Looking at the size of Trollskull alley, its about 700 feet long. On the printed map that came in the book this equates to about an inch.
using 1 inch = 700 feet scale makes it around 3 miles top to bottom of waterdeep. On the latest roll20 presents Dragon Heist Waterdeep adventure (episode 4 part 4), they had this question as well and came to similar conclusion.
Unfortunately Halaster must have cursed all future cartographers who would attempt to map the city above. Every edition after 1st has bobbled the scale. Heist is no exception unfortunately. RobF would be correct IF they hadn't botched the scale on the Trollskull Alley map. That would be one big "alley" if those squares were 10' as marked. And the houses scaled for giants. The alley map should have said 1 square = 5'. Just look at the properly scaled Trollskull Manor map in the back of the book with the squares being 5' to verify. This also cross references with all the original 1st edition materials FR1, City System, and Volo's. Those had many, many building floorplans of large structures that synced perfectly with the giant City System map which had 1" = 100'. Easy to see the intended size of the city in those products. All very consistent.
Then came 2e's City of Splendors. Great boxed set, but no scale was given on the big map. But there was a Castle Waterdeep detailed map you could use to estimate. BUT, this was printed with a mistaken 1 square = 20' which made the castle scaled for storm giants. The castle map should have said 1 square = 10' which would still be an enormous castle, just human scaled. Problem is, people extrapolated the overall city size from that and Waterdeep doubled in size overnight. And seems from that, the future scale of the city in 3.5's City of Splendors continued the doubling of size. Sigh...
Heist could have done a bit of research to bring things back into proportion. Missed opportunity. Double sigh... And the botched Trollskull Alley map scale is just another example of Halaster's curse placed on cartographers. In the end, the Heist maps to be accurate would be 1" = 400' for the DM map and 1" = 450' for the Player map. I've done a stupid amount of map research to verify this. Hope this helps.
Is it just me or did they really screw the pooch when it came to maps in this adventure? We have print borders on the map here, no scale on the map itself and the map was attributed to Schley when in fact it was done by Blando. In all honesty, it's this reason why I haven't bought the physical copy yet, and won't until these issues are rectified.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
So I've spent about 20 hours in Photoshop and have finally removed all the print lines, added all the missing street names, corrected some of the more ridiculous errors the mapmaker made vs previous editions. Unlike some, I kinda like the aesthetic of these new maps and decided to correct them.
Some of the mistakes are simple like where they typo'd Oar Street into Dar Street. Some were more time consuming like adding all the missing walls around all the Seaward and North ward estates. Royal PITA that was. A few mistakes were laughable such as where the grass portion of an estate in North Ward surrounded by buildings was inversed and the grass space turned into a wacky shaped building surrounded by squares of grass that should have been buildings. Derp. Several other careless errors like that. But there are also intentional name and location changes/evolutions - as there should be - in a living changing city. Such as Slut Street evolving to Zastrow Street. I left those seemingly intentional changes alone. I just repaired the obvious duh stuff.
Wish I could share this corrected map with the community. But freely sharing the map with you - that you deserve (and paid for) - is illegal. So I'll print one for myself at Staples and all that work will sit on my HDD forever collecting silicone dust. Sad WotC doesn't have a mechanism to harness external geek-energy to fix problems like this for them.
As for the missing scale on the map, honestly I think having no scale is intentional. I truly think they really don't know anymore at WotC how big Waterdeep is supposed to be. The size of Waterdeep has been f'd and all over the place since 2nd edition. The amazingly detailed 1e City System map set with 1" = 100' was the accurate baseline for the size of the city. And the scale worked perfectly with all the detailed floorplans of larger structures like North Gate and other buildings throughout the city. This meant from the Troll Gate to the outer South Gate was just shy of 2 miles. And all was well in the city.
But after City System, subsequent Waterdeep map releases got crazy and newly stated scales made no sense. The average pauper in Dock Ward suddenly was living in a 30' x 40' McMansion in 3.5e vs their 15' x 20' hovel in 1e. And narrow twisty alleys were suddenly as wide as four lane highways. And sadly, lots of dedicated fans made all sorts of great maps online - all with f'd up size scales because they took the newer edition map scales at face value. And why shouldn't they have? I've poured over all the old official maps, I own all of them. And compared all the scales. I know for certain what happened between editions. And I also think I see why it all happened. But too much detail on that to bore people with here. Just wish someone - anyone - at the various D&D parent companies through the years cared enough to simply reference the original detailed map from City System before making such ridiculous mistakes with scales, names, and locations.
