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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Module-writing: the proper ingredients
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<blockquote data-quote="James Jacobs" data-source="post: 5183017" data-attributes="member: 23937"><p>I often hear about games that extract the maps from our adventures (from the PDFs) and use them with a projector setup; it sounds like a great way to handle the problem of "missing battle maps."</p><p></p><p>We also produce a lot of map packs and fold-out flip maps, and sometimes incorporate them into adventures.</p><p></p><p>But actual printed battlemaps for EVERY encounter in an adventure? It's simply not economically possible.</p><p></p><p>As a thought experiment a while back, I took one of our Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes and figured out how many maps it would take to create a minis-scale map for every encounter area. Pathfinder AP #11 seemed a good example, since it provides a HUGE castle with lots of encounter areas. I did the math... and providing minis scale maps for every location in that adventure would have required the equivalent of 200 or so pages of full-color printing. Since we pay our cartographers by the size of the map, a map that large would have been PROHIBITIVELY expensive to pay for. Even if we pulled some sort of fast-talk swindle and payed the cartographer some super-low fee, the sheer size of the product would not only make it expensive to ship and store, but expensive for customers to buy.</p><p></p><p>And we do an Adventure Path installment every month.</p><p></p><p>The costs for such a project are, unfortunately, simply Too High.</p><p></p><p>That said, with technology going the way it is, we're rapidly approaching a time where it might become feasible to do something like offer high-res maps for use in projectors or iPads or giant electronic gaming tables. We're not really at a point in time where that kind of gaming resource is ubiquitous enough to justify a product line yet, and it doesn't solve the problem of the fact that such huge maps still have to be created (and paid for), though.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James Jacobs, post: 5183017, member: 23937"] I often hear about games that extract the maps from our adventures (from the PDFs) and use them with a projector setup; it sounds like a great way to handle the problem of "missing battle maps." We also produce a lot of map packs and fold-out flip maps, and sometimes incorporate them into adventures. But actual printed battlemaps for EVERY encounter in an adventure? It's simply not economically possible. As a thought experiment a while back, I took one of our Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes and figured out how many maps it would take to create a minis-scale map for every encounter area. Pathfinder AP #11 seemed a good example, since it provides a HUGE castle with lots of encounter areas. I did the math... and providing minis scale maps for every location in that adventure would have required the equivalent of 200 or so pages of full-color printing. Since we pay our cartographers by the size of the map, a map that large would have been PROHIBITIVELY expensive to pay for. Even if we pulled some sort of fast-talk swindle and payed the cartographer some super-low fee, the sheer size of the product would not only make it expensive to ship and store, but expensive for customers to buy. And we do an Adventure Path installment every month. The costs for such a project are, unfortunately, simply Too High. That said, with technology going the way it is, we're rapidly approaching a time where it might become feasible to do something like offer high-res maps for use in projectors or iPads or giant electronic gaming tables. We're not really at a point in time where that kind of gaming resource is ubiquitous enough to justify a product line yet, and it doesn't solve the problem of the fact that such huge maps still have to be created (and paid for), though. [/QUOTE]
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Module-writing: the proper ingredients
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