Map files for PFS

[Lou Diamond]

IN future season 5 releases would it be possible to add a map file with 1 inch grid squares that GM's can take to a print shop and have maps made on plotters?

[Feegle]

This has been asked before, and the likely answer is no.

The reason is budget - maps at a certain resolution (such as the version within the PDF of the adventure) are significantly cheaper to commission than ones at a high enough resolution to look nice when printed at 1" grid squares. If they include a blown-up version of the map they commission, it will look fuzzy and unattractive, so they don't include that version of the map.

[noswald]

I agree it takes time and looks fuzzy, but it isn't as hard to make them 1" squares as it seems to be. The only issue I've had converting maps to a roughly 1" square is the maps that have 1 square = 10 feet. Those are hard to make work. The players at my tables LOVE seeing the actual maps for the custom maps in the scenarios since it makes it more immersive for them. I know it isn't cost effective for everyone to do so, but I've got resources to make it happen. Also, if they do include the maps with 1" squares, the files themselves would be HUGE.

[osuracnaes]

I use GIMP and OpenOffice for some pretty nice results by copying the images out of the PDF, scaling them to 1" square, and creating a document of 11x17 pages that I convert to a PDF and print out at Kinko's.

[Feegle]

noswald wrote:

I agree it takes time and looks fuzzy, but it isn't as hard to make them 1" squares as it seems to be.

This is what I do too. They ain't often pretty, but they're close enough for government work, as they say.

[Andrew Riebe]

I recently got access to the Creative Cloud software, which allows me to use Acrobat Pro and Photoshop CC to get pretty nice results with the map images included in the scenario pdfs.

For the larger scale maps (like those found in the Shattered Star Adventure Path) I just recreate those in either Illustrator or Photoshop, that way I can scale them as I need to get the result I want. I can then output them to a PDF and use the built in poster function to print it out as pages (I had one of the Shattered Star maps print out some 40+ pages when it was done...)

[barnowl]

I would just like a Map with out all the specials on it that I can do the blow up work on. Takes alot of work to strip all the secret stuff off the maps and enlarge. The enlarging is easy. And for the most part the map quality stays pretty high.

[noswald]

If you "pull" the image out of the PDFs, they usually don't have the extra stuff on them. They are usually multi-layer images, and when you copy out the image, you should just get the main layer. There are a few of the older scenarios that aren't like that, but most are good.