Mapping a 3D Forest and City within it, looking for insight

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Magrus
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Mapping a 3D Forest and City within it, looking for insight

Post by Magrus »

Hey there, I am utilizing Maptools to run tactical play by post games for the Pathfinder rule set. I have been considering running a campaign set within my game world that is within a massive forest. Think something the size of Brazil. How I am going to manage this, with a way for easily managing the different heights one can climb to in a simple map is where I am lost at. I can drop tree and hill tokens and scale them to size, litter the map with Text boxes to denote elevations and such. However I run into the issue of on the map, when something gets larger it takes up more space on the X,Y axis which is used to represent distance instead.

Has anyone out there attempted something of this nature, and perhaps has insight for me that could be helpful? I am thinking I will need to eat the fact I will be forced to make multiple maps for the same blocks of terrain just at different elevations. Which is something I do not wish to be forced to do in the event the party decides to split and has some on the ground, and some 150 feet high in the trees. For reference, I am using the records of the tallest trees in the world recorded (140 meters roughly) and expanding upon that due to lag of human logging and a touch of Elven Druid magic. So we are going to be getting into the reaches of upwards of 500 ft tall treetops for this game.

Am I correct in assuming my best bet is one of the two options:
1: Design map to be pleasant at ground level, set a height cap, and move to another map for anything above this height cap. IE 50 ft blocks vertically stacking on one another.
2: Design a map which is all inclusive and lay down text boxes to represent elevation on everything when my players and NPC's come into contact with varying elevations.

If not, suggestions? Would appreciate a different view point here in case I am missing something. Thank you!

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Cherno
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Re: Mapping a 3D Forest and City within it, looking for insi

Post by Cherno »

I am afraid I don't understand the problem at hand. I understand you want to have a map with different height levels, but where is the issue there? I would just paint different shades of green or brown or whatever to denote the height levels.

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aliasmask
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Re: Mapping a 3D Forest and City within it, looking for insi

Post by aliasmask »

As with any large area, I usually have 3 maps. First map is travel map. Each square or hex is about 10 miles. I then have city maps. The scale may vary on city size but 30ft squares. Both of those maps are just for showing position on the map and aren't really needed for combat. I then have my encounter map. I could be a city block or just a single building but usually at 5ft squares.

As for elevations, they're only really needed for encounter maps. So, if you have an encounter on the ground and in the trees that are separated by elevation and one can't see the other, then that's 2 different maps. Now if it's someone like stairs up to a balcony I usually block the balcony with vbl and erase it once the area is explored. MapTool doesn't handle elevations well. There are some complicated tricks that can be used with Wolph42's BoT, but I find it easier to inform the players what they can and can't see and to play accordingly.

Magrus
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Re: Mapping a 3D Forest and City within it, looking for insi

Post by Magrus »

Cherno wrote:I am afraid I don't understand the problem at hand. I understand you want to have a map with different height levels, but where is the issue there? I would just paint different shades of green or brown or whatever to denote the height levels.
There are several. It will look sloppy, ridiculous and confuse my players. The sheer height scaling for many of the tree heights would require me to create many layers, often in a very small area on the grid, obscuring the grid or the objects on the ground. Depending on whether I use lines or colored circles. Aside from that, very time consuming drawing by hand such circles for each and every tree on a series of large forest maps. I *could* go this route, but looking for a better way the results in less unnecessary clutter on my maps that doesn't eat up so much of my time on simple elevation issues.
aliasmask wrote:As with any large area, I usually have 3 maps. First map is travel map. Each square or hex is about 10 miles. I then have city maps. The scale may vary on city size but 30ft squares. Both of those maps are just for showing position on the map and aren't really needed for combat. I then have my encounter map. I could be a city block or just a single building but usually at 5ft squares.

Doing something like that for say, an underwater game would work well, as it's all water. Have uneven ground, with uneven trees stretching from 50 to 500 feet high would simply be a mess trying to denote elevation this way.

As for elevations, they're only really needed for encounter maps. So, if you have an encounter on the ground and in the trees that are separated by elevation and one can't see the other, then that's 2 different maps. Now if it's someone like stairs up to a balcony I usually block the balcony with vbl and erase it once the area is explored. MapTool doesn't handle elevations well. There are some complicated tricks that can be used with Wolph42's BoT, but I find it easier to inform the players what they can and can't see and to play accordingly.
Aye, will definitely need a large, country overview map that covers the region. With a smaller scale map of various sections of important like cities and groves that cover several miles and such. It still leaves me with looking for an intuitive manner with which to denote elevation within the program. Which like you say, doesn't handle elevation well. An issue which may deter me from working on this game and choosing another if I can't think of a way to do this and not destroy my base map with elevation notes.

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Jagged
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Re: Mapping a 3D Forest and City within it, looking for insi

Post by Jagged »

I can think of a few things you can do, all depending upon the size of your maps.

If your map is made up of different objects, you could apply attributes to the objects to denote level. You could then run a simple macro to move objects out of the hidden layer and into the object or background layer, depending upon the level you want to display.

Alternatively you can have multiple maps representing each layer, and use "shadow tokens" to show players and npc on different levels (for an example see my second post in this thread)

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bubblobill
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Re: Mapping a 3D Forest and City within it, looking for insi

Post by bubblobill »

I posed a similar problem some time ago that generated some helpful answers see here

By making things at different elevations visible to owners only, and setting the owners based on elevation, each pc could be able to see your permanent terrain; background, tree trunks and the like, plus elevation relevant objects; boardwalks, buildings, bad guys, NPCs, etc.

Downside is if you have players that work it out and start fiddling. Making them owners will allow them to access the tokens.

For denoting elevation on the PC tokens, have you considered a status or a bar?
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