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.

Maps from the Past: Grade School Project

Among the many remnants of my past recovered from my family's storage unit awhile back was this map of an island that I did for some long-forgotten grade school project. It has a grade on the back (it's good), but I had no idea this map even existed until I pulled it out of a musty old folder. I have no idea what the assignment was, but judging by the thoroughness, I suspect I took to cartography with gusto.

The map is clearly contemporary, with airports and railroads. All of the major features are named. Yet the islands are nameless... Spooky... It might be fun to set a modern adventure in this little world, or re-skin it for Eberron or something similar. Also, my childhood spelling was clearly not as good as I remember it being.

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.

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.

Mapping Habits: Cartographic Zoolander

Current Game

High School Game

As I was poring over the recovered maps, notes and drawings from my recently rediscovered high school gaming binder, I noticed something interesting. The map of my current game world bears an uncanny resemblence to the nearly 20 year-old world map from my very first game! Both maps feature:

• A western ocean 
• A main coastling running north-south
• Clusters of islands off the coast 
• A verdant central landmass  
• A large mountain range that wraps from the north around along the eastern edge of the map 
• A desert on the eastern slope of the main mountain range
• A smaller coastal mountain range

As I thought about this situation further, I started to also notice uncanny similarities in other major fantasy settings. While these settings may not have all of the features mentioned above, they all include a prominent western ocean, and often several of the other features. Take a look at the following maps and tell me there isn't a striking family resemblence!

Tolkien's Middle Earth

The Sword Coast from The Forgotten Realms

The Kingdoms of the West from the Belgariad

Terry Brooks' Shannara

Robert Jordan's world from the Wheel of Time

Brian Jacques' Mossflower

IT'S THE SAME FACE!

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS! Why!? Why do so many of the characteristics in these maps overlap? What compels all of these various authors, myself included to assign similar spatial structures to their worlds? I have a couple possible theories...

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.

Layers of Places Past: Creating Ruins with Purpose

The BIGGEST Henge in the WORLD!

This is yet another post for CampaignMastery's Location blog carnival! Hope you enjoy!

Today, I am going to elaborate on an excellent suggestion from Realmwright on my previous post. I am going to talk a bit about why ruined locations show up where they do, and how their past might inform their present desolation.

The fantasy genre in general, and fantasy games in particular, spend a lot of time focusing on places from the past. Authors like Tolkien and Terry Brooks build their worlds around elaborate histories of rise and ruin. Characters in videogame and tabletop RPGs spend much of their time poking through lost catacombs and ruined castles. The thing is, all that was old was new at one time, and when it was, these ancient places likely served a purpose.

I have a love-hate relationship with many dungeon maps, especially those which follow an old-school aesthetic. Maps are a lot of fun to look at in general, to imagine what a place or space really looks like based on its top-down representation, and old school dungeon maps have an elegant simplicity about them. The problem is, they often seem to be a tangle of rooms and corridors built for no discernible reason!

Now, where the heck is the bathroom?

Sure, the person who dreamed up the dungeon, always says there's a purpose. The map above is clearly a temple of the ancient Blue Oyster Cult. The architecture of Blue Oys is often characterized by its meandering lines and maddening lack of doors in places where they should exist. Archaeologists believe the structure was designed to amplify the sound of the cowbells used in the cult's mysterious rituals.

Seriously, though, who builds like this!? And "insane wizards" is an answer that you can get away with exactly once in your game! I'm looking at you, Undermountain!

This kind of random dungeon layout, while interesting to look at in a circuit board kind of way, really drives me nuts. If you haven't read it yet, Bartoneus, over at Critical Hits has created one of my absolute favorite blog series, called The Architect DM, which is all about creating fantasy designs with a purpose and is a useful way to counter the random dungeon sprawl. I highly recommend you read it, bookmark it, and reference it often when creating your own locations.

When I approach the design of a ruined structure, I always try to start before it was a ruin. I ask myself the following questions:

Make-it Monday: Map, Elven Museum

This post is yet another entry in this month's Campaign Mastery location blog carnival.

Hey hey, map fans! Look at what we have here! Some of you who started following during April's Mapstravaganza mentioned that you wanted some more. Well, I broke out the ol' Prismacolor markers this weekend and drew you up something nice!

This map represents an ancient, ruined elven museum that I ran my players through in my game. I really dug the idea of running a Night at the Museum-style adventure, and when playing in a setting where magic is a reality, it doesn't take a lot to apply it to the "exhibits come alive" trope. Read on to learn a little more about how things were set up in my game, or get a blank copy of the map here.

