I was enjoying the Gregg Helmberger's "build a better mousetrap" thread, and it got me thinking about the cartographic decisions in the APs. First, I am amazed at how much Paizo "gets it" with mapping. A big thumbs up to the cartographers. Functional and beautiful. It's so nice to see the evergreen trees at elevation, the deciduous trees below, rivers logically networked, lakes that are sinks... hooray for geography.
I got the new ROtRL AE and love the direction of the interactive maps. I'm a professional cartographer myself (albeit in the sciences and not the arts) and I have a big plotter that I like to print battle maps on for in-game use. Print map users, the folks who project maps, the virtual table top players, and those who use monitors as battle maps get huge mileage in our games from the interactive maps and the genius decision to create a player versions that do not have secret doors etc. My poor illustrator skills were stretched when I would have to painstakingly touch up the maps from Carrion Crown to remove the stuff to hide from the players (labor of love... hmm... not quite).
I have to also take a moment to say thanks to Paizo for giving us the ability and permissions to use the maps in all these different ways and not get all 'legal' and 'insider content' on us.
Suggestion preface: 1) I have only read CC and ROtRL. I have played the first 3 modules in KM. If you divine from my suggestion that I am reading the wrong APs, feel free to suggest which may better suit me. 2) I am talking here about the 1-inch grid battle maps and not about the regional or town-level maps.
Now to my suggestion, I would prefer that there were more battle maps (let's think of them as "Places") on which there occurred multiple encounters, maybe over several days/weeks/months. Mapped Places that the PCs would return to. Places with complex interactions between the residents. Battlemaps where fights might ebb and flow between rooms. For example,
Too often, the course of the night is: map down, clear map, new map down, clear map, new map down, clear map... Farewell, I only just knew ye! It is probably fair to say, if I as the DM want my maps to become more Place-like, I should be describing them better and slowing my roll. Apparently that admission isn't enough to stop me.
In contrast, I have less love for maps that are strung out dungeons (although strung out dungeons deserve their occasional spots). Here I'm thinking of locales like
These one-way affairs rely on clearing a room and going to the next room. Nothing wrong with them, they just aren't dynamic Places. Doing things in one room doesn't really affect anything else (/hyperbole) and once you leave, you ain't coming back.
The other map I can do without is the round, nothing room
Things I also love are the more general maps due to their re-usability. Places that aren't overly odd or specific. Indoor and outdoor scenes that can be used as a transitory locales injected into any campaign at the drop of a hat. Forests, grasslands, keeps, shorelines, farms, river crossings, mausoleums.
One final idea I've been playing with that probably has a million and one reasons why it won't work... has anyone messed with creating maps from aerial photography. The resolution of these digital orthorectified photographs is getting to a place where they are serviceable for the 1-inch scale battle map. It's kinda cool to play in a real scene. It obviously doesn't work for any locales with structures due to modernity and roofs, but nature scenes could work. Bleh, I am hesitant to even bring it up because I love the hand made map art so much. In fact, forget I said anything ;)
