TerribleSorcery
Should be playing D&D instead
Yeah I was trying to discover how to do that, he mentions it a few times but I couldn't figure it out. How does it work? Which layer gets set to Overlay Mode and what's on it?
Dungeon Maps
- Thread starter squeen
- Start date
TerribleSorcery
Should be playing D&D instead
Oh FFS, I was doing all this with the paint tool on the original bottom layer. Yeah this is way easier.
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
I think Forge of Fury is probably one of the only good official 3rd ed modules. That and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. I've run Forge 3 times. I agree, it kicks ass. That Roper though is an insane amount of free XP. Once the PC's figure out how much it hates fire and that they can shoot it from a distance? It just gets kited to death. That's CR 10 XP getting handed out to 3rd lvl characters. The DMG XP table doesn't even have a column for it lol! The dragon more than makes up for it though!
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
Here's a low-res version of a (free) map from Huso's new Dream House of the Nether Prince.
While I don't like the fancy font (for readability), I do very like that he has put the room names on the map.
I hope we'll see more of this --- I think it would especially useful in city maps.
While I don't like the fancy font (for readability), I do very like that he has put the room names on the map.
I hope we'll see more of this --- I think it would especially useful in city maps.
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
Definitely a cool map. Only two criticisms:
1) The map fits the page. Something about that has always bothered me esthetically. Especially, the bottom right corner seems crammed in there.
2) Super clean lines. I mentioned this in one of the Dungeon Design forums. Crisp, digital lines look dead. I fiddled around with photoshop trying to get my lines more wobbly and still wasn't completely satisfied. The benefits of working with digital far outweigh those of sketching on graph paper in the end though.
The big thing here is that it looks like he's struck a nice balance between giving us as much information at a glance as possible without cluttering the map with confusing noise.
The ideal map for me would work almost like a one-page dungeon in that you can almost play straight off the map, only referring to the book for the really complex traps/puzzles/boss monsters. -Hard to do.
1) The map fits the page. Something about that has always bothered me esthetically. Especially, the bottom right corner seems crammed in there.
2) Super clean lines. I mentioned this in one of the Dungeon Design forums. Crisp, digital lines look dead. I fiddled around with photoshop trying to get my lines more wobbly and still wasn't completely satisfied. The benefits of working with digital far outweigh those of sketching on graph paper in the end though.
The big thing here is that it looks like he's struck a nice balance between giving us as much information at a glance as possible without cluttering the map with confusing noise.
The ideal map for me would work almost like a one-page dungeon in that you can almost play straight off the map, only referring to the book for the really complex traps/puzzles/boss monsters. -Hard to do.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
Heh. You obviously didn't learn to game at a time when everything had to be drawn by hand, graph paper was hard to come by, and you felt a need to use every square of it to cram your dungeon into.
TerribleSorcery
Should be playing D&D instead
Usability, man! It's there to communicate information to the DM, not get used as a fine art piece.
And in this case, the players too, since Huso plays with miniatures on a giant VTT using a screen built into his gaming table...
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
Oh, but I did! I used to hoard graph paper like it was treasure. And yeah, all my old dungeons are crammed into every inch of the 8.5x11 page.
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
And therein lies the benefit of digital mapping: You can easily create the information-rich DM version and a stripped-down Player version for Roll20 or whatever.
But yeah, a hand-drawn map executed with a steady hand like Dyson Logos is a real pleasure to look at. Even he is starting to switch over to digital, but is still freehanding his lines with a tablet. I think when you freehand your map, you're less likely to end up with repetitive, rectangular rooms and boring, straight corridors as well.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
I find hand drawn dungeon maps to be a pain to drop onto a VTT, especially when it comes to creating the boundaries for dynamic lighting. And a lot of the quaint hand drawn maps these days are pretty shaky - I can drop pretty much any TSR map onto a VTT and make it work, but I find a lot of OSR maps need to be completely redrawn.
I used to like (and make) pretty dungeon maps with lots of details, but they take a lot of time to make and I found the players attributed too much significance what was really just set dressing. Now I like clean, simple maps that only include the sorts of details that you would bother to describe to the players in any event. I avoid white as a colour because it is too garish on screen, but other than that I keep it very simple.
One thing I like to do is take the old blue and white TSR maps, convert the blue to black, convert the white to transparent, and drop it in the VTT. Then I use a brush to paint background colours on the layer below the map image. I end up with a workable VTT map very quickly.
I tried to make borderless VTT dungeon maps a few times but found when I did that I didn't know when to stop building the level. So now I always set boundaries before I draw, generally something that can be printed legibly on a single page.
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
omg, you do that?! Yeah, we thought about getting a premium Roll20 subscription for the DM of our Ptolus campaign and came to the conclusion we'd just be cursing him to more prep work!
yeah, I went with a classic look for my Barrowmaze VTT maps and the players have been complaining. They've been spoiled by the gorgeous deluxe maps that ship with Ptolus! You are too right about fun little bits of fluff on the map turning into ridiculous arguments during combat and frustrating distractions during puzzle solving.
agreed. I'm finding myself working to that weird 70 pixels/square standard as well, which conflicts with the 75 pixels/1/4" of a 300 dpi 8.5x11 sheet of graph paper (which would be the standard I would work with for print purposes).
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
@The1True I use Maptools so it costs me nothing (although early on it cost me a lot in time spent to figure the thing out).
The "little bits of fluff" are even more of a problem if you want to repurpose a map. "Ignore those bloodstains/mushrooms/bags of treasure, they aren't there," is a frequent refrain. That's another nice thing about the old maps; rotate them 90 degrees and stock it with your own stuff and you have a brand new dungeon. It drives me nuts how many beautiful maps of, for instance, castles I have from later modules, that I cannot use because they have a wall missing, or a bloody altar where I want a great hall, or some other incongruity so specific to the module that you can't use them for anything else.
I use 60 pixels per 5' square in order to make it easy to scale objects, since 1 pixel then equals 1 inch. I never print anything other than overviews, the size of my maps tend to make my computer blow up if I try to print them at battlemap scale.
The "little bits of fluff" are even more of a problem if you want to repurpose a map. "Ignore those bloodstains/mushrooms/bags of treasure, they aren't there," is a frequent refrain. That's another nice thing about the old maps; rotate them 90 degrees and stock it with your own stuff and you have a brand new dungeon. It drives me nuts how many beautiful maps of, for instance, castles I have from later modules, that I cannot use because they have a wall missing, or a bloody altar where I want a great hall, or some other incongruity so specific to the module that you can't use them for anything else.
I use 60 pixels per 5' square in order to make it easy to scale objects, since 1 pixel then equals 1 inch. I never print anything other than overviews, the size of my maps tend to make my computer blow up if I try to print them at battlemap scale.