Nothing overlaps, this much is true, but the argument was that they were evocatice/mood setting so overlapping sections might not be the reason for the map. As for cardinal directions they are of course placed in a way that makes sense to where you placed the map into your world.
The map needs cardinal directions so as to agree with the (ideal) write-up and boxed text, which has exits and features noted by direction rather than by left-right (left-right is very bad practice) in order to allow for characters coming into the areas from unexpected directions.
As the map has drawn furnishing I would assume the squares are the standard 5 ft. unless it's a giants abode at which point I would adjust accordingly. The shaft with the ladder is 15 ft. The wide stairs are 15 ft. horizontal and 10 ft. vertical. The underground stairs are 10 ft. both vertical and horizontal. The spiked pit is 10 ft.
You're guessing all these values, are you? There's no vertical squares on any of these features to confirm, nor any other indication of vertical scale.
And lest you say this is irrelevant, two points:
1 - I've both played in and DMed parties who had the means to dig through rock from one area to another
2 - spells that don't care about obstructions e.g. Locate Object, I need to know how far they extend.
I'll grant it's a good looking map. However, that might be part of the problem: the mapmaker has gone for style over substance, and with maps substance is the only thing that matters.
The map needs cardinal directions so as to agree with the (ideal) write-up and boxed text, which has exits and features noted by direction rather than by left-right (left-right is very bad practice) in order to allow for characters coming into the areas from unexpected directions.
Unless I want to place the map at a different place, facing a different direction, at which point it becomes a nuisance. I feel writing adaptable adventures is a good thing so that I can use them as needed for my homebrew.
You're guessing all these values, are you? There's no vertical squares on any of these features to confirm, nor any other indication of vertical scale.
I wouldn't use the word guessing and I disagree that there are no indication of vertical scale. I'm assuming the 5 ft. square, I'll give you that, based on the size of the furniture on the map. After that I can use the POV angle to estimate the three dimensional space, that's what's so good about isometric maps.
I'll grant it's a good looking map. However, that might be part of the problem: the mapmaker has gone for style over substance, and with maps substance is the only thing that matters.
This is of course your opinion stated as fact. I disagree. Style in maps can serve many purposes like player hand outs, making them easier to adapt, setting the tone or mood or adding visual cues that saves on the amount of text an adventure needs. But that's just my opinion stated as an opinion.
I guess if I had anticipated that somebody would look for things to complain about that had nothing to do with the topic being discussed of isometric vs. 2D....then, yeah, not the best example. And of course this is the Internet, so my bad for not thinking through all the possible avenues of disagreement.
As an old school guy, I used to agree. Living world and all that. However, I've received a lot of feedback that in modern gaming, people appreciate scalable encounter guidelines.
As an old school guy, I used to agree. Living world and all that. However, I've received a lot of feedback that in modern gaming, people appreciate scalable encounter guidelines.
Unless I want to place the map at a different place, facing a different direction, at which point it becomes a nuisance. I feel writing adaptable adventures is a good thing so that I can use them as needed for my homebrew.
I wouldn't use the word guessing and I disagree that there are no indication of vertical scale. I'm assuming the 5 ft. square, I'll give you that, based on the size of the furniture on the map. After that I can use the POV angle to estimate the three dimensional space, that's what's so good about isometric maps.
I just finished running a module* that used an iso map for the main dungeon/encounter area. Now granted, the area covered by that map was huge compared to the examples here, but as I couldn't be bothered mid-session to count squares AND the squares were drawn in perspective i.e. squares far away were smaller on the page than squares close up, I had to guess all the vertical distances.
This is of course your opinion stated as fact. I disagree. Style in maps can serve many purposes like player hand outs, making them easier to adapt, setting the tone or mood or adding visual cues that saves on the amount of text an adventure needs. But that's just my opinion stated as an opinion.
My opinion is backed by some university cartography courses where I was told the same thing.
The other thing I learned there was that a map doesn't qualify as a map unless it includes two things:
1 - a scale of distance
2 - some indication of compass direction.
