BattleMaps and D&D Insider

[Xorn]

A fellow Descent fan? Those doors look familiar.

I have thought about drawing the map in Campaign Cartographer 3/Dungeon Designer 3--best part about using CC3/DD3 is it has a built-in tile-printing setup that frankly rocks my socks. But I could actually take my current scans (50 px/sq & 50 dpi) and drop them into CC3/DD3, blow them up 400% (as it uses 200 dpi default) then use the tile printing functions still.

If you know the encounter area will fit on 2x2 sheets (16x20), then you specify 2x2 landscape or portrait, pick the spot to center it on, and hit print. Boom, perfectly tiled prints.

(Kind of a plug for CC3/DD3, sorry.) If there's a way I can post my 50 dpi scans of both maps without getting in trouble, let me know, I'll be happy to "un-yoink" the link below:

http://www.eugee.net/downloads/yoinked.shadowfell.keep.maps.zip

 

[Nebulous]

A fellow Descent fan? Those doors look familiar.

I have thought about drawing the map in Campaign Cartographer 3/Dungeon Designer 3--best part about using CC3/DD3 is it has a built-in tile-printing setup that frankly rocks my socks. But I could actually take my current scans (50 px/sq & 50 dpi) and drop them into CC3/DD3, blow them up 400% (as it uses 200 dpi default) then use the tile printing functions still.

If you know the encounter area will fit on 2x2 sheets (16x20), then you specify 2x2 landscape or portrait, pick the spot to center it on, and hit print. Boom, perfectly tiled prints.

(Kind of a plug for CC3/DD3, sorry.) If there's a way I can post my 50 dpi scans of both maps without getting in trouble, let me know, I'll be happy to "un-yoink" the link below:

http://www.eugee.net/downloads/yoinked.shadowfell.keep.maps.zip

Yeah, they're Descent doors. In fact, i'll have to plug Descent while you plug CC3. Descent is a good game in and of itself, but as far as stealing stuff for 4e D&D: my god, between the tiles, monsters, and the tokens for Bloodied, poisoned, dazed, etc., there's hardly a piece of that boardgame that's not usable.

Anyway, on track, i don't have CC3 or DD3 so i imagine the start up is a little steep to get those, although someone has been telling me i should do it.

How much time is it taking you, start to finish, to build one encounter? I'm guessing from the time i scan an image, to the time i lay down the last piece of tape, it's an hour per encounter. Maybe an hour and a half. That's a long time i think. Does CC3 make this any faster? You still have to import the image, but it sounds like it makes breaking them up into pieces much easier. It's tough breaking the maps down into inch squares in Photoshop.

 

[Klaus]

*****SPOILERS!!!!!!**********8


If you're going to play in Keep on the Shadowfell, you probably shouldn't look further. Not a major spoiler though.




So, i've been working very hard on these maps, and i've decided to map out ahead of time the entire first level of the Keep.

Damn, this has turned into a hell of a project, and i don't know if it's worth the effort. HOWEVER, i do think it looks very good. I think the players will appreciate it quite a bit, and it does look better than random tiles stuck together.

See, what bothers me is that the campaign comes with beautifully drawn maps of the keep, but they are all but useless in print scale unless you do what i've done here, or recreate them like some others have done. I elected to go the scan/print/cut route because that's the most viable option for me.

I spent all morning arranging this, and here are the first 3 encounters:

What do you think? It looks better in the finished state than the tile i posted earlier. I didn't intend for the excavation site to be a different color, i added too much contrast by accident, but it hardly ruins it. There's a seam you can see that i'll probably color over with crayon or marker, but it's not bad. I should have enough space in my game room to arrange the entire floor plan, but i have to admit this is HIGHLY time consuming, and if i wasn't such a dork i wouldn't bother.

Again, which was the point of this thread, having actual hi-res tiles pre-sized for print would save dozens and dozens of hours of time. At least these maps are reusable, so it's not exactly a one-shot deal.

That looks nothing short of amazing! Well done!

 

[Xorn]

Yeah, they're Descent doors. In fact, i'll have to plug Descent while you plug CC3. Descent is a good game in and of itself, but as far as stealing stuff for 4e D&D: my god, between the tiles, monsters, and the tokens for Bloodied, poisoned, dazed, etc., there's hardly a piece of that boardgame that's not usable.

Anyway, on track, i don't have CC3 or DD3 so i imagine the start up is a little steep to get those, although someone has been telling me i should do it.

How much time is it taking you, start to finish, to build one encounter? I'm guessing from the time i scan an image, to the time i lay down the last piece of tape, it's an hour per encounter. Maybe an hour and a half. That's a long time i think. Does CC3 make this any faster? You still have to import the image, but it sounds like it makes breaking them up into pieces much easier. It's tough breaking the maps down into inch squares in Photoshop.

I tried it out.

Set the book on the scanner, hit preview scan, then crop the selection to just the map area. Scan at 300 dpi (which is a little bigger than 50 pixels/square). Zoom in and check the level of the grid and use a "free rotate" of 0.2-0.5 degrees to get it straight. Takes usually 2 tries to get it. While still zoomed in, check the width of a square in pixels, and percentage resize the image so the squares are 50 pixels each. Save map. It's now ready for VTT use.

5 minutes has passed.

Open up CC3 and make a new, blank, non-bordered map. Add my 50 px/sq map as a background symbol, blowing it up 400% (200 pixel squares now). Center my view on the area I want to print and set it to tile whatever dimensions I think I'll need (2x3 Portrait for Area 1, for example) and hit Preview. If it looks right, hit Print.

10 minutes have passed, after printing, at this point.

I've got a straight edge papercutter, so trimming the image is actually pretty fast. Drop some strips of tape down and I've got the whole map down on the floor, then take scissors and cut the excess away (so I just have the corridors and rooms left) then cut those apart in the chunks I want to reveal them. Map finished!

Took 30 minutes total, but the straight edge paper cutter is a nice tool, and I have a really nice office jet printer/fax/scanner that kicks out the pages pretty quickly.

 

[ArchAnjel]

Markers and battlemaps are still the cost effective route.

Or you could use MapTool for free and create maps that are nicer than a battlemat and faster, too. That makes it pretty cost effective.

 

[incantator]

I still have not figured out how to print with MapTool, though (unless you do a screenshot and then import it into another program for scale manipulation).

 

[MMKyt]

(Kind of a plug for CC3/DD3, sorry.) If there's a way I can post my 50 dpi scans of both maps without getting in trouble, let me know, I'll be happy to "un-yoink" the link below:

http://www.eugee.net/downloads/yoinked.shadowfell.keep.maps.zip

Page Not Found Can you upload somewhere else

 

[Graf]

Totally awesome. I was despairing (sp!) over what to do for my online game.

 

[Xorn]

Totally awesome. I was despairing (sp!) over what to do for my online game.

For online play, I recommend:

Fantasy Grounds II
Battlegrounds RPG
MapTool

In that order. All are good, I just happen to think FG2 is the best is all.
http://www.eugee.net/03_08_2008.htm

And I know my link to the maps isn't working. I'm not comfortable posting a full scan of a copyrighted map that WotC has not released to the public. So I "yoinked." the link. If a disclaimer of, "You must own KotS in order to download these images" would suffice, I'll put the maps back, otherwise they'll stay like they are.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

I like MapTool far better than FG2. I hate the chat window in FG2, it requires a high level of xml knowledge to customize. Not to mention you can create maps entirely within MapTool using a texture resource library.