GM Tool, Google Earth

[Blades]

I was trying Google Earth as a GM tool and think it has promise. In my case the villain was going to attack a large church in Hudson City. So I used pictures of St John’s Cathedral in NY and printed out pictures for an overview, and to show ingress and egress routes. It worked very well and made my presentation more “Professional”, and cuts down on a lot of description and misunderstandings. (FYI Google Earth is free and takes about 90 sec to install)

Would work best if the computer (w/internet access) is near the gaming area, or if you can print out pictures in color.

Slight disadvantage is the default for Google is to shift gradually from overhead view to a street level view as you zoom in, so just then you are getting close enough, to worry about scale, and how far a person could run, you lose your overhead view.

Also it only shows outside views so it does not help with floor plans.

Could also be used for Pulp Heroes for locations that don’t change much, like Effal Tower, Grand Canyon, or Taj Mahal.

A gaming tool might be a table like this of special and typical locations that you could hyperlink of clip and paste into Google earth or other mapping program. Other examples could be generic strip mall, rich coastal mansion, sprawling corporate HQ, oil refinery, or other places they are common plot locations for a champions or Dark hero’s campaign.

These are some locations I am including so you can test the idea. You should be able to clip these locations (not the names) and paste them into the Google Earth – search – fly to box and have it jump to there. You may need to zoom in, since I don’t see how to paste the elevation in. You can then rotate the view to get the desired viewing angle.

St Johns Cathedral 40.80333, -73.96198

Generic Warehouse 40.69826, -73.97071

Large Cemetery 40.88902, -73.87321

Generic NY apartments 40.77945, -73.94908