Urickland

[robotkarateman]

@robotkarateman - What is the scale on your map?

Vague.

The full-rez version prints off at 10.5" wide, and I scaled that for 1" to be 1000 miles. But, for story purposes, that distance kind of flexed. 1" is about 800 miles-ish, depending on how much of a time crunch the players are on.

[sarendt]

I post more images to the file with out describing them don't expect to understand them, they aren't ment for that.

What I mean by this is that as I am currently putting files into picasa and then adding links and descriptions on this forum.  Some images, such as 'midriver' have no description on the forum, thus it will be very difficult to understand the map until such time as I can add the description and link it here. 

Thus when you go to picasa and flip through the images and complain that things dont make any sense you know why.

Those two things are mutually exclusive. How can you expect us to judge the maps as props but then state we're not meant to understand them?

Sorry, I didn't think it was that poorly worded in the first post.

[sarendt]

Vague.

The full-rez version prints off at 10.5" wide, and I scaled that for 1" to be 1000 miles. But, for story purposes, that distance kind of flexed. 1" is about 800 miles-ish, depending on how much of a time crunch the players are on.

I read this to mean that if the players are in a hurry, due to some type of drama, then things are closer then they might otherwise be?

What level are your playing at?  Do the players really know about stuff thousands of miles away?

[robotkarateman]

I read this to mean that if the players are in a hurry, due to some type of drama, then things are closer then they might otherwise be?

Or farther. Depends on what the story requires and what makes for the best drama.

The only thing I don't change is the distance between places they've been to more than once. My players have access to the raw files for our podcast, which they do listen to, so it's hard for me to hoodwink them.

So far, they've been operating primarily in the Liegeport area, so they've gotten pretty familiar with the lay of the land.

What level are your playing at?

The system we're using doesn't use levels.

Do the players really know about stuff thousands of miles away?

Some. The map they were given was a map they stole from some bandits who got it from a government surveyor they waylaid. The major towns, ports and forts are there (ie the stuff the government cares about), but not much else. They've gleaned other information just from talking to NPCs, and they made one trip to about the center of the coastline.

Where Ross went with America for his new world inspiration, I went Australia, so the theme of our campaign has been indentured servitude of the poor, unloading of criminals, and plunder of natural resources by big companies. A lot of the information about the company-held territories is know only to the companies, especially if it's bad.

[sarendt]

What system are you running?  Are your podcasts on RPPR as well?

[sarendt]

Test 3...




Midriver:  So this is the close up view of Midriver, the second city the players came to.  This is just down the road from Riversend and I will add a crappy image of the surrounding area that includes Riversend shortly.  So this city, as those of you who have read the previous posts know is basically a swamp version of Venice.  The major mode of transportation is via small boats.  Some homes aren't accessible except via riverboat.  The blue is obviously (I hope) water, either the main river on the south (bottom) and the smaller creek's that create the cities roads.  The dark brown is a major and paved road built higher then the ground floor of many buildings, with bridges (black areas) over any of the creeks and a large stone bridge over the river.  All the brown hatched areas are board walks that run in front of the buildings and have railings.  All the rest of the areas on this map would be very difficult terrain, basiclly walking through a few feet of water with mushy mud under it.

Many of the buildings are labeled, if I have the sheet I used to detail which numbers were which buildings I will add that as well.  I remember "1" was the major Inn and 2-7 were upper class buildings made of stone and didn't fit the building style of the other buildings at all.  53-60 is the wharf for trade to on/off load cargo and store it.

[sarendt]

Ok, so technically my image showed up, but I have to admit it isn't very convient to look at currently... Any suggestions to making it small until you click on it like robotkarateman post earlier.

Thanks :*)

[robotkarateman]

What system are you running?

AARG. My own system. I'll be releasing it for free in the next few months.

Are your podcasts on RPPR as well?

No, they're on my site. I considered asking Ross about posting them on the community site, but I'm not sure that'd be appropriate.

Any suggestions to making it small until you click on it like robotkarateman post earlier.

I think Imageshack gives you a thumbnail code that links to the full sized image. I could be wrong, I just hosted mine on my own page.

Let me know if you don't find anything. I have plenty of space on my sites, I could host for you.

[sarendt]

Vague.

The full-rez version prints off at 10.5" wide, and I scaled that for 1" to be 1000 miles. But, for story purposes, that distance kind of flexed. 1" is about 800 miles-ish, depending on how much of a time crunch the players are on.

So your continent is approximately the same diameter as the earth?  The diameter of the earth at the equator is 7,926.41 miles, the US is about 3000 miles wide, on your map one continent is approximately 10,000 miles wide by my math, maybe 8,400 miles at the smallest...