The worst is that even now with crowd sourcing, and some good geeks at WotC, Dragon Heist still found a way to contradict itself with scale. The map of Trollskull Manor in the back with 1 square = 5' is correct (and coincidentally, pretty darn close to the original City System scale). But the Trollskull Alley map with 1 square = 10' erroneously doubles Trollskull Manor and everything else you might extrapolate from it. And off we go again with people erroneously scaling the overall map at 1" = 700'. Sigh...
So I've spent about 20 hours in Photoshop and have finally removed all the print lines, added all the missing street names, corrected some of the more ridiculous errors the mapmaker made vs previous editions. Unlike some, I kinda like the aesthetic of these new maps and decided to correct them.
Some of the mistakes are simple like where they typo'd Oar Street into Dar Street. Some were more time consuming like adding all the missing walls around all the Seaward and North ward estates. Royal PITA that was. A few mistakes were laughable such as where the grass portion of an estate in North Ward surrounded by buildings was inversed and the grass space turned into a wacky shaped building surrounded by squares of grass that should have been buildings. Derp. Several other careless errors like that. But there are also intentional name and location changes/evolutions - as there should be - in a living changing city. Such as Slut Street evolving to Zastrow Street. I left those seemingly intentional changes alone. I just repaired the obvious duh stuff.
Wish I could share this corrected map with the community. But freely sharing the map with you - that you deserve (and paid for) - is illegal. So I'll print one for myself at Staples and all that work will sit on my HDD forever collecting silicone dust. Sad WotC doesn't have a mechanism to harness external geek-energy to fix problems like this for them.
As for the missing scale on the map, honestly I think having no scale is intentional. I truly think they really don't know anymore at WotC how big Waterdeep is supposed to be. The size of Waterdeep has been f'd and all over the place since 2nd edition. The amazingly detailed 1e City System map set with 1" = 100' was the accurate baseline for the size of the city. And the scale worked perfectly with all the detailed floorplans of larger structures like North Gate and other buildings throughout the city. This meant from the Troll Gate to the outer South Gate was just shy of 2 miles. And all was well in the city.
But after City System, subsequent Waterdeep map releases got crazy and newly stated scales made no sense. The average pauper in Dock Ward suddenly was living in a 30' x 40' McMansion in 3.5e vs their 15' x 20' hovel in 1e. And narrow twisty alleys were suddenly as wide as four lane highways. And sadly, lots of dedicated fans made all sorts of great maps online - all with f'd up size scales because they took the newer edition map scales at face value. And why shouldn't they have? I've poured over all the old official maps, I own all of them. And compared all the scales. I know for certain what happened between editions. And I also think I see why it all happened. But too much detail on that to bore people with here. Just wish someone - anyone - at the various D&D parent companies through the years cared enough to simply reference the original detailed map from City System before making such ridiculous mistakes with scales, names, and locations.
The worst is that even now with crowd sourcing, and some good geeks at WotC, Dragon Heist still found a way to contradict itself with scale. The map of Trollskull Manor in the back with 1 square = 5' is correct (and coincidentally, pretty darn close to the original City System scale). But the Trollskull Alley map with 1 square = 10' erroneously doubles Trollskull Manor and everything else you might extrapolate from it. And off we go again with people erroneously scaling the overall map at 1" = 700'. Sigh...
The really ought of checked the scales. Trollskull Tavern and Manor is roughly 65'x45. Though if you look at Trollskull Alley with 10' squares that puts it at 110'x70', even if you change that to 5' squares, The Tavern/Manor loses 10'x10'...
A re-corrected version of the map IS releasable at DMG. If you gain no money from it, you can release your version on Reddit. Multiple people have re-released colored versions of official B/W maps. You "could" see if WoTC wants to use it as a replaced version in either printed issues or DDB.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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So... what's the scale? The map doesn't haven it and the book doesn't have it in the Getting About section.
