Commercial Maptool Product Discussion - have a say!

[RPMiller]

Torstan, any thought to including a PDF of the maps as well? I think you could dramatically increase your sales by being inclusive with those that may not use MapTool, et el. Perhaps be adding pdfs of the maps, and then having a sheet of all the "set dressing" that could be printed out, those that want to use your stuff in an "old fashioned" non-digital play session could print out the maps, and set dressings on card stock and cut them out, and still have a "wow" factor, but play without the need of digital "appliances." Just a thought, and that could allow you to get a little more profit from a larger niche market.

[torstan]

@RPMiller: Absolutely. Each pack already contains a sliced up pdf that can be printed page by page at the table, as well as a high quality jpg for the map, both with and without a grid. I'm very interested in keeping these as broadly useful as possible.

The idea of a contact sheet for the set dressing is a nice one. I hadn't considered that. I was wondering about some means of printing the set dressing to acetate but the fact that acetates use transparent for white pretty much scuppers that for anything other than pits.

@biodude: Thanks for the comments. I agree with your comment about the different levels of features on the objects and notes. Throwing the whole lot in and letting people delete what they don't want seems to be the best plan.

As for the minis - yep, there's a lot of nice stuff that could go in there but a lot of it would depend on a solid universal framework - and I don't think that's ever going to happen as GMs have a very specific idea of what they want to use for their own games. Once we have the framework for Breaking of Forstor Nagar I might chat to Devin and Tyler and see if we can get some nice art for a sample pack. That'll take a while though.

[torstan]

Okay, I'm going to work up the Dragon's Lair with some more fully featured notes, hyperlinks, some traps and some terrain details. I'll try to take on board as many of the comments from here as possible to get a product people can have a play with. I'll also need to pass it by Paizo to get a nice big PF compatible logo for the front of the product. I'll post here when it's ready and I'll make sure there's a means for those that bought the current version to upgrade to the fully featured version, rather than pay the cost again.

I'm still very interested in hearing people's thoughts on what they'd be willing to pay and ideas on things they'd like to see in such a product.

In the mean time - there's another maptool map pack up on the store:

The Island Cave

[RPMiller]

@RPMiller:The idea of a contact sheet for the set dressing is a nice one. I hadn't considered that. I was wondering about some means of printing the set dressing to acetate but the fact that acetates use transparent for white pretty much scuppers that for anything other than pits.

I'm not sure what you mean here, are the set dressing objects all white? As for printing to acetate, I wouldn't make that assumption. Remember that the majority of gamers are a bit on the cheap side, no offense to my fellow gamers, and I think that they would be perfectly happy with cutting out the objects rather than spending the money on acetate. Alternatively, and I'm not real keen on the idea, but it is a work around, use the floor background for the background of the set dressing.

I'm more interested in why the white as transparent scuppers everything.

[torstan]

So with three colours of ink, to get a light colour the ink is applied more sparsely, allowing the white of the paper to lighten the colour. On acetate this comes over as being more transparent. So if you have an object with light sections in it, that translates as being more transparent - which doesn't quite work if it's a set of white glowing runes! If printers had white ink in them it would be great, but sadly I don't believe such things exist.

I agree that a contact sheet on white paper would work well - and perhaps having some generic background texture would work to fill in the gaps so people don't end up having to cut carefully around irregular shapes.

[Natha]

1. Is $1.35 a reasonable price for a map with VBL and light and shade implemented? Would you pay more?

Depending on the size and level of details (lights, vbl, number and reusability of "object" tokens included), I would say yes. Up to 3-4$ I think.

2. Consider a map pack that had three campaign files:
- maptool campaign file with the above detail
- maptool campaign file with objects with Player and GM notes containing information such as object descriptions, DCs and so on.
- as above but with some macros included in the objects (as well as hyper links to the relevant rules).
These would also come with these objects saved out to a folder as .rptoks for quick inclusion.
How much would you consider to be a reasonable price for such a product? Feel free to tie this to a number of new objects if that's the item that provides the most value.

I would be interested in objects as .rptok with a nice "protrait" image viewable to the players but not description or rules/DCs (but that's only a language problem as I would need to translate/redo them).
With detailed and nice objets with "portraits", I would go up to 5-6$ per map.
(once again, hence the size of the map, or the number of tied maps included, this price could go up and I'll still buy if I think it's fair and I "need" the product).

