Do All of Your RPG Maps Now Belong To Judges Guild? ... and more?

[Bedrockgames]

Isometric looks cool and is nice for illustrating 3D relationships, but they're pretty impractical for most other purposes. And it's really messy to draw round rooms in isometric.

Good ones usually supplement with 2d to get around their limitations. But I genuinely find them very helpful because you just have a clearer sense of the dimensions

 

[Thomas Shey]

Isometric looks cool and is nice for illustrating 3D relationships, but they're pretty impractical for most other purposes. And it's really messy to draw round rooms in isometric.

Unless done very carefully, they can also obscure positions if you're trying to use the as any kind of battlemap.

 

[jdrakeh]

Geez. It's like Bledsaw Jr woke up and thought "What can I do today to absolutely incinerate the tiny bit of remaining good will that people have toward my company?" Well, good job, Bob. NAILED IT.

 

[Kromanjon]

Isometric looks cool and is nice for illustrating 3D relationships, but they're pretty impractical for most other purposes. And it's really messy to draw round rooms in isometric.

Fully agree. They can be really cool pieces of art though.

 

[Autumnal]

The one time I saw an isometric map be actively helpful and useful was the first Death Dealer module. The PCs are in charge of a fighting retreat, and seeing the elevations of each part of this path down from an overrun fortress to the surrounding plain was a big deal. Opportunities for ambushes and traps, places to huddle out of sight and do some emergency triage, the whole deal was made better by that map.

So there’s a place for everything. But in general, I find isometric maps more neat than handy.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

One thing occurs to me. You know those icosahedral planet maps with hex grids? The ones Game Designers' Workshop designed for Traveller? They might be able to lay claim to being an original invention, but who would own the rights now? The current holder of the Traveller IP?

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

Icosahedral maps were used before Traveller came along - in the world, not RPGs - so I think we're all safe there.

I believe Marc Miller holds all the Traveller rights these days and licenses them out to Mongoose among others and still occasionally puts out his own material for T5.

As for Judges' Guild, well, it's a shame they ended up going this way.

 

[Autumnal]

Buckminster Fuller got there first, in 1954.

Dymaxion map - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[dragoner]

One thing occurs to me. You know those icosahedral planet maps with hex grids? The ones Game Designers' Workshop designed for Traveller? They might be able to lay claim to being an original invention, but who would own the rights now? The current holder of the Traveller IP?

I went over this for solis/kosmic, and they are in sort of a grey area; it would be difficult to enforce an IP battle over them. Also game companies should pay heed to how it makes them appear to gamers.

 

[Fenris-77]

What a maroon.