Expanding the View - The Town of Manteva

I am continuing to work on this town, I think I have a name: Manteva. I am looking at some old maps of Italy and this one jumped out at me. Maybe it's misspelled, I don't know. 

We are looking at the southeastern edge of the town. I stopped the game in order to come up with some ideas for the flavor and layout of the town. I wasn't planning on a walled village, but it looks nice. 

Walls present some problems for generated maps. Computers are good at detecting collisions, but poor at the layout. Comparing this map to my last post, you'll notice some changes. First, there needs to be dead space around the walls, guard houses, and towers, otherwise, those bits don't work correctly. Providing cover to the enemy is bad, as is providing kindling for fire inside the walls. So, most of the trees have been pushed away from the structures. 

Stores, taverns, and inns should be near an entrance. Coopers and stables are good businesses to have near the gates. I like the Roman idea of bathhouses and outhouses, so this town has a couple. Furriers and smiths also appear near the gates. 

More interior to the town are market houses. These buildings have living space and shop space in the same structure. There is a public barn used for foodstuffs near the entrance. More than a few blocks contain public or private gardens. It looks like farmland, but really these would be a bit decorative and limited to herbs and small eatables like tomatoes. 

Since this is a fantasy town, the characters will find more than a couple of stationeries. Stationery shops sold books and paper. They were "stationary" because they didn't move on market day. The goods were too fragile. In addition to these types of establishments, there is also an Illuminator who would do the art for books. As a hidden feature, these shops are great for Clerics and Magic users. 

I've been labeling these so I can go back and populate each structure with a description. I can't wait to finish this town and move on to the next. 

PS: You can pick up a copy of Old School Essentials Characters, Magic, Monsters, and Treasures on DriveThruRPG. You can also try Wordlographer before you buy.  

Lighter Reading - What I Do on Wednesdays

I'm reading for my next couple of reviews. I like to print stuff out for reading. Today, I fired off The Lake of Abominations -- Hex 17.23 by Third Kingdom Games (Todd Leback) to the printer. Since I have Mr. Leback's Into the Wild coming in the mail, I was going to use this as a model for a hexcrawling module. 

Yeah... I don't know about a hexcrawl module, either. 

Anyway, this funny thing keeps happening. My printer insists that blue is a grey scale color. 

I should have printed in color, because the whole thing is packed with color maps. But in grey scale, my printer keeps coloring the black lines of the art in blue. I couldn't do that if I tried. I actually like it a lot.  

Wacky technology. 

Anyway, back to the module idea. I'd like to revamp both my Kobold's Folly and Compass Rose Inn mini-setting maps into full blown modules. It will probably take months.

I also have a third idea for a map of Miledown, another setting placed in the middle of my Peninsula of Plenty map. Miledown is a small town in a valley. I already have the cover art ready to go. It's just a matter of writing... you know... a description, a story and an adventure.

Little things.  

Let's hope this comes out
less phallic looking.

Of course, since I am going to need maps, I am updating the Peninsula map to a standard 6-mile hex map. When I started out, I was just blue skying and didn't have the scales right. This will fix that. I have an area 150 hexes by 60 hexes planned. About the size of Italy, which the campaign is based on.

One upside to this is I now have a name for the Human Capital: "Rhoom". I wanted run with a counter-factual idea that Remus instead of Romulus survived the foundation of the city. 

Guess what? That doesn't work because Rome was named before Remus and Romulus and "Romulus" means "a man of Rome". Crazy ancient mythology. 

I decided to just steal from Shakespeare: 

That her wide walls encompassed but one man?

Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,

In Shakespeare's time, "room" and "Rome" were pronounced differently and rhymed, making the pun complete. So with a little poetic license the capital is now called "Rhoom".  

I started with the Lake Potamus area and moved out from there. This lake is squeezed between forests, mountains and savanna lands. It's named for the Hippos that live in the region. 

This detail allows me to have chains of forts and fortified houses on the plains. They are fortified against the wildlife and not actual invaders. It's kind of handy because it keeps the Rhoom Empire and Elven Dwarven Combine in a cold war in the area. It's hard to travel the savanna without encountering beasts. 

This is the valley of Miledown.  

It's less thought out right now, but coming along nicely. Since it is a hidden vale, they don't have many visitors. It doesn't look unusual to visitors but it does have several mysteries. 

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. 

Rough Cut - Beacon Harbour

 I inserted my new longboat like houses and roughed out the walls. The tower evolved a bit but I like it. 

Not bad for a quick map in Worldographer. What I do not like is the sharp lines around the cobbles and dirt areas. I'll have to fix that. I also have an issue where the edges of the boat houses are too light. It gives them a "glow" that I don't like. 

The area has morphed into something living from such a simple pencil drawing. Oddly, I noticed that I accidentally changed the name from Banner Harbour to Beacon Harbour. I kind of like the new name. 

