Ghol-Gan King's Wrecked Funeral Ship- Main Deck
serviceable map reference at first glance.
There is a compass rose and scale present on the map.
Detailed enough to make a finished map without too many questions.
however….
Boring location, done before.
I do not recommend this map to progress to round 3
Contributor
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The Good
This map is labelled, and I could make a final map out of it without additional information.
It has a scale, key, and compass.
The Bad
It's a boat. It's hard to make yet another boat interesting without pulling out all the stop. No stops are pulled.
One and a half decks of a boat is a very small area for a full-page map
Is this two wrecked boats, or two levels of one boat? Labels.
Ghol-Ghan is an Africa-analogue-born empire of cyclopes. Why is the boat apparently built by the 18th-century British?
The title says this boat is wrecked, but it looks fine.
My Judgement
A dull idea, underdeveloped, and labeled okay. I do not recommend this entry for advancement.
Modules Overlord
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Drawing from my blog on maps, and the rules for the round, I’ll judge the maps on a number of questions.
Is It a Full Page Map?
Not really. If you discount the water and single rock (which have nothing interesting) and the black space for the part of the upper deck that doesn’t exist, this could be fit on a half-page.
Does The Map Have A Compass Rose and Scale? Are They Used Well?
They are present, but having the ships be lined up exactly east-west, when it supposedly a wreck, is weird.
Is The Map A Place I Want To Adventure?
Not especially. It's a wrecked ship in nearly perfect condition. Those are fairly common.
Is the Map Clear?
Yes.
Is the Map Detailed?
Middling. The lack of details here are things like why it's wrecked (is there a hole in it? If so, where), any elements of interest.
Is the Map Imaginative?
No. You could add a partially flooded hold. A mass of sails and netting and cargo floating nearby. A knocked over mast that formed a bridge to another rock. A shallow reef that gutted the bottom and is just 4 feet below water, allowing a Cyclops to be walking when Medium creatures had to swim. Making it a funeral ship isn't enough to set it apart.
There's nothing of Superstar quality with this as a full-page map entry. I do not recommend this progress to round 3.
A bit of a missed opportunity on this one. While the map is clear, it doesn't spark the imagination. A cyclops funeral ship should be more exotic and fantastic. Then set it on fire while a kraken is attacking it.
It looks in very good shape for a wrecked ship. Also, I see no notes indicating where the cyclops skeleton pirates will be rising from the deep.
30th map I have seem, safe and boring, your current rank is 16th.
So we've got the main deck of a wrecked ship. I suppose that means there are a few more decks below, which presumably look far more wrecked.
That said, there's nothing here to set this ship apart from any other ship, and that's a problem. I recently got Ships of the Inner Sea, and each of those ships have some serious character, and are clearly set apart from each other. This unfortunately fails that.
I think in part you needed to give us the entire ship, not just the main deck, because then you could have at least added some excitement with the wreckage part. I see there are some undead cyclops servants indicated, but they could just as easily be anything else, because there's nothing to make this ship cyclopean.
Sorry, I'm afraid I don't think I'll be voting for this one. Best of luck.
Challenge: Is this map difficult to execute? Does it in my opinion demonstrate the characteristics of a Superstar designer?
Technique: Did the designer show some skill and consideration in the choices made on the map. Are the words used in the key wise choices that add to the overall utility of the map?
Utility: Can a GM/cartographer make sense of the map and make immediate use of it?
Overall: I'll rate the Map as an A for strong recommends B for weak recommends C on the bubble D for weak rejects F for Do not recommends
Challenge: Sunken ship can be hard mode if you execute it properly
Technique: It's pretty but too basic for the competition. All the effort on appearance would have been better spent adding details.
Utility: Usable
Overall: D as in weak reject. It's a basic shape but it sure is pretty.
Just adding a fallen mast and some draugr rowers or something might have helped this out.