Looking at the size of Trollskull alley, its about 700 feet long. On the printed map that came in the book this equates to about an inch.
using 1 inch = 700 feet scale makes it around 3 miles top to bottom of waterdeep. On the latest roll20 presents Dragon Heist Waterdeep adventure (episode 4 part 4), they had this question as well and came to similar conclusion.
Unfortunately Halaster must have cursed all future cartographers who would attempt to map the city above. Every edition after 1st has bobbled the scale. Heist is no exception unfortunately. RobF would be correct IF they hadn't botched the scale on the Trollskull Alley map. That would be one big "alley" if those squares were 10' as marked. And the houses scaled for giants. The alley map should have said 1 square = 5'. Just look at the properly scaled Trollskull Manor map in the back of the book with the squares being 5' to verify. This also cross references with all the original 1st edition materials FR1, City System, and Volo's. Those had many, many building floorplans of large structures that synced perfectly with the giant City System map which had 1" = 100'. Easy to see the intended size of the city in those products. All very consistent.
Then came 2e's City of Splendors. Great boxed set, but no scale was given on the big map. But there was a Castle Waterdeep detailed map you could use to estimate. BUT, this was printed with a mistaken 1 square = 20' which made the castle scaled for storm giants. The castle map should have said 1 square = 10' which would still be an enormous castle, just human scaled. Problem is, people extrapolated the overall city size from that and Waterdeep doubled in size overnight. And seems from that, the future scale of the city in 3.5's City of Splendors continued the doubling of size. Sigh...
Heist could have done a bit of research to bring things back into proportion. Missed opportunity. Double sigh... And the botched Trollskull Alley map scale is just another example of Halaster's curse placed on cartographers. In the end, the Heist maps to be accurate would be 1" = 400' for the DM map and 1" = 450' for the Player map. I've done a stupid amount of map research to verify this. Hope this helps.
Is it just me or did they really screw the pooch when it came to maps in this adventure? We have print borders on the map here, no scale on the map itself and the map was attributed to Schley when in fact it was done by Blando. In all honesty, it's this reason why I haven't bought the physical copy yet, and won't until these issues are rectified.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
So I've spent about 20 hours in Photoshop and have finally removed all the print lines, added all the missing street names, corrected some of the more ridiculous errors the mapmaker made vs previous editions. Unlike some, I kinda like the aesthetic of these new maps and decided to correct them.
Some of the mistakes are simple like where they typo'd Oar Street into Dar Street. Some were more time consuming like adding all the missing walls around all the Seaward and North ward estates. Royal PITA that was. A few mistakes were laughable such as where the grass portion of an estate in North Ward surrounded by buildings was inversed and the grass space turned into a wacky shaped building surrounded by squares of grass that should have been buildings. Derp. Several other careless errors like that. But there are also intentional name and location changes/evolutions - as there should be - in a living changing city. Such as Slut Street evolving to Zastrow Street. I left those seemingly intentional changes alone. I just repaired the obvious duh stuff.
Wish I could share this corrected map with the community. But freely sharing the map with you - that you deserve (and paid for) - is illegal. So I'll print one for myself at Staples and all that work will sit on my HDD forever collecting silicone dust. Sad WotC doesn't have a mechanism to harness external geek-energy to fix problems like this for them.
As for the missing scale on the map, honestly I think having no scale is intentional. I truly think they really don't know anymore at WotC how big Waterdeep is supposed to be. The size of Waterdeep has been f'd and all over the place since 2nd edition. The amazingly detailed 1e City System map set with 1" = 100' was the accurate baseline for the size of the city. And the scale worked perfectly with all the detailed floorplans of larger structures like North Gate and other buildings throughout the city. This meant from the Troll Gate to the outer South Gate was just shy of 2 miles. And all was well in the city.
But after City System, subsequent Waterdeep map releases got crazy and newly stated scales made no sense. The average pauper in Dock Ward suddenly was living in a 30' x 40' McMansion in 3.5e vs their 15' x 20' hovel in 1e. And narrow twisty alleys were suddenly as wide as four lane highways. And sadly, lots of dedicated fans made all sorts of great maps online - all with f'd up size scales because they took the newer edition map scales at face value. And why shouldn't they have? I've poured over all the old official maps, I own all of them. And compared all the scales. I know for certain what happened between editions. And I also think I see why it all happened. But too much detail on that to bore people with here. Just wish someone - anyone - at the various D&D parent companies through the years cared enough to simply reference the original detailed map from City System before making such ridiculous mistakes with scales, names, and locations.
