Maps for play by post

[SnowleopardVK]

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to handle maps (specifically the battlemap) in play by post?

I've looked around and saw that a common suggestion was maptool, but I tried maptool and found it horribly difficult to use, and the tutorials made no sense to me. It took me about two hours to figure out how to put a token on the map with maptool, and even at that point I hadn't yet figured out how to change the terrain from the default blank, featureless field at all.

It would help if I could find something that's not too difficult. I'm not really tech-savvy at all, or good with art for that matter.

(Ugh, it's having to make topics like this one that makes me feel like a complete moron... )

 

[Dice4Hire]

The absolute easiest I have seen if you want people to be able to move themselves is the google docs excel sheet.

Make the cells square, color squares for different terrain and then choose a letter for each hero and a different letter or number for each enemy. There is even enough room for notes and the like. I saw one DM who was able to put note comments (or something) on certain cells to describe the terrain effects and put DCs on them.

It even has a history so you can see what changes were made to the sheet so you can back up an incorrect move or to account for a OA or the like.

I liked it for allowing everyone to edit the map.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

Is there a way to make the cells square faster than manually adjusting the borders of each column and row?

 

[Pinotage]

Is there a way to make the cells square faster than manually adjusting the borders of each column and row?

One other way of doing it is to make TextBox objects in Excel for objects and other features. Then the sheet forms a map that you can drag objects around on rather than typing. This also allows things to sit on top of each other, for example a character on a table. The sheet itself should just be the map.

Pinotage

 

[Hand of Evil]

See the following:

Play By Post - Home

http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online

 

[Krensky]

I would actually recommend Google Drawing over Sheets.

Insert the map file (if you don't have a map file, that's another tutorial...) and then make up chits using the box tools. You can use the polygon tool for masking. The other tools are useful for templates or anything else you want to add to the map.

Download the map as a PNG or JPEG, then upload it to Picasa Web Albums (also part of your Google account) and put it in a public to the web gallery. You can then use Picnic (under the actions menu) to crop or tweak the image if needed. Then you can snag the links for the image to either link the players to the image or to inline the image.

You can also make the Drawing image accessible and let them look at it directly. If you make the players collaborators, they can move stuff themselves.

Here's an example:

And a close up of some of the action:

The green chits are the PCs, the red chit are the enemies, the little blue arrows are because those PCs are on the roof, and the blue starburst is some broken glass. All of the objects there were done with the predefined shape tools in Drawing.

 

[haakon1]

Excel = graph paper

In use Excel, and not with fancy add-ins or graphics.

I just use it like it's old school graph paper, and use colors, cell shading, and cell borders to indicate rock (gray) v. forest (green) v. open parts of the dungeon (white), doors (dashed line), etc.

The PC's get a 3 letter abbreviation of their name for where they currently are, and italic of their abbreviation of where they were at the start of the round.

The enemy get an abbreviation like "O4" for Orc #4. They are in red font, while the PC's are in blue font. People who get knocked out/killed get a strikeout on their font.

Each round, I copy the worksheet for a new worksheet ("tab" in the same Excel spreadsheet), delete the italics for where PC's/enemies started the round, and do the moves fresh. At the end of the fight, you have a round by round record of who moved where and when people went down.

Note that I don't bother with maps unless it's a combat situation, so it's not particularly onerous to do this with PBEM.

About the question of setting the worksheet so the Excel cells look like graph paper squares, that's dead simple. Select the cells, Format -> Column -> set width.

Works for us!

 

[SnowleopardVK]

[MENTION=30936]Krensky[/MENTION]: There were about a dozen things in that post that I didn't understand a word of, but I'd like to thank you for putting the effort in.

I really doubt I have the artistic/technical talent to manage to use that though. It certainly doesn't sound like I do.

 

[Krensky]

[MENTION=30936]Krensky[/MENTION]: There were about a dozen things in that post that I didn't understand a word of, but I'd like to thank you for putting the effort in.

I really doubt I have the artistic/technical talent to manage to use that though. It certainly doesn't sound like I do.

Well, let me try the more verbose fashion. I've actually come to prefer Inkscape with is a more fully featured drawing program, but it's a bit more complex.

First, this assumes you have a Google account. If you have a gmail address, you do.

Second, this assumes you already have a image file that has the actual map. We'll call it map.jpeg for this tutorial, and assume it's 800 by 800 pixels and has a grid. This notional map may be something downloaded off rpg map share, or was posted to a forum, extracted from a PDF, etc.

Go to docs.google.com and login just like you wold to gmail.

Click on the button that says 'Create New' and then choose Drawing.

Please note that checkerboard patterened box. That's the notional 'paper' for the drawing. When you download a copy of the drawing, only the stuff inside that box will be in the file.

Next, click on the menu item 'Insert' and choose 'Image' and then select your map file. It'll take a second to upload, but will then appear in the drawing. Now, click on the lower right corner of the 'paper' and drag it so it's as close to the edges of the image as possible.

Tada, you have your map.

Now, for your chits.

Again, go to the 'Insert' menu and choose 'Shape'. I like the little box in a box thing they call bevel, as shown in my examples. Also, glance over them, those are all scalable shapes you can add. Pick one and draw a one that is slightly smaller then your map grid. Then you can use the paint can and pencil icons to change the colors.

Now choose copy from the edit menu and then past as many of those chits as you have players or whatever you're using it to represent.

Go back to 'Insert' and choose 'Text Box' and click inside the chit and enter your label. Hit enter and drag the box so it's centered. Then carefully select both the chit and the text label by holding control while clicking on each item. Then right click and choose 'Group'. Now the label and chit are considered one object and you can drag it around as one piece.

Then for the masks, just choose the Polygon tool from the Insert menu and go to town.

Next, under file, choose Download as... and then JPEG or PNG.

Then go to picasaweb.google.com, log in, and upload the file, making a new Album called Gaming. Set the sharing option to Public.

Then, if you need to crop the image, choose action and then 'Edit in Piknik' (or however it's spelled). then choose Crop select the section and Crop and save it back to your album.

THen look to the right for where it says 'link'. Choose the image only option, and the largest size and copy the inline link. Then past that into your post using the image tags appropriate to your forum of choice.

Was that better? Seriously, give it a try. Google's tools are designed to be REALLY simple to use.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

Ah I think that makes more sense. Essentially what you're suggesting gives you the tools to play easily online (using chits to represent combatants with the ability to move them around easily) but requires you to already have the map?

If I can find something that would actually work as a map I might give that a try.