Beware the Smiling Dungeon Master

Last weekend we played the third session of my new 3.5 campaign and I feel like this session will stick in my memory as one of the best I have ever run… in part because of everything that went wrong. It may sound malicious, but the dice were often not with the PC's throughout the day, yet it felt like the ensuing calamities were directly responsible for some of the session's best moments.

Start with the Epic: The Wandering Hills

My players would likely deny it, but sometimes I feel like I really struggle and/or forget to add epic fantasy touches when planning adventures or building out my supposed to be epic fantasy worlds. Instead, I get lost in the mundane minutiae. What is the driving force in this town's politics? Do I have enough farms around the city center on this map? What animals make up this ecosystem? What are the mechanics behind this trap? I feel like I almost always start with the practical and work my way up. Sure, I might add some magical beasts to a forest, or have undead raiding local villages... but I regularly feel like it's just not enough. The undead might as well be raiding bandits and the owlbears might as well be divided back into their constituent parts. The epic feels like an add-on rather than an integral part of the world.

Then there are days like today when I feel like something epic clicks into place.

I've been trying to flesh out some of the regions surrounding the one where my players are currently adventuring. I do this for my own enjoyment, and to prep for the possibility of "next steps" in my game's adventure path.

Today, my world-building thoughts started from a slightly different angle than my usual approach. Instead of thinking, "What cities and countries are around this one?" I started pondering some images that have been squirreled away on my Pinterest boards and thinking, "you know what's cool? Floating islands!"

So, instead of starting with the basic size and industry of a nearby citystate... I used floating islands as a starting point for this particular world-building session. I decided to work from the epic concept downward to anchor it in my game.

Floating islands got me thinking about what makes them float. Magic is an obvious answer. More specifically, I am using some elements of the Eberron campaign setting in my world, including air ships built from soarwood. In Eberron, soarwood is rare, and possesses a "magical buoyancy". Well, what if soarwood was not so rare, and was buoyant enough that uprooted trees would actually fly? By that logic, groves of soarwood might have enough lift to drag chunks of land with them!

The floating islands in my game would all be covered in buoyant soarwood groves! But what would actually dislodge the groves? Here, I turned to the real world and the karst landscape of southern China. Perhaps soarwood grows best in areas high in soluble minerals like limestone. Natural erosion might lead to spectacular gravity-defying formations that actually break free and wander from time to time.

With a strong theme for the new region, I turned my thoughts to the type of civilization that might call it home. What if someone took advantage of these floating islands to build cities? The cities would certainly be difficult to assault. Unfortunately, since trees grow and die, maintaining a balance to keep the city in place would require some work. Arborist guilds might hold a powerful position in such a civilization! They would be tasked with pruning and growing the soarwood groves not for aesthetic purposes, but to maintain the physical well-being of the city itself!

The notion of arborists as a powerful profession then led me to begin thinking of this civilization as elven... but a group of elves with a more practical approach to their nature affinity. Instead of simply being the "MOAR TREES!" kind of elves, they would instead focus on the meticulous balance between natural and built environments in their cities.

Over the course of just a few hours mulling this over in the back of my head while I worked at my actual job, I had come up with a natural biome for my world, and a civilization which felt both more fantastic than what often come up with, but at the same time, anchored more deeply in the reality of the world as a whole. When I work the other direction, it often takes me days or weeks to reach this level of detail.

If you find yourself struggling with fantasy world-building like I so often do, it might be worth giving this fantastic > mundane method a try.

New Campaign - New DM System

Introducing the toddler to the joys of dice.

Last November I started up a new D&D campaign with an almost entirely new group after the old familiar cocktail of schedule conflicts, long drive distances, and unresponded emails caused my previous game to unravel. The new group is smaller (just four players), and includes my wife, and three friends I made through grad school. Though I really loved my previous long-running group, it's really neat to explore a new dynamic with new players.

Our November session was also the first time that I played with a fully armed and operational toddler station running around our house. What's more, our particular toddler is incredibly fascinated by anything and everything electronic... and remember how he's fully armed? well those arms can now reach the top of the dining room table where we play. As such, I had to adjust my DMing a bit on the fly during the last game by putting away the Surface tablet mid session and switching to scratch paper and note cards.

