Production Progress

Well, I have some artwork to share. Just a bit and not all of it for POP-001. Since I do not have much time to draw, I have to dedicate some time to practice. As spring goes to summer, I have even less time. To that end, I am pushing my release date to the middle of August. Can't be helped so I updated the countdown. 

Anyway, the main feature of this project is a cenote. In order to make the art work for me, I broke it down into layers on paper so I could scan different parts as different layers. I can preserve my ability to change things up without resorting to "Fix it in post" crap.  

The first image is the extent of the waters. As you can see there is a small island with a cave in the image. I haven't decided if I will do color or not, but I might. The two odd features in the center are holes in the roof which provide access to the cen. There is no other way into this area.  

In order to get down to the water and rock shelf around it, characters will have to navigate a series of wooden platforms. There are two paths down, which are loosely based on both the movie Goonies and several amusement park attractions. 

This area would have been a daily trip for most people from the temple surroundings. Life-saving water plus a cool and relaxing place to hang out would have drawn every villager. The platforms are connected by ramps, but on one side there is a slide, and on the other is a floating platform for resting.

You can click each image to enbiggen them. 

One image will be overlayed on the other but there may be special cases where I want to separate them. A bonus map might be one cause. I was thinking of using the same art as a tiny dungeon. I will have to redress the walls, but it's doable. 

I've been practicing with several other images to get used to inking with new pens. 

Many of these spaceships are copies of stuff from the Dynomo Joe comic series, while the last two are of a spaceship I designed for my Star Smuggler campaign.

This ship is called The Waterbuck and is nearly twice as larger as The Antelope class ship. When designing it, I thought about what a next-generation ship would have and would not have. This ship has the ability to mount 3 turrets. The one turret in the nose of the ship can be fired by the pilot as he or she flies. The other two need crew. The Waterbuck also has an advanced medical bay.  

What it does not have is a stasis unit or any concealed compartments. 

It also comes with a larger shuttle that can be carried externally or in one of the cargo bays. This shuttle has its own fusion drive and life support, so it can carry much more than the old shuttles. Older shuttles can still be used but they must be carried inside a cargo bay. 

As time permits, I will write up the details of both these ships. 

The Temple of Light - Maps

Update: May 3, 2023. These maps will go into a new product called POP-001, Revenants of the Lost Temple. 

This temple complex is the work of an ancient people. The first map is of a traditional family abode. In the past, the tribe dug horizontal homes, as a means of collecting flint. 

As the people transitioned to a bronze age culture, they began the construction of the Temple of Light. The structure is a gleaming white, the effect was achieved with a decorative coating of quartz and flint. 

The Temple was a beacon of solidarity for the people, but it also proved to be a beacon for raiders. The pirates devastated the village proper, taking valuables and prisoners. The raiders returned seasonally to plunder the people. For a time, the villagers disbursed to escape the onslaught.

One day, several young children entered the Temple and discovered a pair of holes in the central hall leading to a deep natural cavern. When the chief was informed, he ordered a return to the old ways of digging pit homes under the Temple.

In a few months, the tribe had relocated under the Temple. By concealing the upper openings with floor tiles, the villagers were able to exact revenge when the raiders breached the Temple. The surviving pirates completed the turnabout with tales of a diamond-encrusted temple protected by spirits of the earth.

Epilogue:

The children discovered the leader of instability in the rock. Future generations will tell the story of a fortress of diamonds beneath the crystal blue waters of a cenote. The stone age villagers speak in hushed tones about the mighty Sea Mage sinking the fortress in anger for the king's refused tribute payments. Adventurers may find tablets of stone that tell of the powerful shaman who levitated the entirety of the Temple to allow her people time to escape the collapse into the waters below.

This series of maps are based on a mix of real-world places and cultures, Grime's Graves, Ancestral Puebloans and people of Teotihuacan in particular.

The Weird Unboxing - Gifts from the Past

I've made an effort to push past certain things that happened in the past two years, but I want to bring something up that I have been ignoring because it's strange and interesting. 

After the house fire, the ceilings fell down, revealing a stack of cardboard boxes we had in the attic. It was very odd because the attic entry was in the garage and the attic is over the house. These boxes were stuffed "way in the back", which corresponded to the center of the house where most of the destruction was. We had no idea what was in these boxes until Jack, our contractor got a ladder and recovered them. 

Well, having lost nearly everything, anything in the boxes would be surprising. 

