Maps - Jon Roberts' Map thread

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Part 2 of the Q&A is up.

[torstan]

I have new map up on RPGNow:

The Tree Bridge

This, and the other maps in the line, can be found here:

Fantastic Maps on RPGNow

Here's a preview of the Tree Bridge:



Each map pack contains:

• A pdf of the map chopped up into printable pages that can be printed on a home printer and then composited on the table into a full scale battlemap - in both colour and printer friendly greyscale
• 2 high resolution jpgs for use in virtual tabletop software, one with a grid and one without. Each is sized so that 100px = 1 square so you can drop it directly into your vtt of choice

[torstan]

... and a little more about The Breaking of Forstor Nagar. This time showing off what maptool can do with light, shade and vision.



Token once again by Devin Night, map and torch by me. To find out more about the project, go here or have a read through the Q&As:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

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Another screenshot, this time showing what happens if a PC is blind:



In this shot you can see that Valeros can only see himself. This is the GM view - so the GM can still see the enemies. However the white line designates the limit of what the player will see.

States are easily tracked in maptool. You can see the clear label showing that Valeros is blind. There are equivalent images that cover all the other states.

Now you'll also see that there's a rather nifty little portrait and stat sheet on the bottom left. This contains all the vital information about Valeros, as well as his portrait. This allows the players or the GM to quickly see important information about a PC, so no more asking the player what his perception skill is before checking if he sees a hidden creature. I'll be showing off a little more of what you can do with this later. The stats here are for Valeros, the iconic fighter from Pathfinder.

Portrait art by Tyler Bartley - our interior artist for this project. Tokens by Devin Night. States by AidyBaby from the RPTools boards. Map and torch by me.

As always, more information on the Rite Publishing web page: The Breaking of Forstor Nagar.

[torstan]

Continuing the series, here the adventurers meet a dragon:



This shot shows how maptool handles the properties. Each player can see their character's vital stats, as can the GM. The GM can decide whether the players can see each others stats. But importantly, the players can't see the stats of the monsters. Although they do get a close-up of it's ugly mug.

Now who can tell me just how much trouble these adventurers are in?

Tokens by Devin. Kellen's portrait by Tyler Bartley. All other art by myself.

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Today we look at storing information within objects on the map.



This shows that we can have objects - in this case a runic circle - that contains information for both the players and the GM. If that information is also placed into a macro (as it is here) it can be sent to chat, allowing us to hyperlink the information that the GM needs at their finger tips.

We'll be building that level of reference into the adventure for all areas, allowing for quick reference to rules to minimise time spent flicking through indexes and maximise the fun!

[torstan]

Roll for initiative!



Maptool tracks initiative in fights, so you always know who's next. When you switch to a player, that characters name is shown in chat so everyone know's the order. You can also drag and drop PCs or monsters to different places in the initiative as people ready or delay actions.

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Here's another comparative shot of the different virtual tabletops. Here the characters face off agains the dragon in Fantasy Grounds, TTopRPG and maptool respectively.



Click for a larger view. You can see that each tool has a different approach to combat, but each allows the GM to easily track hp, access information, roll attacks and all other tasks that you need to make combat flow smoothly.

Today also sees the first part of an interview with our designer and author - ENnie winning Ben McFarland.

To find out more and sign up visit The Breaking of Forstor Nagar.

[torstan]

The second part of the interview with Ben McFarland is up.

Now as we enter the final stretch before development begins in earnest with, here's a new screenshot. This time we're looking at the chat functionality and how this works with dice rolling and macros to make combats slick and fast.



Here the combat has taken a turn for the worse for our players. The rogue breached the magic circle and now the dragon is free to full attack.

In this screenshot I've showed what the chat output looks like for the player and the GM. First you can see the Kellen's attack as he swipes (ineffectually) with his flaming longsword. Now one risk of playing online is that a player might decide to just write in their dice roll, rather than rolling the dice. Maptool offers a way to avoid that (other than just being suspicious of any player that rolls 5 20s in a row...). You can mouse over the number and if the roll is legit, a tooltip will pop up. If it's a dice roll it will show what was rolled. If it's a calculation, such as roll + base attack + strength + weapon focus, then it will show all those bonuses too. So you can be safe in the knowledge that your players are behaving themselves, whether they're on the other side of the GM screen, or on the other side of the world.

The dragon's full attack shows the time saving possibilities in maptool. It would take a decent amount of time to roll all the dragon's attacks at the table, find the relevant modifiers and dice, and then roll the damage. Here one click of one button and the GM (and the GM only) gets a full break down of the attack.

Note that our plan is not to have maptool decide whether an attack has hit or not, or automatically apply damage. Pathfinder is inherently based on exceptions. There will often be odd bonuses or penalties imposed in a fight (+ because you got higher ground, -2 because your character has a phobia of dragons). Equally, the GM may have modifiers for the enemies that they don't want the players to know about. Therefore we let the GM see all the attack and damage rolls. They then decide who has hit, and who has missed, and tells people the damage to apply. If you want to fudge a roll, you can. If you just don't want the player's to know that their sword is actually cursed and gives them -4 to hit dragons then that's fine too. And you can do it without worrying about the code giving you away.

These features make combat easy and quick. I now use maptool for face to face games even if the players can't see it. It makes hp tracking, initiative tracking and running monster attacks so much faster than before. It's nice to have combats that run fast again!

The details of how combat is managed within maptool will be a subject that we'll be debating in detail with our patrons. Sign up now at The Breaking of Forstor Nagar!

[torstan]

Part 3 of the interview with Ben McFarland is up

In non-Breaking of Forstor Nagar news, I did a series of three tutorials for the newbieDM blog on how to create a battlemap in Gimp. They can be found here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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We have reached the finale of the teaser screenshots. Our heroes have defeated the dragon and stand on an icy precipice looking out at a burning city:



and in Fantasy Grounds:



You can click the images to see them larger.

This showcases the ability of both programs to easily include flavour text for the GM and the players, as well as placing images that give a more direct impression of a location than a top down map. The text is by Ben McFarland, our author on the project.

These screenshots are examples of the style we will be using. The art, monsters and storyline will be fresh and new for the adventure itself (though that pirate ship will make it in if I have anything to do with it ).

We have 6 days left before the project goes live when we open the forums to patrons and development starts in earnest. Find out more and sign up at The Breaking of Forstor Nagar.