Would YOU want a book of hand-drawn maps?
- Thread starter psyekl
- Start date
devilish
Explorer
Just to be devil's advocate ..... then why is Wotc's Map Folio such a flop?
MFI: Because they are charging for what was once free?
MFII: ???
MF-3D: I heard that the die-cuts don't match in certain places.
What turns off people to maps that Psyekl should avoid? What made people
burn their copies of MF?
Psyekl -- your maps are excellent and would love to see them succeed where
wotc failed.
-D
MFI: Because they are charging for what was once free?
MFII: ???
MF-3D: I heard that the die-cuts don't match in certain places.
What turns off people to maps that Psyekl should avoid? What made people
burn their copies of MF?
Psyekl -- your maps are excellent and would love to see them succeed where
wotc failed.
-D
John Morrow
First Post
>
For the D&D game that I'm currently running, I took this blank map:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/mapofweek/Dec03_Bonus_map_5_72_dpi_fd9h.jpg
...from the WotC "Map a Week" archive (it's actually a hunk of Greyhawk from a published supplement) and added my own region names, cities, political boundaries, etc.
Create something that looks about that good, include several maps that fit together to cover a larger area, include some interesting geography (like the one from Greyhawk does with the swamp, tall mountains, etc.) but nothing so strange that it makes the map difficult to adapt, and release it in electronic form so I can import it into a graphics program and I might have some use for it.
I'd suggest no grid or scale. My scale for that map is different than the same hunk of Greyhawk and I put my hexes in a drawing layer that I can turn on or off for different print-outs. Again, if you release this electronically, it's trivially easy to include many different versions with and without grids, keys, labels, etc. Yes, you'll have a potential theft problem with an electronic version but your publishing overhead will also drop substantially. You won't have to worry about printing up a few thousand and then only selling a few hundred.
psyekl said:
For the D&D game that I'm currently running, I took this blank map:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/mapofweek/Dec03_Bonus_map_5_72_dpi_fd9h.jpg
...from the WotC "Map a Week" archive (it's actually a hunk of Greyhawk from a published supplement) and added my own region names, cities, political boundaries, etc.
Create something that looks about that good, include several maps that fit together to cover a larger area, include some interesting geography (like the one from Greyhawk does with the swamp, tall mountains, etc.) but nothing so strange that it makes the map difficult to adapt, and release it in electronic form so I can import it into a graphics program and I might have some use for it.
psyekl said:
I'd suggest no grid or scale. My scale for that map is different than the same hunk of Greyhawk and I put my hexes in a drawing layer that I can turn on or off for different print-outs. Again, if you release this electronically, it's trivially easy to include many different versions with and without grids, keys, labels, etc. Yes, you'll have a potential theft problem with an electronic version but your publishing overhead will also drop substantially. You won't have to worry about printing up a few thousand and then only selling a few hundred.
I bought the map folio but I was disappointed.
What I want out of a map is a little more detailed than that, and a little less prettified.
I want not just a map but the bare bones of an adventure - traps, puzzles, notes on features, a guide to the creatures/people that live there. Stats, detailed personality notes and such are not necessary, but might be nice.
After all, if you just want a bare map you can ignore anything that you don't like in a detailed one, but it is hard to project something on a bare map if you are all out of ideas.
Pre-generated maps would be most useful on days that I cannot come up with ideas for adventures, or my players decide to ignore the pre-prepared adventure and go randomly caving. So I would want ideas, and fast, with not more than 5 minutes prep work to loosely work into a game. They would also be useful for kick-starting a stalled imagination, even if I did not go on to use that particular map.
What I want out of a map is a little more detailed than that, and a little less prettified.
I want not just a map but the bare bones of an adventure - traps, puzzles, notes on features, a guide to the creatures/people that live there. Stats, detailed personality notes and such are not necessary, but might be nice.
After all, if you just want a bare map you can ignore anything that you don't like in a detailed one, but it is hard to project something on a bare map if you are all out of ideas.
Pre-generated maps would be most useful on days that I cannot come up with ideas for adventures, or my players decide to ignore the pre-prepared adventure and go randomly caving. So I would want ideas, and fast, with not more than 5 minutes prep work to loosely work into a game. They would also be useful for kick-starting a stalled imagination, even if I did not go on to use that particular map.
JoeGKushner: I've seen a sample of it, and I wasn't going that route at all. Kenzer's book is mainly "treasure maps" in player handout form that are basically illustrated riddles. I'm to be releasing maps of adventure sites for the GM, with the occasional player's handout for those sites.
devilish: With a name like that, it's completely appropriate for you to be "devils advocate"![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
! WotC's maps are rapidly cranked-out digital collections of random rooms thrown together to provide a place to run the game. I'm going to be designing maps with logical floorplans and artistic flourishes and details rarely seen in gaming products. I didn't like the Map Folio at all, and I've yet to be impressed by WotC's map-a-week (though I haven't seen them all). Basically I'm going to put out the type of product I'd like to see, but using the advice of actual gamers to make sure it's something we'll all be able to use.