Inside was my wife's Cabbage Patch Kid from when she was a child, 3 packets of photographs from right before our wedding, a cat carrier, a dishrack, a baby bathtub, and a few of other oddities of mine. Exactly how these cardboard boxes survived in the center of the house, where the ceiling collapsed is a total mystery to me. 

I'd like to detail the gaming things found in that box. 

The first is a paper, hand-drawn map from when I was in high school. I recall putting it away after spilling something on it. Back in the 90's the only way to fix such a thing would be a lightbox or tracing paper. In 2023, the magic of photo editing software can do this in seconds. 

This was one of my first campaigns with a good map and spilling Coke or coffee on it annoyed me to no end. I stuffed it in a box and tried to forget about it. I can't believe how easily this problem is fixed now. 

The map pairs nicely with the dozens of photos I found. In 2021, I made an effort to scan every photo I had and backed them up to the cloud. Boy, I am glad I did. We were vaguely aware that some photos were missing that we attributed to moving right after getting married. 

We were half right, they made the move... to the attic. 

I figure I can spend next weekend scanning like a nut. 

Next up are a series of Reaper minis in the package and a blister pack of Micro Machine Star Wars figures. The packages were at the very top of the box and suffered a lot of smoke damage. They probably protected the things underneath them. Once I disposed of the packaging, the figures looked (and smelled) brand new. The Star Wars figures are plastic and the Reaper figures are soft metal. I'm shocked that they survived at all. 

By way of comparison, I had a box of Battletech Archers (or Robotech Spartan, if you like,) in the basement. Oddly, some of them are super clean like they were never painted and others are slightly charred. Notice the damage to the arms. I liked to kitbash models and often replaced or repositioned an arm. The glue vaporized, leaving me with armless figures. 

Presumably, the arms fell off and were swept up as debris. Understandable considering how much of the first floor fell into the basement. 

I am not too worried about that. I've modded hundreds of Battel Mechs and I have new material to work with. If you zoom in on the Grey mecha, (top row, second from the right), you can probably see the wood grain on the left arm despite the painting. That's because it's balsa wood. 

A while ago, I discovered a different material for figure mods: soapstone. I am going to fix all of these figures up in the coming weeks and I can't tell you how excited I am to try this new material and method. Soapstone is super soft and easy to carve and cut with hand tools. But relative to a metal figure, it is about as durable. 

Soapstone is ironically fireproof.

I am so done dwelling on what has happened. But there is this odd comfort in remembering what DID NOT happen. We all survived to get to this point of moving forward. Finding this box was a sort of gift from the past. I look forward to putting these things right and I will probably post a lot of images as this little project progresses. 

Hex Redux

I have less than 2 months to get ready for my next campaign. That is judging by the countdown to the upper right. I cannot wait for these OSE books to come in. I am kind of at the whim of shipping. 

Thankfully, I have a bunch of set pieces ready to go. My main issue is organization. I pulled my hex tiles from of a pair of giant cardboard boxes, set them up, and then packed them away in a handful of clear plastic totes. 

As you can see to the right, they weren't very organized. Some of the smaller parts don't lend themselves to orderly packing. I haven't solved that problem yet but I will get to that someday, hopefully soon. 

I moved an extra table to the middle of the room so we have enough space to use them. Now in this demonstration, I set up as many tiles as I wanted. It was overkill and I wouldn't actually do that for gameplay. 

I have a nice wooden table with two leaves in it. The leaves allow my players some elbow room. I will have to get more chairs and maybe a rolling storage bin to help clear the clutter. 

One of the nice things about this set of tiles is the quick set up. Each piece has a slot for a biscuit cut into the edge. When wargaming, this feature is a must. Pushing figures and rulers around invariably shifts the tiles. 

Roleplaying games, not so much. A 2x2 or 3x3 section can be set up rapidly, usually while I am talking. The rough look makes the players to visualize the scenario from a homely display, with flaws and gaps filled in with imagination. Sometimes, when the players ask about certain flaws, I will pick their brains for what it could mean. 

My intention in using this sort of setup is to facilitate play, not create a complete world or map. I use some odd bits and pieces to display data. Blue paper is water, green cotton balls are trees, rocks... well, are rocks. 

I use a cord to mark out roads and paths. I can use a different color of cord for the path the players intend to take. This makes the situation interactive as the party can all work together to create the best plan. As more features become evident, I drop colored pieces of paper with notes. I have some colored plastic bits to highlight areas of note. We have cups of colored beads and blocks so players can drop things on the play surface for their own purposes. 

And of course, I can add in figures. 

Check out these images from around the table. 

