Waterdeep Dragon's Heist Player's Maps missing sections of Waterdeep

[jrh18]

I have been working on adding pins to the Dragon Hesitmaps (player and DM). What I have found is that they are not the same. The W, SW and SE players maps are different images than the same version of the DM's maps. Not only that the SE map is missing a large section of Waterdeep and no other map has it. From Soothsayer;s way all the way to the honorable Knight is missing. This includes the Yawning Portal, which is a pretty important part of Waterdeep.

Is there any way that this can be fixed? The easiest fix would just be to clone the images used for the DM to players, I am not sure why they were made different to begin with.

[Zacchaeus]

This was a difficult one as noted in the module. The whole map was way too big to include at a resolution that would make it readable in FG thus the maps had to be chopped up.

The maps in the published adventure are different so the FG module maps are different. The Players map had a border (which made it a different size from the DM map) around it which I left out when I cut the map up so that it could be included in the module; I also left out some portions at the bottom of the DMs map (which contained just sea) thus the dimensions of the DM and players maps will be slightly different. The point was to try and get readable maps for each area within the normal confines of map size and resolution. Thus Soothsayer's way and the Yawning Portal are on the East player's map but are on the DM SE map.

I'll have a look though to see if I can line the DM and player's maps up but it might not be entirely possible.

EDIT: I've and a look and because the maps are different sizes it's pretty impossible to divide both up so that the same detail is on the DM and player maps. Without the border the Yawning Portal appears on the West players map rather than the east one but remains on the DM SE map. What I could do however is add an entirely new map for player and DM which cut the central section out of the overall map. Let me think about it since I don't want to add to much size to the module or clutter it up with too many maps which have no real bearing on the story after all.

[jrh18]

Zacchaeus I understand what you mean about the two maps being different. I hadn't thought about all the land marks on teh DMS map not on the players map. It is still kind of odd that WoTC publishes them at different sizes and ratios. You would think they would be the same image only one with labels and one without.
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This is what I get when I line up the player maps. I feel like something is missing, maybe I am assuming something wrong that the maps should be able to line up.

THe player map becomes important not during the story but after. DMs who want to continue running in Waterdeep and adding locations to the map need the player map to have all the same locations. It doesn't matter to me really that they are different sizes. It would have made copying pins easier if they were the same. I can shift the pins around on the player map, I already have for all but the SE map. It is also important to me because I sell a Waterdeep Fantasy grounds module on the DMS guild and one of the big selling points is I added all of the points of interest to the DM and Player maps for all of the books about Waterdeep from 1e to 4e. It is a real time saver if you have bother the Dragon Heist module and mine and you want to run as much cannon material as possible.

Let me know what you end up doing and I will adjust mymodule to fit accordingly. I am most concerned about areas of the maps missing, which they seem to be based on the screen shot above.

[esmdev]

If it is for after, you might consider a more extensive map with a greater level of detail. Here is one done by a community member that is quite spectacular in it's offerings.

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/262266/Waterdeep-Fantasy-Grounds-Module

[LordEntrails]

If it is for after, you might consider a more extensive map with a greater level of detail. Here is one done by a community member that is quite spectacular in it's offerings.

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/262266/Waterdeep-Fantasy-Grounds-Module
Good link, and I like that Waterdeep module too :) But I suspect jrh knows it pretty well, since he's the author *G*

[jrh18]

I am glad you both like it. I want that product to be able to support DMs who want to use the elven tower inspired map as well as DMs who want to use the Dragon Heist maps. I like providing DMs with options if I am able.

[esmdev]

That is funny, and yes, I like it very much. :)

[Zacchaeus]

OK, here's the lowdown on the situation.

Both the DM and Player's Waterdeep maps are published at 6300px x 9000px but the Players map has a border which makes the players map actually 5716 x 8616 when the border is cropped out. Both maps are too big to include in FG as is since they are too high a resolution and size so we need to cut them up. The primary consideration was that when zoomed in the street names would be readable. So I chopped the maps into six sections and exported each section at 2000x2400. Now why that dimension I no longer know but it must have come after some experimentation with file size, quality and readability. It also looks like I didn't include the entire player's map; I must have cropped out the centre of the map a bit before dividing it up because a lot of the east countryside isn't there. Also during this cutting up a few pixels either way has clearly resulted in a few pixels at the edges of each map being missed. So the DM and players maps are never going to be the same and some sections are not going to precisely align with the adjoining sections. What I probably should have done was size each section so that there was a slight overlap where there was an adjoining section.

Now, I'm never going to be able to crop out one map to fit in with the other 5 with any kind of precision since I just can't remember how I got to the maps that are in the module. So I'd need to redo them all. If I did that then every map will be different from the original and any pins which a DM has placed on those maps will now be wrongly placed. Understandably I am very reluctant to go ahead and do that, since that's going to be a headache for many DMs. So my intention at this stage is not to do anything but if there is enough appetite for the maps to more precisely align then I will look into doing just that.

[jrh18]

@Zacchaeus I think I figured out my issue. For some reason (if you can help me understand why that would be appreciated) my Waterdeep-E-Players map is different from other people. My map stops with half of the word Trades cut off. Someone else showed me theirs and it has the entire phrase trades ward on the map. Is there something I can do to force a redownload of the module?

[jrh18]

You can never mind my entire request Zaccheus. I figured out that my issue was that when I cloned the DM map pins to player maps I forgot to rename the bitmap xml records to point to the Player.jpg for all of the maps. I had 4 maps that were pointing to the DM.jpg. I have fixed the issue by renaming those to the correct images. Now I just have to move the pins. I am happy to do that now that I see all of Waterdeep on the maps. Sorry for the confusion and thank you so much for looking into this.

[Zacchaeus]

Ok, jolly good.