❓ Feedback Request: What do you want from us ❓

Interactive/moving objects make for great flavor and unique puzzles and is to me what sets Mad Cartographer apart from others. Some examples (The Scribe, The Excavation, The Giant Labyrinth (name check). The more of these the merrier!

C Hooks

I can second this!

C Hooks

I love the stuff with built in puzzles/things that the players can interact with. There are so many options for common maps and normal situations, you're who I come to for the more interesting setups. I can pretty easily put up some walls for a basic dungeon or outline some trees in foundry but it would take way more knowledge and time to set up interactive things with tiles my players can walk under and manipulate and everything else. As a non-5e GM it's hard to find interactive stuff I can just plug and play

Fantasticat

Thanks for the support Rukie! Touching on your Wishlist: 1. We're actually looking to completely redesign the website, as we're trying to push "The MAD Network" more it will become more of a portal for all content we release under MAD (and there's more coming in the new year!) One of the big things we want is a searchable database for our maps, letting folks arrange them by theme, content, and linking similar maps, etc. and showing which theme they're in. So hopefully we'll have something that gives you what you're after when that drops (but as with everything we do, it's a pretty big undertaking). 2. We've kinda gone beyond the point of renaming stuff now, all our file names start with "MAD" (so you know they're ours) "Theme_Name" then map release number. In pCloud however everything is put into a numerical folder when it's released, so all the files on pCloud are in order from earliest theme (starting with 01. Caverns) to last theme. Renaming now means we'd have inconsistent file naming across our Foundry content, and there's no chance of us renaming and relinking all the FVTT content! :D 3. We have our MADventures, which we'd like to release more of, I don't think we have the bandwidth for making tokens and monsters with TMC, but we might be launching a new project soon™, which would tie in with our TMC content. 4. Dependencies are listed in Foundry journals already and prompt people to install them, the reality is that these days we generally use the same dependencies for the majority of our maps so Levels, Token Attacher, Parallaxia, and now Monks are typically our go to. If you install one of our packs, generally you've already installed all the dependencies you'll need. Final thoughts: glad to have you with us!

Alex Hitchen

Hello MAD Team, I am definitely happy being your Patreon because of the Foundry integration and detail you put into your maps. I appreciate the creativity, structure, and organization of your themes. I like the small details (i.e. Canopy – having a token go underneath an arch or tree is fun to see) as well as the big ones (i.e. Moving parts of a map). I know that uses third party modules and some people don’t like that, but I do!! I also like how responsive you are to the community. When I have a question it’s not hard to reach you and I get a fast response. I like that the maps are organized in “themes”, because it makes it easier for me to find the right map for what I am looking for in my campaigns. My MAD Wishlist: 1. Keep on updating the gallery on the MAD website. I like that all the maps are there so I can browse every map you have available without opening each and every folder. A tiny suggestion would be to have the option to see “all” maps (instead of being organized by themes), so your entire library of maps can be browsed in one gallery without me needing to open each theme to “search” for a specific map. 2. Add numerical organization. 8Foldpaper did this the best; their map names were outlined as “[2022_12_09] Map Name” ([year_month_day] map name), and it helps with organization/getting the folders organized in order. I probably wouldn’t do that for every map for you all; it would be more for your themes so it’s organized in order. (i.e. [2022_12] Wild Woods, [2023_01] Pick n’ Mix 2023) 3. Tokens/NPCs and Monsters: If this is too much work maybe not, but if possible having NPCs and Monsters with stats and quirks that are included and usable in your maps can be integrated as an addition to the maps for Foundry. 4. Dependency list: Perhaps it would be useful to have an excel sheet that has the dependencies of each theme, so people know what is required per map? Final thoughts: I am a longtime supporter of yours and will stay as such because you are all awesome in what you do. Thank you for everything!