Over the holiday break, I did some thinking about how to adjust my DM toolkit to better deter toddler interference. I'm currently prepping for our second session happening this weekend, and thought now would be a good time to share some of the adjustments I made.

The short of it is that I am switching to a digital/analog hybrid.

I am keeping Microsoft OneNote as my main record-keeping system. I contemplated switching back to an old-school quad-rule notebook, but I just like OneNote's search and reorganizational capabilities too much. However, I am ditching the Surface as a game table interface. The kid was just too drawn to it, and besides, we still have our 1st gen RT. It's upgraded 8.1 operating system takes up nearly the entire hard drive, though I shifted pretty much the entire file storage system onto a sim card, It still gets really bogged down the longer its on and becomes nigh unusable really fast.

Instead, I plan to shift to printed copies of my OneNote pages at the table. This worked really well for me during a one-off I ran for some of my previous players last summer. It just means that I need to remember to print the sheets.

In addition to the printed OneNote pages for encounters, I am going to try out 3x5 cards for my NPCs, and I did pick up a quad rule Moleskine for rough planning notes and adventure mapping.

I suspect the biggest change the notecards and printed pages will have on my style is to force me toward brevity... and therefore wit, right?

An Exceptional Podcast

There is a truism amongst RPGers that listening to another person talk about their game, or their favorite character is an excellent way to clear a room. D&D and other tabletop RPGs are fun if you are doing, NOT if you are watching. It is known.

There are, however, a few shining exceptions to this rule. The Acquisitions Inc. "celebrity" games held at the PAXes are one example, as are some of the RPGs featured on Geek & Sundry. The appeal of these examples, however, relies in large part on the participation of notable members of the geek glitterati.

Well, recently I was directed to another exception to the D&D spectatorship rule. I have started listening to The Adventure Zone podcast, which was created by the McElroy's who also host My Brother, My Brother and Me over on Maximum Fun.com.

In the Adventure Zone, Griffin, Justin, and Travis McElroy are joined by their father as they dive in to 5th Edition D&D. Most of them have zero to limited experience with D&D, and Griffin is a first time dungeon master. They begin with the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure before spinning off into a homebrewed plot set in the Forgotten Realms.

I regularly find myself laughing out loud in my car as the podcast plays during my commute, and have even sat for a few moments in the parking lot from time to time, just to hear a little more. The guys are definitely beer and pretzels-type gamers with a solid presence on the radio. The combination of table banter, humorous character choices, good radio presence and a willingness to not worry about genre makes this podcast highly listenable.

As a bonus, the Adventure Zone also solicits the names and ideas of listeners for use in their world. This has given rise to such characters as Magic Bryan, the drow, Johan the sad bard, and Davenport the gnome. I'm currently about 8 episodes in to what is currently a 15 episode run with new 'casts released every 2 weeks. So, if you need a nerding fix that you can enjoy while you work or drive, I highly recommend getting into The Zone.

Episode 1: of The Adventure Zone

DM Support Group

I got a bit of a surprise last week when the Wizards of the Coast video DM Support Group showed up in my YouTube feed. Turns out my best friend is portraying Rick, the Dungeon Master harried by magic item hungry players... boy can I relate. Rick includes a reference to a particularly frustrating player named Jeff (Geoff?) which I am going to say is a shout out to me, even if it's not.

Note: I have never played in nor run a campaign with my bestie. I have also never shuffled multiple decks of many things together. However, I can definitely relate to DM's suffering from players who are walking magic arsenals. Perhaps I should try attunement.

A Very Nerdy Christmas

This Christmas was full of wonderfully nerdy gifts from friends and family. The photo above shows a selection of the highlights. The Wife made my son a plush D20 as featured in my previous blog post. We also got him a plush triceratops, and my cousin got him an awesome Star Trek onesie!

My dad got the Wife Machi Koro, a really fun card-based city-building game that is very fast to learn and faster to play. The Wife and I played our first two games over the course of an hour or so a couple nights ago. I definitely recommend it if you're looking for a new game. It'll also be interesting to see how it plays with more than two people.

The Wife got me the amazing TableTop Owlbears shirt from Shirt Woot!

