Bryan McWhirt's page

1. I don't have any problem just clicking on the image to select it, right-clicking to Copy, going to Paint and Paste, then crop as desired. If that doesn't work, there's also a Take Snapshot option in Acrobat's, I think, Edit menu.

2. Fantasy Grounds is an installable VTT program, I haven't tested it out whether it can save assets offline.

Thanks Samy. It looks like FG does not require network but I will find out. I'm going to hold off on getting it as they are working with Paizo to release full functional Starfinder rules minus space combat. It's been submitted to Paizo as of yesterday and it's waiting on approval. They say it will probaly take a week or two for Paizo to approve or submit changes/corrections so best case is that the full Starfinder rules for FG could be available in a week or two. Someone else suggested Maptool and I briefly looked at it and for just maps it should work.

I have a few questions regarding the PDF then.

1. How do you get the images out of the PDF? They are understandably password protected.

2. It turns out there won't be internet access where we will be playing, which makes my last few days of learning Roll20 pointless. Does anyone know of a VTT for Mac that does not require Internet or and I back to using GIMP and tons of layers? Unfortunate as once you start getting past Roll20's learning curve for GMs you get to liking it.

Bryan McWhirt wrote:

...since the oh so intelligent people at Piazo decided that it was a good idea to release the adventure path but wait for a year or more depending on when they do make it to market to publish the maps for those adventure paths. That takes some serious intellect.

Appreciating the necessity for that takes some understanding of the production process and the timelines involved in ordering art - most of the art and maps hasn't yet been produced until after the AP is halfway done, so even if they pull the trigger immediately on pawns/map packs/ancillary products they are rarely ready before the AP is completed. They need to wait for this since things can change substantially from outline to author turnover - significant NPCs can take on different relevance and I presume the author is also largely responsible for the maps as well.

Also, I'm not sure what you're waiting for in terms of maps. They don't generally 'publish the maps for adventure paths' separately (they used to provide such a product but there were a lot of people who objected to it and the format of the map folios was changed, to generally positive response). Just a heads up, in case you're waiting for a "Distant Suns Map Collection" PDF or something..

That said, I would always recommend waiting until after an AP is completely released before running it anyway. There is usually nuance and context for the early installments that don't really come together until you've read books five and six. Many of the problems people report when running the early/mid-range AP issues stem from a failure to fully appreciate the overall arc, in my opinion.

I prefer to not use VTT but since there are no maps for Incident at Absalom Station (Dead Suns 1 of 6). The Docking bay is scheduled for a March/April release. Sunrise Maiden has a May/June tenative release date. I have not seen a release date for the Fusion Queen, Acreon, or Drift Rock, indicating they are likely going to be a year or more after the module has been released even though the maps are don as a scaled down version appear in the module but you are not going to be fitting any pawns on those.

I guess I can understand the non-overhead view on the tokens. For using a VTT I'd still prefer a 3/4 isometric view.

I've not played pathfinder so I don't know how adventure paths were done in the past but I would think the best way would be to release the maps for each module with the modules. I don't mind the extra cost as that makes sense to me and one of the main reasons I wanted to move to Starfinder over Star Wars was that these maps were going to be available to play on. Buying a module and having to wait a year for the maps to be available or be force to use a VTT is just sad though. I would feel a bit different probably if other maps were not coming out before the ones needed for the module.

Does the PDF version contain top-down views for VTT? Since that is the only real reason to have the PDF and the only real way to use the pawns since the oh so intelligent people at Piazo decided that it was a good idea to release the adventure path but wait for a year or more depending on when they do make it to market to publish the maps for those adventure paths. That takes some serious intellect.