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I am currently running a campaign set in Kaer Maga, taking over from another GM who was running an excellent game set there before he moved away.
As players, we were always trying to get a handle on just what the city looked like. The maps available from Paizo are great, but it's hard to appreciate the unique nature of the city presented in 2D. As often as not, I didn't picture the multi-layered sections within the walls.
When I took over as GM I used Sketchup 8 and drew the city. For my players I load up Sketchup and can rotate around the city with the mouse to give them any angle I want.
I decided to post it on Youtube but the conversion to .avi possible with Sketchup isn't very good, so I made a slide show from shots I took of the 3D model I drew.
I posted the slide show on Youtube if anyone is interested:
Go to Kaer Maga Slide Show
(Or go to Youtube and do a search for Pathfinder Kaer Maga)
Let me know if this is helpful to your players.
You're not still uploading are you? I got "An error occurred, please try again later"
Awesome of you to do this - Kaer Maga... <3
Edit: Loading now!...
Wow - very impressive work. I always thought of the Highside Stacks as overhanging the center part of the city, probably mistaken though.
The godsheads for the water flows are missing of course, but I imagine modeling that would be incredibly time-consuming. I'm curious though, could you stack the little houses on top of each other at the broken section of the wall?
I'd also imagined a few more levels on the interior, but all-in-all, most impressive, and gives a much better idea of the layout and depth of the city.
Cool video.
Though now I am a bit disappointed. Only picture I ever saw of the city before was the one at the beginning of your video with all the huge Head-Waterfalls. Seeing it as just a broken Hexagon took away some of the coolness for me.
That...must have taken an appallingly long time to make.
Major props to you for taking all the time and effort.
The godsheads are on the painting but not in the map plans nor on the drawing that shows the levels below. But doing them would have been incredibly hard. In Sketchup, the hardest thing for anyone to create are 3D people or faces. It would require creating a lot of planes.
As to more levels, by the description of the height of the walls, about 80', I can't imagine very many levels. The City of Strangers source book mentions 8 levels, but only in some sections. In others the sections are one vast level, such as where the broken roof sections are above the Cavalcade.
In the source book it says:
From a distance, Kaer Maga appears to be an enormous outcropping of gleaming, white stone extending straight up from the cliff ’s edge, its 80-foot-high walls forming a seamless, six-sided ring and its squared-off skyline broken only by a cluster of towers and minarets at the south end.
I seem to remember James L. Sutter saying that the godsheads are not there, the image you are refering is most likely a painting drawn by someone in Golarion.
Some of the water lines are missing and i think that the scale of things is a little off.
Other than that WOW really really great stuff, congratulations.
Right you are Kantrip - they're on the cliffside.
That...must have taken an appallingly long time to make.
Major props to you for taking all the time and effort.
It took about a week, several hours a day. Sketchup is great, but because you're working with planes that might cross across the entire creation, if you make a change to one part of it, you might also change something else that you don't catch till you're beyond the point of being able to undo it.
Making all the buildings was very time consuming. Copy and paste is really a pain because it's so hard to get it lined up with the plane you want to place the copy on. Most of the buildings I did one by one.
Very nice. I think sketchup would be good for 3—d dungeon illustrations...
Yep, I've played around with that some. Moving about inside is tricky, because if you rotate around to a wall you go through it and it's easy to get disoriented trying to get back to the view you want. The program has a walk-through feature that's pretty good, though.
I downloaded a castle someone made that you could walk through and it was pretty nice.I also made the cyclops city from the Adventure Path "Island of Empty Eyes". That came out really good. I don't have it posted on line yet, though.
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Very nice. I think sketchup would be good for 3—d dungeon illustrations...Yep, I've played around with that some. Moving about inside is tricky, because if you rotate around to a wall you go through it and it's easy to get disoriented trying to get back to the view you want. The program has a walk-through feature that's pretty good, though.
I downloaded a castle someone made that you could walk through and it was pretty nice.I also made the cyclops city from the Adventure Path "Island of Empty Eyes". That came out really good. I don't have it posted on line yet, though.
I know what you mean about disorienting... I played around with one in blender... (OK, one I more or less finished )...and it can be crazy.
Holy crap that is awesome! Major props to you for that!
Looks a lot like the model I made of Kaer Maga :)
Yes, I saw your model some time back on the message boards, before we started playing in that setting.
When I researched what was written on Kaer Maga, I remembered that your model was much more accurate than the faces-on-the-cliff painting. Probably using the same sources as you, I tired to make my 3D images match the descriptions.
