Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The Tombs - New Mapping Project

Here's a first look at a new mapping project. The Tombs is a collection of underground crypts and tunnels, complete with its own worship area, body preparation chamber, waiting rooms and reception areas, and priest / attendant quarters. This is a quick export from Inkscape showing the main rooms and corridors. I did a quick fill using Gimp to provide a little texture and contrast. The lines are a bit fuzzed because Inkscape's png export is sub-par.
I'm going to try a more old-school doors-as-squares and black-lines-for-walls look with this project and see how it goes. I'm also going to work in a larger scale in Gimp. I targeted Koslac's Crossing at Roll20's native 70px grid resolution. I'm going to do my Gimp work at 300 dpi with this map. This is a smaller map too, as it's built on a 40x40 grid of five-foot squares compared to Koslac's 60x60 grid.

One of the mental hurdles I always face with virtual maps is the ten-foot versus the five-foot corridor. When I started gaming, it was all graph-paper all the time, and my brain's native resolution was 10' squares. With the advent of battlemaps and virtual tabletops based on five-foot grids, it's sometimes tough for me to plan out corridors I'm happy with. I'm relatively pleased with this (so far).

Monday, March 18, 2013

The Wilds - Back on the Road


It seems I missed posting the last couple turns (mostly because the party was in town and dealing with logistics for their next trip). Summary: went back to town, collected a modest reward, got their map copied by the local scholar, found out what a few magic items were, and bought supplies and mules for a longer trip beyond Stonefinger. Durego also gained a level, the only party member to do so (he had very lucky rolls on starting bonus XP). We'll pick up at their departure from Auslaug...

Koslac's Crossing

Finally, the end is in sight. I finished off the text editing and final layout this morning. I need to do one more review of content to double-check all the links and bookmarks, but this should be up on DriveThruRPG this week.

And now it's done!

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Tome of Names V1 now on DriveThruRPG


As a GM, I hate making up names, so I did something about it. Each Tome of Names volume contains 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.



Sunday, March 10, 2013

The Crossing - Floors and Doors

About 60% done with colors now. This is a mashed together image showing the upper layer with the lower portion partially opaque below. Still things to do, like shadows and line cleanup, but it's getting there.
And even though I did this just to have something to post, it points out nicely that I have a bunch of void spaces on the upper level that need some fill...

Saturday, March 9, 2013

The Crossing - Colorizing Detail

I've gotten some work done on this, but not as much as I'd like. I'm really not happy with the current state of the doors, and I need to figure out a solution to that. Here's a clipped out piece to show the current level of detail.
I'm not sure wooden doors (at least those wooden doors) are the right choice, and I don't really like the thick black borders. I may end up doing some door panels by hand to get them right. Time to go looking for some new textures...