The practicalities of running Fort Rannick.

[Allyx]

Hi all, I've been having a blast GM'ing my first Pathfinder game with my family playing the PC's, the party are currently at the Graul farm, and rescued the Black Arrows before attempting the farmhouse interior.

My question is how to actually run the Fort Rannick seige, we use figures, so I have been preparing the maps on 1 inch squared paper, and drawing the map with pencil as close as I can, but it is truely huge, even splitting the outdoor map into 4 peices, each peice is larger than our table.

So how did you go about running this part of the adventure?

[Jhaeman]

That's a good question! I just finished running the siege. I *really* wanted to draw the entire fort, but when I calculated the area it would cover I realized it would a) take ages to draw; b) take up a ton of paper; and c) never fit on my table. So I ended up just prepping the area around the two main gates for the initial attack, with full maps only of the interiors of the inner keep.

[The Usual Suspect]

Draw the buildings, with a few squares outside them, then cut them out. You can then place the buildings down approximating the distance to the next building as the party moves about the fort. use a blank grid map to place your cut out buildings on. That way you can move around the buildings to represent just the areas where the PCs are, and then be descriptive about the distances.

[Zebbie]

This is one of the three maps that made me switch to a LED TV and digital mapping system for my non digital, in person games. I can zoom in and zoom out at will, with Digital tokens or use physical figures(my typical preference). Sandpoint in Chapter 4 was another big one. Just couldn't fathom how I was going to pull that off and do it justice. My players love it.

All that paper and all that ink.. so close yet so far away from what I wanted to achieve. Made the switch, and I have never looked back.

Cost me around $200 and I am set for

[Allyx]

I saw on Youtube a gaming group called Dicestormers who project the maps onto a white sheet of paper on a table by bouncing the image off of a cieling mounted mirror fixed at a 45 degree angle that can be retracted when not in use.

I have a projector and laptop containing my pdf rulebooks etc... so I'm tempted to try rigging up a similar setup, I'm sure it will come in handy later on with the Sandpoint battle especially.

Thanks for your insights, I will probably use the paper map I've drawn this time and set up the projector for future sessions.

Which digital mapping systems are worth looking into? I have no experience with any of them currently, so I guess I'm looking for some informed recommendations.

[mousmous]

We have a similar projection set-up as you describe for the Dicestormers and we use Roll20. It's very nice. My favorite parts of it are that I can make tokens that are spell effects and drop them _under_ the miniatures, or remove them easily. It makes fog of war simple to do, if a little clumpy (but that's my fault for being on a laptop and refusing to use a mouse). If a map is too large for the table, and many are, I can shift-click and force the map to move to where I've pinged the map. I started by cutting sections of the map and moving between maps for one dungeon, but that was a hot mess.

I like d20. If I had to do it again(and had the money), I would probably switch from a projector to a TV built into table. The two annoying bits about projecting the map, are arms in the way of the image while moving pieces, and people bumping the table, knocking the miniatures askew to the grid.

[Allyx]

I opted for Maptool instead of Roll20, I did try d20pro for a bit but struggled to get the fog of war working correctly.

The PC's decided to attack from multiple directions simultaneously which was a bit of a challenge, one I hope they don't repeat later when Sandpoint gets attacked by Giants, we struggled through it but I get the impression the battle may have run smoother had they opted to play on the paper map opened out onto the floor, there was some confusion over the vast distances between the entry points to the keep.