The name had me expecting more. The wreckage of a Cyclops king's funeral ship sounds like a memorable place to adventure. Then this map is here instead and if I had purchased this without seeing the map first I would probably want my money back.
The ship doesn't look wrecked at all and is far to 18th century European for the name. The large black space on one of the decks is completely wasted space. There is nothing even around the ship to help it out.
Overall brilliant name which probably means you had a good concept that was not well executed.
Here are my ratings for this map:
First Look: C
It's a good looking ship. But it's just a ship.
Interest Level of Location: D
The location concept itself is worth a better grade. But the execution made it into a normal ship with only a few minor features that you wouldn't find on any other ship.
Tactical Depth: C
A fight on the deck of a ship at least offers some obstacles and decks on different levels, but not much room to move around.
Adventure Potential: C
It would be easy to drop a shipwreck like this into a nautical adventure, or even make it the objective of one. But the map doesn't tell me a story that suggests any particular adventure.
Clarity: B
It took me a minute to figure out what the two different views were (above the forecastle and inside it) but everything else is otherwise clear.
Logic: F
The ship neither appears to be wrecked (other than its adjacency to a rock) nor like it belonged to an ancient Cyclops empire.
Overall: C-
My favorite thing: The idea is pretty metal
Other things I like: It's a fine looking ship
My least favorite thing(s): I think you expected the art to carry you to victory here, but I think it's just a mapmaking program and there is nothing superstar about that. Nothing about this map has me excited to run an adventure here.
Will I vote for it: I will not be voting for this map
Very pretty and well made map. I really like the fine work done on the fore deck with the Cursed Circle and the King's Coffin. There is a story here and it looks quite interesting. Definitely a good adventure map.
However none of the imagery here is very evocative or magical. It is a ship run aground; I got a lot of those with all of the pirate material I am using for my current game. There is not much here that could not be gained by buying an appropriate Map Pack from Paizo.
Consequently I will not be voting for this entry.
The idea of a tomb ship got me really excited. I might even say you'd make a decent cartographer, though the water does feel way too busy. But I got really disappointed. I've run a seafaring campaign for over two years and scoured many sources for ship maps. Yet, this is probably one of the most boring ship maps I've ever seen. It doesn't feel finished -- where's the below decks? Even if the below decks were mapped, the map's main attraction (the coffin) is the first room the party will encounter. Even with what few rooms we got, the layout doesn't make for a good adventure.
A ship. I'm sorry, but that's all this is, a ship. I apparently have the same map-making package as you have, because I recognize these textures, and I could make this in ten minutes. Nothing Superstar about that.
The idea is a good one. A ship meant to sail a fallen king into the afterlife, probably specially built for this mighty king. I can see a ship with no main deck, the dead king lying in the hull that has been opened to the skies, I can see black sails, honor guards chained to the ship so they will go down with it, heaps and heaps of treasure, some kind of trap meant to sink the ship, anything but this.
And sure, the cursed circle and the library are nice touches, telling a story, but you had a full page to use for this. Take us a bit closer and show us some details. Plus, where are the lower decks? You had room to draw them.
All in all I cannot like this map, even though I kind of want to. It's simply too much wasted potential.
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Modules Overlord
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Official Round 2 Note: On Map Resolution
We’ve had some comments on legibility of smaller type on the maps, and the contestants are (by the rules of the contest), not allowed to clarify anything, so I want to make a general statement about maps and resolution.
When we required all contestants to present maps at a specific dpi and size, we did so because in past years we’ve had some issues with maps (for the encounter round) being sent to us in different sizes, resolutions, and dpi, making it difficult to give them all a high-quality presentation for the contest. We found that asking for a higher dpi than we’ll use in the end allowed us to create a standard of presentation that kept all images crisp and clean. For encounter-round maps, this has worked well.
Unfortunately, since this round requires all text be provided on the maps themselves, many contestants used the dpi and size standards we required as the basis for making sure their text is clear, and otherwise tried to keep words as small as possible so as to not clutter their maps. This was done in the (reasonable) belief that the maps should look good at the size we asked for, rather than in any different size we might present on our website. When resized for smaller, high-quality images, this can result in words that aren’t clearly legible.
