What's the scale on the Apple Lane map?

[Brootse]

The old Apple Lane book had a scale for Gringle's Pawnshop which was about 20m * 40m, and you could chart the rest of the hamlet with it. But the Gamemaster Adventures book's drawing of the Tin Inn shows beds, and if you use them for scale the new Apple Lane is about one third of the size of the old one. The Horsemasters’ stable has 80 stalls for horses in both versions, but they couldn't fit in the new version's stable. What kind of scale have you used when you ran the new version?

[Ian Absentia]

I haven't run the new rendition of Apple Lane, but I'm not surprised to learn of the change in scale.  In my experience, it's not uncommon to conceptualise buildings and open areas as being much more spacious than they are in practical reality.  My favorite ever was the world map from Exalted, where 1 inch equaled 800 miles, making the "island" at the center of the world roughly the size of South America (good lord, is Ian still banging that drum?).  The world's rather a bit cozier than people expect.

The appropriate answer, of course, is that Apple Lane hasn't shrunk at all, but that it's being represented more accurately for tactical planning.

!i!

[Qizilbashwoman]

1 hour ago, Ian Absentia said:

My favorite ever was the world map from Exalted, where 1 inch equaled 800 miles, making the "island" at the center of the world roughly the size of South America (good lord, is Ian still banging that drum?).

I mean EXALTED is supposed to be incomprehensibly massive. I think that was larger than intended, but the Blessed Isle was always supposed to be absolutely huge, like the size of China.

This is usually true of time in fantasy games, where also if you remove two zeroes from the timeline things make sense ("100,000 1000 years ago, the Ancients were destroyed, and only buried ruins now remain of their advanced society.")

Edited June 5, 2020 by Qizilbashwoman

[Ian Absentia]

Just now, Qizilbashwoman said:

I mean EXALTED is supposed to be incomprehensibly massive. I think that was larger than intended, but the Blessed Isle was always supposed to be absolutely huge, like the size of China.

Boo! 👺  Yeah, I recall this old chestnut.  I firmly believe that it was an error in either cartography or copy editing.  Japan or the British Isles is an ample scale for adventure, but, still -- South America?

2 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

This is usually true of time in fantasy games, where also if you remove two zeroes from the timeline things make sense ("100,000 1000 years ago, the Ancients were destroyed, and only buried ruins now remain of their advanced society.")

This, I'm onboard with.  Legendary or mythical scale is often, if not typically exaggerated.  But, back to the point of discussion, this is Apple Lane we're looking at.  I reckon that the original, somewhat bloated scale may be a sort of cartographic Americanism, as alluded to in the saying "In America, 100 years is a long time; in England, 100 miles is a long distance."  Things are just bigger 'round these parts.

!i!

[Qizilbashwoman]

Just now, Ian Absentia said:

South America

there are solar exalteds who can shoot an arrow that distance and kill an enemy

[Lordabdul]

4 hours ago, Brootse said:

What kind of scale have you used when you ran the new version?

We just ignore scales half the time (we don't always use a battlemat)

But yeah, nicely spotted, it is indeed different. I prefer the new scale though -- the buildings look way too roomy in the old version for an ancient civilization. You might get away by just adjusting a few things like the number of spots in the Horsemaster's stable (at first glance I think it can potentially fit up 30 horses).

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by lordabdul

[Ian Absentia]

Yeah, yeah.  Paul Bunyan, the Salmon Leap, seven flies with one blow, and all that majestic hoo-hah.  Apple Lane!

!i!

[Arcadiagt5]

The absence of scales from too many maps is the bane of my existence as a GM. Especially when I'm trying to load those maps to Roll20 for tactical use...

[David Scott]

I did some scale tests for Apple Lane so I could run it online. In my original face to face run I used the original map as it was flat and could photoshop out stuff. I took the map and set the photoshop grid to match the scale. Each big gridline is 10m (small 2m). I added the tusk riders with Vasana racing up behind (as it happened in the game). Her bison is about 2.5-3m long. I adjusted the figures so they look roughly right (for me). This made each big gridline 5m (small 1m).

[Thaz]

I think that's a bit on the large side. 12m wide  gates would be Huge. We're talking small bronze age cart wide here not modern School Bus

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

Each big gridline is 10m (small 2m).

Means the main building is something like 30m x 40m!  Even most modern houses are only on the order of maybe 10m x 15m.  If it was the Clearwine palace or a temple, I might buy it, but for a rural inn?  

[Thaz]

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

Her bison is about 2.5-3m long. I adjusted the figures so they look roughly right (for me). This made each big gridline 5m (small 1m).

I think you have the scale out by about 50%. I dont think your small Inn is going to have a gate you can ride 3-4 abreast through. Especially 3-4 Bison abreast. Bison are BIG and you've scaled them more to a small pony. No offense and just needs a tweak IMHO

 

[Puckohue]

Reminds me of the fact that it seems C7 made the Old World ~60% larger in WFRP 4e by putting "miles" where there used to read "kilometres"...

