Here is a small section of a map which combines simple vector buildings and other symbols with bitmap fill styles and effects. It's based on Waterdeep from the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas, and the original map is copyright Hasbro. It's by no means finished.
I used the following effects:
- Blur on the water
- Drop shadow and glow on the text
- Bevel on the woods
- Wall shadow on the buildings
- Transparency on the building outlines
- Texturize on the roads
A more detailed section:
The whole map includes over 100,000 entities and takes about 8 seconds to redraw with effects on. We'd love to do a new Forgotten Realms Atlas, given the chance, using the new features in CC3, and employing the best cartographers to create a new style. If you'd like to see this too, sign our
online petition.
11 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
The strangest thing about the Esoterrorist playtest was that the perception of railroading absolutely did not reflect what was going on in the games. We had comments from both the players and GMs, and what we found was that GMs who were improvising the most scenes based on player input, were the ones whose players complained the most about being railroaded. Perception is massively important. The best thing is that every report had players doing very different things and achieving different goals despite the structure of the adventure.
As a result, Robin wrote a piece for the on railroading - a worthy and useful addition to the rules. The game itself is no more or less susceptible to railroading GMs than most other games.
Here is a short excerpt:
An investigative story in any medium is, by its very nature, highly structured. The investigators learn of a mystery, then move through a series of scenes, each of which concludes in the acquisition of a clue which segues into the next scene. The story reaches its climax when the investigator discovers and reveals the answer to the mystery. It may or may not conclude, for extra punch, in a physical confrontation with the story’s now revealed-antagonist.
Structure can be difficult to achieve in the roleplaying medium. Guide the players too little and they lose the thread, resulting in a loose and sloppy narrative that provides none of the neat, order-making pleasure the genre is meant to provide. Guide them too much and they feel that their freedom of action has been taken away from them, and that they’re merely observers moving through a predetermined sequence of events. (As you probably know, this latter syndrome is known in roleplaying jargon as railroading.)
There is an interesting issue here - is the illusion of choice in a game as good as real player choice? A computer game example - in Doom 3, you are at one point asked if you want to call the Fleet in to help, or not. As it happens, bar one short video clip, it actually doesn't make any difference to the game at all.
4 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