Lastly, I made my wife a gaming kit to hold her D&D stuff (except character sheets.). I picked up a craft box from Michael's, stained and lacquered it, lined the inside with green felt, and then made up a couple little boxes for her characters' minis. I decorated the outside of the boxes with drawings that represented the core elements of her characters-- fire for her pyromancer, and a tree for her druid.

 I also painted up a couple minis to represent her characters.

 Rayne is her pyromancer from our last campaign. The base figure is from Reaper's Bones line. It's plastic, and so the sculpt isn't as crisp as its pewter counterpart. It turned out okay, but I was having a heck of a time getting a good pale complexion that didn't look ashen.

 Her catfolk druid figure and baboon companion turned out much better. It took some hunting to find the minis, but I'm pleased with the ones I picked up. I especially love that the baboon is letting out some sort of shriek or hiss, as my players have already decided that this is his most common expression.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and may 2015 be full of joy.

Merry Christmas 2014!

The Wife and I had some unexpected big-ticket expenses come up just as the holiday's were getting rolling. In order to keep Christmas affordable, we decided to do a bunch of handmade gifts this year. The Wife made this awesome plush D20 for the boy.

I've got another holiday story that gamers will appreciate. So, I recently discovered one of the major downsides to living in the 'burbs... or my particular burb anyway.

This past weekend, I had just got back from running errands while the Wife and kid were 30 miles north baking cookies at grandma's. I was getting hangry. We hadn't been grocery shopping, and the dregs of food in our house all looked unappetizing. I didn't want to go back out since all the fast food I like required traversing the clogged streets around the mall. Then I thought, "I'll use this as a chance to order a pizza!" The wife can't eat cheese or cured/processed meats, so pizza is a rare delicacy for me.

I popped online to the one pizza delivery place I had found in our area that produced a pie worthy of calling food. (ie. not Caesar's Domino Hut) I placed my order through the online order service as I have done in the past, put Chronicles of Riddick on Netflix and sat down to wrap presents. Festive, no?

Time passes... not sure how long, but it was at least half an hour.

I think to myself, "I should probably have my cellphone nearby in case the pizza place calls." I get my phone and sure enough there is a voicemail. The online ordering service had called to tell me the pizza place wasn't answering their phone, so they were canceling my order.

Damn. My hanger was flaring up. I was annoyed that my order was canceled. I was more annoyed that an online ordering service was really just a middle man who called the pizza place for me!? I got back on the pizza place's website and called their direct line. Sure enough, nobody picked up and their voicemail box was full. GAH!

I did another online search desperately looking for delivery options that supplied actual food. Apparently our little middle class neighborhood is smack in the middle of some sort of culinary wasteland. I found one other delivery pizza place. Their website said they were open. I called. The phone rang... and rang... and rang... nothing.

PIIIIIIIIIZZZZZZAAAA!!!!!

I had gone full hungry Hulk. I ranted online. I sent despairing texts to the Wife, and then I caved and did the only thing I could. I made boxed mac and cheese. It took the edge off, but did a poor job filling the pizza shaped hole in my belly.

But the story doesn't end there.

The following day, my wife and I received an email from PizzaForYouBoth promising that if we responded by that afternoon, Pizza Claus would deliver a pie of our choice from a restaurant of our choice. My first thought was, "Those Nigerian princes are either getting more clever or more desperate." My second thought was, "I bet this is one of my best friend's little generous shenanigans." The Wife responded to Pizza Claus, since she has the more restrictive diet, and placed an order for a chicken pizza half with cheese, half without.

Sure enough, Pizza Claus showed up just before I got home from picking up groceries and delivered a quality pizza to our door. It's good being best friends with Pizza Claus, even if you only see him once a year.

If you're celebrating Christmas or other holidays this season, I hope they are wonderful! If you are not, I hope whatever you are doing instead is wonderful!

A Whole New World

Baby's first game session

2014 has been a heck of a year. Between working the bugs out of fatherhood 1.0 and settling in to our new home out in the burbs, my family's gaming habit was chucked unceremoneously into the back seat of life among the lost quarters and the ice scraper.

Well, earlier this fall, while rummaging around in the metaphorical seat cushions, I rediscovered my desire to DM. It was a little flat and covered in crumbs, but still functional. I put the word out to the old gaming group to see if folks were interested in restarting the old D&D 3.5 campaign, or in rolling up something new. The interest was definitely there, so we began working out what would be different.