So far we have modular dungeons, caverns and towns/buildings, all with decorated and blank options, and we'll be adding in a new modular pack in January. Maybe we'll start looking at splitting the themes into half of our maps being more narrative and half being more blank/utility/generic.

Alex Hitchen

Thanks for the feedback robert. With regards to adding narrative, we generally avoid big narratives, but it's pretty difficult sometimes to make a map without having any narrative because it can look pretty boring. A lot of the time we make variants, such as the Sea Giant Shipwreck map with the smashed up ship and the dead sea giant, we made a version without the sea giant because it was too big a narrative to overlook. Sometimes we also make completely blank versions of buildings and dungeons so that folks can populate them. Finding the balance between everything being utility and generic, and maps having some inspiration and hooks... the line is always going to shift. Case in point is the recent Alpine Bank, which has some cool items in the vaults, some DMs would want them empty so they can populate them, some DMs don't want to populate anything and would prefer not to have empty boring rooms. That said, we will try to give more options with blank rooms now that we'll be getting more assets available to people, so folks can add the fine details themselves!

Alex Hitchen

I'm a recent patron, and I love your content. The quality is top-notch and some of the best available. I'm really into low-prep and re-using. So I love having great backgrounds that I can use for different purposes (e.g. outdoor maps I can quickly pull-up for unplanned encounters or when the adventure goes an unexpected direction). I also love tile sets for the same reason (quickly pull together a floorplan or dungeon from tiles, as needed). For these reasons, I'd love to see more "generic" maps, tiles, and reusable packs. No complaints about existing content, of course. It's fantastic!

Andrew Spurgeon

Enjoy reading all the comments. I’ll keep mine short and sweet, because most of what you do is terrific. My personal preference is for the graphic realism style of map, as opposed to the more cartoon or comic book style of art. I know this is likely to be a personal preference only! What I try to avoid these days, are assets that obviously look like they were made on inkarnate or dungeondraft, particularly the latter when the art style used thick black lines and highlights to depic texture lines on trees or castle furnishings. You are already on the art path style I like, so I’ll only recommend that you continue to evolve the art style toward realism, which takes advantage of Foundry’s ability to offer high quality ambient lighting. Otherwise, one thing that I do not care for is to have details (like blood splatter on the floor) or other elements that literally force their way into the story that the scene is telling the players. It’s fine to our bedroom furniture into a bedroom or kitchen fixtures inside of a kitchen, but maybe avoid dropping a pile of skulls or a huge spider web into a room, because that forces me to incorporate details that do not fit my purpose or plot line of a scene. In some cases I can overcome this issue by dropping a tile asset over the undesirable detail, p, but even then I have to find something that adequately matches the style, lighting, and color saturation of the rest of the scene. For example, one scene i used from Baileywiki had carts full of elephant tusks (to depict poachers), but there are no elephants or mastodons within the regional geography of the world, and I didn’t notice this until I had already spent hours building details for the scene. In summary, allow us to populate story-forcing detailed asset tiles into a room….keep details generic. For example, in an alchemy lab, please DO include things like an alembic, potion bottles, books, herbs, etc. but avoid dropping an amputated limb or pile of gold into the room.

robert schaefer

Thanks for the feedback and the support Jose! Touching on The BAD 1. Dependencies are, for the most part, what set us apart from a lot of other FVTT creators so we've definitely leaned into using them so that we (and you folks) can get the best out of Foundry. This does, as you say, come with the pitfalls of content no longer working if there's no updates (though this is generally map specific, but can be pack specific with the Modular X themes). To avoid minor delays during version updates the only option for much of this content would be to just not have it, and I think it's one of the key things that sets us apart. Embracing third party modules is something I thought about when Foundry was first released public (in the same month I'd launched my Patreon) and the first thing I made was modular city tiles with Urban Exteriors theme... so we've been in bed with Token Attacher since day one. I do believe near everything that has a Token Attacher element to a map (rotating mazes, moving puzzle parts) DO have an alternate where possible; similarly with most of our content that uses Levels (we released a version of The Lighthouse for Dreaded Domains that was a completely flat map with the different floors laid out in a single map); sometimes it's easy to do so and makes sense... other times not so much. So it's something we're always mindful of, and if modules stop working with big version updates then we'll be all hands on deck repairing whatever needs to be repaired! 2. Not sure what you mean by Map Surprises, and as far as Crucible goes, it's not TECHNICALLY a MAD product, but we're obviously heavily involved (that aside, yeh, we're looking to update all the tokens in the new year for Crucible :D )

