The Wilds - Camping is fun!

Another Monday, another turn. Last week, the party made their escape from the Cold Caves, dragging along a bunch of kobold heads (for bounty), a big black bear (hoping for a nice hide), and some miscellaneous loot. We had a bit of a snafu with the mailing list software, so a few regulars failed to respond. Here's the results...

The Wilds - Lucky 13

I've been doing a lot of writing elsewhere, so this place has gone quiet. Since I'm writing turns for my PbP Labyrinth Lord game anyhow, I thought I'd start sharing them here. Here's how the game is being run:

I write two turns a week, usually Mondays and Thursdays. Turns go out to a mailing list that includes all the players and their responses generally go back to the same list. Secret information goes out separately to individual players, and answers come straight back to me. The turns I write (hopefully) reflect the actions/desires of the PCs. In combat situations we try to run three rounds per turn cycle. The rest of the time, I try to cover at least one scene per turn.

In addition to the start / end framing you see below, the turn includes a bunch of boilerplate about the characters and their logistics -- marching order, watches at night, that sort of thing. That keeps everyone on the same page, which can be a challenge in PbP games.

Here's the turn!

DriveThru RPG New Year, New Game

DriveThru RPG is starting up their New Year, New Game sale right now, featuring over 50 core PDF titles at 40% off. A few items that caught my eye:

• GUMSHOE Core: Trail of Cthulhu
• HeroQuest: Core Rules
• ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying
• Little Fears (10th Anniversary Edition)
• Mekton Zeta

The nice thing about this sale: the feature items are core books. Pick one up and be ready to roll with a new game. The sale runs from January 7th to January 14th. As an added bonus use the coupon code happynyng2013 for an additional 15% off sale items.

Happy browsing!

An Update From The Wilds

Since I've been working on other writing projects I thought I'd share an excerpt from my play-by-mail campaign, a Labyrinth Lord game I'm running for nine of my friends. This is two rounds of action from the group's current encounter. They're... having some difficulty.

Not Dead Yet

It's been quiet here, but never fear, the blog is not dead. In November, having found myself unprepared to take on NaNoWriMo, I decided I needed to focus on a novel project that's been bouncing around in the back of my head. That plus the holidays and a PbP game have been sucking down quite a bit of time. I'll be back in another 65k words or so.

Friday Map - Inkscape

I've been messing around with Inkscape as a mapping tool, and ended up with this as a result this morning. I already have a blank image set up with the grid lines drawn into it, so this didn't take long. I started with the polygon/star tool, and set the rounded and random fields to .100 and .200 respectively. Then I drew a bunch of random polygons, randomly changing the number of corners to values between 3 and 8 as I went. Once I had a bunch of polygons I dragged them around to something that looked good, and drew a few connecting shapes with the freehand line tool to create closed paths. I tweaked the paths using the node tool and simplifying the ones I drew by hand (Path/Simplify).

Once I had something that looked good, I used Path/Union and Path/Difference to turn the collected shapes into a single path. I duplicated the path and applied Path/Outset a few times, giving me an interior path (the caves) and an exterior path (the shading). I applied Filters/Distort/Pixel smear to the caves, and Filters/Scatter/Air spray to the shading. Tweaked down fill alpha a bit and played with colors a little, then exported to png. After a little cropping with Gimp, here it is:

The Wilds - They're Off

After some starts and stops, the gang in my play by email game is on the road, headed to the Cold Caves to see what's behind the recent attacks on the surrounding farmsteads and settlements. The tea and cakes were delicious. As usual I'll be using TiddlyWiki to manage the game, and writing two main turns a week. We've found this pace gives everyone a chance to participate, including the folks with heavy work schedules.