Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 4870609" data-attributes="member: 7006">Well, since Myth And Legend has opened up the floor on his mapmaking knowhow for Play-By-Post games... I guess I'll add my own particular methodology for mapmaking as well.My own particular method is using Microsoft Excel.  First, you can import and paste a picture image into Excel, which is useful if you already have gridded maps from modules, websites, or the like.  Move the image so it is in the upper-left corner of the spreadsheet, then manually adjust the column width and row height of the spreadsheet so that the letters and numbers match up to the grids already printed on the map (thereby giving you easy coordinate identification to your map).At this point, at the bottom of Excel you'll see the tools for Autoshapes and the like.  Create a bunch of autoshapes (like circles for example) to represent the PCs that are of proper size to fit nicely on the map (and which you can color fill to match the dialogue color of the characters).  Use a different shape for all monsters (I use diamonds myself) and color fill those in as well.What is great about the autoshapes is that you can pick up and move these shapes all around the spreadsheet (and the picture map image) as though they were tokens.  What is also cool is that you can adjust the width of the outer line of the shape, plus change the line color.  So if a PC or monster gets a status effect placed upon it, you can identify it with the autoshape (so a wide purple outline means slow, a wide blue outline means immobilized etc. etc.)Once the shapes are placed on the map at the beginning and on each subsequent turn, you hit PrintScreen on your keyboard, open up Paint, paste the image, crop the image so you only have the map left over, then post the image to an image-hosting site (I myself use <a href="http://www.imageshack.us" target="_blank">ImageShack® - Image Hosting</a>)  You can then post or link to the image when you write out the results of the round of combat.Then, once the next round begins, re-open the Excel file, move the autoshapes around the map as needed for the next round's actions, save, hit PrintScreen, rinse repeat.Hope this helps out some of you with some new mapping ideas.</blockquote>

Verification