Alex Hitchen

Your modular selection is by far my most used content, I can't wait for even more variety. Thanks again!

steven

Hey Guys, Long-time supporter and lurker, and happy for the opportunity to provide some of my feedback. I’d like to keep it short and sweet, so here we go: The Good: --------------- 1. You guys are (in my opinion) the most consistent Patreon creator in terms of quality, detail, and usability. I can always expect timely, foundry-ready content every month without worrying about doing many (if any) tweaks to your scenes. 2. Your maps are detailed and varied enough in style and layout to retain incredible re-usability time and time again. (I still use some of the Forest Wilderness and Caverns Maps years on!) The Bad: --------------- 1. You are at the behest of module dependencies. If a module is retired (paralaxia) or takes a long time to be updated (Token Attacher)-- your module quality suffers. My recommendation would be to create scene versions without this dependency as a sort of ‘vanilla-friendly’ version. 2. Sometimes map surprises are configured in such a way that a regular player can “see” the surprise with the way the maps are configured. This is more geared toward the ‘Crucible Magazine’ scenes, but it is good to keep in mind as you guys move forward into 2023! My hope in 2023 is that you continue to deliver these fantastic foundry modules and detailed maps, taking advantage of all that it has to offer. I hope that you guys take advantage of your talented team of artists and replace those ugly generic markets with some token or portrait art. If you’d like to discuss a little more about the feedback I’ve provided, please don’t hesitate to reach out via DM’s. Keep up the great work guys, and I look forward to 2023!

Great to have you with us Steven! We definitely try to find the balance between generic/utility and the more unique environments, and this is typically easier from theme to theme. Some themes are more popular than others, but sometimes niches need to be filled. One of the main reasons we're doing our modular content (Dungeons, Caverns, Downtown and our fourth one coming in January!) is so that folks can quickly build their own generic locations and we can give them unique rooms/buildings/areas to shape them to their party needs. Have a good look over what we've got available and I think we've ticked off a lot of those locations already (though we do like to go back and do stuff again for variety)!

Alex Hitchen

I've only recently become a patreon, but I've been a fan of your teams work for years. You produce original and usable battlemaps, which is why I find this patreonage beneficial. I don't want many bells and whistles or animations, I just want continued usable content. My request is this: more original but generic usable content. For example: a variety of Inns/taverns, throneroom/temples, market squares, manors, farmsteads, shallow caves, simple dungeons, tiny hamlets/villages of various peoples. Wherever you regularly find your generic party adventuring or questing, those are the types of maps I'm tired of making myself. Thanks for your work!

steven

Presumably this is Foundry specific. A lot of the earlier content was made without Foundry even having the capability to do canopies; anything made from Classic Dungeons theme generally has interiors (if that is the intention) and canopy elements where it makes sense. We've decided to integrate Monks Active Tiles with our last pack so DMs can do interactive things with switches for specific maps (like making the cliff rockslide appear in one of the new Woodland maps). HOWEVER, we do have a BIG project planned for next year of going back over ALL our Foundry maps to add canopies and interactive elements :)

Alex Hitchen

I enjoy the map designs, they're unique and cover a lot of different areas. I wish there was more features automated, like some maps have things with doors but there isn't anything in it, no better roofs automation. Animations would be cool too, just generally more immersive features leveraging foundries capabilities more than just drawing walls.