MultiLevel castle

Hey folks, I'm mapping a really big castle for my players. It's got several levels, and I'm trying to understand how best to lay out the various levels. Some of the towers are taller than others, and there are various underground levels. At the moment the best solution I have is just laying out multiple copies of the whole map, one for each level. Right now a single level of the castle almost fills a 140 x 280 tile map. If the whole castle comes out at about 9 levels that's just stoopid huge. I don't want to make a new map page per level, as that makes combat across more than 1 level (and this castle gets invaded a fair bit) very very tiresome. Any advice?

Dang. That is stoopid huge as you say. Most people made the various levels on one map page and just used dynamic lighting and such to separate them but you have maps to big for that. Is the group going to split apart to handle each level during the same session or are you running a few one session then another session the others? Does it matter if the multiple groups know what the others are doing? You can pull individuals onto separate map pages if they are all there at the same time but they would share the chat area. A rough way would be make a campaign for each level and invite only those that are supposed to be on that level. This would keep them separated and out of the info loop about who is doing what and such but the workload would dramatically increase. Something like this I have no good answer.

Thanks for the input. I'm not sure those suggestions will work for me. I wonder if this would work? If it were possible to place "switches" around the map. One pair on each stair. The player who clicks on a switch has their token teleported to the partner switch, to define moving from one floor of the castle to another? That might at least make navigation around the map faster. I think nothing's going to stop this map getting 4 or 5 times bigger than it is right now.

I think there is something in the API (mentor level) scripts that could be tweaked to function like a switch but not sure.

I think I know the best solution. It would involve making it possible to create arbitrary layers in the Map layer, and then associate certain tokens, texts, art and GM objects with a given layer. This would mean that all we have to do is allow a player to define the layer (castle floor) they're on at a given time, and the player only sees the map for that layer. This would work, though I have no idea if it's possible. Also, LOS and FOW would have to obey layer rules.

There is only map layer, token/object layer, GM layer, Dynamic lighting layer. The player can only access the token/object layer while the GM can access all of the layers. None of them can be defined like how you described. You might want to post a suggestions in the suggestion forum.

Thanks, I will.

Sorry that I couldn't help any but there will be more probably that will post suggestions that you can think about.

There's no reason to make multiple campaigns anymore; since Rugged Reroll, you can easily split the party in the same campaign. Just drag the player's icon to the map you want them on! (Icon in lower left, not character token.) Make a map for each level, let 'em run around as needed. When they switch levels, just move their icon to that level's map. Still quite a bit of work for the GM but at least it's all still in one campaign.

I feel your pain, though I was stupider. I made a 15 mile by 20 mile "city"... on a grid measured by feet. I gave up the idea of actually including the second floors and higher.

I do not recommend making a map this large with dynamic lighting. The more DL you put on the map the greater the system resources you and your player's computers will need. I suggest placing this on different pages.

Wow, that's much bigger than my castle. I'll have to check out Rugged Reroll.

Wait, is RR automatically activated or something? I can't seem to find instructions for it.

Rugged Reroll was a series of changes to Roll20. Things like better image handling of large images, waypoints for token movement, token actions (a token specific macro bar), etc. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/521628/rugged-reroll-is-live#post-521628" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/521628/rugged-reroll-is-live#post-521628</a>

Makes sense, thanks.