I'm working on a book and I need your input!

While a rectangular building will fit a grid at the point where the grid line was started, unless the rooms and walls are drawn using dimensions relating to the grid, they will soon start falling accross the grid squares in irregular places, making partial squares the norm for many areas (particularly narrow spaces). My particular style is intended to increase the realism of the game, which is often missed with the grid-based maps available through most published resources.

Because this seems to be a major concern with at least a couple of you, I think I'll incorporate some drawings based on the grid, but I'd still like to throw in some of my more realistic ones for those who may want that style as well.

Thank you for the great input, and keep it coming!

psyekl said:

While a rectangular building will fit a grid at the point where the grid line was started, unless the rooms and walls are drawn using dimensions relating to the grid, they will soon start falling accross the grid squares in irregular places, making partial squares the norm for many areas (particularly narrow spaces).

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As I mentioned, I feel it's acceptable to fudge the grid somewhat to keep it aligned. You can either scale the grid slightly, so the squares are a few % smaller or larger, or just draw the squares along the walls a little smaller or larger. Let's say you have a 17' wide room. You could either scale the grid for that room to be about 5 2/3', or have 5' squares in the middle and 6'x5' "squares" along the walls, or even two 5' squares in the middle and 3.5'x5' "squares" along the walls. You should *not* just slavishly stick to a 5' grid and have a 2' strip of partial squares along one wall - or even worse: two 1' strips along both walls!

Partial squares are not really a problem, as long as they either unambiguously count as "full" squares or as inaccessible ones. In the example above, a strip of 3.5'x5' "squares" along the walls is fairly unambiguous. A 1' or 2' strip is *not*, and in case of the 1' strip you might as well erase a grid line and make the next squares just a little larger.

Along the same lines, if you do wind up having to fit diagonal walls, you can typically arrange the grid such that you get either almost complete squares, or small triangles that nobody will mistake for a real square (and you can often get rid of those too by joining them to adjacent squares).

Yes, all of this takes quite a bit more effort than just slapping an arbitrary grid over the whole thing. You may wind up having to edit individual grid spacings and grid lines, and you'll have to "marry" differently aligned grids across doorways etc. But I'm guessing more than half of that effort could be avoided by keeping an eye on the dimensions from the get-go.

Wow. I have to say that the fungus cave REALLY got me excited.

If I were to publish this as a PDF product (which I am hereby soliciting you to do - want to publish this through E.N.Publishing?), I would do each map twice. Once with grid and key for the DM and once without grid or key for player handouts.

And I think Black & White is 100% acceptable, although Greyscale is even better.

As a footnote - this is the map for tomorrow's underdark adventure (the level 3 party is trapped in the middledark, resulting in a lot of running and hiding instead of fighting - a mushroom cave with a few low-level inhabitants and running water will be a welcome respite to them)

Well HECK YES! The book this research is for was intended for a .pdf, but I still need to find out how to do it. The biggest problem I'm having is being able to reproduce my originals into digital format. Most of the drawings used for my samples are drawn at 17"x22", and will not fit on my scanner (which is why none of them are complete). I mentioned before that I'm not very computer literate, so I'm not familiar with how to scan them in portions and paste them together. There is a local printing company that has a large-scale printer, but the cost is prohibitive...

I'm considering making the drawings on 8.5"x11" pages at a fairly large scale probably with 1/4" grid squares), but this will require patching several pages together to view larger structures (such as a castle or a city). As a DM, would this be helpful or would you prefer having the entire structure/area drawn at a smaller scale to fit on one page?

HellHound: That's the first time I've ever seen one of my drawings modified, and it looks great!

psyekl said:

I've been wanting to release a book of maps for role players, but I need some input to make sure it's something that you would want. Most of the maps will be drawn by hand and I'll make some of them available to the EN World forum for critiques.

1) What maps would you want to see? I draw just about everything from natural cavern complexes to dungeons, animal lairs, castles, towns, cities, modern homes, skyscrapers, sewer systems, space craft, world maps, weapon designs... you name it, I can probably draw plans for it.

2) What genre would you want? Sci-fi? Fantasy? Horror? Historical?

3) How much info do you want? Do you want maps that include a fully detailed adventure, some adventure ideas or just label the rooms and let you decide the uses?