At the end of the day, pack up easy. Before I clear up, I make sure to photograph the set up for my notes. 

As you can see a ridiculous amount of tiles fit in one small area of my basement, always ready to go. 

Once I start this campaign, I will keep you guys in the loop. 

Tinkering Again With Artwork

I am getting ready to revamp my Kobold's Folly book. I plan to recreate it as a full scale module. The image at the right is how I originally envisioned the Folly. 

The Kobolds accessed the Folly from a cave system below. I find that the style of Worldographer is not up to the task and I am looking for an alternative style. It's wonderful for producing battle mats and large scale maps, but not so hot with cave systems. 

I'd like the base the system of caves on Carlsbad Caverns. I've been reviewing maps and brochures of the place for weeks. The cavern under the Folly is much smaller than Carlsbad Caverns. 

I've also been looking at the art in DMGR1 Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide. This book is one of my favorite's even though it's technically e2 D&D. At the time of e2's launch, I didn't realize that it was a revamped system and was using willy nilly in my AD&D campaigns. I love the isometic projections in this book and would probably want to copy that style. 

My inclination is to go hand drawn, but not really hand drawn. The above was an experiment with my Wacom Bamboo using Gimp. 

Next up is just penwork. 

This style isn't bad, but I'm not so sure about color. 

I'd like to match this style if I could. It's close to the style in the Sourcebook above, while not an exact match.  

Terminal Cone of Negative Energy - What I Thought Instead of What I Should Have Done

Yesterday I posted about creating a map with a download of the HPS Cartography Kit. I love Nate's artwork. Well, that didn't work for a variety of reasons that seem to limited to the six inches of space between my ears. 

Ooo... that looks nice! 
I meant the interface and the tiles, not my map.

The HPS Cartography Kit is meant for Hex Kit, not Inkwell Idea's Worldographer. I wasn't going to let that stop me, I could just edit... 400+, 500+, 600+ images so that they fit in Worldographer. Then I started messing around with Inkscape, not to edit pictures but to freehand a map. 

Yeah. No. 

So, back to DriveThruRPG for a copy of Hex Kit. It made the most sense. If I'm going to review HPS Cartography Kit in the near future, I should have the actual software which it was designed for, which means I need Hex Kit. Which has the side benefit is one more review I can do. 

If you had a lot of patience, you could totally free hand a map with just tiles. Or you could edit one type of tile for a completely different type of software. The problem is I'm adjusting my insulin levels since a near disaster the middle of 2020 and I am now made of frantic energy and not a drop of patience. 

Did I mention it's week 4 of 2021 and I'm on Week 8 of reviews? It's the drugs, I swear. 

Speaking of problems that I have, I have my own product called "Hex Pack", I am really glad I researched that name not at all and luckily missed naming it "Hex Kit" like I've been calling it in my head since it first popped into my mind. I launched my Hex Pack back in April of 2020, so you can see how some of these things can collide. 

Anyway, maximum effort! More speed! 

I usually drop little hints about what I intend to review, but I usually don't offer links to products I haven't used, read, reviewed, etc. because I don't know how they will turn out. The links to DriveThru and Inkwell Ideas are a pretty good hint as to what I think of these products already. 

I do have one other hint, I had the worst time trying to figure out how to launch Hex Kit in Linux. So I reached out to the author and they gave me the answer in a couple of minutes or hours. Frantic energy, no difference between minutes... hours to me right now. Anyway, it's easy. 

Oh, what the heck?

All you need to do is open Hex Kit. It's right there! 

Yeah, Linux Terminal foo is required. The actual command is: 

or ./Hex\ Kit

Hmm... when was the last time I used a front slash anywhere? Don't know, but I can already see it's going to become a habitual thing. 

I wanted to review Hex Kit first then HPS Cartography Kit second, but software has a learning curve that no amount of drugs will fix. I really want to do these now, but it may take until March 2021. 

I did want to share the output of just a few minutes/hours of tinkering got me. 

And of course, that also leads to the heavy handed hint that great products come from authors who have excellent customer service and responsiveness to the most random and frantic questions. 

What I Should Be Doing vs. What I Am Doing

Yeah, it's one of those days. I realized that I wrote enough reviews to take a long break, perhaps until March. I've a lot of things downloaded from DriveThruRPG and Amazon to read in order to do even more reviews. But instead, I find myself thinking about maps for my Peninsula of Plenty campaign. 

Yes, I'm going to get that back on the table. And I want a better map than this: 

Or this: 

Well, it's happening. And I'm making a better map. 

