown. I flecked it a bit by adding noise, then applied the Texturizer filter, using "Load Texture" to load the file I created first. From there, the rest was just a matter of variations on the same theme, and then applying finishing touches.

Get Rid of Those Hairline Gaps? In some applications, very thin "hairline" spaces are visible between the characters - an apparently unavoidable display issue (your computer thinks this is an alphabetical font, and it's trying to make each "letter" distinct and legible). However, while the gaps might appear on the screen or in a preview, they should not appear on a printed page or a created graphic.

www.cumberlandgames.com

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The Flagstones font and documentation are each Copyright ©2000,2008,2017 by S. John Ross. This font is free for private use. Inquiries regarding licensing the font for commercial purposes should be directed to S. John Ross. This font is provided as-is with no warranty expressed or implied. Any questions about this font should be directed by email to <sjohn@cumberlandgames.com>