The Wilds - Another Day, Another Tree

In which, the party finds their way blocked by a huge stand of thorny shrubs, and takes a detour...

Koslac's Crossing - Now Available

Koslac's Crossing is now available on DriveThruRPG! I'm pretty pleased (and nervous) about putting this up. It's the first map project I've published, and the first PDF I've produced myself. Fingers are crossed.

I'm still trying to figure out DriveThruRPG's preview publishing. The last two products I've published, Deadly Blows, and Tome of Names Volume One, have both been PDF, so the built in PDF previews have worked. This product is a zip, so I want to show a sample section from the map. Apparently the sample image got lost in translation. If you want to check out some of the early-stage art you can see it here and (even better) here.

So what's in the package you ask? Here's the summary:

A 13-page PDF containing a brief site history, architectural notes, and compact, printable maps for use in preparing encounters and content.

Three different versions of each of the dungeon's two level maps. Levels are approximately 300 feet by 300 feet, and maps are marked with a five-foot grid (60 by 60 grid squares, 70px per square). The following maps are included:

• GM Maps - numbered, all secret doors/passages shown.
• Keyed Player Maps - numbered, no secret doors/passages shown.
• Unkeyed Player Maps - no numbers, no secret doors/passages shown.

Note that these maps are probably not good candidates for battlemap printing. They really were intended for virtual tabletops.

You can get the whole thing right here.

And since DriveThru is still being finicky about the sample image, here's a preview.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

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).

The Wilds - Into the... Wilds!

Back in business, time to see what's out there!

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!

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.

• Here's the Tome of Names - Volume One link