Make-it Monday: A to Z Compilation Books

One of the big reasons for using maps as my A to Z theme was to build a collection of stock locations for use in my game. For this week's Make-it Monday, I decided to compile all of my hand drawn originals, along with printouts of the parchment-textured finals into two artist portfolios. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a portfolio at my local art store with enough pages to include everything in one volume. Still, I am pleased with how things turned out.

The old label maker comes in handy once again

Here's the interior layout turned to a couple of my favorites from the challenge.

Tucked away snug on my RPG shelf.

I don't know that I've ever shown this, but this is my RPG bookshelf all within arms reach of my GM spot.
The plastic bins on the bottom two shelves are all packed with minis.

There are a few leftover pages in each portfolio, so I may work up a title page and table of contents for each. It's really not necessary, but it would look cool.

Collapse on the Couch and Reflect

This is my reflection post for the 2013 April A to Z Challenge.

I would like to begin by welcoming everyone to my non-Challenge blog. I feel like blog personalities change slightly when not under the pressure of A to Z. Like getting home from work, or a fancy dinner party with a bunch of strangers. After A to Z, the blog's shoulders relax, it kicks off its shoes, cracks open a beer and maybe lets out a little fart or something. You get to see it when it is not trying to be "on". Sometimes that change is a little different from the vibe given off during the A to Z.

This past A to Z was all about maps for me, but ROFL Initiative is more than a place for pretty maps. Yes, I draw on occasion, but this space is mostly a celebration of all things nerdy. Of things that would make jocks of the 1980s want to beat me up. I would elaborate further, but this past week, Wil Wheaton posted a blog, a video and a picture that also happen to sum up what I strive for in a far more eloquent way than I could on my own. 

You'll be Safe Here, by Dryponder

If you don't follow Wil already, you should check his stuff out. You might like what he has to say. In the mean time, welcome. I'm glad you're here.

On to the reflecting!

This was my third year participating in the A to Z Challenge. In a lot of ways this year was wildly successful.

• My visible followers grew by 50% over the course of the month.
• I smashed my previous monthly page-view record by 200% and broke 10,000 pageviews for the first time.*
• By hand drawing my maps, I actually got myself away from my computer in the evenings and avoided the temptation to work on personal projects during work time.
• I wound up with a collection of stock maps that I have already begun putting to use in my D&D game. This past Monday, my players battled a bunch of undead beasties at an altar.
• Using maps as my theme helped prevent me from phoning in my posts while in the thick of it. In years past, I've always been tempted to just get a blog done regardless of how crappy it was. Not so with the maps.
• I added quite a few new blogs to my feed reader.

 *This was largely due to a wonderful fellow blogger posting about my project on Reddit, which led to it trending as high as #3 on the RPG boards for a day. It'll be interesting to see where things stand post spike.

However, there were also a lot of things that continue to frustrate me about the Challenge, or at least make me pause and say, "I wonder…"

• I had a heck of a time making it to other people's blogs.
• When I did find time, I found myself wondering if I should go to new blogs, or revisit the ones I was really digging. I definitely felt like I didn't have time to do both.
• It generally took longer to make the maps than it otherwise would to write a blog, so more of my time was consumed by the challenge.

Very soon I will add this year's posts to my A to Z archive page. If you would like to check out my entries from years past, you can find them there in convenient lists! Do I think the Challenge was worth it this year? Yes! Will I do it again next year? Not really sure yet. I probably wont know for a while now.

Oh, if you didn't get enough alphabetizing during April, check out Realmwright, who has decided to run a May to Z blog challenge!

Z is for Ziggurat

This is it! The final map of my April A to Z mapstravaganza and my third successful completion of the A to Z challenge. The ziggurat, a mighty monument with a lot of steps that take a lot of effort to climb. What lies in the chamber at the top? Steps down... perhaps to adventure!

Big thanks to everyone who joined me on this A to Z challenge! I found many new blogs to follow and it looks like I attracted many new readers. I will probably take a break from posting... perhaps doing a wrap-up on Friday.

For those of you who joined for the challenge, the mapstravaganza represented an escalation of my New Year's resolution, which was to make a thing a week. I intend to continue with my make a thing a week challenge. The things I come up with get posted every Monday as part of my ongoing Make-it Monday series. Some will be maps. Some will be drawings. Some will be crafts. Some I haven't thought of yet.

Okay, get your printable ziggurat here.

I'm going to stop typing now.

