The Sword of Bees

This is the sword Raúguey, from my Labyrinth Lord Wilds game has. Figured I'd post it here, since he finally discovered what it does.

Sword of Bees
This two-handed sword is plain but quite sharp. It has the following characteristics:

• +1 weapon
• It emits a low buzzing, humming sound when used in combat.
• Any natural 19-20 attack roll causes a swarm of bees to swirl out of the weapon's blade, surrounding the struck foe. These bees cause no damage, but distract and blind the enemy, who suffers a -2 penalty on all actions, and a -4 morale penalty for three rounds.
• Any natural 1 attack roll causes a swarm of bees to attack the wielder as above.
• Bees are glittering gold unless a fumble is rolled, in which case they are a sickly green.

The Sword of Bees is one of seven items found in Items of Power Volume Three, available on DriveThruRPG.

The Wilds - Mayhem in the Fields

As they enter the sixth round of the fight, the party is worried. Several party members are down, including Grit, and Raúguey is badly wounded. There's some shouting about spells as combat continues against the last four foes. Also I've discovered I've been handling spell-casting incorrectly so far as timing in the round, so that'll be fixed as we move forward...

The Wilds - Blood on the Grass

Battle is joined, the trap is sprung, how will things go for the plucky adventurers? Signs point to blood, and there's more trouble waiting in the wings. Let's see how it goes...

The Tombs Virtual Dungeon Map

The Tombs is now available on DriveThruRPG!

The Tombs is a ready-to-fill dungeon map for use with virtual tabletops such as Roll20 or MapTools. This complex contains over sixty rooms and corridors, including a small shrine complex, visitation rooms, living quarters for the tomb attendants, a secret tunnel complex, and, of course, many many tombs and crypts.

This product includes six versions of the 200 foot by 200 foot complex map rendered as JPG images (150px per square, 40x40 grid squares):

• Unkeyed player's map with no grid.
• Unkeyed player's map with grid.
• Keyed player's map with no grid.
• Keyed player's map with grid.
• Keyed GM's map with no grid.
• Keyed GM's map with grid.

The GM's versions of the map shows the location of all secret doors in the complex.

I hope you'll check it out, or take a look at the entire catalog. Thanks for reading!

The Wilds - First Contact

After a hurried, whispered planning session, the group scatters to lay an ambush for the whatever-they-are creatures trying to set the tree on fire in the distance. The general idea is to spread out and funnel the enemy toward the campsite by lighting a fire. Locky gets fire duty, while the missile-equipped spread out to either side in a loose V formation. Let's see how it goes...

Stepping Up

I've been working on some geomorph tiles recently, and as part of that process, I've been trying to develop a good technique for layout down stairs with appropriate shadows to indicate descent/ascent. This is a before/after (left and right respectively) shot of my first and second attempts at this process. I posted the first on the G+ Map Making in Games community, and got some excellent feedback there.

The changes:

• A different method of laying down the base shadows. The overlay layer I used in the first version was producing an over-saturation effect.
• A second harder shadow near the back of each stair tread to sharpen the edges.
• A very faint highlight on the front edge of each tread to make them pop.
• A gradient shadow to indicate depth, using the revised method.
• A doubled shadow on the lower floor to better match the shadows on the lower stairs.

You might be wondering what this is going to be used for. Well I can offer a hint:

The Wilds - The Race

The party's watch has spotted a group of... something headed out of the woods and kind of in their direction. Uncertain as to what they might be facing, the watch rouses the camp and they all watch as...

PBE Games - Q1 2013 (man I'm rich)

When I first started publishing RPG products via One Bookshelf, I promised myself I'd share out the sales results. There are a few real publishers that do this, and I've always found their data fascinating. So here goes.

The Wilds - Roads and Ruins

Last turn the party found an abandoned road running past a ruined church where a battle of some sort took place long ago. After regrouping and reconnoitering the ruin, they're headed west along the road...

Tome of Names - Volume Two

Tome of Names - Volume Two is now available on DriveThruRPG!

This is the second volume of a three-part series. Each Tome of Names volume contains over 370 unique names arranged as three language collections, each with its own flavor and sound. Each language collection is subdivided into given names and surnames arranged in a dice-friendly tables to allow easy random name selection. There's a PDF sample available on DriveThruRPG that includes a bunch of example names, so you can see if they're useful to your campaign.

I hope you'll check it out, or take a look at the entire catalog. Thanks, as always, for reading!

Wilds - Building Bridges

The next day...

The Tombs - An Update

Here's another look at my Tombs mapping project, which is getting pretty well along. Right now I'm struggling with the best way to deal with secret doors in the virtual map world. Obviously there's information on the map that players shouldn't see right off. I know most of the virtual tabletops support fog of war and/or line of sight, as well as layers. I'm just trying to make it as easy as possible for someone to actually use this as a GM.

This is the GM's version of the map. The player's version would *at least* be minus the secret door markers, and possibly minus the passages, though that'd require a fair bit of shuffling at the table to deal with. Full scale, this is a 150dpi map. The walls are thick enough (25px) that it's easy to reveal individual areas without showing stuff beyond them.

I think I'm convincing myself that just hiding the secret doors markers is the right way to go.

I'm also fairly pleased with the water.

The Wilds - Kit Cats

The party (well, *some* of the party) have decided that having a pet giant lynx would be cool. Between that, running low on time for their first exploration trip, and skinning the dead momma-cat, they decided to split up...