Without one or both of those, it's just a drawing or sketch.
No need to reorient the map, a letter N and an arrow pointing the appropriate way is all it takes.
I just finished running a module* that used an iso map for the main dungeon/encounter area. Now granted, the area covered by that map was huge compared to the examples here, but as I couldn't be bothered mid-session to count squares AND the squares were drawn in perspective i.e. squares far away were smaller on the page than squares close up, I had to guess all the vertical distances.
You're using a bad experience with a perspective map to throw shade on isometric maps, as if anything that's not 2D is all in the same category.
As I said up-thread, it would be easy to add elevation differences as numbers to an isometric map. The logic of "isometric maps suck because that one example doesn't include those numbers" seems....short-sighted. Look, here's proof that 2D maps suck:
No scale, no compass, no room numbers. And what does that "T" mark? If it's a pit, why can't I see it? How deep is it?
My opinion is backed by some university cartography courses where I was told the same thing.
The other thing I learned there was that a map doesn't qualify as a map unless it includes two things:
1 - a scale of distance
2 - some indication of compass direction.
Without one or both of those, it's just a drawing or sketch.
I will agree with what you learned in university: substance is more important than style, but that doesn't mean it "backs your opinion" unless you can demonstrate that your opinion is superior substance. You may personally like reading elevation changes as digits on a floorplan, or cross-correlating multiple 2D views from orthogonal angles, but for many (I would predict "most") users, representing numeric elevation changes into visualizable differences is superior substance.
I just pre-ordered "Hands of the White Wizard," the latest TOR supplement from Free League. I don't actually play TOR anymore, so I guess it's the exception to my "I don't buy RPG supplements just to enjoy long-form prose" rule.
But I still read it as if I were going to GM it, so it has me thinking about how I would like it presented differently. I have two observations/suggestions:
A brief summary is presented at the beginning of each of the six adventures in the book. However, even though this is a book for GMs (LMs, or Loremasters, in TOR parlance), these summaries are written as if they teasers on the back of a book jacket. Here's the teaser from the 5th adventure:
In this adventure, the Player-heroes are sent in search of strange tidings out of Fangorn Forest. They discover some desperate, starving Dwarves, the survivors of Balin’s Expedition. Saruman sends the Player-heroes north to Moria, to learn what can be known about the remaining Dwarves and the lost Ring-lore of the city…
That's cute and all, but is barely of any use. So my first suggestion would have been to summarize more explicitly, including the major conflicts that are going to be resolved, so that I have a more clear context while reading the next 18 pages of text.
Secondly, a big theme in TOR (and in Middle Earth) is how the the Shadow corrupts, and so adventures are designed with lots of morally complex decision points. Which means there's a lot of text along the lines of "...if the PCs previously chose option A, then the NPC will do X, but if they chose option B, then the NPC will do either Y or Z, depending on..." So what I would have loved is some kind of flow-chart/diagram that mapped all this out. That flowchart could be overlaid on horizontal bands representing the six sub-divisions of the adventure, so I could see, "Oh, they will have to make this decision in Part I, and that affects these choices in Part III."
I want this less because it would help me make decisions while running the adventure, and more because studying it at the beginning would (again) give me a better framework for understanding everything I was about to read. Kind of like how in some academic books the introduction lays out the structure of the arguments in the following chapters.
I just pre-ordered "Hands of the White Wizard," the latest TOR supplement from Free League. I don't actually play TOR anymore, so I guess it's the exception to my "I don't buy RPG supplements just to enjoy long-form prose" rule.
But I still read it as if I were going to GM it, so it has me thinking about how I would like it presented differently. I have two observations/suggestions:
A brief summary is presented at the beginning of each of the six adventures in the book. However, even though this is a book for GMs (LMs, or Loremasters, in TOR parlance), these summaries are written as if they teasers on the back of a book jacket. Here's the teaser from the 5th adventure:
In this adventure, the Player-heroes are sent in search of strange tidings out of Fangorn Forest. They discover some desperate, starving Dwarves, the survivors of Balin’s Expedition. Saruman sends the Player-heroes north to Moria, to learn what can be known about the remaining Dwarves and the lost Ring-lore of the city…
That's cute and all, but is barely of any use. So my first suggestion would have been to summarize more explicitly, including the major conflicts that are going to be resolved, so that I have a more clear context while reading the next 18 pages of text.
