Thinking Big about Guild maps

[pyrandon]

First of all, Torq (and others), I like the way you think!!!

This idea has been raised before among the community leaders--along with many, many other ideas (some of which were thought of as cheap sales items just to cover costs; we are a not for profit venture, but Arcana and others do have to eat costs for software, hosting, etc.) We did not pursue the idea at the time, mainly because we were all taxed for time. I also remember I liked the idea, although a general atlas or "Best of TCG 2008" (etc.) was my own vote (and I still like this idea, although it's different than what you are proposing, of course.

I think this project is very ambitious, which scares me, because we're looking at a coordinated effort by many, many people over long periods of time. I'm not sure we could sustain it. I worry it's one of those projects that gets started, then dies. (Not to say we shouldn't try it anyway, but if we do we should build in failsafes.

I can only speak for myself as a community leader that I would contribute but not run this. Long-term projects like this are not my forte. (I work in jerks and fevers, followed by cool spots and breaks). Does a CL really need to be in charge? Could a solid Guild member do it?

There are plenty of other things to consider, I think, but I think the above issues are first in order of importance. What are your thoughts on all that?

Again, I applaud all you guys for thinking of a fun way to promote the Guild & inter-Guild involvement!

[Gamerprinter]

Although a project like this would require the long-term participants to keep the direction on track and moving forward, however, much of the development could be like that of GIMP - where designers come and go, so in the end there are 2000 mappers used in the life of the project.

If the fear that a project that starts and dies at the guild seems disconcerting, I have no problems hosting the third party site to house the project with a direct link and forums thread from here. This way its a guild project but it's also not - so as not to have anything detrimental reprecussions to the Guild - if that's your fear, Pyrandon.

I too need mapping breaks now and again, and I have lots "pots cooking on my stove" - I'm a busy guy, so sometimes I couldn't stay involved on a constant basis, but I'd certainly remain with it in the long run.

Torq, if you want to be the Project Leader, you are certainly a candidate, there might not be a required need for Community Leader participation, beyond being another mapper.

I think we need to get thoughts from a larger number of CG members who might be interested, before we do anything - but I'm open for participation.

[Torq]

Pyrandon, I have the same reservations about starting a project and it dying a quick or even slow death. That may happen. But this site is has the personnel most likely to make it succeed. I dont think anyone should feel obliged to commit to such a project. We are mostly amateurs who need to do other things to make a living, so I dont think anyone should feel under pressure to make any form of deadline.

I for one would love to contribute. I'm not sure I'm cut out to lead the project (although I appreciate the vote of confidence GP). I believe the preson who leads this sort of project will have to be someone with a prettty good grasp of mapping on a global scale. To create a "macro" view if you like as a blue print from which to work down. I also dont really know much about web hosting or programming, which may be a necessity particularly if the project were to really get going.

After my eralier post in response to GP, I thought of a potential problem with collaborating with the Fantaseum Alliance partners. Work sharing is fairly easy to do when you are hsndling the mapping, but not so when you are creating the backstory or campaign details. The other two sites would struggle to get a brief to us for a long time, because their processes are, by definition, much slower if major collaboration is sought between their members.

Torq

[Badger]

I have a vast homebrew world... for the last... 22 years its where I have spent a lot of blood, sweat and time. I've always encouraged my players to help in the creation of that world... any ideas they might have, etc... some have gone on to world changing events, others... not so vast, but none the less they have contributed something in so much as having a character in my world... It of course is an ever changing world which reacts to their and NPC's actions... I won't bore you with the details of that... but, with such a large world as I have, and with the history of it, the NPC's the Villians, the countries, regions continents, races, religions ... etc... it was quite overwhelming ... I am a chaotic person by nature.. with hardly any organization skills (this is why I married my wife ) and I would find that I would have maybe... three different maps for a certain region only because I lost the first two somewhere among the debris which couldn't be called a filing system in any universe and I would have to make it up from memory and fill in the blanks....

So... I finally came up with a way to organize a large world... something I called the RDI (Regional Development Index) ... This catagorized everything mostly by (first Continent, Region and then Countries, cities, etc..) This proved to be quite useful... as I could file the stuff where I needed it.. and find it again when I needed it... it also helped me keep track of what I already had developed so that if a player wanted to make up a character from a certain region I could A: either give them the specifics so they could make a background or B: give them my generalized idea of what it consisted of and they could come up with details for that area (subject to my approval) and thus add to the ever increasing player and GM built world... I catagorize these by numbers... 1 being an area virtually a blank canvas and 4 being something that is in the realm of completed and very detailed already...

While this is probably not completely what a project like this needs, It would help in establishing the world and its regions as well as giving everyone an idea of progress and what future expansion is needed...

That is my idea on how one could at least organize the project as well as oversee it and run it...

Torq has the right idea about CBG, it would be a long an arduous task in which we (the mappers) would be waiting on... I'm not totally against the idea however and maybe we should consider reversing that... making the maps... and sending it to them and allowing them to "fill" it with campaign goodies...

Anyway... that's my couple coppers for now

Del

[Redrobes]

Thought id just chip in here. I wrote ViewingDale as the purpose built app which is going to bring a whole campaigns worth of maps together. It has been tested with 100,000 icons on the same page and it renders at about a frame a second with that much info. Theres details about that on its forum.

I am writing my GeoTerSys to create vast terrain so that there is a base for the world which goes down to a level of detail which would allow you to put a house on it and it not look lost in a sea of blurryness.

So hell yeah ! I am heading that way at full speed. GTS is being used for MeDem and for me that is a test bed for the fantasy realm that will be made beyond that point. I want a large 1000 mile+ terrain where every city and village has detail of its floor plans etc.