Geoff

Y is for Yeti's Cave

High in the frozen mountains, perhaps near the icy chasm, a yeti has made its lair in a secluded cave. The cave floor is littered with the leavings of the yeti's hunts. Perhaps the beast has discarded some unknown treasures from unwary travelers it has slain. Or if your in the market for a nearly complete dire elk skeleton...

Just one more day left in the A to Z Challenge!

Get a printable version of the yeti's cave here.

X is for Xill's Nest

One of the beauties of D&D is there are tons of things that make use of obscure letters like X! The Xill is a race of 4-armed lizard-like beings that live on the ethereal plane. They are evil raiders who wait in ambush for creatures on the material plane to pass by. They then cross over the planar boundary, subdue their prey and drag them back to the ethereal plane. Xill reproduce by implanting their eggs in their victims (Alien or wasp-style) When the eggs hatch, the Xill larvae devour their host from the inside.

The Xill nest takes advantage of their ethereal nature. It is located on the ethereal plane next to a material road where prey is plentiful. The brood chamber and that of the Xill leader have no doors. This allows ethereal Xill to pass while trapping material beings within.

With that, we are done with the final full week of the challenge. Just two more posts to go!
Get a printable version of the Xill's nest here.

W is for Waterfront

or wharf... or whatever.

I'd like to give a big shoutout to Dyson Logos and Dante for posting about my A to Z mapstravaganza on various sites yesterday. Apparently the Reddit RPG forum got ahold of it and my traffic spiked to the point that I got a month's worth of traffic in a single day!

Today's map depicts a seedy fantasy waterfront, complete with vikingesque longship in honor of the Swedish invasion my site underwent yesterday. I love the potential weirdness that can take place in dockside neighborhoods. The combination of ships coming in from exotic locales, and ships headed out carrying folks with places to go, folks with people to flee and folks just looking for adventure makes for a crab pot of excitement just waiting to boil over.

Speaking of crab pots, I once worked up an in-game dockside bar called Peggy's. It was run by a dwarf with a peg leg. He had lost his leg in a battle with a giant crab, but managed to take one of the crab's claws in vengeance. He felt fine about it until he learned that crabs grow their claws back. Now ol' Peggy makes regular pilgrimages to re-take his nemisis' claw. The walls of his bar are festooned with the fruits of his labor.

At some point, I would also like to create a seaside bar run by catfolk. It would be called the Crusty Starfish. If you own a cat, I'm sure you get it.

Oh, also, now my 20% gray pen is starting to fade, so I only used it for small bits of shading. I did the shady sides of the rooftops after the fact in Photoshop. Do I go to the art store again or try to get through these last three maps?

Get a printable version here.

V is for Village Square

It all starts here. The ubiquitous village has been the jumping off point for countless D&D games. My campaign started in a tavern in a village much like this one. Cliche? about as much as you can get, but it wasn't for my players who had never played before that.

Just four more days left!

Get a printable version here.

U is for Undercity

Beneath every city lies a world of secrets where things discarded by accident or intention go to find new purpose. In the sewers, theives and the destitute can find refuge from judgment and prying eyes.

U is also for "Uh oh, out of ink." My 50% gray marker I bought specifically for the A to Z challenge ran out of ink partway into shading this drawing. I had to continue with the 80% gray marker and then adjust the curves in Photoshop. It's kind of cool that I managed to draw a pen dry in less than a month, but it does mean I'll be stopping at the art store before moving on to V.

Get a printable version here.

T is for Thunder Vale

Thunder Vale is a valley high in the Cloud Peak Mountains, named for the booming echoes made by two waterfalls pouring over a cliff at its southern end. The stronghold featured yesterday is located atop the cliff in Thunder Vale. In my game world, the stronghold and vale were given to my players to serve as their base of operations. When they found it, the stronghold was in partial ruins, and a group of refugees had settled nearby fleeing a plague (of the zombifying sort) that was sweeping the land. The players have begun to fix up the keep and many of the refugees have chosen to stay, beginning to establish agriculture and herding within the vale.

Get a printable version here.

S is for Stronghold

Welcome to A to Z week four! I went waaaaaay overboard on the first map of the week and ended up doing four maps. One for each level of a simple stronghold, from the basement to the top of the guard towers. This map is unfurnished due to the sheer amount of time it took me just to finish the structure.

R is for Rookery

We have reached the end of week 3 of the A to Z challenge, and I'm still hanging in there. For this week's finale, I give you the rookery for the Royal Turimori Griffoners! Just one more full week and a couple extra days! I may deviate from my original list for the next couple maps... not completely sure yet.