Secondly, a big theme in TOR (and in Middle Earth) is how the the Shadow corrupts, and so adventures are designed with lots of morally complex decision points. Which means there's a lot of text along the lines of "...if the PCs previously chose option A, then the NPC will do X, but if they chose option B, then the NPC will do either Y or Z, depending on..." So what I would have loved is some kind of flow-chart/diagram that mapped all this out. That flowchart could be overlaid on horizontal bands representing the six sub-divisions of the adventure, so I could see, "Oh, they will have to make this decision in Part I, and that affects these choices in Part III."
I want this less because it would help me make decisions while running the adventure, and more because studying it at the beginning would (again) give me a better framework for understanding everything I was about to read. Kind of like how in some academic books the introduction lays out the structure of the arguments in the following chapters.
"Book jacket teaser text" is a good analogy for what it is and how it reads. For better or worse, RPG scenario designers think of themselves as narrative designers rather than game designers. If the adjective is "narrative," you tend to think in literary terms and tropes.
I go back and forth on the usefulness of flowcharts. Proposing them suggests that someone's thinking beyond simple text formatting and that's a good impulse. (I'm not criticizing you, @Bill Zebub, just speaking generally). For more complex scenarios beyond something basic like dungeon crawling, though, I worry that they can become spaghetti. I see their value for establishing the initial connections. I definitely want a way to track what you're talking about, the "if X then Y" stuff that should be a part of good scenario design.
I might want a flowchart, but I'd want something connected to the NPC, too. (This is part of what I mean by repeating information. More on that in a moment.) This is why I like the workbook idea. I would add this sort of tracking functionality to NPC stat blocks. There could be a few short, one-line reminders below an NPC's stats and traits, e.g. "PCs didn't help Gandalf find a path in Moria, so Aragorn [this is in Aragorn's stat block] sides with Gandalf in disputes." I'd put a checkbox (workbooks are for writing in!) next to each one. Maybe in play and certainly between sessions, I could look at the NPC stat blocks to see if any of those events occurred, the "x" in "if x then y." If it did, I'd check the box in the stat block. When I pull out the stat block to play the NPC, I can see the checked boxes and RP accordingly.
[Edit: This is why Revelation Lists are such important design tech. Every published scenario is, in part, an investigation. The usefulness of their structure goes beyond investigations and investigation scenarios. What I'm describing in the previous paragraph is effectively how Revelation Lists are properly used.]
So the information about the x/y triggers would be in two places: the flowchart summary near the front and on the stat block. The value of this repetition comes from what Bill suggests: studying it at the beginning wold give him a better framework for absorbing the scenario's design. The stat block becomes more useful as it becomes closer to GMing notes that can be used during play. So many GMs complain about having to rewrite scenario text to make it useful during play. Scenario presentation should aim to look more like GMing notes (or a worksheet?!) than core rulebook text.
Finally, an undertone in Bill's post suggests that these more practical approaches to text and presentation could work as introductions do in academic text. To me, that reads like adopting a new, improved form of presentation and design before getting to, well, what, exactly? Back into two-columns of text with some bullet points? What if there were no difference between this introductory, schematic, external, "DVD commentary" presentation and the rest of the scenario? I see no reason to retreat back to the same form we've been stuck with for 50 years. Write it all as if it's the "introduction."
Finally, an undertone in Bill's post suggests that these more practical approaches to text and presentation could work as introductions do in academic text. To me, that reads like adopting a new, improved form of presentation and design before getting to, well, what, exactly? Back into two-columns of text with some bullet points? What if there were no difference between this introductory, schematic, external, "DVD commentary" presentation and the rest of the scenario? I see no reason to retreat back to the same form we've been stuck with for 50 years. Write it all as if it's the "introduction."
