Re-Working the Village of Barovia
Added 2023-09-22 17:45:42 +0000 UTCHi everyone! I wanted to get the collective thoughts of our community regarding the Village of Barovia. As I have been re-working my older CoS maps, I have been working my way back toward the Village of Barovia. It is such an iconic village, and I want to do it justice!
The previous map I did include three key locations: Bildrath Mercantile, Mad Mary's home, and, of course, the Blood of the Vine tavern, along with a number of homes within the central party of the village.
As I start to think about re-working this map, I find myself wrestling with two thoughts, and I'd love your input and feedback.
1. I re-work the original map as is, including those key locations and homes, and just update it to my current map standards of today. The pro to this approach is you get everything on a single map without having to worry about switching maps. The cons are that I'm not able to get as detailed as I like since I have to scale down the finer details of the interior locations to such a degree that it is hard to see everything clearly.
2. I approach this more modularly, where I create a series of maps, each featuring key locations along with a generic village street map. This would be a separate map for Mad Mary's home, Bildrath's, Blood of the Vines, and I would also do a map with rows of houses and even a pie stand for our favorite pie-selling granny. The pros to this method are I can give each location a massive focus on detail, and the rendering would look much better when exported. It would also allow you to use these locations in a modular way within other campaigns and create more flexibility with the maps. The cons, of course, is you would need to continuously switch maps as your players move from location to location.
So, my dear community, I ask you. Which do you prefer?
Cheers,
DM Andy
Comments
Yeah, that was my original intent when I built the first one. A large area for players to explore different key locations. What I may end up doing is a hybrid of both, where I create the maps individually, and then combine them in Photoshop together to form a much larger map, this way I can hit both buckets. It'll take some logistical work, but should be doable. I will also be doing the same for Vallaki and Krezk eventually :) Thank you for your input!
Andy D'Amato
2023-09-26 20:53:33 +0000 UTCBeen using your older Village and Vallaki maps and my players really loved the seamlessness on those layouts. Just something fun about knowing exactly where you are in a cityscape. It helps my players who don't talk alot to build up the confidence to make faster decisions of what location they would like to visit. Would love to see an update on both the Village and Vallaki as well as possibly some expansions.
Mr. Gwynplaine
2023-09-24 16:05:57 +0000 UTCYeah, dynamic lighting on a large map seems to have issues on a VTT. I use Roll20 myself and, like you said, lots of lighting can bog things down on some of the larger area maps. I do like keeping it all on one page, so it's a balance for sure. But lately, I've been learning more toward singular locations (like I've done for Saltmarsh). From an artistic standpoint, I feel like I can do the location more justice when it's the sole focus. One of my regrets was putting Blinsky's Toys in such a large map as I really felt I didn't do it justice. Of course once I hit Vallaki again, I'll re-do Blinksy's in all its glory :)
Andy D'Amato
2023-09-23 17:08:27 +0000 UTCThanks for your response Tixu! It's looking like that's the popular vote for sure :) No matter what, I still do intend to do a "streets" map so I will have both big and small, but right now it's looking like I'll do the key buildings separately.
Andy D'Amato
2023-09-23 17:06:29 +0000 UTCI've not heard of this supplement before but it looks awesome! I just bought it on the DMs Guild and I'll give it a read and see if I can make some maps to support it. Great suggestion, thank you!
Andy D'Amato
2023-09-23 17:03:03 +0000 UTCThank you for your insight! Either way, I will for sure keep both the church and burgomaster's mansion separate as I know both of those maps are often used for combat encounters.
Andy D'Amato
2023-09-23 17:01:42 +0000 UTCi do like big huge maps with many Locations, because they are seemless, BUT: im using Foundry and Big Maps tend to suffer on Perfomance when you have a lot of lightsources and the like, so im going with lots of small seperated Maps nowaday.
Michael Strickmann
2023-09-23 13:40:12 +0000 UTCFor my campaign, i'm using all your maps. But as i prefer detailed maps, at the moment for village of Barovia, i used Beneos one for Bildrath & Mad Mary's and The Dungeon Madames one for Blood of the Vine. So i voted for separate maps.
JM Tixu78
2023-09-23 06:06:39 +0000 UTCAnother CoS module I'd love to see you tackle is the Beast of Graenseskov. It's one of the better intro campaigns for Barovia, and I'm running my players through it right now. There are zero map assets out there for it, so I've been slapping a few things together. Really makes me appreciate all the work you've put in on the core locations.
Jeremiah Johnson
2023-09-23 05:03:56 +0000 UTCI like the maps as they're laid out currently, none of those locations are ever important enough to my players to need that much map detail. The Church and the Burgomasters manor are way more important to my players.
Jun the Bun
2023-09-22 19:56:46 +0000 UTCLove Storm King's Thunder! I played in it as a player end to end and had a wonderful time with it. I don't have any plans (yet) to hit that campaign since I'm finishing my work with CoS and starting Ghosts of Saltmarsh; however, with that said, I do plan on hitting all of the major modules, and that one is certainly on my list!
Andy D'Amato
2023-09-22 18:52:03 +0000 UTCOh 100%! I'll also be re-doing those maps as well and eventually, I'll have a fully re-done village of Barovia. With even more gothic horror goodness :)
Andy D'Amato
2023-09-22 17:59:05 +0000 UTCHave some possibility to made Maps for "Storm King's Thunder" campaing!?
Javerd
2023-09-22 17:58:11 +0000 UTCHaha, I love it! I'm SUPER excited to work on this location again.
Andy D'Amato
2023-09-22 17:58:02 +0000 UTCI can give my players a good overview of the town using theater of the mind. Detailed encounter location maps are more helpful. I would add the Burgomaster mansion (my players spent a lot of time there with Ismark and Ireena) and the church/cemetery grounds.
Karl Knarr
2023-09-22 17:53:47 +0000 UTCI would just close voting now and start making the maps. LOL
Michael Rozmin
2023-09-22 17:47:46 +0000 UTC
