Dungeon 185 - Bark at the Moon: Dungeons biggest adventure

[Aegeri]

Sometimes I see the extensive (excessive?) abbreviations, complaints, etc. and think gamers are the laziest bunch of malcontents who can't agree on what to be lazy and malcontent about.

I run three campaigns* and with the exception of Cross City Race, I've wrote the adventures/encounters in all of them. So how damn lazy do you think I am when I do that?

*Albeit one is ending this week and the other will start when I move to Australia and get acquainted with my new group. I'll be continuing with my two VTT games regardless though.

 

[Herschel]

I run a campaign, DM LFR, play in 2 others and in LFR and know I like/use short cuts as much as anyone, placing time and effort where I best see fit not in every aspect of the game. Anyone claiming otherwise is either not being honest with themselves or completely OCD.

With us gamers, it may be some of both.

 

[Aegeri]

I put a lot of effort into nearly every aspect of my games. There is very little I don't think about on how to improve or do better. The only thing I really become very stuck on is mapping - because I am simply utterly terrible at it (Hand drawn or computer ). I don't view it as unreasonable to expect dungeon to actually have decent maps with its adventures (apparently though this is unreasonable). It's the one and only thing that is really important to me and for ages Dungeon was giving me this - up until this delve nonsense completely took over the magazines utterly like some kind of insidious bone cancer. Now dungeon has taken away the one thing I always got from my subscription for 5 minute hack jobs (that I could do myself while blind and tied to a donkey* I suspect).

Apparently this makes me "lazy". The irony.

*It would be a pretty small donkey.

 

[Herschel]

If it bothers you that much, learn how to better map. I bought the map packs with adventures like Fane of the Drow, etc, and buy the Paizo battle maps, Cubicle 7 battle maps and dungeon tiles as well as having the Chessex mats and I use 'em all, depending on the situation. Good maps would be nice, but are probably the easiest thing to do without in a published adventure. Often times I'll read a room description and change the map anyway.

Dungeon Tiles are a great tool. They're modular and versatile. Just because I don't use them very often doesn't mean I don't appreciate what they bring to teh table.

 

[Herschel]

Delves are also great. I can take them and drop them in to an adventure I write if I like, where I like.

 

[the Jester]

Honest question for those who dislike DT based maps: is it difficult to just reimagine the maps that you dislike and free hand them for your game, or are you specifically looking for maps you can "print" that are not DT based?

Neither. Though once in a while I'll print a map out for use if I'm running a canned module (I'm running the 4e ToH stuff and scanned and printed the maps at mini scale, for instance).

Mostly, I just feel that a good map is a very basic part of an adventure. I like it as much as, if not more than, I like a page's worth of art. A good map can be inspiring. The maps in Ravenloft (I6) were amazing, for instance, and they added a lot to my enjoyment of the module as a dm. Likewise, the maps in the Gates of Firestorm Peak are creepy and evocative. Very cool.

Now look at any one of the maps in that adventure and tell me it is inspiring. I dare you to keep a straight face while you do it.

And as near as I can tell, the art budget on the adventure in question didn't go towards handouts, but to the handful of illustrations scattered in the adventure- there's the "page 1" illo of two dudes fighting (somewhere around 1/2 page size), a small pic on pg 4 that shows a little atmosphere shot of the village (I guess) that is a bit over 1/6 page, a similar sized pic of an npc on pg 5, another npc on pg 10, yet another on pg. 11, and tons of crappy maps. As compared to old issues of Dungeon, both print and electronic, which had comparable numbers of pictures and good maps.

My gripe is that this is yet another area where DDI's quality has declined. Is it so hard to recreate cool map areas with Dungeon Tiles? If so, does that speak to the quality of the maps as cool maps or to the quality of tiles as a cool map-replicating product? If map quality must be "dumbed down" to meet the available tiles, I'm afraid that is a huge strike against DDI adventures for me.

 

[the Jester]

If it bothers you that much, learn how to better map.

You may be missing the point. Why buy the magazine if you don't get anything from it?

I think that Aegeri and I are in a similar boat: we'd like to give our money to WotC if only they would do a minimal amount of work to get it. But extracting content from our tools, or reducing the quality of the content, doesn't exactly work.

Seriously, every adventure ever published in Dungeon has had maps. Until very recently (the advent of tiles) almost every one of those maps was good or better. I have a hard time accepting that it's suddenly necessary to cut back on good maps to save money. If that is true, perhaps it's because the crappy content has driven enough subscribers away that the model is collapsing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I won't call it a massive big deal, but I do think that using Dungeon Tiles tends to put designer creativity into a rather small box. There's only so much variety you can really get with tiles. Sure, you can say "well, imagine there's a cliff here and a this and a that" but if that's what needs to happen then why use tiles at all? I just think tiles end up with repetitive modular maps that lack real originality.

I really generally hate not having large scale maps too. It doesn't always matter, but with adventures that are spread over an outdoor wilderness type area I find that often it is difficult or impossible to really understand what the overall picture IS. I want to know geographically how the different parts relate. In theory I can just run the encounters according to the text, but I don't find that players often actually go along with the script. If there's no overall big picture view of things it can be pretty hard to sort out what happens when the party takes a right turn somewhere along the way, or what the consequences of certain decisions might be.

Basically I'd rather have good original maps than anything else. Give me a text description of the NPC. I'll go find something that looks right in Google or whatever and print it out if I need it. I mean atmosphere is all well and good and in a printed module I bought in the store I'd want SOME artwork for sure, but gosh I have the Internet and I have 100 volumes of D&D books and fantasy art I can just scan. For me trading a good map for yet another picture of yet another fantasy character isn't a good trade.

Anyway, someone going to actually tell us some more about this here adventure? Thinkin' the great map debate has PROBABLY reached a point of diminishing returns...

 

[Scribble]

Since the things clearly sell, they're most likely being used- so in my opinion they should support their product with scenarios that let you use them.

Also is it easier for a non tile using customer to create a map based on the idea of what's there, or is it easier for the DT user to recreate a map based on what he has available?

I'd say the first one is easier based on experience.

Creating maps for people who don't intend to use the product, or in ways that would detract from the larger goal should be a tertiary concern at best.

 

[renau1g]

Creating maps for people who don't intend to use the product, or in ways that would detract from the larger goal should be a tertiary concern at best.

And yet if it is a primary use of the customers it should not be overlooked.