The worst is that even now with crowd sourcing, and some good geeks at WotC, Dragon Heist still found a way to contradict itself with scale. The map of Trollskull Manor in the back with 1 square = 5' is correct (and coincidentally, pretty darn close to the original City System scale). But the Trollskull Alley map with 1 square = 10' erroneously doubles Trollskull Manor and everything else you might extrapolate from it. And off we go again with people erroneously scaling the overall map at 1" = 700'. Sigh...
So I've spent about 20 hours in Photoshop and have finally removed all the print lines, added all the missing street names, corrected some of the more ridiculous errors the mapmaker made vs previous editions. Unlike some, I kinda like the aesthetic of these new maps and decided to correct them.
Some of the mistakes are simple like where they typo'd Oar Street into Dar Street. Some were more time consuming like adding all the missing walls around all the Seaward and North ward estates. Royal PITA that was. A few mistakes were laughable such as where the grass portion of an estate in North Ward surrounded by buildings was inversed and the grass space turned into a wacky shaped building surrounded by squares of grass that should have been buildings. Derp. Several other careless errors like that. But there are also intentional name and location changes/evolutions - as there should be - in a living changing city. Such as Slut Street evolving to Zastrow Street. I left those seemingly intentional changes alone. I just repaired the obvious duh stuff.
Wish I could share this corrected map with the community. But freely sharing the map with you - that you deserve (and paid for) - is illegal. So I'll print one for myself at Staples and all that work will sit on my HDD forever collecting silicone dust. Sad WotC doesn't have a mechanism to harness external geek-energy to fix problems like this for them.
As for the missing scale on the map, honestly I think having no scale is intentional. I truly think they really don't know anymore at WotC how big Waterdeep is supposed to be. The size of Waterdeep has been f'd and all over the place since 2nd edition. The amazingly detailed 1e City System map set with 1" = 100' was the accurate baseline for the size of the city. And the scale worked perfectly with all the detailed floorplans of larger structures like North Gate and other buildings throughout the city. This meant from the Troll Gate to the outer South Gate was just shy of 2 miles. And all was well in the city.
But after City System, subsequent Waterdeep map releases got crazy and newly stated scales made no sense. The average pauper in Dock Ward suddenly was living in a 30' x 40' McMansion in 3.5e vs their 15' x 20' hovel in 1e. And narrow twisty alleys were suddenly as wide as four lane highways. And sadly, lots of dedicated fans made all sorts of great maps online - all with f'd up size scales because they took the newer edition map scales at face value. And why shouldn't they have? I've poured over all the old official maps, I own all of them. And compared all the scales. I know for certain what happened between editions. And I also think I see why it all happened. But too much detail on that to bore people with here. Just wish someone - anyone - at the various D&D parent companies through the years cared enough to simply reference the original detailed map from City System before making such ridiculous mistakes with scales, names, and locations.
The worst is that even now with crowd sourcing, and some good geeks at WotC, Dragon Heist still found a way to contradict itself with scale. The map of Trollskull Manor in the back with 1 square = 5' is correct (and coincidentally, pretty darn close to the original City System scale). But the Trollskull Alley map with 1 square = 10' erroneously doubles Trollskull Manor and everything else you might extrapolate from it. And off we go again with people erroneously scaling the overall map at 1" = 700'. Sigh...
The online maps don't have the blue fold marks any more. So they fixed that at least.
Closet_Geek, do you have a way of providing that corrected map? In particular the villas having walls seems important to make clear from the outset.
The really ought of checked the scales. Trollskull Tavern and Manor is roughly 65'x45. Though if you look at Trollskull Alley with 10' squares that puts it at 110'x70', even if you change that to 5' squares, The Tavern/Manor loses 10'x10'...
Closet_geek! I'd love to have a copy of your map....
A re-corrected version of the map IS releasable at DMG. If you gain no money from it, you can release your version on Reddit. Multiple people have re-released colored versions of official B/W maps. You "could" see if WoTC wants to use it as a replaced version in either printed issues or DDB.