Our new house is on the opposite side of downtown Seattle from most of my players, and the longer travel time means that our previous weekday evening schedule was out. Having an infant in the house also made late-night, raucous hack-and-slash Cheetofests impractical. We ended up settling on Sunday afternoon game time. And because of the longer commute for my players, we also decided to do longer, 6-hour sessions about once a month. Honestly, this format is something that I have been wanting to do as a DM for a long time. It means I don't have to shift straight from working Sporkchop into gaming Sporkchop, and longer sessions mean more continuity over the course of a game session.

The changes meant we lost a couple players to busy lifestyles and other projects. This also made it necessary to start a new campaign as the in-progress plotline of the former game could not maintain its integrity minus the characters we lost.

We are now playing in a different part of the same campaign world, and starting again with at level 3 with four players down from the honestly unwieldy seven.

I also made a couple changes to my DM-ing choices for this campaign to help it better fit with my crowded lifestyle.

I am wholeheartedly embracing Sly Flourish's philosophy of the Lazy Dungeon Master. I am trying to keep prep minimal, and focused on the things that are really necessary to run a fun session. The biggest specific choices I have made to simplify this new game are:

Limiting the source material:

Original from XKCD

In my last game, pretty much any supplement people wanted to work into the game was added to the pile. While this was great in some ways, the sheer number of books we needed at the table every session, and the sheer number of pages to flip through when leveling, or looking up a rule really dragged the game down.

I decided to try an experiment that I had been mulling over near the end of my last campaign. I offered each player the choice of adding one supplement (no compendiums) in addition to the core rulebooks as a source for their character's material. They picked the splat book, and I would use it to help season the campaign world. Most of the players embraced the choice, though I did get some pushback from our resident min-maxer who had developed an astonishingly game-breaking concept.

Going with found maps:

You got the thiiing!

I love world building, and drawing maps. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most time consuming aspects of game prep, and I just don't have the capacity to develop my own custom city and dungeon maps for every session. I thought I would try to add my own stories to existing maps I found online. I started with the wonderful trove over at Dyson's Dodecahedron, and grabbed a couple candidates for the starting city. I also did some searching through the Cartographer's Guild, and even pulled in some maps from published sources. This has not only saved me a tremendous amount of prep time, but has also helped inspire some ways to flesh out my shoestring concepts based on the spatial arrangement of the maps in use.

Firing up the generators:

This generator produces d100 random Daves
These are the Daves I know, I know...

NPCs are my key to a successful session. If I can nail down the personalities and motivations for my NPCs, I can wing most anything else. I have been making heavy use of the random name generator at Behind the Name, and of this awesome list of d100 NPC traits.

We have now run three sessions. One for character building, and two play sessions. So far the new structure seems to be working well. People are having fun, and the prep time has been much more manageable than for the previous campaign. After our last session my players also mentioned that they really enjoy the longer, more leisurely sessions, which allow for time to eat together and catch up before jumping into the game.

On a related note, I've had a lot of people start following my Youtube channel over the past few months after finding my DM Organization in OneNote video, and I got so excited by the new followers and the opportunity presented by this new campaign that I decided to make a video describing my OneNote planning process from the very beginning of a blank campaign.--A Let's Prep video!

I shot the whole thing, then reviewed it with the Wife and found that I was rambling into the bore-o-sphere throughout the video, so I never edited and uploaded it. I've been meaning to re-shoot with a tighter outline, but just haven't had a chance. If you'd like to see me prattle on about my game organization process on camera, let me know. Maybe it'll convince me to get off my butt and make it happen.

Review: Table Titans S.2, Great Comic, Not so Great Game

Warning, this post contains a minor spoiler for anyone who hasn't read ANY of the Table Titans comics, but who intends to start with season two... for some inexplicable reason.

16 pages in, a player character appears.

I started reading Scott Kurtz's D&D comic Table Titans when it was a little ways into its first season, so I was understandably excited when he began season two, "Winter of the Iron Dwarf" late last year. If you're not familiar, Table Titans follows the in- and out-of-game adventures of a runner-up group of D&D players who frequently haunt an actual Seattle gaming parlor in an effort to build their nerd cred and win the coveted "Winotaur". The comics are beautifully drawn by Kurtz, the characters have depth, and the portrayal of gamers feels real... as it should, since Scott himself is an avid player.

