Tile of the Week #1

If you follow my blog, you probably know that I produce Dungeons in Blue, geomorphs for the virtual tabletop. When I work on these I'm usually building them a sheet at a time, which can be daunting sometimes. I decided to start doing some individual tiles and this is the result. I'll be (trying) to post up a tile each week, providing both GM and player versions and covering the usually quarter/half/full sizes as usual. Without further ado, here's the first entry, a quarter-sized cavern tile.

Player Version

GM Version

I'm also playing with a show / hide button here, so if things look wonky or a tile is missing, have patience (edit: looks like that's working, if not, please let me know).

All Tile of the Week images are free for private use. You can download the images above using right-click / save as. Each tile is a 100px per five-foot square image, sized for compatibility with Dungeons in Blue geomorphs. The entire Tile of the Week Collection is also available as a pay what you want bundle, if you're feeling lazy.

PS - in case it's not clear, you can right-click / save and download these images.

Wilds - Hard-headed

Start Date: August 29, Year of the Badger, mid-morning
Start Status: Where there's fire...
Start Location: Blackpool Maze

Nameless Coast - Group Events

Last post I laid out some general thoughts on how I was going to populate the Nameless Coast with groups. Part of that process is having events occur to groups over the course of time. Here's a start on a list of events that might show up.

• New Arrivals - additions to the group.
• Group Division - splitters!
• Resource Exhausted - time to move on?
• Resource Discovery - time to settle down?
• Natural Disaster - trouble at the mill!
• Disease - bring out your dead!
• Scarce Food Supply - so hungry.
• Rich Food Supply - so fat.
• Internal Conflict - Economic - the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
• Internal Conflict - Social - that ain't right!
• Internal Conflict - Military - we're takin' over, see?
• Internal Conflict - Religious - kill the heretic!
• External Conflict - Economic - your stuff, give it to us!
• External Conflict - Social - death to vermin.
• External Conflict - Military - we'll call it a police action.
• External Conflict - Religious - kill all the heretics!
• Trade Alliance - nice stuff you have there.
• Military Alliance - two are stronger than one.
• Social Alliance - why can't we be friends?
• Religious Alliance - what's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?

More to come.

Nameless Coast - Arrival

In the last Nameless Coast post, I outlined the major races I was going to use in this little sandbox. Over the last few days I've laid out a basic method of populating the area and tweaked the races tables to suit. Now I have a plan.

Wilds - Get Killed With Fire?

Last time the party discovered a fortified hall, complete with arrow slits. Wonder how this is going to turn out? My guess is poorly for someone.

Major Races of the Nameless Coast

Since the last Nameless Coast post I did a bit of thinking about how to introduce population groups into the area and use these groups to drive the development of hex contents. Today I sketched out a quick table of the major races I'm going to use for this, and some broad categories to assign to these groups.

PBE Games: New One Page / Uncommon Ground

The latest PBE Games releases since the last update, starting with a few new One Page tables:

• One Page #15: Jungle Features and Hazards
• One Page #16: Wetlands Features and Hazards
• One Page Pack #3

Numbers 15 and 16 complete the terrain and hazard tables I started with One Page #8. Pack #3 is a bundle deal offering One Page numbers 11 to 15 at a discount.

I've also released several new Uncommon Ground texture packs:

• Lunar is an irregular stone surface with a monochromatic appearance.
• Sand Burn is a grainy stone surface.
• Wooden Waves depicts smooth-grained wood with wave-like darker lines.

All Uncommon Ground textures are licensed for personal or commercial use. You can see the license right here. Here are the preview image for these new textures.

Lunar

Sand Burn

Wooden Waves

That's it for this update. Thanks for reading!

Wilds - It's a Trap!

After being stymied by the pool at the bottom of the eastern stairs, the party decides to close things up and backtrack to the other stairs, hoping for drier ground.

Nameless Coast - Now with Name!

So I've decided to run with the Nameless Coast as the overarching name for this place. I've also started to frame out how I'm going to populate at least parts of it. I'm going to start with pure wilderness with no established populations of intelligent, community-forming creatures (so no humans, elves, dwarfs, goblinoids, or similar). Of course this is a bit of a fuzzy set, since depending on how you interpret creature-descriptions they could be in or out (things like trolls and giants).

Next I'm going to start sending in groups, each with a set of characteristics that include why they're here, how many they are, and how they got here. For example I may introduce a tribe of goblins looking for new territory since their old area is getting overpopulated. They're traveling in from the south-west on foot, they're well-prepared for survival, but they're relatively few in number. Another group might be a shipload of human refugees fleeing a distant war. They stole the ship, are poorly organized, and have little in the way of supplies. Where they land could well determine how long their pseudo-colony survives.

