What kind of map do you find yourself looking for?

Personally I think I look for encounter maps that I can setup quickly. They don't necessarily need a lot of fluff added to them, but for those times when I need that, it's good to have.

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RPGMapShare.com admin

I like the detailed city maps but the problem with most maps I find on-line is that they already have a name for them attached somewhere on the map. I might like your map, but I might want to call it something else.

This vote was a tie with Dungeon Crawls, but there too, I find that too many people make the maps look too real, with shadows, lights, monsters, animals and other ambient or "always in motion" objects. My thoughts are this: don't put an animal on the map -- It won't ever move for the players!! :)

With more and more advanced programs to display our maps, we are better leaving the lighting, shadows, people, animals, secret doors and or other moveble objects up to the program. It looks kinda funny removing a Fog of War only to find a torch lit room already in place when it should really be dark or to see an Ogre standing there that we cannot move around. I say leave many of the objects for the Maptool type applications - this way we can interact with them (put out lights, move creatures and reveal secret doors (or close the door for that matter).

Oops, I'm rambling again..
(Steel, delete if this is outside the discussion)

I agree with you, Dorpond.

Seems that most people make the maps to see how pretty they can make them, with little thought to utility. I make maps for commercial RPGs (for the Infinite Realities products), and I like to provide two different maps, one for players and one for GMs. The latter having room markers, encounter markers, etc, and the latter being more spartan, which can be used as the playing aid by the GM.

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RPGMapShare.com admin

Have any ideas how we can promote that type of mapping? (as far as having a DM map and a Player map?

I am with you on this. Secret doors is a good example and doors. I wouldn't put doors on my maps. I wouldn't put secret doors on my maps either. The doorways are always doorless because this way we can just stamp down a door object and now we have the ability to leave it open or close it. As far as a secret door, I make it a wall just like the other walls. If someone finds it, stamp down an S on the wall to show it is secret.

Simple things like this can make a program like Maptools work a whole lot better.

So back to the question; any way we can promote this type of mapping up here? Should there be a naming convention of files that if it is a DM's map the name will be NameDM.jpg?

Hmmm....

I think it would be difficult to enforce at best, impossible at worst. I think it's just a matter of making cartographers aware of the need out there.

I hadn't gotten as far as doors. I can see someone complaining "Where's all the friggin' doors??" on a distributed map, though, lol.

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RPGMapShare.com admin

I'd just like to chime in to support the idea of leaving moveable items like doors, torches, animals, and figures off of battlemaps. This makes them much more useable in virtual tabletop software.

Then again, I'm biased.

Battlegrounds: RPG Edition is new virtual tabletop software for both Macs and Windows PCs that allows you to play any RPG online or offline. It's very easy to use and has useful features like Fog of War.
www.battlegrounds.com.

Maybe these kinds of preferences should go into a forum topic.

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RPGMapShare.com admin

We've got a dead heat between detailed city maps and quick encounter maps, with Overland way behind. Other and Dungeon Crawl being no-shows.

Does this mean that for "dungeons" people are using published adventures which already have maps? 

Steel Rat
RPGMapShare.com admin

I have never bought or used a published map in my life.. I make my own dungeon maps mainly because they revolve around my story..

This is a tricky question really.

1. Until recently, I had to draw my DM maps on a battle mat. As you know, the DM can have the prettiest map in the world but it is still going to look like crap to the players when drawn out with markers. Because of that, I didn't need grossly detailed maps so I just drew them out on graph paper.

2. Now with tools like MapTools and Fantasy Grounds, we can finally display detail to the players but what I am finding is that all the maps made by experts on Dundjinni and the comminity is that there is way too much detail. There are closed doors everywhere, objects laying around, bloods splats, creatures and other misc "ambiences" that I don't want. My games are very realistic where time is always moving. I used logic where monsters live real lives and move around. They are not going to be standing in an empty room waiting for an adventurer to come in. So now, I still can't use these very nice works of arts that the community makes.

3. I have a hard time trying to figure out what half of the objects are in a community map, what the maps function is, and end up screwed when I see stairs in the map without another map to use. Did you ever get a great map only to find there are stairs leading somewhere? Well where are the other maps? Sometimes I will be looking at a map for an hour trying to figure out what this or that is; that's when I slam down the map and just make my own :)

So I guess the question is this: Will I use more community maps if they are basic? Will I use a map if it is layed out logically? If I can drop my own objects in it, I think I will have a much greater need for dungeon maps and when that day comes, I am sure my vote will greatly swing towards needing more dungeons..

Steel Rat
RPGMapShare.com admin

I'm looking for Sci-Fi Objects. like the type that I can make floors plans of starship with.

You should find plenty of that here...

Steel Rat