review: Map Folio 3-D

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

reference: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=989

It's a good set. Just not a "WOW!" set. I hope that's come across.

[Fellfrosch]

I really wish that they'd done more non-city stuff. Buildings are nice, but most adventures take place in caves and dungeons and stuff. It would have been hard to do an ancient subterranean temple in the same style as these buildings, but it would have been a little more helpful if they'd pulled it off.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Yeah, underground scenarios provide a challenge, because they tend to be less symetrical than cities, and would thus require more design and instruction. However, the rewards very well may have been worth it.

I think they were intending to target the miniature gaming audience though, which would require more above ground structures. A series of this sort of thing would be MUCH more interesting to me than the flat maps. A packet doing a full castle, maybe a Japanese inspired castle for another set, a massive temple complex for another, etc. Then they could also do setups for underground groups to. They could rate them like Transformers do for difficulty of construction as a warning.

darnit, why the heck don't WE publish this stuff Fell?

[Fellfrosch]

It requires artists, printers, distributors, and money. If we can come up with those, though, I'm all over it.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Its a reprint of more stuff that used to be free to download and print out from wizards site... Im just glad I still have the PDF's...
They were nice...

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

well, i think for art we just need textures. I think we could do that. printers and distributors are taken care of with the money.
Which we can steel...

[Fellfrosch]

Sure, but who takes steel money these days?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

you mean these Steel pieces from Krynn are worthless?

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

yeah,... now those platinum pieces... those are worth a fortune

[Spriggan]

and, if you use classic D&D rules, a lot of exp too.

[Fellfrosch]

Under current D&D rules, we would have to expend some xp to make the maps set. How does that work, exactly--do we get dumber?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

only if it's a MAGIC map set.

Your proposition would be a loss of intelligence. It's not an expenditure of will, either, because that would be wisdom. It's not age, that's a different stat, so uh... maybe you just get more naive?

[JP Dogberry]

No, No, No.

You can only spend experience that you havn't gone up a  level with. Only when you change levels do you become more experienced, and XP is a rank of how close you are. When you spend it making items, it represents you spent time making items instead of training.

My question is does that mean item makers need to go out adventuring to earn the experience to build stuff?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

except that the "training" part of the leveling portion has absolutely no game representation, even in most story oriented games. And it would seem to me that actually using your skills to MAKE something practical would ENCHANCE your ability.

[Fellfrosch]

If they ever make a D&D MMORPG, that would make an awesome crafting system: every time you build an item it actually becomes harder for you to get better at making that item.