When I read the write up for the battle at the whale processing plant my brain went NUTS thinking how I was going to represent it on the board.
First off, I am not sure WHAT the heck it is about drawing maps that have all the buildings at an angle to the grid. I swear all of Sandpoint was drawn that way. OK rant over.
I became fascinated with the cinematic concept of fighting in a place that was
A)Slippery with oil and blubber
B) Had good cover and fields of fire (With hundreds of seagulls providing miss chances)
c) Was extremely flammable
Since I have five players I knew I needed to up the encounter to keep them from breezing through. I added a 4th level Druid of Gozreh who had a hatred for the whale killing foreigners and a vulture animal companion
Her main focus was fire spells. Produce flame would allow her to pinpoint fire, and flaming sphere would roll around catching the blubber, waste and spilled oil on fire in wall patterns. And she would use her 2d level summon nature's ally to summon a small fire elemental. I had multiple fire markers ready including a couple of fire-walls to represent the path of the flaming sphere.
I knew I could not easily represent the three levels of the flensing house so I built one.
Since I cannot post pics here (Or cannot figure out how) I will direct you to my webshots page that has the images of the flensing house, boiler vats etc
http://inlinethumb61.webshots.com/50236/2140627060101629488S425x425Q85.jpg
[IMG]http://inlinethumb61.webshots.com/50236/2140627060101629488S425x425Q85.jpg[/IMG]
One change I made was to add a pulley and chain to drag the blubber tot he second floor. The grates had holes in the center large enough for a person to slip through (Which the druid and her flaming hand DID after getting a critical card with "knock back 5 feet) the resulting splash of super heated whale oil, now ignited and sending splotches of napalm like fire over to the other two boiling vats made the final fight on the roof even more dangerous as the building was catching fire beneath them!
I also moved the ladder to the opposite end of the second floor so the PCs could not climb from ground floor to the roof without crossing the (inhabited by angry terrorists) 2d floor.
I also assumed the steam from the boiling blubber gave some concealment and decided on a 30% miss chance if over 10 feet away.
The PCs climbed up (the very slippery) chain at one point but failed the last roll and got stuck, thus creating a "pinata" situation for the two freedom fighters armed with clubs right by the chain.
The party managed to defeat the enemy and keep Gellick (Who was the wonder hostage) from dying, they slow walked away while the plant exploded behind them.
They had already ticked off the government while meeting with them to discuss sponsorship of their expedition (Two of the PCs are Mawangi natives and do NOT like the Apartheid-like ways of the colonial government. and were very vocal about it) When they wrote the letter to decline sponsorship, the Oracle doing it rolled a "1" for diplomacy. The PC they showed it to also rolled a "1" and therefore thought calling the government a bunch of hyena raping goat suckers was the height of decorum. So now the Baron wants their heads on pikes for destroying a valuable, long standing business. The pathfinders are trying to get them out of town as fast as possible while trying o soothe ruffled feathers.
For me, the building will become scenery for war machine....
We were playing on a battle map so I turned the map to line up with the squares and placed the building atop the battle map aligned with the squares below. Using the map underneath we could approximate movement and placement etc. I sued a tape measure to measure missile and spell ranges.