Virtual Tabletops and 10 Foot Maps

[Curmudgeonly]

It's not uncommon to get 10 foot maps in the APs, how do people using virtual tabletops like roll20 deal with them?

[Avatar-1]

I don't think I've ever come across this before, but it'd be trivial to align the VTT's grid to have 4 grid squares to a 1 map square in a 2x2.

[archmagi1]

In maptool, just set your grid spacing so that 4 program squares fill one printed map square.

[Mythic Evil Lincoln]

Yeah, I've become a deft hand at aligning grids. Paizo's products contain mercifully consistent grids, which helps.

Generally, I blow the map up until it's roughly the same size (for 10' squares, a 4:1 ratio). Roll20 has a great tool for this that lets you just highlight 9 squares and it gets you pretty dang close. (Highlight one-and-a-half squares for a quick 10' grid).

Then I just massage the whole thing by lining up one side and stretching or squeezing the other side until it's aligned. I do the Y axis first, then the X axis.

I have it down so it only takes a minute or so, but once this is done, I can turn the VTT gridlines off and rely on the (much prettier) image gridlines.

[Curmudgeonly]

Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

Yeah, I've become a deft hand at aligning grids. Paizo's products contain mercifully consistent grids, which helps.

Generally, I blow the map up until it's roughly the same size (for 10' squares, a 4:1 ratio). Roll20 has a great tool for this that lets you just highlight 9 squares and it gets you pretty dang close. (Highlight one-and-a-half squares for a quick 10' grid).

Then I just massage the whole thing by lining up one side and stretching or squeezing the other side until it's aligned. I do the Y axis first, then the X axis.

I have it down so it only takes a minute or so, but once this is done, I can turn the VTT gridlines off and rely on the (much prettier) image gridlines.

But if you remove the VTT's gridlines, how does that help? The map still has only 10 foot squares.

Maybe I'm not understanding >.<

[Mythic Evil Lincoln]

Since both MapTool and Roll20 have measuring tools, once I have the squares aligned, I'm okay with not having 5' gridlines. Tokens just take up 1/4 of the 10' squares. Sometimes, if it's not too garish, I'll match the color of the image grid and leave it on for 5' squares, but since the computer is measuring distances for me anyway (and counting diagonals, etc) I tend to put form over function.

[Lochar]

Roll20:
Align the grid like it's a 5' map. Turn the grid black.

Now edit the size of the map, double the number of pixels for width and height.

It's now a 10' map with good lines for the grid.

[Tangent101]

Oh man, that's so... simple! It's a no-brainer! And it never dawned on me. :(

[Lochar]

Yeah, just make sure you actually get the map the right size before you start putting down dynamic lighting. My DM for Shattered Star didn't look close enough at the tower in Book 1, made it 5' then did lighting.

He ended up shrinking the grid 50% to get the right size so he didn't have to redo lights.

[Carter Lockhart]

Alternatively, size map to grid, go into the roll20 map options. Change grid scale to .5, and change it so one square = 10'. Resize tokens as needed. Done.

[Lochar]

Yeah, but then you have to resize a lot more tokens, rather than just resizing one map.

[Carter Lockhart]

Lochar wrote:

Yeah, but then you have to resize a lot more tokens, rather than just resizing one map.

The trick being, create the map and resize it before populating with tokens afterwards. Also, resizing tokens takes like, one second each.

[Curmudgeonly]

Thanks Lochar!