How do people travel around here?  It would take months of travel by horse and cart to get from one state to the next?  Is your whole planet this large or just this continent?

Your maps seem to be haphazard collections of shapes and objects that are only there because you wanted them to be there and offer no concessions to realism. For example, the map of Midriver. Are the buildings really huddled along the beaches like that? Come a good rain the entire town is washed away. Does the town really have only one road? Must be a pain in the ass to get your goods to market. The houses on the opposite side of the river from the buildings numbered in the 60s are completely boned regarding transportation, unless they're all riding around in on the river like some sort of swampy Venice. Think about the logistics of a structure before you place it.

Did you have any concession to realism when you made this map?  Unless everyone in your world has acess to magikal ways of traveling, especially your players it should take weeks of travel to get from city to city.  A horse can travel 50 miles in a day under the best of conditions, so to travel from Liegeport to Fort victory, as the crow flies is 750 miles and takes a horse two weeks?  The average person, say a farmer taking his goods to market would travel a month or more... 

Old world ships, such as the ones Columbus sailed averaged less than 4 knots, 8 knots max, or about a hundred miles a day.  To travel from one side of the continent to the other would take 3 months, how far away is the old world?  How large are the ships that they travel on to keep enough supplies to survive that travel time?

[robotkarateman]

Did you have any concession to realism when you made this map?

Relax. I somehow doubled the distance when I posted earlier. That's what I get for not including a scale key on the map.

The continent itself is 9.5" on paper, 3800 miles.

[sarendt]

wow, ok, that makes a lot more sense.

[sarendt]

This was a very quick sketch I did of the area surrounding Midriver and Riversend.  I wanted to give the players an idea of the surrounding area but hadn't made a map at that scale yet.  I believe this map is about 60 miles per square.  This would have also worked well for a rough layout of that map when I get around to doing it, making sure the scale is correct and putting key features in where they should be.  Its amazingly difficult to go, by hand, from a map with scale of 400 miles per square (the first image I posted that I printed from online and colored/added lines to) to something on this scale (or any other scale for that matter) and not screw it up, even with making a rough go at it first.  I have in the past just tried to wing it and ended up putting a lot of time into a map that was a waste because key elements of it were wrong.



Here we have the area surrounding Midriver, Riversend is to the east along the road.   

• The break in the road where it intersects the river requires a boat of sometime to move past, a canoe is docked for one or two people to use or to call a ferry from town to move larger carts and wagaons.
  
  
• The bridge over the river labeled "Troll Bridge" has a real troll living there, I like to do cliche things like that :*)  This troll is a troll mom who has a couple trollings living under the bridge as well.  The bridge is over a deep chasam of about 250 feet or so, the troll's cave under the bridge on the east side and has a short path leading to it from that side.  There is a sign with the troll's hand written "Trol Brige, Plese Poot Gold Hear!" so some thing similar.  Mostly she's just like any other working mom, just trying to get by.  She was meant to scare the players a bit and be an encounter that they couldn't beat at their level, 3 I think at the time.  They did attack her and managed to knock her off of the bridge, so they 'passed' the encounter with out killing her...
  
  
• The black hexagon south of the city is the midriver castle, a under manned home of the slightly richer nobles.  Its construction is a mystery and I never went into much detail of it as the players never showed any interest in going there.  It is of similar construction to the nicer homes on the far side of the river, which would be made by some ancient people who lived here.
  
  
• A small labyrinth lies a short walk off the road North of the Troll bridge, again something that was never explored.  I had wanted to put a puzzle type encounter here, something that would be similar to the Pan's labyrinth movie but never made it
  
  
• Some various quests area's are labeled on the map, just some basic stuff I had hints about in town but never developed, again the players choose to run off on other errands.
  
  

The players only spent about a day or two near Midriver, I had some out of game plot going on at this point and one character had been asked to go find a missing goblin scholar that was studing a 'Dark Manor' in the foot hills to the North.  He had been in regular communication with his guild but they hadn't received any word for a few days and wanted the party to seek him out.  The 'Dark Manor' was based on the zone 'Mistmoore' from Everquest.  I will link those maps soon hopefully.

[sarendt]

So does anyone else have any maps to share?  Any thoughts about good point of the maps?  Parts that aren't as good?  Does anyone have any stories of GM's using game props to good ends?

[Charlie72]

Something I drew for someone

[sarendt]

Thanks Charlie72 :*)

Could you explain some of it for us?  What is the map for?  Which game system?  Was it used by the players or the GM? 

-Scott

* Interesting note: that the goverment doesn't like your image file and I was forced to load the page on my way too cool DROID in order to see it :*)