Map clarity styles

So on a map that makes extensive use of difficult terrain or different elevations, I'm trying to figure out a balance between design clarity and good looks. I'm taking a cue from the Descent boardgame and trying out red outlines on tiles with blocking or hindering terrain. Do you guys find this distracting or find it easy to flip between art-immersion and tactical feedback? If anyone has good examples of how others have pulled it off successfully, I'd love to check them out.

I don't know that the red lines are really necessary. I create similarly-detailed tactical maps for my D&D game and I just tell the players if something on the board would slow movement (like your slope) or is outright impassible. Although I would hope that they would already assume that something like the big rocks could not be moved through. As a side-note, if you upgraded to a paid account you could use dynamic light lines as a barrier and the players would not be able to move through them even if they tried. They wouldn't actually be able to see the light lines, but if they tried to move their token through one it would just bounce back to the start point.

Richard T. said: Do you guys find this distracting or find it easy to flip between art-immersion and tactical feedback? I don't usually play with that tactical of a grid in the RPG's I play.. but from a purely visual-critical perspective, I think it looks fine to good. It's not distracting, and I would say if it was. It's pretty easy to visually see the topography features, or to focus on the HUD (heads-up display) overlay markings. Based on the example graphic & color schemes in play there.

Distracting, but there's a simple solution... make the red lines and such available as part of the marketplace package as a transparent overlay so the GM can put it on the GM Layer and move it to the map layer if needed.

HoneyBadger said: Distracting, but there's a simple solution... make the red lines and such available as part of the marketplace package as a transparent overlay so the GM can put it on the GM Layer and move it to the map layer if needed. this idea is awesome, also i would add... make token objects for the trees that are blacked out stumps so GM's can move the tree tokens to GM layer when needed, but are shown as whole when the players first encounter them..

Brett E. said: I don't know that the red lines are really necessary. I create similarly-detailed tactical maps for my D&D game and I just tell the players if something on the board would slow movement (like your slope) or is outright impassible. Although I would hope that they would already assume that something like the big rocks could not be moved through. Aside from the blocking terrain, which I agree with as far as obviousness goes, I also have dotted-line indicators for height differences. The suggestions about the overlay and stumps are interesting; though I don't know how often players go lumberjack in games.

<a href="http://i.imgur.com/RNdpwnX.gif" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/RNdpwnX.gif</a> No API needed..... And the red lines can be turned off and on by the player. And can be viewed just by the player or all players. Does that fix it?

Stephen, HOW DID YOU DO THAT?

Easily!!!!!!!!

GenKitty said: Stephen, HOW DID YOU DO THAT? Just to link the answer to the question: All is revealed...

:| If I wasn't already fighting to keep the map jpg under 5mb I'd totally do that.