3. Say each map had a sister product that consisted of a set of monsters as .rptok files that fit the theme of the map. These would have properties built in and could have macros and framework or just have top down token and portrait. Essentially a virtual minis pack for the map. Would yo be interested, and if so how much would you see that being worth?

I would be interested in the .pngs but not the framework/macros.
But I have no idea about how much I would like to pay them.

[RPMiller]

So with three colours of ink, to get a light colour the ink is applied more sparsely, allowing the white of the paper to lighten the colour. On acetate this comes over as being more transparent. So if you have an object with light sections in it, that translates as being more transparent - which doesn't quite work if it's a set of white glowing runes! If printers had white ink in them it would be great, but sadly I don't believe such things exist.

I agree that a contact sheet on white paper would work well - and perhaps having some generic background texture would work to fill in the gaps so people don't end up having to cut carefully around irregular shapes.

Ah, of course. Makes sense. Why not just make your glowing runes in yellow, light blue, or other similarly light color? Honestly, I don't think anyone would be upset if the "glowing runes" were some other color. Just in the text, make sure you don't refer to a color. Just state "glowing runes," and that would take care of it. Not to mention, if magic is involved it is likely that the runes are just energy of some sort, and the observer is likely to see other things behind the "glow" such as the floor texture and such.

Oh, and there used to be a printer made by Alps that had white ink. Sadly, I believe they are no longer being produced.

[Natha]

In the mean time - there's another maptool map pack up on the store:

Bought it, liked it but (imho), on such a map, I would like :

Spoiler

- the secret door (the wall, not the "S") to be a moveable background tile
- the boat and the giant tree to be moveable objects

- more objects like : tree / bush / rocks / rumble
- various "mood"/"colored" lights

And be carefull with the grid size and placement against your background drawing :

Spoiler

torstan_cave_grid.jpg (38.19 KiB) Viewed 1332 times

[RPMiller]

And be carefull with the grid size and placement against your background drawing :

Spoiler

torstan_cave_grid.jpg

I have to disagree with that statement. Artists and mapmakers alike should never have to be constrained by the grid. The grid is an arbitrary game mechanic that was put in to handle tactical situations and rarely equates to a real world equivalent, especially when dealing with dungeon crawls. The players and GM should be able to adjudicate with common sense regarding placement. Of course, the grid is starting to fall by the way side with other systems as they are beginning to realize the artificial-ness of it, and with VTs now in abundance more and more people are able to drop the grid altogether and move to gridless. The exception being systems that require a grid, of course. But what is a grid really? It is a fast representation of distance. That is all it is. If we take the initiative to start dealing in distances rather than grids in our system mechanics, I think that will eventually get rid of the need for the constraints of a grid.

[gamerprinter]

In complete agreement with RPMiller here. I am a pro fantasy cartographer and have heard complaints before, how a given map doesn't match the grid they place on it. I say, "wah! who cares?" Grids are artificial representations of distance for game mechanics. The world isn't designed on a five foot grid, and fantasy maps shouldn't be either. There should definitely be an implied scale at creation, but whether it meets a true five foot grid or not is irrelevant. A GM and players should be able to adjudicate how much room their is to maneuver anywhere on a map.

Anyone asking for that specifically is unduly constraining a map design - to the point of asking for it, is just completely silly.

GP

[torstan]

I agree Natha. This map was originally created for the adventure To Kill or Not to Kill by Rite Publishing rather than specifically for VTTs. It is more in the vein of the Tree Bridge map than the Dragon's Lair. As a result I created it without the prior intent to make it a map with movable objects. However, as the map predominantly involves things that are 'bolted down' I think the impact is minimal. It is these sorts of considerations that mean the basic maps + VBL packs at $1.35. Obviously if I were to make this a fully featured map pack I'd make sure that there were objects in the map that could be taken out, re-used, have notes attached and so on as discussed. This was the last map that was created before I started thinking about this approach (it was done over the summer). Future maps will be much more in the vein of the Dragon's Lair.

