Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 1616409" data-attributes="member: 8863">I've never been very impressed with some examples of WotC maps.  They seem to like to make the maps look "pretty" but a game map is more than just a piece of art; the DM has to be able to use the map to judge distances fairly accurately.  A player map doesn't need to be completely to scale or accurate, though.The 5' grids are proably a result of the fixation on minis.  I don't have a huge problems with it, because I don't really use Map-of-the-Week (been meaning to archive the maps for some time now, though), and because I usually map my dungeons at 5' squares anyway.  Besides, if you're using minis, a map drawn on a 5' grid is easier to use as is than one on a 10' grid, because with the 10' grid, you have to double the size of everything.  Really, I don't think the actual scale of the map itself matter, I think it's how big they make they grid.I agree.  The map should be fairly clear, since the DM needs to use the map to set up encounters, especially if he's using minis.  Maps that '"snap to grids" make this easier.  I mean really, the grid is an artificial feature in the dungeon, the dungeon itself isn't going to be marked with 5' squares, the squares are there so the DM can judge distances.  Having the dungeon snapped to the grid isn't going to make it less realistic.And like I said above, it's the size, not the scale of the grid that counts.  The squares on the grid need to be large enough to be counted easily.Not a bad map.  Yeah, the alignment stinks, but I'd just redraw it for my own use anyway.And I've seen "small grid madness" during the TSR days too.  The "Nemesis" adventure from Dungeon # 60 is a pretty bad example.  On page 48, there's a map of a yuan-ti lair that's gots all sorts of twisting and looping passages with a grid that's about 2mm to the square at the standard 1 square = 5 feet scale. The grid is "broken" in places too.Just as bad is another map for the same adventure on p. 54.  The grid is just as small, but is even more difficult to read, and is at a scale of 1 square = 10 feet!</blockquote>

Verification