PDA

View Full Version : A question about Play by Post games and maps.



ngilop
2016-11-07, 03:15 PM
Hey guys, got a question. I am thinking of starting a play by post game for friends who, I no longer live nearby. I have no idea how to get maps working though :(

How in the world does one get maps to work. Like for instance.

I wanna run rise of the runelords.

I have the book and the PDFs of the adventure path.
How in the world do I upload those bad boy maps so they know visually and logistic-ly what's going on.

How would I edit them to go from round to round and other such stuff.

Stan
2016-11-07, 05:32 PM
What I've done is use Roll20. It's designed for live online play but it's perfectly fine for pbp. You can throw up a map, then use tokens to move people and things about - you can make a token out of any image. There's also a built in die roller. You can set up a wiki of NPCs and locations for the campaign.

Ninja_Prawn
2016-11-08, 06:44 AM
What I've done is use Roll20. It's designed for live online play but it's perfectly fine for pbp. You can throw up a map, then use tokens to move people and things about - you can make a token out of any image. There's also a built in die roller. You can set up a wiki of NPCs and locations for the campaign.

I'm running a PbP at the moment (which Stan is playing in, as it happens), and we're using Roll20 for that. With a bit of effort, you can set up some pretty good-looking maps. You can import your own images so, if you're any good at drawing, you can create custom tokens for your players and monsters, which is nice. If you or one of your players pay the subscription fee, you can also use line-of-sight and lighting effects.

The only real downside is that you can't use it on mobile.

ngilop
2016-11-09, 08:27 AM
I understand roll20. But I do not want to have my players have to set up accounts on multiple sites just to play 1 game.

I am planning on running my game on rpol.net and am currently playing in 1 still alive game there. The DM sets up maps I guess I could just ask him.

Are there any other ways is roll20 honestly the only way to go?

Stan
2016-11-09, 09:28 AM
I've heard of people using Google+ with shared documents. I've never a shared map/image there so I can't give details. I'm in a game which is similar but lower tech where IC is a shared Word doc on Google Drive; character sheets and maps are in a folder there accessible by everyone.

I can see the advantage of having everything in one place. Roll20 campaigns have forum sections that you could use for IC and OOC threads.

Ninja_Prawn
2016-11-09, 10:23 AM
Are there any other ways is roll20 honestly the only way to go?

I've run PbPs with TotM as well, but I'd definitely say Roll20 is 'better'. And the thing with PbP is that it's difficult to sustain long games and any extra quality you can give players to keep them engaged is worthwhile.

The other option is to draw your own maps. This is a pain because you have to re-draw them every turn (or at least every round, if you do team initiative), they're never very nice to look at and often difficult to actually read. As an example, this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?471657-Ansalonian-Adventures-IC&p=21376985&viewfull=1#post21376985) is a currently-ongoing combat in another game I'm playing. I don't envy the amount of work Gorgon_Heap is having to do, as compared to what I'd be doing on Roll20.

Jama7301
2016-11-09, 01:23 PM
Somebody in the Advice for PbP thread posted something they wrote for doing grid based maps in a way that could be updated by the GM after receiving coordinates from players. May not be best for faster paced games, but it may help.

Specific Post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=14206724&postcount=4)
Play By Post Guide Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?257924-Guide-to-Play-by-Post-Games&p=14206724&viewfull=1#post14206724)

cobaltstarfire
2016-11-09, 01:31 PM
A couple of games I've played on used google docs for maps.

They'd upload the map into the doc, and player tokens, so we could move them around. It worked pretty well. And your friends don't need to sign up to use google docs, just make it such that only people given links can get to it, and from there they can interact with the map without having any kind of google account.

Grod_The_Giant
2016-11-10, 01:56 PM
There's always the old email/dropbox/Facebook Messenger/whatever method where you just send them the file.
For forum like this one you can host the image somewhere and insert it in a post.
I've used Google Hangouts a fair bit for online RPGs-- I've found the roll20's video chat is less reliable-- and a few times us DMs have used the share screen function to show off maps.

ngilop
2016-11-23, 09:04 PM
TO add more to the dilemma..

Ok I have the interactive maps for rise of the runelords..... BUT like is the full extent of interactivity just being able to turn grids on and off....?


And exactly HOW would I up load a single map, and not the whole page into google docs as well as add in tokens to represent characters/monsters/whatevers.