Online map revealing on-the-cheap

PhilHibbs

Mongoose
I've been thinking about online tools for gaming, and I've come up with a cheap-and-cheerful way to reveal maps to players online.

1. Install Dropbox
2. Load up your favourite image editing program - I use Paint Shop Pro v6, which might be available free in some places, but The Gimp should be able to do much the same, or even MS Paint.
3. Load your map image, and create a blank image the same size next to it on your screen (copy it and delete the contents, maybe just delete the secret stuff and leave the "outside world" parts there)
4. Save the initial blank image in your Dopbox "Public" area
5. Right-click on the file in Explorer, and select Dropbox -> Copy Public Link, and send this link to your players
6. Use a Clone tool, or just copy and paste chunks across, as the players explore the area, saving the image regularly. Tell them to hit Refresh in their browser to see the latest bits.

Step 6 is the only thing you need to keep on doing once you've got things going. Here's an example I just played around with - most of it was done with the PainShop Clone Brush, but one bit was copy-pasted.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8129635/mapreveal.jpg
 
That's one way to do it. I would wonder if it might become too tedious for the GM to be constantly merging layers, saving and updating that file in order to push map updates to players, though.

I've used Screenmonkey with a fair amount of success in the past for other tabletop games. The lite version is also free.

Edit: After looking at it more closely a couple years on, it seems that Screenmonkey doesn't have a d100 option when rolling dice. That won't work so well for RQ games. It's a shame; it was decent free tool otherwise.

I did happen to run across another piece of software last week (RPTools) that's open-source. It shows promise, but I haven't had time to play with it. Maybe someone could test it out and report on its usefulness? 8)
 
The mapping program is MapTool. It is very good, and has pretty deep control if you know how to use it--which I do not (very well). I have used it for online tabletop gaming a few times. It has good "vision" tools (e.g., you can apply it to walls in a house and the players, on their ends, only see what their character should see, including lighting, lowlight vision, etc.).

There are some video tutorials that show you how to do the basics.

Also good is TokenTool, which simplifies making tokens for use in MapTool.

http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=downloads
 
I fiddled with it a bit when I came across it last week and it seems like quite a nice tool. Now all I need to do is find some people who play RQ online regularly - the offline game I'm in now is awesome, but doesn't happen often enough for me to get my RQ fix. 8)

need-rq.png
 
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