When I first started playing around with Sketchup, the first major thing I made was the Alamo. Then I made a keep for the campaign we were in, and then I decided to make Kaer Maga when we moved the campaign to there. And I did go back and look at your model again when I started making it. :-)
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This is so awesome! You really have no idea how happy it makes me to see people playing in the city, let alone creating such elaborate art and props. :D
Thanks for posting!
This is impressive. Well done.
This is great. Now we (I) need the same thing for Sharn on Eberron. I've always had trouble imagining that city.
Great work and very useful.
If there was something similar for Outsea...
This is great. Now we (I) need the same thing for Sharn on Eberron. I've always had trouble imagining that city.This image is the best I've seen to capture Sharn
That one's pretty good, thanks. It doesn't show the inside of the towers, however.
The Sketchup model is truly fantastic--I keep spotting buildings that are keyed locations on the map, and I'm sure I haven't caught all of them.
This is extremely timely for me, as I'm about to start the first session of a Kaer Maga campaign in just two days. I plan to show this off to the players as soon as they emerge from the Halflight Path. I can't wait for them to start asking about the Augur Temple, the Pinnacle, Heaven's Ladder, and other prominent landmarks that would be difficult to catalog as they walk through the city streets. And seeing the model set me straight about how completely the walls separate the various districts, with just a few large arteries breaking through to join them.
And James Sutter, thanks for imagining the city in the first place--my players won't leave any stone of it unturned by the time we're through.
The Sketchup model is truly fantastic--I keep spotting buildings that are keyed locations on the map, and I'm sure I haven't caught all of them.
This is extremely timely for me, as I'm about to start the first session of a Kaer Maga campaign in just two days. I plan to show this off to the players as soon as they emerge from the Halflight Path. I can't wait for them to start asking about the Augur Temple, the Pinnacle, Heaven's Ladder, and other prominent landmarks that would be difficult to catalog as they walk through the city streets. And seeing the model set me straight about how completely the walls separate the various districts, with just a few large arteries breaking through to join them.
And James Sutter, thanks for imagining the city in the first place--my players won't leave any stone of it unturned by the time we're through.
Glad you like it. With the different layers, connecting stairs become excellent ambush spots and those arteries become choke points. Also the idea that in many places, roofs would run up to the ceiling and provide support for the next level; and maybe in a few places there are hidden stairs within buildings to traverse levels without going into the streets.
Our group bought a building and converted it to a "secret headquarters", using the Ultimate Campaign book as a price guide. We joke that it must be the best known secret location in the city, with our group so oddly diverse as to stand out even in Kaer Maga. (Currently a fetchling always surrounded by shadows, a schizophrenic half-orc who's sometimes a savage brute and at other times a refined gentleman, a witch with undead henchmen included a troll skeleton in full plate, a 5' 6" Shoanti with a polar bear animal companion, and a goblin npc the party adopted. As a reward for loyal behavior, the fetchling wizard put continual flame on both the goblin's dog slicers, and he can't resist brandishing them as he walks the streets.) And if that weren't enough, during down-time, the half-orc took it upon himself to hire a maid to come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The rest of the party learned about her when they came down one morning and she was chasing the goblin out of the kitchen for helping himself to hot cakes before breakfast was served.
"Who is she!"
"Our maid. I thought we should have someone keep the place cleaned up for us."
"You hired a maid for the secret headquarters?"
"Yeah, but she promised to keep it secret."
"And you gave her a key?"
"Oh, yeah, so she can come in an clean up when we're out adventuring and stuff."
"What about the traps we set when we leave?"
"Oh, I showed her where those were, so you don't have to worry about her setting one off."
"We're going to die in our sleep."
Holy cow that's a lot of work! Good on ya! That is fantastic!
And James Sutter, thanks for imagining the city in the first place--my players won't leave any stone of it unturned by the time we're through.
Thank YOU! Kaer Maga remains one of the parts of the setting I'm most emotionally attached to (rivaled only by outer space), so it's immensely gratifying to see folks playing in it. :)
Also, obligatory plug for my new novel The Redemption Engine, which comes out in April and is set in Kaer Maga!
I fell in love with the idea of Kaer Maga when I first read about the troll mystics on the streets telling fortunes by reading their own entrails. Sadly, I have yet to play or DM in the city. Someday, though!
I can't wait to get home and view the video. Sounds fantastic.