[Brootse]

Here's a map where Gringle's house is in the original scale, and the rest of the buildings in the new scale:

It was a rather large pawnshop. But otoh Gringle was a wealthy man who could afford to live in a huge mansion, though I think that it would have taken more than one duck to keep the place clean. It's understandable that the original writers wanted to make the pawnshop huge, because that made for a more interesting scenario. And it's size doesn't matter much wrt the new scenario, since it's in ruins. I think that I'll keep the original size for Gringle's Pawnshop, but keep most of the rest of the hamlet in the new scale. The new scale can be estimated from the bed sizes in the Tin Inn. Postal's and Mineera's cottage is wider than a bed length, so lets say that it's about 4m wide with walls. Horses in a standing stall require 1.5m x 2.4m space, and the stable is 8m x 6m. So in it's current size it could fit 8 stalls. Which I guess is a bit small, since he's supposed to have 2-12 horses plus some mules and donkeys. But if it should have enough space for 80 horses, it should be 10 times larger. Perhaps I'll make it double the current size.

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, Thaz said:

I think that's a bit on the large side.

28 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Means the main building is something like 30m x 40m! 

Sure, I did it quickly. IMO it's better than the old scale. How about this. 1 small square is 1m:

Even then judging by the front cover it's way too big 🙂

 

[Ian Absentia]

4 hours ago, Thaz said:

We're talking small bronze age cart wide here not modern School Bus

All hail the Ancient School Bus!  Chariot of heroic children!

Can we talk about straight streets oriented to map-north now?

!i!

Edited June 6, 2020 by Ian Absentia

[Thaz]

38 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

Can we talk about straight streets oriented to map-north now?

Well if the place was built by Lunars or even Sartar the builder I'd kind of expect that. On the other hand I havent seen any straight roads in towns on the new RQG

[Brootse]

Uleria's Temple seems to have grown double in width and length compared to the Tin Inn. And the stable seems to have moved a bit and slightly more than doubled in length.

[Brootse]

21 hours ago, lordabdul said:

We just ignore scales half the time (we don't always use a battlemat)

Yeah, whenever possible, I don't draw any tactical maps for players, and instead just describe the events. But this is a very tactical scenario, and I'll probably run it online too, so maps with scales are needed to know where a character or enemy can move in a round, and where the characters can shoot.

[Lordabdul]

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

Sure, I did it quickly. IMO it's better than the old scale. How about this. 1 small square is 1m:

I would personally make it a bit bigger -- around 21m for the the length of the northern wall, and about 24m for the southern wall (based on the new RQG map). The hex/square grid version would actually be a bit bigger than the "real" Tin Inn building, which IMHO would probably be only ~18m for the length of the northern wall. This is because you need to have wider spaces between furniture and other obstacles so that a character token/mini can occupy that space (so it kinda rounds up several things up to the nearest meter).

I personally like smaller spaces better anyway, as it allows for more interesting tactical combat: not everybody can fit in a room, so various characters are going to go around or try to shoot through the windows, other characters will be more quickly backed against a wall, etc... It also means that as you break furniture and punch holes through walls, the maps changes more significantly and that creates more opportunities.

3 hours ago, Brootse said:

Yeah, whenever possible, I don't draw any tactical maps for players, and instead just describe the events. But this is a very tactical scenario, and I'll probably run it online too, so maps with scales are needed to know where a character or enemy can move in a round, and where the characters can shoot.

Makes sense!

Edited June 6, 2020 by lordabdul

[GAZZA]

I'm not a huge fan of tactical maps for tactics, as such, but I do find that having something visual helps players imagine the environment they're in; as such, I usually make at least a crude approximation of maps in Roll 20 or whatever (e.g. with the Frog Grog Shoppe from last night's game). Scales are useful for that sort of thing (the FGS doesn't have one, so I winged it - would have been nice to know how big it was supposed to be though).

[soltakss]

Having looked at some plans of Bronze Age citadels, I am surprised at how small they are.

Similarly, buildings in medieval Europe were generally a lot smaller than they are nowadays.

So, we draw buildings that suit our current tastes, but these are probably a lot larger than they would have been in the past.

For me, a 20m long building is huge, that would have been a longhouse or main building.

[Lordabdul]

11 hours ago, soltakss said:

For me, a 20m long building is huge, that would have been a longhouse or main building.

In that specific case it's actually multiple buildings around a courtyard... so the entire north wall (which I measured to 21m for battlemat purposes, but less than 18m for "real"... maybe even as small as 15m) actually spans 2 buildings, here. But yeah that top left building is pretty big, and notable for having a top floor.

[Shiningbrow]

On 6/5/2020 at 11:59 PM, Brootse said:

What kind of scale have you used when you ran the new version?

I was going to use fish scale, but thought it'd be too easy.

Then I decided to use dragon scale, but it was too hard. 

So, now, I'm trying out bronze scale...

[Ian Absentia]

See?  It's exactly this sort of flippant disregard for proper cartography that got us in this mess to begin with.

!i!