I have wanted this since I started as a DM and have been making the tools to do this for the last 5 years. Yes its ambitious but I have no doubt any more that its within grasp - maybe 6 months away now. Were just starting to chug out MeDem terrain demo tiles within the last month.

If you need a demo of ViewingDale then were nearly at the time of iCon. See my sig, sign up and have a play with the demo that will be online in a few weeks/days now. ViewingDale is a VTT but its also a multi user networked map sharing tool. Connected members can all modify, update and share the maps, hence - Share the Vision !

What Del is describing with the Regional Development Index is a mapping hierarchy which is exactly the way the program stores the map database. I suspect that if Del were to put his collection into it he would be able to zoom from full continent to house floor and smaller in one smooth run.

[Badger]

Aww... and here I thought I was being original or something.... I'll definitely be checking out Viewing dale... what a shameless plug, btw ( j/k ) Can't wait to see the demo!

[Redrobes]

Sure its a plug but heck, its frustrating when you plug all day and night for 5 years over this and people still say that its almost impossible. Collating all the maps together has traditionally been the hard bit and making the maps is the fun and easy bit - its just that there would be an awful lot of them to do. In the past, like say Forgotten Realms, the creators have produced many maps of the same place at different scales. A) This is a waste of time and effort and B) They never really lined up seamlessly. Also, people would generally independently make very similar maps of similar places like inns & castles whereas what you need is templates of maps which could be chopped about and modified. So given that these three issues can be eliminated the actual difficulty can be significantly reduced to a manageable level. Add on multiuser networking etc and its all there for the taking.

If you had written Photoshop and people kept saying that its almost impossible to make maps with MSPaint then you cant help going Aaaarrrrhhhh !!! The undertaking of making a continental sized campaign world down to floor plan level seems daunting only if your sat there with a pen or a paint package contemplating the enormity of the task ahead. If you change your perspective on how to deal with the problem then its doable. Not easy of course but very possible. The talk of it petering out after a certain time is a nonsense if you are not making the map like writing a book starting at page one. Everyone could continue to make the maps they already make and it would still progress. Nothing has to change - it just needs collating into a campaign. The most change would be that sometimes you might have to make a map of a more specific area because its missing. The idea of GTS is to do away with even that by generating a base land that has everything already there but not populated.

[Gamerprinter]

After my eralier post in response to GP, I thought of a potential problem with collaborating with the Fantaseum Alliance partners. Work sharing is fairly easy to do when you are hsndling the mapping, but not so when you are creating the backstory or campaign details. The other two sites would struggle to get a brief to us for a long time, because their processes are, by definition, much slower if major collaboration is sought between their members.

Torq

This is the case only if we are planning to be the world-builders of a brand new project. Consider that among the many campaign worlds being developed by the Campaign Builders Guild is a project called CeBeGia. This world has already a significant developement as well as some ideas on the world geography itself.

Not that there aren't adequete world-builders among the membership of the CG, and not that there aren't substantial mappers in the CBG community - its just that we are an alliance of sites and we should be working together in some respects. It seems playing World-Builder among the CG is counter-productive to involving the CBG.

Both projects are similar and yet are treated as mutually exclusive. Besides the CeBeGia project is not without some level of development already and may be ready for mapping by CG members without having to wait or struggle to new developments.

In all sincerity from me, however, I understand the marketing viability of working with a vanilla world - to capture the attention of the widest pool of players and GMs, but I've never played, GM'd or spent any development time on vanilla worlds. I like my icecream with flavor! I would work on any periphery areas of the campaign world that's not completely vanilla. Even if I participated, I'd never play in a vanilla campaign world. For me it would be an exercise in world development, rather than a project fulfilling any personal goals beyond that.

[Torq]

Thanks to everyone, and most recently to GP and Redrobes for engaging thoroughly and candidly on this issue. I think a major issue of contention will be the level of "directorial control" that would be both healthy and necessary. On one hand higher levels of control will mean more thematic consistency, more seamless blending of various levels of zoom and probably a more polished product at the end of the day. The result would be a more or less uniform world with its own "flavour" to use GP's word with corrected spelling and which could be mapped and plotted smoothly using a product like Red's Viewingdale, without too many hiccoughs.

On the other side, and the approach I would favo(u)r, would be a looser managerial model. It would strive to allow mappers on this site, to to what they already do, namely make maps in their own styles and feel free to experiment and develop their styles in different directions. There would obviously be some basic paramaters eg, global geography, climate, cultural info, planetary size etc., but the control would not extend so far as dictating style and nuance to individual mappers. The pitfalls that I believe exist with the first method would be caused by the fact that many mappers would feel its a bit of a chore if their brief is too specific and would be more likely to lose interest. It would also, in my opinion, discourage people who would otherwise like to have a go but feel a little self-conscious about there maps or their skills. And can you imagine sending an e-mail to HandsomeRob saying "We really like the continent map that you've put together, but do you think you could make your mountains look a bit more like Pyrandon's?"

On the whole I believe the essence of this site and the reason for its success is participation. Encouraging participation, possibly at the expense of stylistic consistency, would be better in my view. I would go so far as to say it would be necessary to achieve the levels of participation from this community that would ensure a project like this didn't die out. I may be alone in this view, but there it is.

Torq

[NeonKnight]

I agree with Torq. I would rather a comprised world map of a fantasy world to mapped with a variety of styles. Looking at past historical maps from Earth, they did not all have the same style to them, thus we had things like the Mercator Style, the John Speed Style, and other incongruous styles.

Even the Forgotten Realm Atlas had a few different styles of maps within it.