Artists please consider this

I would like to run more town/city adventures, thieves love them and I have tried various routes to make them. The problem I have run into is most of the sets, and I have bought several, fall into one end or the other in the spectrum. Big blocks of buildings channel the creativity down a narrow path, making them usable only a couple times before the players know it too well. "Kit" sets or assembling the bits makes for very large piles of files that slow down the game and wipe out slower, older PCs. What I would like to see is collections of buildings on transparent backgrounds that have basic details which I can drop onto terrain and arrange as I please. I am doing 9th century high fantasy, but a hovel is a hovel and a shop is a shop. I use Dynamic Lighting, so roofs are superfluous for the most part in my use, once you draw the sight lines they become invisible to the player, although I will do a page with roofs for the "second story men", if I think it will be needed. I realize this would be a fair bit of work and would be willing to pay a premium price for it. An advantage of being old and established is I have some degree of disposable income for my preferred hobby. There are some interesting sets out there, but I want to be able to have more layout control without killing my player's functionality. This village built from pieces of walls, floors and random parts eats up a lot of memory and took me a lot of time, before I put in 200 NPCs This section of town built from a set I purchased, even without the details actually crashed the server before I removed some features. I like to provide as much flavor as possible for my players, along with dozens of detailed handouts for background information and rumors, so I know what I am looking to build, while lacking the graphics talent to actually do it "from scratch". Perhaps some of you of steady hand and sharp eyes can mull this over and see if this is something the market would bear.

Thank you, al e. Most definitely some great feedback to think about here.

I think the biggest problem you'll encounter is that if you create such a big map with dynamic lighting it'll kill most PCs. Mine kicks ass, but there's only so much a browser can handle, so even with a very powerful one it won't be enough. I had a problem running a 100+ room dungeon complete with lighting on every corner and there was nothing I could do, even with the mods' help, to make it run smoothly. In the end I had to split it in 5 maps, which was short of ideal, but at least we could play. Anyway, I'm just trying to say it might be tough to use dynamic lighting with a lot of buildings. It *might* have changed with the introduction of the global lighting, but I can't say for sure.

I am going to have to learn to do it in a graphics program and flatten it to a JPG. I have a friend, and player, who teaches photoshop, so I just have to arrange to learn it...

I'm currently in the midst of working on a set which are just building interiors. Here's a sample, set on a background: <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pqd8op46jkpecws/The%20Inn.jpg?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/pqd8op46jkpecws/The%20Inn.jpg?dl=0</a>

Simon S. said: I'm currently in the midst of working on a set which are just building interiors. Here's a sample, set on a background: <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/pqd8op46jkpecws/The%20Inn.jpg?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/pqd8op46jkpecws/The%20Inn.jpg?dl=0</a> Nice work, I think there is a glut of bars and inns out there though. More mundane buildings houses, shacks, hovels would stand out from the crowd more.

Oh, there will be plenty of things, this was just part of the free package of maps I already have on Dropbox.

I look forward to it.

al e. said: I am going to have to learn to do it in a graphics program and flatten it to a JPG. I have a friend, and player, who teaches photoshop, so I just have to arrange to learn it... Photoshop is an incredibly powerful and deep program. I've used versions of it since the early days of the software. The GIMP is a free open-source program that does almost the same thing, for purposes of this discussion. If you'd rather get the cheaper software, they look and perform fairly similar, but it would be best to learn in GIMP if you're going to ultimately install GIMP rather than pay for Photoshop. Ideally you want to learn on your own computer so you can literally set-up the program window in the way that is optimized for your workflow needs. Here's the good news --- learning to do In-Photoshop-Or-GIMP, what you're already doing in Roll20 (layers of graphics, Move To Front, Move To Back, drawing shapes or lines or freehand, the equivalent of that) --- would be the easy stuff in Photoshop. You can learn to do this in an hour from your friend, and I think within an hour of learning you'll have more tools at your disposal than Roll20 offers. There are many deep features of Photoshop that you can ignore & still be able to accomplish every kind of map you can create in Roll20. Be sure to tell your instructor friend that you want to learn about Layers and Flattening and Transparency , learn the Clone Tool because I think you'll like that (for placing things like flowers), learn the Lasso for selecting , and not to bog-down on tons of other features like Channels, Masks, Levels, Filters, etc etc. Many of the other features are more photographic oriented. You can even close most of those extraneous toolbars, and expand the Layers toolbar so you can really see what you're doing (that's what I mean by set-up the program windows for your mapping workflow, hide all the photographic tabs you don't need for this). It's like where Roll20 has GM Layer, Token Layer, Map Layer, and Move To Front, Move To Back within any of those layers.... Photoshop and GIMP have infinite layers. You could put every treasure chest on its own layer, or put them all on the "Treasure Chests" layer, or put them all on a "Map Layer". Your choice. Then drag-and-drop the layers to move anything on top of anything else. Or Hide/Show any layer and save a flattened image of that (EXAMPLE: Put all the Traps on a GM/Trap layer... Hide the GM layers and save a version, it's a Player's Map!). I'm familiar with the complexity of Al's mapping from playing in one of his campaigns. I endorse his request to the artists, but at the same time, I definitely think that you would enjoy the power of Photoshopping your maps.

I will be seeing the guy Sunday, well he plays in my high level old game, 21 years so far. I would guess he knows most of the other software as well, as he teaches at Moore College of Art in Philly. He is an appletini, but he also knows his way around windows. My maps are probably over the top it is true.

Actually working on a future set of maps for cities, but the timing is still a ways off. A lot of work is required for making cities. Although I am hoping to have around 10 different full size city maps in my creation.

Might I direct your attention this-a-ways to the talented Gabriel Pickard's first installment of his City Builder? <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/set/501/vill" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/set/501/vill</a>... He goes on to say that the set will continue to grow... "My Modular city will progress with the follow sets: hamlet/surrounding farmland, village along the river, big city, big city along the river." Was this the kind of thing you were thinking, Al?

It is in the right direction, and I plan to purchase that set, It is groups of buildings, which I can work with, I realize I will still have to chop the map up to do it, I am doing my current city in quarters, which are actually much smaller now, but these will definitely help. I burn through a lot of terrain in my games. I run two games, a total of ten sessions a month, and they tend to leave a lot of blood stains and broken things everywhere they go, not much resale value when they are done with a piece of scenery... I do look forward to his future releases as well. I have a hankering to do a vast city, sort of a Lithuanian Lankhmar.