Paizo - How about map exports for Roll20?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


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I keep running into posts where GMs want to export maps from PDFs for use with Roll20, but it sounds like it's an involved, tedious process that discourages or outright defeats many who attempt it.

Paizo - there's an obvious need here. Why not address it? It seems to me that the easiest thing to do would be to just modify the existing PDFs by adding extra copies of any maps to pages at the end of the PDF that are "Roll20 ready" and can be easily uploaded. Start on a "time forward" basis and work your way back. It seems to me that you'd make a great many people exceedingly happy by doing this.

Alternatively, I suppose you could create a "map export" utility, but that sounds like more work than it needs to be.

Just a thought, but I know our GM would love it.


If I recall correctly, Roll20 is a Paizo partner, so they already can do this for people using Roll20.

I don't think it's involved or tedious, but I do find the whole Roll20 site to be extremely complicated and hard to grasp. Maps, though, are easy to import there.


Personally I got used to the manual screenshot-cut-modify-save-upload method, so I'd be very hesitant to pay for a more comfy feature.

However, if Paizo's maps are more readily available in Roll20, they might draw additional attention to Pathfinder (and Starfinder): "Oh, this game has such good maps - maybe I should try it!". I mean, Robert Lazzaretti creates maps far superior to most free content out there, his work is arguably even better than the D&D maps.


Just checked Roll20, and they already have adventure paths and modules for Pathfinder that include tokens and maps especially made for Roll20.

It's not likely that Paizo would be able to supply competing maps designed specifically for one of their distributors, who is already converting Pathfinder material for their site.

If you want Roll20-ready maps, you need to buy them from Roll20

Roll20 wrote:

Paizo Inc. and Roll20 celebrate their new partnership by diving into the War for the Crown adventure path. Each installment is fully converted in-house, making it simple for anyone to run and play with minimal setup. Included in this Roll20 conversion:

Crownfall, a Pathfinder adventure for 1st-level characters, by Thurston Hillman, converted in its entirety for the Roll20 platform.
More than 40 NPCs & creatures, each with complete character sheets, one-click actions, and associated tokens.
11 ready-to-play pregen characters from each class of the Core Rulebook.
4 battle ready maps set with dynamic lighting, pre-placed NPCs, and support for advanced fog of war.
2 overland maps of the city of Oppara and the regions of Taldor.
Rollable tables for random encounters and rumors.
Integrates with the Official Pathfinder Character Sheet as well as the Pathfinder SRD.
Will include the fully converted War for the Crown Player's Guide soon after it is released by Paizo. This item will be patched to include this.


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Roll20 does not have maps for all of the APs. I am currently running Carrion Crown and it's not available. Trying to adjust the maps from the PDF in Roll20 has been a nightmare. I finally did a grid pattern guide in Photoshop and discovered the grid on the maps is not consistent! How do you make a grid for a map that is not consistent?!?


An inconsistent grid doesn't matter if the GM paints the map manually or prints only parts of it. Keep in mind Carrion Crown was among the first APs ever released, virtual tabletop likely wasn't big then. To answer the rhetorical question...

There is a workaround: Simply don't use Roll20's grid for such maps. Activate snap to grid only when you place the map image - it helps you to align it to the edges. Make sure both grids roughly fit, so PCs and NPCs will be properly sized. It has some limits, for example moving a character with cursor or measuring distance won't work perfectly. But it's quick.

In my experience the inconsistencies are always (?) at the edges. You can put the offending map parts onto another Roll20 page, move them by some pixels until it fits (filling the gap with copied neighbour pixels) or just tell your players the grid is off there.

Dark Archive

I found it much easier to turn the roll20 grid off as well and just copy and resize the image as desired, the grid is already painted on the pdf images.


Most of the time matching the map's grid to the Roll20 grid is super easy. There are only 2 problems I've come across.
1) A skewed map. A handful of the maps are skewed or rotated at a slight angle. You would need to use an image editor and rotate the map to be level before importing it.

2) One map with multiple grids. This one seems pretty rare, but a few times there is one map made of multiple areas and these areas are on different alignments. In this case you'll have to use an editor to cut the map up and align the grids independently.


JJ says that things are moving in a direction to make better maps: here

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