Dungeon a day

See an article about any RPTools tool ? Post it here !

Moderator: Azhrei

Post Reply
User avatar
torstan
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1887
Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2006 6:50 am
Contact:

Dungeon a day

Post by torstan »

So Monte Cook has started a mega-dungeon here: www.dungeonaday.com. The map is huge: http://www.dungeonaday.com/categories/Level1Map Note that those are 10' squares. They don't have a map at 1" squares or in fact anything more detailed than the one shown there. They encourage people to use their sponsor's dungeon pieces to build it for their games. However I thought this might be an interesting challenge for the fledgling maptool dungeon tile pack, and it worked really well. So I posted on the forums over there. I've posted a zoomed out shot, and a few close ups of the first couple of areas. I'll be interested to hear the responses. I'll keep an eye on the thread and send people back over here if there's an interest.

It's $10 a month to subscribe and you'll need a subscription to read the forum, but if you are signed up then the maptool post is here:

http://www.dungeonaday.com/forum/22/125

User avatar
trevor
Codeum Arcanum (RPTools Founder)
Posts: 11311
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2006 4:16 pm
Location: Austin, Tx
Contact:

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by trevor »

Definitely let us know how the thread discussion progresses
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

User avatar
torstan
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1887
Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2006 6:50 am
Contact:

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by torstan »

I will do.

Clickable html links in notes would be amazing for this. The rooms each have a web page with their descriptions, and being able to pull that up from within maptool would be spectacular. I think that would sweep the board if it were possible. I don't know if that's an easy or a hard fix, but there's a lot of talk on the dungeon a day boards about getting the online map to have clickable room numbers. If it were possible to trump it with maptool it would make quite a splash.

User avatar
jfrazierjr
Deity
Posts: 5176
Joined: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:31 pm

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by jfrazierjr »

torstan wrote:I will do.

Clickable html links in notes would be amazing for this. The rooms each have a web page with their descriptions, and being able to pull that up from within maptool would be spectacular. I think that would sweep the board if it were possible. I don't know if that's an easy or a hard fix, but there's a lot of talk on the dungeon a day boards about getting the online map to have clickable room numbers. If it were possible to trump it with maptool it would make quite a splash.
Sooo... any though about making a frame with HTML that links to the room layout image as well as description? That would be a somewhat easy way, perhaps even combining tables for the image and another table for the text,send the macrolink to everyone to open a frame with the description of the room.
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

User avatar
torstan
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1887
Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2006 6:50 am
Contact:

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by torstan »

So this has generated a bit of interest so far. I am still maptooling up the dungeon at the moment (it's around 400 by 500 grid squares, so it's a lot of dungeon to map) but it's getting there. I'll post it there when it's done. I'll also add room notes that have macros with links in them that allow people to link the to the room descriptions (that are all online) from within maptool. I posted about this in the maptool forums here:
http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7538

This has already got a few people over there to come by the maptool forum to see what's going on. My guess is that when the full level one map is done and people can play with it, we'll get a lot more.

Currently the two greatest things that people want from dungeon a day that haven't been provided by Monte Cook are:
1. A map with clickable links to take you to an area.
2. 1 square=1 inch battlemats that people can print out and play on.

Both of these could be generated by maptool and tiles. 1. I addressed with the links in notes, which can currently be achieved (though a little more cumbersome) through links in chat. 2. could be achieved really quickly with an advanced screenshot tool that can export a larger image at native resolution rather than being limited to the screensize. I posted a note about this in the feature requests forum:
http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=7569

I'll keep you posted on any further developments.
Last edited by torstan on Thu Mar 19, 2009 6:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Brigand
Read-only User
Posts: 1623
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2008 8:57 am
Location: Nosy GM's can go frak themselves!

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by Brigand »

Is he really getting $8 to $10 a month for that on name recognition alone? I could do this for a living if I could get 120 people subscribed.

User avatar
torstan
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1887
Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2006 6:50 am
Contact:

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by torstan »

Yes, but then he was one of the core designers of 3e and Ptolus was a hige success. Also, the reviews have been nothing but positive.

I'm still a little unsure myself of the use of this after the novelty has worn off, but I'm certainly pleasantly surprised by the originality of the dungeon so far. I'm going to stick it out for the first couple of months at the least.

Remember that he does still have to pay his cartographer (though that's really only one map so far) and whoever is maintaining the website.

User avatar
Brigand
Read-only User
Posts: 1623
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2008 8:57 am
Location: Nosy GM's can go frak themselves!

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by Brigand »

At $10 a month, I would require 125 subscriptions a month to pay my bills and put food on the table. That kind of traffic isn't going to make a dent on most hosting sites. The real cost is the setup of the website and the ability to handle the subscriptions. At 250 subs a month, I could pay off my car in less than a year and quit my day job.

Ah well. I don't have the name recognition to capitalize on this nor the initial fees required to set up such a site in the first place. And I didn't think of it first. *sighs*

Phergus
Deity
Posts: 7132
Joined: Fri May 12, 2006 8:56 pm
Location: Middle of Nowhere, NM
Contact:

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by Phergus »

torstan wrote:1. I addressed with the links in notes, which can currently be achieved (though a little more cumbersome) through links in chat.
On largish maps, I make unshared Campaign Macros that do a "/goto x,y" for quick navigation. You could toss in a /self <a href="some link">foo</a> to get the link into chat. Still clunky but...

User avatar
torstan
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1887
Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2006 6:50 am
Contact:

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by torstan »

That's exactly the workaround I am using. Glad to see we're all thinking in the same way.

Thanks for the goto idea. I was going to suggest the use of NPC number tokens and then the map explorer will get you around quickly.

User avatar
Brigand
Read-only User
Posts: 1623
Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2008 8:57 am
Location: Nosy GM's can go frak themselves!

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by Brigand »

You could create a single macro that populates a drop down list with all the encounter token names. Then the submit button would run the goto command.

User avatar
torstan
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1887
Joined: Wed Sep 27, 2006 6:50 am
Contact:

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by torstan »

One or two new comments over there, but here's a recent post
Holy crap. I think I encountered MapTool before, but long ago, and it wasn't nearly this awesome. I'm going to go cry now. Cry, and spend countless hours playing with my new toy. Hours that I should be spending on real life, or sleep, or food, maybe.

*eg*
Just made me smile so I thought I'd share it over here :) (with apologies to Jos Willard....)

User avatar
trevor
Codeum Arcanum (RPTools Founder)
Posts: 11311
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2006 4:16 pm
Location: Austin, Tx
Contact:

Re: Dungeon a day

Post by trevor »

awesome ! Time to go catch up
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

Post Reply

Return to “RPTools Sightings”