As Season Two began, however, something didn't feel right. "Winter of The Iron Dwarf" starts with an expository focus on a caravan of dwarves traveling from a besieged fortress in search of reinforcements. I thought... interesting, I bet the PCs are going to be escorts! Nope. These NPC dwarves were on their own... then they get to their destination just fine and ask the king about soliciting the aid of a great warrior (also not a PC). Through all of this exposition, the comic treats us to an uneventful journey, some decent travel talk, lush visuals and a rich feeling world. Only in the 10th page of in-game time in the comic... 16th page overall are we set up for a reveal that the warrior the NPC dwarves get is not the one they seek, but his daughter... one of the PCs.

Don't get me wrong, the art is still gorgeous. The story is definitely intriguing from a comic standpoint... But as it drew on without the input of the story's heroes, I grew antsy. See, while this technique of establishing the story's focus through supporting characters is great for comics. It's horrible for RPGs. Kurtz's DM character spends way too much time in exposition that is entirely devoid of input from his players.

Because this is a comic about a fantasy game, not just a fantasy world, the player in me began to get anxious until my inner voice was screaming, "WHY HASN'T ONE OF THE PLAYERS TOLD THIS JACKASS DM TO GET TO THE GOOD PART!?"

I was honestly torn, because as a story alone, it's really cool. I think, however, that it serves as an excellent example of the potential pitfalls of media crossovers and a DM who is too deep into his world. Expository introductions that focus on minor or supporting characters are common and work great in film, literature and even comics. The opening focus on C3P0 and R2 in Star Wars is a great example of this, as is the beginning of the LOTR films with Elrond and Isildur battling Sauron, or most of R.A. Salvatore's books, it seems. It works great in those media, because they are unidirectional. There is a storyteller, and a reader/watcher/listener who is taking it in. The exposition establishes the mood and draws the player in.

This can certainly also work in a game, but it's limited by the players' attention and desire to get in on the action. It's a perilous trap for DM's who have spent so much time lovingly crafting a world. They want to roll around in it, to share it with others... "see! look at this gorgeous thing I made!" But players, unlike readers aren't as interested in what YOU made. They want to get in on the creation process to add to or tear down your beautifully crafted world and make it their own.

Perhaps things would have been better of beginning with a focus on the dwarven messengers arriving to summon the wrong Bronzebottom. Is her dad unavailable? missing? Is the messenger just incompetent and doesn't realize he's called on the wrong person, or is the younger Bronzebottom so eager to prove herself that she dissembles or doesn't mention she's not the one they seek. Perhaps with such an adjustment to the opening, "Winter of the Iron Dwarf" would feel like both a great comic and an interesting game.

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop

At last! I have a plan to break out of this posting rut! D20 Dark Ages is hosting a blog hop in February, in celebration of D&D's 40th birthday, and I aim to join. The challenge works much like April A to Z, except with much more specific prompts, all of which are focused on D&D or other tabletop roleplaying subjects.

After reading over the list, I suspect that some of the posts will be rehashes of things you've already seen on this blog, and others will require a bit of creative interpretation. I was a long-time lurker with D&D, and did a lot more reading and dreaming about it in my earliest days. I am also the perpetual DM,  and my stints as a player have generally been short-lived, so the answers to many of the player-oriented questions will take some tweaking.

Still, I feel like I work best with prompts, and am looking forward to a productive posting February!

Make-it Monday: Sporkchop Attempts to Sew a Dice Bag

The Wife and I got back from an uber-relaxing holiday weekend spent at a friend's house in the mountains, and I think the Wife decided that I was just too relaxed by the time Sunday rolled around. So, when we got back into town she decided that Sunday afternoon would be an excellent time to teach me how to use a sewing machine.

We decided that my first project would be to try my hand at a dice bag similar to the one Paul Mason makes in this nifty tutorial video over at Geek & Sundry. It seemed simple enough, but let me tell you, even though the project only involves four bits of fabric (five if you add a decorative piece to the bottom like in the video), it sure does a good job of presenting its share of frustrations. The circular bottom bit was probably the most frustrating to line up properly, and the stretchy fabric I picked out didn't help.

