Creating a clickable world map

Hello guys, just wanted to share a little creation I've cooked up. It's simple but i'm finding it to be handy and above all, the players love it and it helps bring a little bit of extra immersion.  My goal was to create an interactive world map with objects and areas that could be clicked on to bring up information on them. Did some searching on the forums and didn't seem there was an easy way to achieve this aside from making each and every place a separate character to shift click on.... But!  It it entirely doable and above all pretty simple.  The steps taken to achieve the above are as follows.  1 - Create Handout entries for each location containing whatever material you want and accessible to all players. Create a master Handout with the list of all of the location journal names (exactly) including [ ] around the name to create hyperlinks to the individual handouts. To find the link simply save the master handout then right click any one of the desired location names and copy link. (You will need this later) 2 - Create a token image using a clipped portion of the original map. This way you can overlay the token exactly where you want it using the Alt key. Line it up to perfection and it will blend in perfectly with the map (would suggest using the token lock api script to keep it there!) 3 - Name the Token [Name of place](Hyperlink from the journal linking to the handout), also make it controllable to all players and i'd suggest either giving it a condition marker or a health bar to make it more visible. (Make sure the bar is visible to all players too!) 4 - Create a macro along the lines of  /em asked the locals about @{selected|token_name}. The result of this will be that a player may click the desired location on the map - click the macro (Which I have called Gossip/Research) and it will place directly into the chat - "player asked the locals about H elmgart " with the word Helmgart being a direct hyperlink to your chosen handout!

+1 You should add this to the following thread. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/5899495/stupid-roll20-tricks-and-some-clever-ones/?pageforid=5899495#post-5899495" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/5899495/stupid-roll20-tricks-and-some-clever-ones/?pageforid=5899495#post-5899495</a>

Nice walkthrough, if you change the macro to be @{target|token_name} you can omit the players need to have control over the token and thereby the chance of them moving them/needing to use tokenlock :)

Ah - Brilliant! Thanks Zie. Given my own clumsiness (and the capacity for things to go wrong) i'd suggest token lock - but I think it would certainly be better looking to have it as a target rather than selected - to omit the extra UI popups around the location.&nbsp; Many thanks!&nbsp;

Brian C. said: +1 You should add this to the following thread. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/5899495/stupid-roll20-tricks-and-some-clever-ones/?pageforid=5899495#post-5899495" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/5899495/stupid-roll20-tricks-and-some-clever-ones/?pageforid=5899495#post-5899495</a> You might find some helpful ideas in this post about&nbsp; Map Pins . You can also save yourself some effort by using an&nbsp; Invisible Token , rather than go through the effort of lining up a screen shot. And yes, step 3 above in particular is pretty clever.

Invisible Tokens.... God damn that makes this a lot simpler. I'll perhaps go back and edit the main post following some of these great suggestions :D

Another thing you could do is use an empty ring or another image for the token. Then the players know there is something to click, but you do not have to include token bars, and you can resize it to encircle whatever you want on the map.

Brian C. said: Another thing you could do is use an empty ring or another image for the token. Then the players know there is something to click, but you do not have to include token bars, and you can resize it to encircle whatever you want on the map. I'm currently playing around with adding some actual images of Pins to the map layer underneath a transparent token (for themurzions), but a Circle would definitely be a viable alternative and suitable. Cheers for the input :)

For visible markers, you could take some of the Unicode symbols (♜⚑⚒⚕⚚⛉⛫⛿) or outlines (▢▼◇◊◯◻⛶◌) and use them with the text drawing tools and put them on the map layer, additionally you can resize (font size) and recolor (font color) these markers to your liking.&nbsp;

This is brilliant!

The thing to beware with emojis (I use them a lot), is that they appear differently or not at all on different systems. Even some of the ones I use in-game do not appear when pasted into the forums. At the very least, I'd suggest using a site like getemoji.com to see how they render on different platforms.

...which is why I picked unicode characters rather than the emoji... and tested them in-game to make sure they show up in Arial font and are recolorable (the emoji are not)&nbsp;

Derp. Well.. I'll actually read next time. :)

Apologies - I didn't mean to come off snarky. I only now realized I hadn't been making good use of the text tool for graphics and was kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner.&nbsp; I mean... I'm testing a lot of them now... and for overland or notations...&nbsp; ⛀⛰☘☆♔⛏♨ ☣☢☠⚛⛓⚱⚰☙ ...and cuneiform which appears to be available, and makes for some really interesting ancient-looking map markers, a sampling of only a few (they don't show up here after processing, but they do show up in the text graphic editor in-game).&nbsp; Egyptian Hieroglyphs also work and could substitute for a lot of tokens...&nbsp;

Pat said: Apologies - I didn't mean to come off snarky.&nbsp; You didn't. I felt chagrined for not reading carefully. :)

I've used the Old World token/map packs by Russ Hapke in the marketplace for making map markers.

Perhaps it's because i'm a simple sausage, but I've just been sticking a map layer PNG item underneath the token on the token layer, this way I can choose something of my liking. It's not a real map till you have stuck pins all over where you have been :D Also... Follow up post planned based off of this... Range finder converted to travel cost calculator, based off of groups token measured to destination token.&nbsp;

+1 really good ideas here.

Airsickhydra said: Perhaps it's because i'm a simple sausage, but I've just been sticking a map layer PNG item underneath the token on the token layer, this way I can choose something of my liking. It's not a real map till you have stuck pins all over where you have been :D The pins look great! I use a transperant token and then add a crossed out symbol whenever the place have been cleaned/purged/destroyed - whatever. :)

That is really clever