Across the Third Dimension!

Admittedly, I'm about a day behind on my posting, but for good reason! I had an idea all set to go for yesterday, but then got distracted by the ultimate love/hate of my gaming experience --map making. My love for dreaming up new worlds and putting them on paper has been going strong ever since my 5th grade bestie, Jim and I acted the part of two bizarre deities and dreamed up the world of "Boink"... because what else is a 9-year old going to name his penultimate creative act? We had countries, and creatures, and political drama and drew it all out on a giant, poster-board world map.

Not good enough! At full res, some moutains overlap the lakes!

Well, my love of mapping never went away, it just ran face first into my perfectionist adult self. THEN, I discovered the wonder that is the Cartographer's Guild and Perfectionism wedded Competitive Nature to become the ultimate tiger-parents to my creative inner child... I want to please them, but I also want to play video games and make out with my girlfriend! GAH!

So, anyway, I ended up spending much of my day off rummaging through the tutorials over at the CG in an effort to come up with a satisfying world map for my current game. The image to the right is my previous attempt from several months ago, which my tiger ego (or would it be superego?) finds completely lacking in merit.

Sudden shift of subject!

My basement apartment

In happier news, I saw this TOTALLY AWESOME blog post by the new contributor over at NewbieDM.com. SheDM lays out a how-to for building clear, elevated, stackable grid mats for taking tactical gaming into the third dimension!
I too have toyed with similar construction projects, with varying degrees of success. While I love building multi-level sets for my players, I often run into problems because overhead lighting does not adequately penetrate elevated sections made from foam core and cardstock. Also, I have a bad habit of trying to make the elevations to scale (1" = 5').

She DM's penthouse

Given 10' ceilings, that's not a lot of room to get your hands in to push pieces around.

SheDM's use of cake pillars and glass/plex just might solve both of those problems!

So, it looks like my tiger-ego has signed me up for yet another task that I must now strive to be the best at... sigh...