4) Would black and white maps be useful or do you want color? If you want maps in color, I have to learn how to use Photoshop !

5) Please let me know if there is anything you'd like to see that I haven't mentioned!

i've attached a few of my layout sketches as examples. Most of these are still in pencil and are a bit light, so you'll have to zoom in a bit to see them:

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I'm not big on maps, but that 5th one I would pay good money for if it was on parchment-looking paper preferably (which means not PDF, but actual product as I do not have access to a color laser printer that would be required to make such a thing from PDF; if you can do that sort of thing [custom work], email e at reanjr at wwnet dot net). That's exactly the type of map I would like to have for my campaign; one that I can give to my players and have no qualms about it and that also didn't break the verisimilitude of the campaign.

As for the color, Black and White (Greayscale actually) is just fine. Preferable in most cases for me, as I like maps to represent in game maps, which could often be done in chalk drawing. You have uber-cartographic talent.

To directly answer your questions now

1. Regional maps are good, especially ones with purpose (treasure map, or map to this one city with landmarks along the way). Done in the style I already talked about.

2. Fantasy or historical. Sci-Fi maps tend to be pretty useless for my purposes.

3. Don't even label the rooms. Everything should be blank.

4. Already answered that. A couple of color ones thrown in with mostly black-gray-white ones might be good, though, to spice things up. Even better might be making a DM color detailed map (still unlabled mind you, but drawn to scale), then a black-and-white player version of the same map with as it would be drawn by someone who was visiting or had scoped it out, but not someone who was a professional cartographer.

5. ...

psyekl said:

1) What maps would you want to see?

3) How much info do you want?

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You know, it would be kinda nice to see a couple differnt view of the same area or world. You'd have one highly detailed "ground truth" map, which nobody but the DM gets to see. Then there are a number of player maps, done with various scales and amounts of details (not to mention distortions, fictitious features, and just plain errors!) in a more "historical" style.

psyekl said:

Well HECK YES! The book this research is for was intended for a .pdf, but I still need to find out how to do it. The biggest problem I'm having is being able to reproduce my originals into digital format. Most of the drawings used for my samples are drawn at 17"x22", and will not fit on my scanner (which is why none of them are complete). I mentioned before that I'm not very computer literate, so I'm not familiar with how to scan them in portions and paste them together. There is a local printing company that has a large-scale printer, but the cost is prohibitive...

I'm considering making the drawings on 8.5"x11" pages at a fairly large scale probably with 1/4" grid squares), but this will require patching several pages together to view larger structures (such as a castle or a city). As a DM, would this be helpful or would you prefer having the entire structure/area drawn at a smaller scale to fit on one page?

Click to expand...

I would suggest that you keep drawing large. The process required to stitch together two partial scans in photoshop is really pretty easy. If you would like some help, Email me at josh AT storyartgames DOT com and I can walk you through it.


jtb

I'm actually in the process of speaking with someone who may be able to do the digital half of this project. If it falls through, I'll definitely be in touch! Although, I don't own the photoshop program, so that may make it a bit more difficult...

What maps would you want to see?

The area around a village, with a couple of roads or tracks, some forest, and few features that look interesting but aren't described. Maps that include diagrams like the one with the hanging egglike thing. Maps with cities drawn in as little pictures, not as circles. The artistry and the creativity of the map is what's key. If I'm using a map as a tool, it's because the map itself gave me an idea and sparked my creativity, making me want to bring it to life with a story.

2) What genre would you want?
Fantasy only, on my part.

3) How much info do you want?
None. As I mentioned above, the purpose of a purchased map is to spark my creativity.

4) Would black and white maps be useful or do you want color?
Black & white.

5) Please let me know if there is anything you'd like to see that I haven't mentioned!
Needs a grid. This isn't just me - Necromancer Games had new maps drawn of their Rappan Athuk dungeons and posted the new maps on the web because there were so many complaints about the fact that the maps didn't have a grid. LEAVE OFF THE SCALE, THOUGH.
Here's how I'd use them. Make two photocopies (or prints). Key one of them. Give the other to the players with no key. I'd even make sure, when you advertise it, that you tell prospective buyers that the maps are suitable as player handouts. That's why a DM will pay for a map.

Could you contact me at mythmere at yahoo dot com? I'm doing a pdf myself that needs maps.