Suggestion: PC friendly maps in scenarios

[Ring_of_Gyges]

As it stands, maps in scenarios include GM only information. Locations of traps, secret doors, where enemies will emerge from etc...

One consequence is that the GM can't show the map to players at the table to give a vision of where they are.

It seems like it would be easy to also include a spoiler free version of each map that appears in the scenario so that the GM could print it out as a handout to give PCs.

Would you use such an addition? Any objections to it?

[Martin Kauffman 530]

The maps should be printed black and white on letter sized 8 1/2 by 11 paper with 1 inch boxes to represent each 5' square. They could be placed on the tabletop and the players could just place their minis and play right atop the map. They could be included as an adition to the PFS module even if this meant the cost of the module would increase by a dollar or two.

[Bbauzh ap Aghauzh]

Why black and white? I prefer to print my maps in color.

That being said. You can use your acrobat reader to select and copy the image to your clipboard. Then pick another app or program to paste it into, scale and tile it, then print. You'll have to cut and tape pages together, but this process usually leaves most GM notes out.

[godsDMit]

Andrew Christian wrote:

Why black and white? I prefer to print my maps in color.

That being said. You can use your acrobat reader to select and copy the image to your clipboard. Then pick another app or program to paste it into, scale and tile it, then print. You'll have to cut and tape pages together, but this process usually leaves most GM notes out.

I do roughly that same thing with Paint.

[Andreas Forster]

Actually, you can just click on a map in a pdf, then right-click and copy to clipboard. Open a bitmap editor program (like MS Paint) and paste from clipboard. The picture you'll get is the map without the GM info.

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Andreas Forster wrote:

Actually, you can just click on a map in a pdf, then right-click and copy to clipboard. Open a bitmap editor program (like MS Paint) and paste from clipboard. The picture you'll get is the map without the GM info.

Thanks! I hadn't known that, but I've got it to work.

[Saint Caleth]

Copy/paste sometimes does not work, since there is sometimes a transparent or mostly transparent image overlayed over the map itself in the pdf as part of the layout.

The export images feature in Nitro PDF works in every situation I have run across in a Paizo pdf. It also gets images with transparency like NPC headshots out of the pdf without the black mess of a background.

[Arutema]

The latest versions of GIMP will let you open a PDF directly in order to extract those pesky images that are not copy-pasteable. It's also a good all-round image editor and my choice for converting stuff to handout or VTT format.

[Jason Wu]

Andrew Christian wrote:

Why black and white? I prefer to print my maps in color.

Color does cost more to print. Ink keeps getting more and more expensive.

-j

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Surely the prefered option would be to publish the PDF in color and let people print it in black and white or color depending on their preference. Anyone can check a box when printing to go grayscale.