After a bit of hemming and hawing, (get it? hemming!?) and perhaps a paltry amount of pouting and blowing off of steam, I finally managed to create something that I am not horribly embarrassed to use for dice storage.

See! Happy Sporkchop!

I picked out a red paisley print to strike fear into the hearts of my enemies!

I ended up with some unintended pleating around the base of the bag, though
I do like how the bit of paisley I picked for the bottom lined up... sort of tentacley!

The black, velvety lining is also pretty boss.

 For a first venture into machine sewing, I would have to call this a success. Unfortunately, I have little patience for my own learning curve and tend to get grumpy if I'm not perfect on the first try. I'm working on tempering that tendency, but could still use some practice. Because, hey, nobody's perfect!

Game Maps and Notes From My First Adventure EVAR!

In my continued rummagings through my very first DM binder of 20 years ago, I came across the maps and notes I drew up for the very first adventure I ever ran.

The girl I was dating at the time (read getting caught making out on people's couches like the uber-jerk I was at that time in high school) had an interest in D&D I think largely due to her dad. The basement of their house was AWESOME. Wall to wall shelves of dad's fantasy paperbacks and game books.

Well, she and some of our other friends wanted to get a game up, but we had no DM... of course, I said I'd do it. What's the big deal? I thought. I had previously played and run a lot of HeroQuest and Dragon Quest games. I really liked THOSE. how hard could it be!?

Make-it Monday: SketchUp Tiles

Using SketchUp's built-in style sets can yield some really cool looks.

I apologize for the lack of posts last week. Life got really slammed as the Wife and I scrambled to finalize our offer on the house it looks like we will be buying. All offers and counter offers have now been accepted, so we just need to finish wrapping up the mountain of paperwork that goes along with such things and we'll be on our way to home ownership! We also headed out of town late last week to go down to Oregon. I had a conference to attend, and we decided to extend our trip into a mini-vacation... without a computer.

Well, we're back. We are still busy with the house stuff, but I did have a chance to dink around in SketchUp a bit! I created a nifty little virtual version of my Dwarven Forge dungeon tiles. Each 10x10 tile is made into a component, which makes it super quick and easy to plot out a dungeon. Simply use SketchUp's [ctrl]+move and array functions to duplicate and move pieces around, and you can have a little dungeon complex up in no time. It took me about an hour to build all the tiles you see here, and set up the little example dungeon.

The whole dungeon was built from five basic block types

A top-down view

I think I'll keep tinkering with this method of SketchUp dungeon mapping. The components are simple to build, and I suspect I could come up with some pretty cool looking dungeons just using a few basic building blocks.

Make-its of Days Past: Map, Ulrich's Pass

Life came on pretty strong this past week. The Wife has been down for the count with a wicked cold, and I have been doing my best to keep up with the weekly chores so she can rest. Of course we didn't actually get much resting done, as we just put an offer on a house this weekend and had it accepted! Holy crap, now we're in the inspection and Escrow scramble.

The point being, I didn't have time to really make anything new this past week. That's not to say I didn't put time into keeping my make-it resolution going. I did put an hour or two worth of work into figuring out an approach to making SketchUp videos for gamers, and I am cultivating ideas on that front, but I didn't end up producing anything worth sharing from the effort. The Wife also got into the make-it act after getting bored with lying around, watching TV (and buying houses). She picked up a paintbrush and applied a base coat of grey paint to an entire set of the Dwarven Forge tiles that I started recently.

So, as a consolation prize for not finishing anything new this week, I give you another map from my very first DM binder. I don't even remember what Ulrich's Pass was supposed to be for, but I definitely dig the topographical feel. Also, hex paper! I found a whole huge sheaf of the stuff in the binder. I distinctly remember struggling to form my opinions on the usefulness of hex vs. square paper back in my 2e days. I definitely dig hex for regional maps like this one, but still prefer quad-rule for dungeons or other tactical maps.

Running Dreamland Adventures in D&D

After a month of conferences, illness and Halloween craziness, my regular game group finally managed get back to the table this past Monday. We ran through a session that accomplished something I had been wanting to run for a long time. The adventure we began on Monday took place in the dreams of one of the PCs.