As for the grid question I think it's a little more subtle than that - and there are good arguments why asking for it to be consistent with a grid is certainly not 'completely silly'. A twisting narrow cave passage like that shouldn't conform to an arbitrary grid - that's something I think we can all agree on. I personally would turn off snap to grid for that section of the dungeon when I play. However I also understand that's not necessarily a possible solution when playing 4E. The grid is more than a distance measure - it's a fundamental part of the rules. You can't play 4E without a grid. In this case I would say that you place the characters token in the square that they want to be in - whether it's half in a wall or not. 4e rules accept that a character does not fill the whole square all the time. Therefore, though it may look a little odd whilst playing, I think that's still accurate within the rules. I'm certain that it's possible for the DM to abstract that and make rulings in such a case.

That said, it's certainly true that a map maker can try to make sure that the weird grid intersections don't necessarily fall in the wrong places all the time - so to make it a natural shaped cave, but to make the ruling in grid based systems as reasonable as possible. I'll keep an eye out for that in future maps.

Thanks for picking it up and for the comments. If you're willing to write a review on RPGNow, I'd always be very grateful. I'll make sure I take your points into consideration on future maps.

Oh, does anyone have any requests? I have a few ideas for locations, but could be swayed by ideas for a particular type of location that people could do with? Generic maps like taverns, streets, caves and dungeons, or more unusual locations like cloud castles, geodes, underwater reef mazes? Any preferences?

[Maelwys]

I'll agree with what many others have (I believe) said already.
2, provisionally.

Maps, VBL, lighting.
+ set decoration w/descriptions
+ creature tokens w/descriptions

Nothing rules-based, just lots of graphical resources and let the DM fill in their own game-specific details (for whatever rules set they plan to play). Maybe even have some of the creature tokens scattered about (in "recommended" locations, barracks, guard post, dragon lair, etc) and then have a separate "Green Room" map with a handful of extra tokens in it that can be distributed at the DMs discretion, if he needs extra actors for his game.

[torstan]

Thanks Maelwys. Would you want text descriptions that are player visible too? Or just DM descriptions? And you'd actively want to avoid things like open lock DCs inside the text descriptions?

A few other points I missed whilst answering the grid questions:
@RPMiller - yep that's certainly a possibility. Shame to hear that the white ink printers don't exist any more.

@Natha - mood lights? Do you mean light sources with coloured halos? Or lights that are actually built into the graphical assets - like the lighter halos that are around the torches on this map?

[jfrazierjr]

Oh, does anyone have any requests? I have a few ideas for locations, but could be swayed by ideas for a particular type of location that people could do with? Generic maps like taverns, streets, caves and dungeons, or more unusual locations like cloud castles, geodes, underwater reef mazes? Any preferences?

Frankly, overall, I am in love with the usefulness of GE's cave tiles. I would love to have more stuff like that I would even add some additional stuff if only I had his original texture from which to work. As it is, I am slowly building up the parts into multiple central columns to save and for quick use later as single images.

I would love to see some something like that in a different style such as yours though for variety. I would especially love to see some means to create elevations.. for example, in my first full maptool game earlier this year with my face to face group, they came from a tunnel up to a cavern. At the end of the tunnel on the side of the cavern was a "balcony" along with a set of steps.... At the time, I just faked it in Maptool as best as I could and I always meant to get around to doing something like it as an object in GIMP, just never got back to it...(hmmm might have to start playing around again now...)

[Jshock]

So with three colours of ink, to get a light colour the ink is applied more sparsely, allowing the white of the paper to lighten the colour. On acetate this comes over as being more transparent. So if you have an object with light sections in it, that translates as being more transparent - which doesn't quite work if it's a set of white glowing runes! If printers had white ink in them it would be great, but sadly I don't believe such things exist.

I agree that a contact sheet on white paper would work well - and perhaps having some generic background texture would work to fill in the gaps so people don't end up having to cut carefully around irregular shapes.

Ah, of course. Makes sense. Why not just make your glowing runes in yellow, light blue, or other similarly light color? Honestly, I don't think anyone would be upset if the "glowing runes" were some other color. Just in the text, make sure you don't refer to a color. Just state "glowing runes," and that would take care of it. Not to mention, if magic is involved it is likely that the runes are just energy of some sort, and the observer is likely to see other things behind the "glow" such as the floor texture and such.

Oh, and there used to be a printer made by Alps that had white ink. Sadly, I believe they are no longer being produced.

If one were so inclined, they could print a flipped image on acetate (so that it shows correctly through the unprinted side), and then paint over the appropriate areas with white paint.