What a stupid map!
Why oh why would you design a map so incredible difficult to draw out for play.
I want to run this adventure after RotRL but not with that Map.
Has anyone else changed it for something more user friendly?
What a stupid map!
Why oh why would you design a map so incredible difficult to draw out for play.
I want to run this adventure after RotRL but not with that Map.
Has anyone else changed it for something more user friendly?
I would also like to know how people played through this adventure. If drawn to scale, the maps are massive and very time consuming to make!
I would also like to know how people played through this adventure.
Online, where you just use the image of the map. No drawing required. :)
Why oh why would you design a map so incredible difficult to draw out for play.
Because a tiny castle with ten rooms simply connected by hallways is boring.
I would also like to know how people played through this adventure. If drawn to scale, the maps are massive and very time consuming to make!What a stupid map!
Why oh why would you design a map so incredible difficult to draw out for play.
I want to run this adventure after RotRL but not with that Map.
Has anyone else changed it for something more user friendly?
When I run this castle, I plan to print out the map to scale (maybe glue it to cardboard), then let the PCs explore it room by room.
If you don't want to print it, you could draw rooms as they go or draw the whole thing once and keep it from week to week.
Well, the PCs have explored most of the castle, but for future reference, how would you print this all out to scale? (I am very computer illiterate BTW)
I really like the map. I redid a version of Foxglove manner in 45 degree 3D style and I'm seriously thinking of doing the same with this map at some point as castles look exceptional when done in this manner.
Well, the PCs have explored most of the castle, but for future reference, how would you print this all out to scale? (I am very computer illiterate BTW)
Well, first I either scan the map or extract the images (depending on whether I have the print or PDF version). For CotCT, I scanned in the images. I then clean it up in GIMP - remove unnecessary borders and secret doors, etc.
If I am going to piece together the dungeon room-by-room, I extract each room into a separate image and then throw all the images into a Word document. Rooms that are larger than a single piece of paper will need to be split then taped back together. Come game time, I tape each room to the gaming table as the party explores it. This isn't 100% ideal, since the players can get a sense of the dungeon dimensions based on where I lay out the first piece. You can use Word to adjust the size of your images so they come out to the correct scale.
For skeletons of Scarwall, instead of taping each piece to the table, I plan on attaching them to cardboard to create tiles. This should be a bit easier to set up and break down - important because they'll be in Scarwall for more than just 1-2 sessions.
If I am printing out one giant map, I use PosteRazor to create a PDF for normal sized paper. You'll need to figure out how bit your map should be and input that value into PosteRazor. You could print out the whole map on a large sheet of paper at Kinkos, but that's pretty expensive. I'm still experimenting with the best way to connect 20-30 sheets of paper, but a combination of tape and rubber cement seems to be working well. Just tape was insufficient because the individual sheets separated when I rolled the whole map up.
Either way is pretty labor intensive, but it looks so much better than markers on a grid.
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I have used gridded easel paper (like for presentations) that I got at Staples for large maps like this. They're generally 1" grid and can easily be rolled up, cut into individual rooms, or pieced together sheet by sheet as the map is revealed. Tablets run about $30 at Staples, but you can use one tablet for a whole campaign or longer depending how extensively you use it.
I'd also like to note that I welcome complex and unique maps, especially for large dungeon compounds. In this regard, I don't think anyone competes with Greg Vaughan in his intricacy and scale. Thanks Greg!
I really like the map. I redid a version of Foxglove manner in 45 degree 3D style and I'm seriously thinking of doing the same with this map at some point as castles look exceptional when done in this manner.Could you show us that 3Dmap from Foxglove, please?
I'll link what I have on Photobucket. Unfortunately I don't have a place I could show this whole thing off in full size. The map is a modified version of Foxglove Manour. Its been modified to hook up with a second building as that is what I needed for the adventure I made for my PCs. Foxglove is on the left.
Jeremy, that is freaking sweet!
What I have done for printing off maps is:
- Copy the image out of the pdf of the module (click on it and select copy)
- Paste it into an image editing program such as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.
- Look at the ruler and figure out how many squares there are per inch.
- Go to image size and resize the image so that it is scaled to 1 inch = 1 square. (Note, the image will be at a resolution of 72 dots per inch, I leave that the same, although you could bump it up to 150 dpi if you wanted). Use the bicubic interpolation for resizing. Photoshop will actually add pixels to make the image bigger.
- The resized image is going to be somewhat blurry, so I go into Filters/Sharpen and use either Smart Sharpen or Unsharp Mask and sharpen the image up. Play with the settings until it looks good. You can really get it to look pretty good this way, despite having scaled the image up dramatically.
- So, now I have an image that is pretty huge, depending on the map, and something like 40 by 50 inches. I have access to a color printer at work that will print 11 by 17 pages, so, I make a new file that is 10.5 inches by 16.5 inches and then I drag the big map around on it, printing off individual sections.
- I have taped individual sections together at times, or, I have also just described the dungeon as they go through it and then pulled out individual maps for areas when an encounter happens.
For Scarwall, I'll probably describe it all verbally... it is a big place and I want the players to get the feeling that mapping it all out could be difficult. Then, when an encounter occurs, I'll pull out the appropriate printed map and run it on that.
Why oh why would you design a map so incredible difficult to draw out for play.
Play it without a map. When you get to combat encounters just worry about drawing out the rooms the encounter takes place in.