I figure I'll run about 100 years of this sort of thing, with new arrivals coming in randomly over time. Not exactly sure what system will be a fit for this, so I may pull together something in Fudge. I did a quick brainstorm on group motivations / attributes (really quick), and came up with this:

Why are they here?

• Looking for something
• Fleeing something
• Population pressure
• Invasion

Who are they?

• Leadership
• Numbers
• Unifying characteristics / aspects
• Underlying divisions

Resources

• Military
• Survival
• Trade

How did they get here?

• Ship
• Land
• Magic

What is their attitude toward others?

• Friendly
• Xenophobic
• Hostile
• Cooperative
• Neutral

When did they get here?

• Which decade / year

Obviously this is still very rough, and I haven't really framed how I'm going to achieve forward progress, but it's a start.

Coast of [something] Hex Sandbox

Terrain is done! I spent a few hours (OK, more than a few), finishing off all the six-mile hexes with basic terrain, and then dropped in a couple islands for good measure. Here's the final result.

Final Terrain Map

Wilds - Into the Darkness (again)

Usually I trim down and polish up the turns from this game. Today I decided to just cut and paste the message that went out to my players (minus the contacts section with email addresses and such). The main difference is the addendum that outlines standard marching orders and watches.

Nameless Hexes

I really need a snappy name for this project, but I'm not feeling inspired yet. I had the time to add to the previous map. I'm still using the same basic filling strategy with Ground Rules, and now that I have the edges finished off, it's easier to deal with a full hex at a time. Detailing out a hex worth of terrain takes me about 20 minutes now.

The Wilds - Don't Drop Him!

With spells depleted, and worried about the noise of the elevator room drawing foes to the area, the party decides it's time to get out and recover. "We've only been here for a morning and we're already leaving," grumbles Raúguey as he helps Locky and Mordikarr drag the searched goat-thing's corpse to the Reptile House.

Sandbox Update

Just a quick progress image from this map. Finished off all the border areas, and I'm now working on the coast, including where I anticipate placing my "civilized" area.

And here's a cheesy GIF animation of the process, which may or may not work in Blogger's image viewer.

• Next!

The Wilds - Pull the Other One

With the current level mostly explored, the party decides to make a trial of the lever room after a final bit of exploration. This eventually results in the party splitting up, so the following is a bit piecemeal in places. It also covers several turns, because there was a fight in the middle of it all.

Progress by Hex

Not much to say about this, just showing forward progress. I changed up how I've been building these a bit. I think the first hex I built out was a little too monotonous, so I'm using a slightly different method now. Before I was treating all unfilled hexes as the large hex terrain. Now I'm placing a single 'best match' hex in the center of the large hex and treating all A1 results (the randomizer hex) as the large hex terrain type. This has led to more variety, while retaining some of the basic feel of the big hexes.

Early Small Hex Work

In progress

It's not exactly a fast process, but that's more because I'm keeping careful labels on everything and flipping between Gimp for mapping and Excel for dice rolling. I've tweaked a couple table entries along the way (and fixed a couple more typos too). I think I want to finish off all the border hexes and then start moving in, so... onward!

• Next!

Dungeons in Blue - New Tiles

I've finally finished off the next three tile sets for Dungeons in Blue, Set J, Set K, and Set L. Each of these sets contains nine 100x100-foot full-sized tiles, ready to drop into whatever virtual tabletop you prefer. These sets are also available in a bundle, Triple Pack Four, at a discounted price.

As usual these maps include GM and player versions, plus a full map key, preview image and brief read me. All image files are 100px per five-foot square PNGs. Here are the one-third scale preview images for these new sets:

Happy mapping!

PS - If you're looking for previous product releases, you can find them all tagged here.

Hexing Onward

I had time to do a bit more work on this hex map project, so I picked a large hex to fully map out with smaller hexes. I started on the coast, in one of the mountain hexes, to see how things turned out. Instead of using a random pick I started in the center of the hex and worked my way out from there. Because I was treating unfilled small hexes as the containing big hex's terrain type, the small hexes were fairly homogeneous until I got to the edges and started considering bordering hexes too.

Before

After

As you can see, mountains overwrote most of the original hill terrain, making this a pretty rough coastline. Small patches of woods and a few more open areas along the coast popped out, along with a small wetland on the northwest side. In retrospect I probably should have treated the mountain results as hills, since that was the base terrain for the big hex, but I think this looks fine. I think I'll work through a few more hexes to the south before I focus on my planned settlement hex, either the scrub area or light woods next to that little jag in the coastline.

• Next!

Más Hexes

Lest you think I forgot about this hex map project... I haven't. I got side-tracked last week with new PBE Games releases, and then sports-related events. Now it's back to the hex map, and a refinement pass on the previously generated big hexes.