As much as I try to program TTopRPG so that the actual play session proceeds as smoothly as possible, it can be deceptive just how much work goes into prepping a campaign so that play can go that smoothly.

This article is to set your expectations about what you'll need to keep in mind as you prepare your campaigns.

Maps

Your maps can either be built from the ground up on a Blank Map, or defined from an existing map graphic file. Sometimes maps are assembled on a Blank Map using a map graphic as a template to trace from (see below).

Usually, my maps come from published PDFs, or supplement PDFs that publishers are gracious enough to provide.

Paizo is great for this. They provide free PDFs of their Pathfinder adventures to subscribers, and have provided map PDFs for almost all of their old Dungeon magazines (#148-#150 are missing, and they don't expect to provide them since WotC now has all those files). Using a Pathfinder Path Adventure PDF (#3 and on, since #1-#2 weren't prepared the same way) and Adobe Reader 8 (for some reason 9 doesn't allow this), you can grab a labelless map by clicking on the map background to highlight it (the mouse must be a cross), right-click and copy it, then paste it into Paint or some other graphics program.

You should make sure that the final graphic scales somewhere between 25 pixels and 100 pixels per 10 feet. 50 is optimal. Try to re-size the graphic within this range.

Sometimes, you'll have to use maps that are scanned in from physical products. It is possible that these maps have physically skewed grids, or map subsections whose grids don't line up, so you'll need to make sure they are squared up nicely before you attempt to plug them into TTopRPG (otherwise you won't be able to line up the grid - see the related article).

Sometimes, the maps from PDFs, and especially scanned maps, have the secret doors and other hidden areas showing, so you'll have to remove them somehow before using the map graphic. When I attempt to graphically remove items from a map, I'll size the graphic to a huge proportion, remove the items in as smooth of a way as I can, then re-size it back to normal. This helps hide the modifications. Instead of altering the graphic, you can prepare a new one yourself with a graphics program or assemble it from scratch inside TTopRPG using MapBuilder. When I build such a map using MapBuilder, I usually start with a blank map, then add the original map graphic as a MapBuilder Image and get it lined up with the grid. Then I place MapBuilder objects of my own on top until the usable map is finally assembled and remove the map graphic (or set its transparency to zero). You'll need you own library of tile-able textures for this purpose. I don't provide them with TTopRPG for intellectual property reasons.

If you can get a clean map without labels and secrets, this whole process is naturally much faster. Usually, with a clean graphic, the only slow part is getting the grid lined up.

Bear in mind that currently you cannot load other maps while you are in combat. So if you think combat will spill over into one map from another, try to include all of the fighting areas on a single map as you prepare so that you'll be able to continue the fight (you can always sketch the necessary areas in a side area to continue the fight as well). A future enhancement will remove this limitation, but it will require some work on my part.

Monsters

Naturally, you'll need opponents for your players to face.

You'll need to place all the monster icons on a map, which means you'll need cropped and squared graphics for their icons and enter the data for each icon. You will also need to prepare their macros if you wish to have buttons to click for their abilities. Macro setup usually takes more time than preparing the icons. Graphic cropping is usually a medium ordeal as long as you have the source graphic ready to work with and a decent graphics program to prepare it.

You'll need to handle all the graphic cropping and initial storage yourself. And you'll need to add each graphic to TTopRPG one at a time, providing each with a common name (TTopRPG will make its own copy if it doesn't already exist in the corresponding folder). MapTool by comparison allows you to import whole folders of graphics at a time. I may introduce a way to do this in TTopRPG, but currently this functionality does not exist.

TTopRPG does a few things to make the icon placement process easier, however:

  • TTopRPG remembers what you entered for the last icon, so you can just place another and hit ENTER to duplicate the last one.
  • You can Ctrl-C to copy an icon (or a group of icons) and Ctrl-V to paste it, allowing you to quickly place the same monster icon over and over. This may not work on Macs running TTopRPG in an emulator.
  • You can export the monster icon by right clicking it. Then you can select from the Exported Icon list the next time you Place a new icon to quickly populate the fields.

    • TTopRPG also allows you to save the monster macro tabs by right clicking each tab you want to save. This saves the macro tab in the Monsters folder of the specific campaign you are working on, allowing you to load it again later. This does NOT make the macro tab commonly available to other campaigns, but you can copy and paste the files into the other campaign folders manually if you need them in another campaign (TTopRPG does not have strong support for managing large campaign data stores. Future enhancements will expand on this.)

    An extra note: Even though secret doors and pit traps are not actually monsters, I place them as monster icon graphics with 0 total hit points so that they appear as objects with neutral captions. You should expect to have a general secret door and pit trap graphic ready for these purposes.

    Player Characters

    PC Icons are handled mostly the same way as monster icons, except you have the option of allowing players to prepare the macros themselves. You will still need to place their icons and insert their graphics.

    Room descriptions

    If you don't want to have to type out the room descriptions as players explore, you can prepare them in Info Boxes throughout each map. I like to copy the text from electronic copies of the adventures and just paste it into the info boxes. Unfortunately, the lines in the PDFs usually have their own line feeds which affects how the text pastes into the info box, so you'll need to clean it up and do a test Broadcast to make sure it looks alright. Macs may paste control characters as well.

    I usually put the room number and its title in the upper blank of the info box so that I know which room to refer to in the printed version of the adventure (I might include a page number as well).

    Info boxes can also be used to give you information about how monsters react or other small notes to help prevent having to refer to the printed version for the adventure.

    Lighting

    If you really want to get snazzy, you can set up each map so that lighting will function. This involves placing shadow and darkness walls throughout the map so that lights will cast shadows. See the related article.

    Attempting a lighting setup can take a while if it's your first time. Once you get your own good method down, it usually goes much more quickly.

    Other concerns

    For the simplest implementations of maps, everything above should help get you going.

    Sometimes, however, you might want to do something a little fancier. For instance, on a map that shows buildings with their roofs on top, it might be interesting to set up floor plans inside buildings that remain invisible until the players go inside. To accomplish this, you can prepare a floor plan for each building as a separate PNG graphic and add it as an invisible feature icon so it appears under the grid. With a hit of the V key, the floor plan is visible. But this also means you'll need to make all of the icons inside visible and invisible with the floor plan, along with the fog of war you draw out to keep deeper areas of the building hidden. In the future, I may implement sub-maps which will allow you to build smaller maps inside a larger one and attach icons and fog of war to them. But this will take some planning, since icons can move outside the submap and would need to be detached as they leave or re-attached as they enter so that their visibility coincides with the floor plan as it disappears and reappears. I don't want to complicate TTopRPG just to include a more convenient feature.