Monday 31 December 2012

The Little Book of Dungeons: Cave Geomorphs

As promised in my earlier post ...today sees the release of The Little Book of Dungeons: Cave Geomorphs.



This product features all of the maps from the 2012 Map-a-Monday project in one handy pdf booklet, as well as several additional geomorphs as an added bonus.

Like its predecessor, the booklet costs just $1 over on RPGNow and DriveThruRPG.

2012 Map-a-Monday (week 53)


Well here it is ...the last map of the 2012 Map-a-Monday project...

...and since this final map marks the end of the project (as I'm sure 105 geomorphs over two years is enough for most people) I've decided to finish on a large (double size) map:



And there you have it, 52 dungeons drawn in 2011, and 53 caves in 2012 ...and I somehow managed to not lose my mind in the process :) (though I may have been a little crazy to attempt such a thing in the first place).

So, I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who has visited the blog/website/G+ page over the past year, and I hope that the Map-a-Monday project has been interesting to follow, and (more importantly) a useful resource for my fellow gamers.



Note that a pdf booklet containing all of these geomorphs should be available for $1 over on RPGNow/DriveThruRPG a little later on in the day -  which will also contain several bonus maps as a little added extra for those folks that decide to pick it up.

Monday 24 December 2012

Saturday 22 December 2012

Age of Shadow pre-gen's & wiki


PRE-GENS

While converting a couple of the AoS pre-generated characters over to 'epic' PCs (as featured in the campaign guide), I noticed a couple of minor errors on one or two of the sheets.

So, while I was at it, I've gone ahead and updated all of the pre-gens, and have given them names more befitting the AoS setting (which also marries them up with the characters that appear in the little narratives of the campaign guide).

I've also thrown in a couple of extras - bringing the total number of pre-gens (or NPCs if you prefer to use them as such) up to a full dozen ...all of which are listed below:

Amalia (female human)
Arothel (female elf)
Berezan (male dwarf)
Darothan (male elf)
Galanill (male human with elf lineage)
Hardwin (male human)
Khomal (male dwarf)
Linza (female human with elf lineage)
Lothar (male human)
Othmar (male human)
Rothallon (male elf)
Shethari (female dwarf)

Note that these pre-gens can be downloaded freely from THIS PAGE of the Age of Shadow website.

WIKI

I'd also like to mention that The Age of Shadow wiki now contains all of the skills, spells, and monster stat-blocks from the main rule book.

It's still a bit of a work in progress, but it's finally starting to shape up into something usable :)



Monday 17 December 2012

2012 Map-a-Monday (week 51)

It's Monday again ...and that means another little map:


Sunday 16 December 2012

Experimenting with the Roll 20 virtual tabletop


After hearing good things about the (browser based) Roll20 virtual tabletop, I thought I would have a little play around with it today - and I have to admit that it seems rather nice.

However, it did take a while for me to figure out how to get the inbuilt grid to align with the grid of an existing image (as you basically have to work with a grid size of 70 pixels - or fractions thereof) - but once I'd figured it out, it wasn't that much of an issue.

You can also search for maps and tokens within Roll20 itself (which is pretty darn cool if you need something on the fly), as well as being able to upload a few images of your own (I think you're given 100MB of storage space with a free account). However, I'm pretty sure that you can't add maps or tokens from a specific URL (which was a bit of a letdown - especially since I've got loads in my photobucket account) - but I understand that you get more storage space with either of the subscription options.

A quick example using one of my wilderness maps and a couple of basic tokens.


I also had a few problems when trying to set up and use a basic character sheet (as it kept rolling a skill test multiple times for some reason), and since I'm only testing it out with a free account I sometimes have to wait for a 15 second counter to run down before it will load (which isn't really much of an issue) - but other than that it's not too bad at all.

I particularly like how the GM can switch between several different map windows without it having any effect on the map that the players are viewing (as the latter is toggled separately with its own little 'bookmark' icon). I also like how easy it is to add and modify little extras to each character/monster token - like a HP track that only the GM can see, different coloured markers to indicate various effects, and so on. And if I ever wanted to add a bit of ambient music or the occasional sound effect, then the jukebox feature might come in handy too.

But for me, the most useful features have to be the 'fog of war' (for masking off areas of the map that the players are yet to explore), and the little ruler tool that not only allows you measure the distance from one square to another (thus eliminating the need to count squares for ranges, movement, etc.), but also acts a great tool for determining line of sight.

Obviously there are some features that I haven't tinkered with yet (or I'm yet to discover), but on the whole it seems like a handy little tool ...and one that I'd gladly use if I was running an online game.

Monday 10 December 2012

2012 Map-a-Monday (week 50)

Here's the last of the 'cave corner' pieces:


...and only 3 more Mondays to go until the end of this year's project!

Monday 3 December 2012

2012 Map-a-Monday (week 49)

Here's the first map for December:


I'm just going to do one more of these corner tiles, and then see out the rest of the year with the more usual size/shape of geomorph.