I came up with a few custom mechanics for creating a dream-like feel to the adventure, and I will get to those in just a bit, but first a little back story to set the stage.

SketchUp for Gamers

The landing at Fenwatch from my last campaign

I've been seeing an increase in the use of SketchUp lately for game mapping. The most common technique seems to involve importing a hand-drawn dungeon map and pushing/pulling it out into three dimensions. You can check out an excellent example of this by mapper, Kevin Campbell here.

Now, I am a huge fan of SketchUp. I deal with it regularly in my day job as a museum exhibit developer. I even teach an annual introductory seminar on it for my former grad school program. So, I like to think of myself as being relatively skilled with the software. Yet in my several attempts to adapt the program for game mapping purposes, I always wind up faltering and leaving a half-produced model waiting to be finished. Why is that?

Hey Geoff... why you no finish Wayshepherd's Guild?

Using SketchUp well takes time. 

I think the name SketchUp is a bit of a misnomer, because if you use the program like a sketch pad, simply drawing in your maps, your model can quickly become cumbersome to work with. The program should really be called "ModelUp", because, as I tell my students, it works best if you "group early and group often". To translate for mapping, each bit of the map should be "sketched" as its own unique group or component. Every doorway, pit trap and blood-soaked altar should be set up as a discrete building block and then plugged into the model. The downside to this technique is that it adds steps, which adds time to the process. If you are in a hurry to get a map done for next week's game, you might want to run with pen and paper. Heck, even at work, we use pencils and sketch pads as much as any software, especially when pressed for time.

Because I'm running an active game, and leaning towards the Lazy DM model for most of my planning, cracking open a SketchUp file for my location-based encounters just hasn't been practical of late. If I were focused on mapping for maps' sake, or making something for publication, it might be a different story, but when in a hurry, it's best to stick with quad ruled paper and pencil.

That being said, SketchUp can offer some definite advantages in certain circumstances such as:

• Dungeons with overlapping levels. The ability to view models from all angles is a powerful visual tool when dealing with twisting ramps, balconies and other vertically layered environments.
• Recurring locations. Recurring environments in your game, especially those that might be modified over time can really benefit from the SketchUp treatment. If you set things up well, it can be quick and easy to expand the kitchen on the party's keep, or add battle damage to the mage's tower. If set up poorly, however, such changes could be a nightmare.
• Established Settings. This is a bit of a Catch-22. SketchUp can get more efficient as you use it, but it can take a while before it is efficient enough to be worth using for a game. Why is this? Well, again, if you are building your models well, you will start to accumulate a library of components that can be quickly plugged into other models as needed. If you don't need to create a creepy statue for your 2nd or 3rd creepy statue dungeon, you can save a lot of time if you slogged through the work in the 1st one.

So, perhaps the best way to start using SketchUp for a game is to build game-like things for fun... without session prep deadlines, or real requirements. Once you have your system down and a library built up, then take the plunge to work it into actual game mapping.

Of course, all of this rumination on SketchUp has both given me an idea and gotten me tempted to try my hand at game mapping in it again. I think that I will take a stab at creating an online version of my intro to SketchUp seminar, but with a focus on creating things for use in RPGs. I don't have a schedule for it, so it will likely be slow to roll out. Nevertheless, I think it could be helpful for those game mappers who want a leg up to use SketchUp well.

In the mean time, if you are currently using SketchUp for fantasy mapping purposes, you can find some furniture and other dungeon/castle elements (along with a couple unrelated projects) for use in your models in my SketchUp warehouse here.

It's like some sort of kobold-filled Ikea

Make-its of Days Past: Maps, Falrhea and Ravenwood

Hey hey, map junkies! I've got a couple more maps to share with you from my very first DM's notebook. The first is a very similar, yet slightly different left-justified regional map akin to the one I posted a couple weeks ago! 

I'm not sure how this map relates to the previous region, but I suspect they are part of the same game world. I haven't found a whole lot of notes pertaining to either of these maps. I think high school me was more fond of the drawing aspect of world-building, and likely kept a lot of the relevant story in my brain rather than putting it on paper. Over the course of time, the contextual details, which informed these maps has long-since faded.

That being said, present me really likes the detail past high school me put into the coastline, and is honestly impressed at the decent place names my younger self came up with.

