Firebrand's Redoubt: Stronghold of Lady Delbera Axebringer

[Monica Marlowe]

Chris Shaeffer wrote:

My girlfriend asked who I thought was going to be a contender this year, and you were the top of my list. Great map! It just has that classic feel for me.

I am utterly embarrassed by this and thank you for your kind words, Chris. I think it's too early to make such predictions though. Thank you again.

[Raynulf]

Monica Marlowe wrote:

Had contestants from Brazil, Australia or any other southern hemisphere locale opted to do a map with the orientation of “up” being south, I would have said that they were using the same logic, but they might lauded for their ingenuity.

Speaking as someone from Australia, we equate "up" with North as well. Because we use the same maps as everyone else ;)

As an aside (and not a criticism), sometimes it can be a fun thing to throw a bit of an angle (always under 45 degrees, otherwise you may as well rotate the map), mostly as a concession to the fact that it's not always possible to line your walls up to the cardinal directions.

(In engineering we follow a similar system; process plants are typically arranged on a grid, and we pick whatever axis is closest to true North, call it "plant north" and then make that "Up" on every map/drawing/layout etc, with just a reference to "true north". But anyway, I'll stop rambling now).

[Jeff Heikkinen]

Chris Shaeffer wrote:

My girlfriend asked who I thought was going to be a contender this year, and you were the top of my list. Great map! It just has that classic feel for me.

This felt like the map to beat for me too.

[Monica Marlowe]

Raynulf wrote:

Monica Marlowe wrote:

Had contestants from Brazil, Australia or any other southern hemisphere locale opted to do a map with the orientation of “up” being south, I would have said that they were using the same logic, but they might lauded for their ingenuity.

Speaking as someone from Australia, we equate "up" with North as well. Because we use the same maps as everyone else ;)

As an aside (and not a criticism), sometimes it can be a fun thing to throw a bit of an angle (always under 45 degrees, otherwise you may as well rotate the map), mostly as a concession to the fact that it's not always possible to line your walls up to the cardinal directions.

(In engineering we follow a similar system; process plants are typically arranged on a grid, and we pick whatever axis is closest to true North, call it "plant north" and then make that "Up" on every map/drawing/layout etc, with just a reference to "true north". But anyway, I'll stop rambling now).

I was thinking magnetic compass-wise when I said that, it actually didn't occur to me that your maps would orient toward the equator :)

I started out as an engineer, how many times do you hear "assume no friction?" I totally get your rambling :-)

Mapping is kind of the same thing - no adventuring party in the 20 years or so that I have gamed have ever gotten out their survey equipment and been angry that the map was 10 degrees off.

There are definitely good and logical reasons you would want your map oriented some other way than N-S 90 degrees. I just felt that the number of reviewers that seemed to take it as a personal affront and were asking for the designers to do something in a different arbitrary way simply to be arbitrary and held it against many of the maps because of "reasons." It seems unnecessary to reinvent the map wheel or compass rose :-)

[Gabriel Almer]

Monica Marlowe wrote:

It seems unnecessary to reinvent the map wheel or compass rose :-)

Agreed. I would think that, unless you have a very good reason to change map orientation beyond the cardinal directions, you should stick to convention - it makes the map easier to read and it faciliates communication between the GM and the players. The map's contents should have their own logic (that's why structures aren't supposed to align with the grid), but I can't think of a good reason why the compass rose needs to follow that same logic on principle - to me, that seems arbitrary.

[Monica Marlowe]

And recently in the news D&D map projectors. Having things line up on the grid truly is an arbitrary and now useful convention. :-)

[Andrew Black]

Now bring on da monsta!

[Aaron Miller 335]

Congrats this was a wonderful map!

[Anthony Adam]

Hey all

As it was discussed quite fervently about compass roses and north, here are some thoughts for you to consider, a lot of this is very personal, but you may find it of use...

Let me start with -

I have no problem with north being always up on the page!

But...

When you draw, for example, a building that is represented in a city map, please ensure the compass rose on the building is at the same and correct orientation for how the building is represented on the city map! Yeah, I peeve on that one >.< - I loves my consistency!

How many of your mountains, caves, and dungeons, all have holes in the south side for entrances? It's like a plague of mining locusts all decided to fly towards the pole, drilling into south facing escarpments and mountain sides during their periods of rest.

Would you believe that after 30 odd years of playing, one of my old timers actually said to the group "dont go to the north side, the entrances are always on the south side!" >.< - I turned my map upside down at the point! :P - One of those days I was awake and thinking on my feet ;)

The other problem with "always north" is the tendency to let it AND the grid lines dictate subconsciously lines of parallelism in the design, e.g. all the corridors are plumb bob straight, angular corners, regimented rows of buildings with perfectly straight roads built on a hill side, etc.

To sum up, "North up" works for gaming purposes as it simplifies everything into an expected norm, the phrasing for directions and room descriptions are unified - so as they say, "if it ain't broke..."

I guess what I was trying, really badly, to illustrate was that you should try to avoid letting the compass rose, the grid lines, the north/page orientation force subconscious design decisions into your vision unless you really want it to.

That is where this design scored so well with me, the gridlines and compass rose didn't seem to affect the design to any great extent. Even though north was up, it wasn't a big influence on the design.

One thing to maybe try as an experiment, rough out your maps on plain paper, then transfer the design to graph paper - i.e. remove the horizontal and vertical distractions and see where it leads :)

Hope that ramble clarified what I was trying to say >.<

Now back to typing up more reviews for me... :D

[Raynulf]

Anthony Adam wrote:

I have no problem with north being always up on the page!

But...

When you draw, for example, a building that is represented in a city map, please ensure the compass rose on the building is at the same and correct orientation for how the building is represented on the city map! Yeah, I peeve on that one >.< - I loves my consistency!

Having just GM'd Feast of Ravenmoor... I heartily second this.

Two full page maps:

One has no scale of any kind.

One is an encounter map with the compass rose in the wrong direction. Specifically: It had north as "up", per standard, when according to the town map, box text and information presented to the GM, it should have been "Left".

Otherwise it was a great module, but having to pause partway throguh the big encounter area to figure out why the text directions made no sense was something that I could have done without :P

I take this as additional validation: Don't assume the cartographer can read minds!

[Monica Marlowe]

Anthony Adam wrote:

When you draw, for example, a building that is represented in a city map, please ensure the compass rose on the building is at the same and correct orientation for how the building is represented on the city map! Yeah, I peeve on that one >.< - I loves my consistency!

Well, that's entirely different and something that bugs the tar out of me too! That kind of mistake feels like a lack of communication between designer and cartographer or failure on the part of the developer to catch the mistake. I encounter this more in video games, but I don't usually run modules either.

[Luthia]

Congratulations on the top 16. I had this map in my personal top 8 as well as many others. I actually really liked the unusual shaped design - I mean, on an underground map, why ever not?

The lack of more Golarion tie-in and the fact that dwarves bore me a little bit was probably the least likeable parts of this map. Oh, that and the hand-writing could be more legible, but that might be a classicist/teacher pet peeve. It's not like I can't read it.