John Morrow: Providing something that looks that good isn't the problem. Spending the time and effort to make something look that good then finding out that very few people even wanted it, now that's the problem. I don't doubt that my style will be appreciated for the most part, but appreciation and marketability are not necessarily in the same boat, which is why I want the input from the very people I'm doing this for.
I wasn't planning on including a grid or scale on overland maps unless I thought it would be absolutely necessary. Indoor maps will almost always have a scale and grid.
Please keep the input coming, I'm actually getting some great ideas! My first release is already partially completed, and it should be a good one!
devilish: With a name like that, it's completely appropriate for you to be "devils advocate"
! WotC's maps are rapidly cranked-out digital collections of random rooms thrown together to provide a place to run the game. I'm going to be designing maps with logical floorplans and artistic flourishes and details rarely seen in gaming products. I didn't like the Map Folio at all, and I've yet to be impressed by WotC's map-a-week (though I haven't seen them all). Basically I'm going to put out the type of product I'd like to see, but using the advice of actual gamers to make sure it's something we'll all be able to use. John Morrow: Providing something that looks that good isn't the problem. Spending the time and effort to make something look that good then finding out that very few people even wanted it, now that's the problem. I don't doubt that my style will be appreciated for the most part, but appreciation and marketability are not necessarily in the same boat, which is why I want the input from the very people I'm doing this for.
I wasn't planning on including a grid or scale on overland maps unless I thought it would be absolutely necessary. Indoor maps will almost always have a scale and grid.
Please keep the input coming, I'm actually getting some great ideas! My first release is already partially completed, and it should be a good one!
Attachments
Add me to the list of people interested in buying a well-designed collection of usable maps. While I can produce a passable map using software, I rarely have the time to invest in doing so. The Wizard's maps-of-the-week are very hit or miss, often being too artsy to use in game or too random in design (e.g. plenty of dead end corridors and dungeons with no doors, entrances or other features). Show me something I can use and this overly busy DM will be a happy customer.
John Morrow
First Post
psyekl said:
Fair enough. What I'm trying to say is that I'd want maps that I couldn't just slap together myself in a few hours. I'm looking for something that looks cool. Judging from the sample, I think you are on the right track, though color was part of the attraction for me with that WotC map. One suggestion from looking at the sample -- make sure that you leave enough room for the GM to add in his or her own labels, place names, and cities and such. A lot of your map is covered in art. In practice, that could mean either (A) more whitespace or (B) scanning in the geographic features in a mid level gray or various colors or tings and making the main land outlines black. Basically, the GM needs to be able to write over what you've drawn and have it be readable. If you use color, remember that printing large areas of dark color will kill ink cartridges. Keep the large areas of color light.
Again, electronic versions help mitigate these problem if the GM will be adding labels electronically (in Canvas, for example, I simply put a 2pt white line around black text and it creates letters with a white knock-out space around them). They can also color in their own maps.
You probably also want to clean things up a bit more after the scan (e.g., despeckle, make the background pure white, adjust the contrast, etc.). But overall, it's nice work.
psyekl said:
Absolutely. But give me a map that I can write (either physically or electronically), adding my own place names, cities, and boundaries. You should do that excercise yourself with a copy of one of your maps. How readable are the results?
psyekl said:
Great. I wasn't thinking about indoor maps. Two points out indoor maps.
First, I was impressed enough by Green Ronin's "Dungeons of Dooms: A Compendium of Fantasy Maps" to buy it. If you want to see the sort of blank interior dungeon maps that I'd pay $20 for in a book, that's the book to look at because I did, after all, buy the thing. It's not perfect but I can actually see myself using some of those maps for the underground portion of the game that I'm running.
Second, I think a fairly complete book of reasonably common and mundane buildings that appear over and over again in fantasy games could be useful -- a few inns and taverns (perhaps "small", "medium", and "large"), a few shop types (perhaps those same size categories or maybe by the class of goods tehy sell), some generic temples, generic keeps, generic towers, etc. The key is to make the designs the generic cookie-cutter designs that a GM can use over and over again (the equivalent of a "colonial", "ranch", "split-level", etc. in houses) rather than oddball architecture that can only be used once (e.g., round inns, taverns with quirky features, towers build in unusual places, temples clearly designed for a specific deity, etc.). I think I'd buy a generic book of medieval fantasy buildings, especially if you did some homework on the designs. Again, my preference is still electronic here (so I can label, modify, etc.) but I'd probably buy a book like this.
Specifically, I have some of the old Citybook series of supplements but the buildings are too specialized. Rather than an "inn", it provides a specific inn. For blank floorplans, I'd want plans that can be used over and over again. And in reality, many buildings are built to certain general patterns over and over again because they work.
Barendd Nobeard
Explorer
Yes, I'd love such a product.
Your product sounds much more interesting to me than the Map Folios from WotC. (Which I purchased and now regret purchasing.)
Your product sounds much more interesting to me than the Map Folios from WotC. (Which I purchased and now regret purchasing.)