Despite my decent naming skills, "Falrhea" sounds like vertigo-induced dysentery

The second map is of the city of Raven Wood and its surroundings. I dig the smattering of dots and random shapes used to flesh out the population centers. Though I'm not sure high school me really understood how rivers flow. One seems to dead-end in a corn field.

While losing the contextual details behind these places after 20 years in a musty closet is a little sad, these maps also present a sort of blank slate from which to form new stories! I may see if I can't work some of these into the Westerlands at some point.

If you like these ongoing posts of maps from my gaming past, stay tuned. There are still more in my binder and I plan to keep sharing them here. 

On a separate note, in case you missed it, I updated my final Halloween costume post with a couple of better pics taken by my friend, Dan.

Encounter Design: Party Planning

Two weeks ago, I ran the first real session of my second campaign. Because the session picked up just a few months after the climax of the first campaign, my players decided that the wanted to kick things off with a celebratory feast. Makes sense, given that they saved the world, and all.

Celebrations aren't new to this particular group of players. Their characters have thrown several shindigs over the course of their careers. In the past, however, its usually been just a matter of blowing some well-earned loot, bolstering their reputation, and the in-session commitment has involved a bit of flowery description and maybe ten minutes of our time.

This time was different. This time, they wanted something... several somethings, actually.

During a couple pre-campaign get togethers while the players were leveling, upgrading their base of operations and blowing their well earned loots on new shiny things, they hatched a plan for this party. They wanted to use it to advance a couple plot threads left over after the last campaign, and to hopefully kick off a couple more.

Specifically, they hoped to accomplish the following:

1. Reveal the secret royal identity of the party's rogue
2. Legitimize their ownership of their base of operations (gained while the land was in conflict)
3. See if they could find some insight into an ongoing demon-possession problem the party monk is dealing with
4. Look into purchasing an airship from the gnomes so they could go recover the remains of a dragon hoard they were forced to leave in a far off ruin during an earlier adventure
5. Look into opening a trade route via an abandoned pass in their territory to a neighboring country
6. Oh, and of course, endear themselves to the people

That's it, no bigs, right?

Well, of course there was no way I would let them reap the potential rewards to be gained from these various desires with just a bit of description and a few minutes time. There are big ticket items in there, and they would need to work for them! So, I decided to turn the celebration into a session-long encounter, complete with the very real possibility of horrible, embarrassing failure.

Here's how I did it:

Make-it of Days Past: Map, Amak Tor and Surroundings

I am on the road this week, so you are getting the travel edition of ROFL Initiative. I rolled for random encounters during my trip today and got one delayed flight, which lead to several extra hours tacked on to my travel time.

Anyway, mapmaster, Dyson Logos has been encouraging everyone on G+ to post mapping creations from their pasts. So I have. Here is another map from my very first game world, that I created back in high school. This map doesn't have quite the polish of the one I posted last week. My river placement and coloring are much sloppier.

One thing that is interesting about this map is that the place names really show the influence that David Eddings was having on my high school self. The heavy use of "K"s in the place names on this map indicates that this is bad country. 

In other news, if you have ever wondered what it takes to start up a video game company, I recommend you check out my buddy Charles' blog. He's been producing games for the likes of Microsoft and Sony for over a decade, but set out on his own recently to start his own company. His blog is tracking the earliest stirrings of his newly full time company. If you're interested in reading about what it takes to get into games AS IT HAPPENS, I highly recommend you check out his shizzle... and his blog.

I've got more maps, more costume updates and a recap/how-to for running an encounter centered on a feast or celebration all in the works, so stay tuned!

Make-its of Days Past: Map and Airship Diagram

I've been going through a bunch of boxes retrieved from my family's storage unit, and recently stumbled on the most amazing thing! My DM binder from THE VERY FIRST D&D CAMPAIGN I RAN BACK IN HIGH SCHOOL!! This is vintage gaming gold from the days of 2e folks! Of course if I recall, the campaign lasted all of two or three sessions, but the world-building was pretty epic.

Here is a map and an airship drawing that I scanned from the binder for just a little taste of the stuff I unearthed. Check 'em out! I'll probably upload other bits I find as I get my old notebook reorganized. Who knows, I may try to incorporate some of this stuff into my current game.