Map Design Preferences

Show off your RPG maps, campaigns, and tokens. Share your gaming experiences and stories under General Discussion and save this forum for things you've created that may help others run their own games. Use the subforums when appropriate.

Moderators: dorpond, trevor, Azhrei, Gamerdude

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

Re: Map Design Preferences

Post by torstan »

I'm happy for a map to have any level of burnt in detail as long as it looks good. I'm perfectly happy to describe any variations to the players. Equally, as a player I've never had an issue with walking through closed doors. I find that the VBL does a very clear job of showing which doors are open and which doors are closed. If I can see through it, then it's open!

I also love good lighting effects because they make a big difference to how good a map looks. I'll take pretty, but a little inaccurate any day. (Please, no Miss North Carolina jokes).

Of course in a perfect world, a map would come with a background map, all movable objects separate on the object layer, including lightsources - with their own lighting effects, and with the room descriptions on numbered tokens on the hidden layer.

<threadjack>
Just a little advance warning, I've taken on the lead developer role for the first commercial maptool project for Rite publishing. It'll be a pathfinder adventure as long as we can get the electronic format past Paizo's legal people and I'll be doing the maps and objects. Devin will be doing the tokens. There'll be an accompanying pdf to the campaign file. It's a patronage model which means that if you buy into the project you get to decide much of the structure of the adventure and guide its development. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread to see what people would like in the format of their campaign files.

If you are really keen and want to get in on the action then the early days brainstorming thread is here. Oh, and yes - I am Jon Roberts when I am not being Torstan.
</threadjack>

User avatar
IMarvinTPA
Dragon
Posts: 467
Joined: Mon Sep 11, 2006 10:12 am
Contact:

Re: Map Design Preferences

Post by IMarvinTPA »

The main reason I like doors on the object layer is that one of my players has a habit of finding ways to separate them from their hinges. (When the Open Lock DC is 30 and you have a brute with a large great sword...)

The only other convenient thing about having door objects, is you can put their lock and trap information on the door itself instead of a random room description (which room has this door's info / which door does that info apply?)

Torstan,
As soon as the Bestiary comes out in the PRD on Paizo's site, I'll work to get them into my database. Then you'll have tokens with data!

IMarv

User avatar
IMarvinTPA
Dragon
Posts: 467
Joined: Mon Sep 11, 2006 10:12 am
Contact:

Re: Map Design Preferences

Post by IMarvinTPA »

torstan wrote: with the room descriptions on numbered tokens on the hidden layer.
Actually, what I like to do is put the room descriptions on those nice little circled "i" tokens and put them on the object layer. The "read out loud" descriptions go in the normal notes section and the DM stuff goes in the DM Notes section.

Then I have some DM only token states that are half-images.

The left halves are blank and 0-9 and the right halves are 0-9. I then assign the tokens these numbers so I can see them. The players get a handy little info i they can use to review the room description. The images I use are at http://www.imarvintpa.com/Imagery/v/Gen ... rs/QDNums/

My brother-in-law is supposed to make me some pretty looking ones, but alas, my birthday present (March) looks like it'll be a Christmas present at this rate.

IMarv

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

Re: Map Design Preferences

Post by torstan »

That's very kind of you! There's some question about the degree of information that can be built in to a commercial adventure under the Pathfinder license, but I'll certainly take a nosey once you've got that put together. Thanks for the offer!

I agree about the doors - I find hardness, break DC and a hp total don't go amiss for doors too. I too have a party that likes destroying the furniture. Good thoughts on the ordering of the room numberings too. I can see that having the tokens that the players can click with the room information is helpful. I just prefer not to have (i) tokens player visible. I've done a few adventures where I've put it all in a transparent square object in the middle of each room. The players then knew that they could click on the middle of each room to get the information.

User avatar
IMarvinTPA
Dragon
Posts: 467
Joined: Mon Sep 11, 2006 10:12 am
Contact:

Re: Map Design Preferences

Post by IMarvinTPA »

Clear vs info icon is a personal choice, but we agree on purpose.

The Pathfinder monsters will live at http://prpg.imarvintpa.com/ But the 3.5 monsters already work and are at http://www.imarvintpa.com/dndlive/ Just search for a monster and click on its token.

So, if you want to preview what will come out, that's available now. They're designed with this campaign framework in mind: http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=5475

IMarv


User avatar
IMarvinTPA
Dragon
Posts: 467
Joined: Mon Sep 11, 2006 10:12 am
Contact:

Re: Map Design Preferences

Post by IMarvinTPA »

PS I made a feature request for the movement thread-jack.

I haven't figured out what to do, if anything, for the Patron campaign jacking.

IMarv

Post Reply

Return to “User Creations”