Fantasy Ground Map by Kevin Beck standard and with lighting

[kevdog45]

Good day fellow gamers!

I am building a campaign in Fantasy Grounds called Adventurous Endeavors and in doing so one of the things I have discovered I enjoy most is making battle maps. I use Campaign Cartographer 3+ as my program of choice. I have the Dungeon Designer 3 add on that I use for dungeons. The following two maps are maps I made that resemble what the final battle maps for my campaign will look like. Both feature the same cave structures but one of the maps has lighting effects and the other one does not. Both maps represent areas of approximately 120x85 in feet and 37x26 in meters if my basic math is correct. . Both were saved at 2000x1400.

I used these dimensions because the the battle maps that come with Fantasy Grounds appear to be representing similarly sized areas assuming each square represents 5ft. I placed a 5ft grid on one of the maps within the CC3+ program and when placed into Fantasy Grounds that five foot grid came out to about a square of 85 when placing a grid in Fantasy Grounds.

My question is which of the maps do you think makes a better battle map? Lighting or no lighting? I think the lighting adds tactical issues for the players that a good gamemaster could exploit. For example, giving the lighted map to players without darkvision while giving the unlighted map to those with it?

The final maps will have symbols on them representing various in campaign details but I wanted to give a sample here since I am having fun building this campaign and wanted to share.

[Bidmaron]

Your conversion from feet to meters is backwards. There are.305 meters per foot. Nice maps though.

[kevdog45]

Your conversion from feet to meters is backwards. There are.305 meters per foot. Nice maps though.

Thank you for correcting me! I got meters mixed up with yards. I fixed the post. Also thank you for your compliments.

[LordEntrails]

I would find the map with lighting to be difficult to use as a DM. The dark areas are hard to distinguish where they are walls. Also, the shadows will vary depending upon lighting sources. Many/most adventurers will have at least torches if not light spells or lanterns, etc. So though shadows and lighting are a nice artistic effect, I think they take away from usability when done as heavily as you have done.

You could do some 'light/minimal' lighting effects for ambiance, but I would not try to realistically represent any one lighting condition.

Also note, you will not want to have an actual grid on the image when you add it to FG. Instead just put a 5ft square in the top or bottom left corner and use that as a guide for overlaying an FG grid on the image.

[kevdog45]

I would find the map with lighting to be difficult to use as a DM. The dark areas are hard to distinguish where they are walls. Also, the shadows will vary depending upon lighting sources. Many/most adventurers will have at least torches if not light spells or lanterns, etc. So though shadows and lighting are a nice artistic effect, I think they take away from usability when done as heavily as you have done.

You could do some 'light/minimal' lighting effects for ambiance, but I would not try to realistically represent any one lighting condition.

Also note, you will not want to have an actual grid on the image when you add it to FG. Instead just put a 5ft square in the top or bottom left corner and use that as a guide for overlaying an FG grid on the image.

I expect that I will probably not use the shaded maps in my actual games. It is curious though that the people choosing to load up the maps loaded up the shaded one more than the non-shaded.

[Zacchaeus]

Some info on exporting maps for use in FG from CC3 or CC3+ here and also here.

[kevdog45]

Some info on exporting maps for use in FG from CC3 or CC3+ here and also here.

The multiplying by 10 is exactly what I do now. I was playing with resolutions when I made the map I posted. All the other maps are made with that rule paramount. Sometimes I double it so that I can get better resolution and then just use a 100 square within fantasy grounds for my grid.