When preparing and creating adventures and gaming sessions I like to use/re-use the material I have on my shelves as much as possible.
One of the things that can often take a long time to draw or create yourself is maps. So I like to use maps from products I already possess. If I need a castle, an inn or an old tower ruin I like to leaf through the various books, modules and magazines I have to see if anything fits.
This, however, can also be a tedious process as I might have to look through a lot of books to find e.g. a tower map.
So I was wondering whether it was possible to make a collaborative collection of map references from the products Paizo publish.
It wouldn't be the maps themselves, just a listing of the maps contained in each product. If you have the product you could then just pull if off the shelf after searching through the "database" and use it in your adventure.
I'm not entirely sure how, technically, this could be done the easiest way. I was imagining sort of like a wiki with tags (maybe even part of the official wiki?).
So you could click on the "inn" tag and you'd get a list of products which contain a map with that tag (product and page#).
You could, of course, also select the product itself and see the list of maps within that product.
Is this a feasible project? Anyone interested in collaborating on it?
I haven't worked with wikis before, so it would be faster if someone with that kind of knowledge could help kick things off.
This could actually be extended to a similar project with NPCs (if you need a quick villain at a certain CR).
I'd like you to read it again. I'm not talking about posting any maps online. Just a database/overview of the maps contained within each product.
Example:
Rise of the Runelords adventure path #4 - 4 maps, page 7, 13, 15, 32.
Tags: Inn, Temple, Ruin, Dungeon, Cellar, Norgorber.
(note, the example above is entirely fictitious to avoid any spoilers)
That's it. If you then clicked on the "Inn" tag you would get another list:
XYZ adventure path #4, #6
Module X
Module Y
Module Z
I'm not entirely sure where you see anything illegal in that.
It's just a reference source. You'd have to actually own the product in question (whether hard copy or pdf format) to actually see and use the map.
GentleGiant, I think a data base telling me where to find maps of a particular kind would be useful. I think it could also list if the map is a play size or not as well.
To use your example above:
Click "Inn" and see
XYZ adventure path #4, #6
Module X
Module Y
Module Z
Flip Poster Map (Play Map)
etc.
How do you propose to gather the information? User-driven or designed by you?
Given that I don't own all Paizo products it would have to be a collaborative effort (I have almost all of the Adventure Paths and a bunch of the older modules + almost all of the player companions, setting books etc.).
I wouldn't mind gathering it all and entering it into the wiki, although others could do the same with the collaborative set-up of a wiki.GentleGiant, I think a data base telling me where to find maps of a particular kind would be useful. I think it could also list if the map is a play size or not as well.
To use your example above:
Click "Inn" and see
XYZ adventure path #4, #6
Module X
Module Y
Module Z
Flip Poster Map (Play Map)etc.
I haven't done too much thought about the specific layout of the entries yet. I wanted to find out if there were anyone interested in such a thing and in helping build it.
But it could definitely also be a good thing to differentiate between "gridded" maps (which could also be used as combat maps if blown up to the right size) and "overland" maps (region maps, villages etc) - don't know if that's what you were hinting at.Obviously, when I say Paizo products I also mean their Flip-Mats and other map products.
What I was thinking was that it might be a suitable "sub-category" of the Sourcebooks category on the official wiki.
The sourcebooks page can be found here.
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So, you are thinking of a map index similar to the Art index? Note: most of the maps for the products in the art index say [map] after the page number
So, you are thinking of a map index similar to the Art index? Note: most of the maps for the products in the art index say [map] after the page number
And expansion of that I guess you could say. Where one could search/click on tags for certain descriptors.
Admittedly, I don't know if that is even possible in the wiki coding. It's quite common in blog software, so I don't know if they can be combined or if it's already doable right in the wiki.The tags would have to be more generic too (although certain Pathfinder names would be present too, like city names and e.g. deities - to cover maps of temples dedicated to those deities) to cover the general use of the maps (as I've give examples of above).
I think it sounds like a marvelous idea, but I'm utterly clueless as to how one should do it...
I'll try and investigate whether it's possible to incorporate into a wiki or if another format is more suitable for the project.
If anyone should have any ideas or insights, please feel free to share them.
The wikia website would probably be the "easiest" way to set up such a wiki. Just have a short page for each map with a very basic description on one line, and the book name and page on another. Then have use the categories as tags for the size (poster map, full page, small, multi page), type (building, ruin, town, regional overview, etc.), other relevant tags (monastery, religious buildings, manor house, inn, cavern, lair, dungeon level, etc.) maybe the cartographer (Rob Lazzaretti, etc.)
The category pages would then have lists of all the individual pages that have had that category applied. And the category pages can have another level of category tags applied to them. So all the "size" tags (see above) would have the category "Map Size" applied to them (and only to them - these categories wouldn't be applied to individual maps) so that you could look at the page for the category "Map Size" and get a list of all the sizes of maps that have been listed.
I made a sort of "test" one here: http://pathfinder-maps.wikia.com I don't know enough about how wikia's page layout works to really get it working right though.
Make the art index into a searchable/filterable DB and any search for [map] will give you the map list.
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The wikia website would probably be the "easiest" way to set up such a wiki.
Unfortunately, this isn't possible, wikia adds the CC-BY-SA Creative Commons license to whatever is added there, which you are not allowed to do by the CUP.
This type of index would be welcome on the current wiki on http://www.pathfinderwiki.com/