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- Thread starter Fyrestryke
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thormagni
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Fyrestryke said:
Grrr. This just ticks me off, to levels entirely out of proportion to the offense, but this is driving me crazy. I dealt with maps a lot when I was in the Navy. In fact, for two years, I worked in our chart vault, giving out maps, working with maps, mapping things, etc. I know a little bit about maps.
And I can tell you that the one, absolutely critical piece of information you need for a map is a scale (well and of course, not having canals in a desert city, but I digress.) Without a scale, your map is damn near useless, because you don't know how far away things are. Is the continent the size of North America? Is it the size of Indiana? Is it the size of the palm of my hand? Who knows if the map has no SCALE on it? How long will it take to get from place A to place B? You can't tell if you have no SCALE. It is a pretty freakin' simple mapping concept.
For reasons I do not understand. Sword and Sorcery does not put a scale on their Warcraft maps. There is no scale in the main book, there is no scale in this books. What in the world are they thinking? What could you use those pretty maps for, without a SCALE?
Sure, it says Ironforge city is a massive underground city. But without a scale, we don't know whether massive means a mile across, 10 miles across, 100 miles across. There is no way to tell! This is just stupid.
Fyrestryke
Explorer
thormagni said:
Hmmmm. I shall send them an email and ask them for why they are stoopid.
thormagni
Explorer
thormagni said:
The e-mail I sent. Of course, their stupid program takes out all the paragraph breaks, so I look like a run-on moron, but there you go...
subject: Warcraft RPG complaint/concern
from: John Clark
reply-to: jrclarkiii@sbcglobal.net
message: To whom it may concern,
I have purchased several of the Warcraft RPG books so far and just downloaded the free version of Lands of Conflict from Drivethrurpg. I have a quick question/concern about the books that I was hoping someone could address. Why do none of the continent, city or country level maps in the book have a scale listed?
Without knowing the scale it is impossible to determine distance between two points or travel times or relative sizes of land masses, or really any of a myriad of things that you would want to use maps for. I thought at first that this must be some sort of strange Warcraft-inspired vagueness, but noticed that my Ravenloft book also suffers from the same problem. Without knowing the scale, a map is good for nothing but a vague idea of where countries are in relation to each other.
This is extremely frustrating as obviously your cartographers spent a great deal of time making attractive maps, yet I find them nearly useless for anything except filler art. For example, the Dwarven city of Ironforge is a "enormous underground city." But does that mean it is a mile across, 10 miles across, 100 miles across? If I wanted to travel from there to the next town, would it take me a week, two weeks, a month? It is impossible to tell without a scale.
I am not suggesting you place a grid on the maps, as that would detract from the artistic look. But a legend showing the appropriate scale is really necesary to make them useful.
Thanks in advance,
John
Fyrestryke
Explorer
Cool. That's much more elaborate than what I wrote. 
I also thought about posting such a question on the forums.
EDIT - I got a reply...
Just got another...
I also thought about posting such a question on the forums.
EDIT - I got a reply...
Conrad Hubbard said:
Just got another...
Sorcery said:
Last edited:
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