Phystus

In my previous post I wrote about the difficulties I had with scanning my old campaign area maps from paper into a digital form so I could use them in FG. As you’ll recall, it didn’t go very well. But of course, campaign maps aren’t the only maps we have to deal with as a GM. We have to make dungeon maps as well. And while I was scanning maps, I scanned some dungeon maps along with the campaign maps to see how that would go.

I’m sorry to report it went even more poorly than had the campaign maps. While the dungeon maps were a lot more readable than the campaign maps, and the file size was more reasonable, there was a fundamental problem with the graph paper: the “squares” weren’t actually square once they were scanned. I’m not sure if that was due to issues with the paper or the scanner, but the result was that I could only get the grid that FG applies to align with the squares on the paper for a small area, perhaps the size of a single room. The grid wouldn’t align across the entire map. Worse yet, no matter how hard I tried the graph paper was never exactly square in the scanner, so I always had to open the scan in a graphics program and rotate the picture a tiny bit to get it square. The angles would be small, less than one degree, but if it wasn’t square it looked terrible. Each scan was at a slightly different angle, so I had to tweak it by trial and error each time until I got it perfect.

I soon realized that by the time I did all of that I might as well draw the dungeons in the paint program to begin with. So I that’s what I did! The results were still quite Spartan, but at least the picture was square, and the grid would align properly.

Attachment 13954

That’s a very basic map. In fact, this is the DM map for the first adventure I ran with FG. Yeah, that’s right, I had a different map to show the players! Several maps, in fact. There was one for each area of the dungeon, so there was one for the corridor at the north end, one for the square room, one for the next corridor, one for the first of the three contiguous rooms, and so forth. As you may have surmised, I didn’t yet grasp the purpose of having a mask.

I soon learned how to use a mask effectively, and subsequent maps showed an entire dungeon level at once. Eventually I learned about other mapping tools, and the results became a bit more artistic as well. But that’s a post for another time.

Thanks for reading!