Recently, I downloaded Domain Building by Third Kingdom Games, Seafoot Games' The Abandoned City of Nexus 20x30 Battlemap, and reviewed both How to Hexcrawl and Hexcrawl Basics which all got the brain warmed up to the idea of maps and hexcrawling.

It only took a little more to get me moving. First, was a recollection of the Tabula Peutingeriana, a Roman schematic of the Empire's road system. It is not to scale, but it displays all of the major cities and roadways a traveller might need to cross the whole Empire from Britain to the edge of India. It's a parchment scroll, 21 feet long! Check out the link for the Wikipedia entry. It's amazing! The crazy thing is squashed and distorted yet still an accurate rendering of the roads. 

The second part of the push was a combination of a framed copy of Nate Treme's Moldy Unicorn plus a download of the HPS Cartography Kit I meant to review. Review, hell. I'm using and abusing it. I'm making a giant map of the Peninsula of Plenty in that same scale - 11 inches by 21 feet. One inch (or hex) is six miles, which translates to 1500  miles of roads and hexcrawling. 

 

I love the style of maps this hex pack creates. The pack is advertised as containing 400+ tiles, but it's more like 500 or 600. Go check it out. It's a steal. 

Update - Two new views of the work in progress.  

Mom, Dad... I'm in prison, and I don't like it.

This morning, I busted out some pens and graph paper to come up with the next scenario for my Star Wars campaign. This post is somewhat applicable for other campaign types, as you can grab the maps for just about anything. The links below go to the worldbuilding and character information about this campaign, in case this is the first you are hearing of it. 

In my worldbuilding post, I mentioned many names. Bergel was the Neimoidian viceroy in charge of the planet but he is playing a very sideways game of "not it". He knows the Empire or the Rebels will be paying him a visit very soon and he doesn't want to be the guy in charge when it happens. 

He set up the Tactical Droid, Green-5 as the pasty when whoever arrives has an obvious target to kill. He ordered the droid to protect the planet and Bergel charged him to work with the leadership of the planet. Additionally, Bergel has a Neimoidian bounty hunter, La'ow Houd keeping tabs on Green-5 and the leadership. His intention is to make sure that Green-5 puts up a bit of a fight, but not enough to get the planet glassed. Bergel is going to play the deposed leader card and say that Green-5 took over. 

Green-5 is pretty smart when it comes to tactics. He drew up a plan to kill everyone on the planet but since he's been ordered to work with the Lord and Lady of the planet this idea has been ditched. The Tankerenians are treating him like a living being which is causing him to wildy exceed his programing. He should have gone into safe mode a couple of times already but keeps lumbering on.  

In light of the riots and a party of unknown adventurers, he is in high threat mode. He has negotiated a plan to keep everyone safe. The Lord and Lady of Tankeren have granted him plot of land that contains a ruins. Green-5 started construction of a prison to incarcerate the rioters as he catches them. Currently, they are mostly held in place, which is very dangerous for his droids. They are not jailers or wardens. 

Bergel hates this idea. For one, the prison is far too close to the Capital making both a military target. Second, if anyone attacks the prison, it will be a bloodbath. This will cause the Tankerenians to fight with anyone that slaughters the prisoners. Bergel is an opportunist and has been exploiting the citizens, he doesn't mean to get them all kill or enslaved. This is exactly what will happen if the prison is completed. Someone will come to knock it out. 

Bergel is playing both sides. He set Green-5 on his course but also has La'ow Houd keeping eyes on him. La'ow has set his ship down near the prison site and has been evaluating the situation. He has a mandate to sabotage it any way he can. He doesn't have the means to destroy it himself, but he does know of a party of adventurers (click here for their character sheets) who might get the job done. In a perfect world, these adventures will do double duty: free the prisoners and destroy the facility. 

Last week, I posted some towers. I really liked these designs and incorporated them into the maps. When I drew them, I was thinking medieval towers but the slender design lends itself to sci-fi. 

The prison has 16 towers to jail prisoners. Green-5 is pretty sharp and he tried to eliminate as many problems with jailing people. Each tower is 6 levels or 22 meters high and 9 meters wide. They were carved right out of the local bedrock, so it should be impossible for prisoners to dig their way out. 

The bottom floor is the bathroom and showers. There are no windows on this floor. The next 4 floors are accommodations for the incarcerated. Each level does have a narrow slot window, but is far too small for an adult to crawl out of. The roof is for recreation. Prisoners are dropped off on the roof by a floating platform. There are no droid guards inside the towers.

