Being that I purchase my APs at my FLGS (I think this is fair trade for them providing gaming space), I don't have any PDFs of the Kingmaker maps. I'd like to get a decent map of the area to print out for my players, but I don't exactly want to spend hours hand-drawing one in Photoshop.
Anyone have any ideas about how to easily and quickly produce a PDF for the players which I could rapidly update week to week?
I'd stongly suggest getting the Kingmaker Map Folio. It includes a map for each of the 4 Stolen Lands sections without GM Info. You or the players could mark them up directly.
If you definitely prefer PDF...then get the PDF version of the Folio and alter to suit.
Another option is to use Hexographer to make your own version of the regional maps. You don't have to purchase the pro version for this, but can instead use the free online version. The advantage with this is that you can update the maps as the kingdom grows.
Thanks, all!
Get Adobe Reader, available in the Downloads Section.
I just bought the Folio in pdf format from paizo, but when I try to open them in Adobe Elements to add fog over the unexplored region and add the sites that are discovered, it asks for a password to unlock...
I don't have any such thing.
I really have no experience in playing with pdfs and the like. Am I missing something?
Thanks!
Well, I know what you mean by wanting to "add fog" to the map, but I'm not really sure specifically what you're doing in Adobe Elements. The PDFs are deliberately password-protected (randomly generated passwords, and Paizo does doesn't record them anywhere) to avoid having people alter and then disseminating the PDFs.
I've done the same thing you're trying to do, but I took a screenshot of the map and then pasted the image as a new file into another image editing program. Paint.NET worked great for me, but I was willing to put the effort in to learning the basics.
Don't bother trying to change the PDFs, they are your "base maps", just copy them (keep a copy as your base also), and use your copies as your working maps.
I've used PAINT.NET & Paintbrush for our maps, I must have made a hundred maps by now.
Earlier versions of Adobe would let you just click & copy the map, now I have to take a snapshot of it (which changed my scale).
So now I've changed everything over to 100% size scale, I can draw city districts to scale no. I think each district works out to road=1 pixel & block=2 pixels wide, whole district=16 x 16 pixels. That makes a hex(shire) about 192 pixels wide.
Our previous scale was about 75-80 pixels to a hex. So the detail I can put in is much better.
Rather than fogging over unexplored hexes, just blur them. The terrain should not be completely unknown, they should know if it's plains, hills, forest, swamp, mountain.
Using PAINT.NET, I just take a black&white or sepia or negative copy, cut out whatever parts they've explored and paste it into a new layer on top, and merge it down. Print it out for the next game at whatever scale.