We’ve made a change to rescale everything to the higher end of maximum image size for uploaded images for all maps that were entered this round. This should allow for better legibility for voters when selecting their favorite maps to advance in the contest. It is our fault that this process was not properly communicated to our contestants, so consider this when adjusting or finalizing your selections.
Obviously, we’ll explain what is going to happen to the images of maps, and how to allow for it, more clearly in future rounds (and future contests). My apologies to any contestant with a map that has suffered as a result of how we handled scaling in this round.
I thought this was fairly uninspiring. There's already a flip-mat that could easily fill this same purpose.
Good Luck
First off: Congratulations on making Round 2, and the best of luck in the votes!
Coolness: Do I look at this, and want to use it in a game? Does it provoke wonder or amazement? Does it hold potential for interesting encounters, adventures or roleplay? How much mileage does this map have in it?
Usability: How usable is this for me as a GM (being that GMs are actually the primary audience of most maps)? Is the legend clear and in logical order for play? Does it give me enough information to easily visualize the parts and wax poetic about the varied locations? Does it have the necessary details for me to run with it on the fly, or will it involve a lot of improvisation? Does it have any glaring oddities that stop me mid-breath to go "what the hell is that?!"?
Craftsmanship: Is it clear, legible and containing all the necessary bits and bobs? Does it make good use of the space? Is the scale appropriate for the detail (and visa versa)?
(I suppose you could also call them "Creativity, Functionality and Skill", but I like my terms better :P).
Coolness: F
- Positive: Ancient cyclopean funeral ship? That's something I'd like to see!
- Negative: But this isn't it. It's a stock British ship circa 1800's, sized for medium sized crew (looking at the interior) and made of wood (Ghol-gan were famous for building things from stone) which should have perished in the millennia since the cyclops were around. Furthermore, it's less wrecked so much as perched gently on a small rock, and thus can't have been there more than a few months, as even a small storm would dislodge it.
- Verdict: F. This was not what was advertised.
Usability: E
- Positive: It's the main deck and sterncastle of a 175ft three masted ship. I can sort of use that.
- Negative: I can't use it for its intended purpose; cyclops are large, and can't fit in half of it. Also, most of the ship is missing, even though there are openings on the deck that drop into the absent lower sections. That's putting aside the fact that barrels, hammocks and decking would have decomposed and gone through a few thousand generations of plankton and krill by now.
- Verdict: For me, this is an "E". As the adage goes, "A picture is a thousand words", and this map gives me maybe a paragraph.
Craftsmanship: E
- Positive: It is a reasonable demonstration of a software package. Compass and scale are present.
- Negative: The scale is wrong for a giantish ship. The ship is 'wrecked' perfectly east-west, which is very contrived. The entire design does not consider the actual subject topic and time involved, indicating inadequate research before submission. There is very little actual content for a full page map, and most of it is plain decking; something this simple doesn't really warrant a map. The ship is still perfectly upright, despite being 'wrecked. Most of the decks are missing, indicating the map is also incomplete.
- Verdict: I'd peg this as an "E".
Overall: E-
I'll add the comment here: Software can help make a good idea look great, but should be approached with caution and deliberation, because depending on the package used it can unduly restrict what you can do and what you can represent.
I am critiquing this without having read others' first:
Off the bat, this looks like a Paizo AP map. Very professional.
A wrecked funeral ship...interesting idea, but this isn't that interesting.
The title text should be less stylized, ditto for the compass rose.
This has the smackings of a viking funeral ship, so I kind of expect this to be on fire, instead its just a tomb with a cursed circle.
There's at least some barrels and such but again...this isn't that interesting.
Overall, this is a good looking map...but that's about it. I'm not interested by much of anything on here, why would I even want to explore a funeral ship anyway?