The Tactical Droid has invented a variation of an oubliette, and the prisoners know it. Several smaller prisoners, mostly women and children have managed to get out of the towers and explore. They have not found a way to breach the walls, so they have not escaped. When they do figure out a way, they are going to destroy this place. This keeps the prisoners from fighting with each other. Wrecking this place is their game plan. 

I must apologize now for the orientation of the prison. The prison towers are on the south side of the map, which means that if I wish to continue this tour of the facilities, the maps will be upside down. 

South Ward (Prison Area)

In the map above, you can see the tower arrangements. The guns that point inwards are heavy stunners. The outward pointing guns are light and heavy weapons for taking down infantry and armor. The dotted lines are the gates. Imbedded in the ground are metal posts meant to stop vehicles while the gate doors slide sideways. They don't stop people, that's what the gates are for. At the bottom of the image are two ramps that lead to the fortress. 

As you can see from the arrangement, the towers block lines of fire. Green-5 believes that a force could come down the ramps and sweep up anyone trying to escape. He's never seen a prison riot before. 

The walls are hollow. There is a 1 meter wide and high tunnel through them, so Destroyer Droids can deploy from cover via secret openings. On the top towers of the prison side are two domes so that the Destroyer Droids can rally before rolling out into the yard. These tunnels are also how droids reach the weapon emplacements in the tower. 

The Command Section

The command area is much more reasonably designed. On the right bottom corner is the barracks area. Since only droids are station here, not much room is needed to store them. The towers along the perimeter have heavy weapons. The box like structures are missile launchers, however, they lob missiles upward. They cannot target anything inside the perimeter, not even the prison area. 

In the courtyard on the left are several faint pencil lines to mark where ships should land. This is also where the hovering platform is stored. These are not permanent marks and are moved, added and removed as needed. The faint pencil work at the top of the image is a duplication of the prison area so I can match the two halves of the map together. 

For the next session, La'ow will alert the players to the problem the prison represents to the people of this planet. He will be helpful, but not really helpful. The players will arrive before the entire structure is complete, they will see how the towers are constructed and gain useful recon information before making their assault. 

Towers - Tiny Maps

I started drawing a few towers this week. They came out pretty well.

The first is a 35 foot tall tower, meant to be placed on exterior wall. The exterior is on the left and the interior of the walls is to the right. The first floor has no windows, just a door. The door opens inward while a pair of barred doors open outward. 

I haven't filled in the walls because I don't know what pattern I want to use. The walls are tapered from bottom to top so this is not a good design against siege engines. The bottom might hold, but the top could be collapsed by catapults. 

I drew no interior designs, not even stairs, so I can adapt them for different purposes. 

The next tower is 55 feet tall. Again the walls are tapered. This design is basically the same as the tower above, except the barred doors open inwards.

I like the details on the doorway at ground level, except I made a mistake. The scale in the profile view is one square equals 10 feet, while the side view is one square equals 5. The door is a massive 10 feet wide. As you can see from the tiny doodle on the upper right, I tried to fix that by making the door multifunction with two sally doors.

Additionally, I didn't like the way the windows looked. I changed styles and neither one looks very good. Plus, with the tower being so tall, there has to be a way to reach the walls. 

That won't do, so I decided to redraw it.  

In my third iteration, I came up with some ideas I liked such as the door leading to the top of the walls on the 4th level. I forgot to fix the door on the first level. Actually, this is the point where I realized the door was so big. I added some arrow loops next to the ground floor door. 

I think that I can fix the door digitally, but maybe I'll just redraw that level or the whole tower tonight. 

I really like this design and I'll use it to work up some designs in both Inkscape and Worldographer. 

Testing New Tech with Sketches

I bought a new phone, a Moto G Stylus and new Kindle Fire then started working at a place where neither are allowed. That's ok, it gives me time to draw. 

The first image was a warm up for pen work. Just some designs. Perhaps, they are windows, dias* or portals. (* I'm not sure if the plural is "dia", "dias" or "diases".) 

The next two pictures are of towers. Each tower is drawn in profile and then top down. The profile is 1 square equals 10 feet while the overhead view is in 5 feet per square. 

i didn't like how the arrow slits looked and completely forgot the side door. 

These towers are strange because the exterior of the castle is to left and there is no windows on the ground floor. I need to draw in stairs next. I love the detail on the doors. There is a main door plus two gates to bar it from opening. In this rendition, the fifth floor has no windows at all. 

Both need a top floor.

Anyway, it's late at night. That might explain the strange pink cast to the images. I didn't use a flash.