Bit Off More Than I Can Chew - Beacon Harbor

As mentioned before, I wanted to do a map of The Fortress at Titan's Gate. 

I selected this tiny part to get started in Worldographer. I figured each square was 10 feet across. These structures are massive.

And then found I didn't have the right icons. Plus, the icons available don't seem to match the style. Well, Worldographer has standards to make your own icons. So off we go to painting with GNU Image Manipulation Program. 

This is one of those viking type longboat houses. I only need one because the software will let me rotate and scale as needed. It's rough, but coming along. 

Tinkering with Worldographer

This one is called Miledown, a village, an abandoned tower and a fortification. 

I haven't picked a scale, but I think each hex in the image above should be about 0.2 miles or 1056 feet. That's ok, because I am going with a more artistic rendering of the map. I'll probably add more blue and green pops, but I really like this style. 

The fortification is forming in my mind, based on this image from earlier this month. 

In Worldographer, I have started throwing down the outlines. Right now, I have only laid out the items the guys in the image above can see. I should have marked their location, but I didn't think of that. If you look at the far lower left tower, they are about 6 boxes up and 6 to the right of that tower. 

This front area should be about 1/3 of the whole fortification. In HO scale, the whole thing would be 3 feet wide and four or five feet long. I hope to be done with the digital art by Christmastime. 

If you want to see some of my other maps, go check out DriveThruRPG. Each is listed as pay what you want. 

Kobold’s Folly Mini Setting Kobold’s Folly

Compass Rose Inn Mini Setting Compass Rose Inn

The Hex Pack The Hex Pack

Map Doodles

I'm troubleshooting Worldographer tonight. It works on one system but not another. Annoying, because I know it's my machine. 

Anyway, here is a quick map I used for testing. 

As a map, it's pretty plain. I like it as artwork better. 

Adding Icons for Worldographer

Worldographer comes with an impressive array of Icons. However, I need Romanesque icons which don't appear to be a part of any set. I had to edit what I had into what I needed. Edits can be fairly rough depending on scale.

As you can see, these are pretty flawed, but on the scale of my map, the flaws are invisible. I created 3 domūs so I can have variety.

Editing Icons is a pain. Normally, one gets Icons via Inkwell Idea's Patreon but there are other sources such as their main website in the store tab and, believe it or not, DriveThruRPG. They have dozens of offerings on DriveThru.

I want to review all of these products, but the line started back in 2015 and there are literally dozens of them. What 'll offer today is a round of products from 2015 with a brief description. Each is available for $1.99. The artist is Keith Curtis and these items are transparent png files which can be used in a variety of mapping products.

Hexographer September 2015 Monthly World Map Icons (Any Editor)
Description: E1 lin eart for trees, forests, rockets, zombies, etc. 

Hexographer October 2015 Monthly World Map Icons (Any Editor)
Description: Resources, hills, forested mountains.

Hexographer November 2015 Monthly World Map Icons (Any Editor)
Description: Whirlpools, resources, craters, crevices.

Hexographer December 2015 Monthly World Map Icons (Any Editor)
Description: More resources and detailed compasses. 

Dungeonographer September 2015 Monthly World Map Icons (Any Editor)
Description: Bookshelves, character tokens and staircases.

Next time in this series, I'll look at the 2016 launches, hopefully coming to current by sometime in March.

One special note is that Worldographer actually started as several different products: Dungeonographer, Hexographer, Cityographer. Much of each of these different software packages in combined in Worldographer and you can import old maps into Worldographer with little fuss. Worldographer also has a free product, a Pro product and total package bundle. I was a such a fan of the software, I purchased the full pro bundle which included all of the older products. It was probably unnecessary, but I've enjoyed it. Much of the artwork on this website is done in Worldographer. I should probably do a review of it soon.

Tinkering with Worldographer Maps

I've created a couple of Roman Style Domus or homes using Worldographer. I'm tinkering with options and scales. Domus A has coordinates marked on it and is square to 5 feet. I've created a battlemat 1 inch to the square, 1/2 inch to the square and 1/4 inch version.

Unfortunately, my website doesn't easily permit scaling of images, so they have to be downloaded to be properly viewed.

Domus A 1 inch to five feet

Domus A half inch to five feet

Domus A 1/4 inch to 5 feet

Domus B is square to 5 feet. There are no coordinates. 

Domus B 1 inch to 5 feet.

Domus B, 1/2 inch to 5 feet

Domus B, 1/4 inch to five feet

I'm trying to get the hang of editing these in GIMP so I can have particular scales in my products. I am not sure which I like better, other than to never put coordinates in maps less than 1 inch to 5 feet.

Worldobuilder By Inkwell Ideas for Maps

A few months ago, I picked up a whole suite of software for mapping and world building. I have to tell you, the Worldographer software is excellent. I use it for my books, my blogs and my campaign. It couldn't be more handy. They have a collection of software, but my favorite is Worldographer. It basically does everything I wish it to.

You can pick up new icon packs from Patreon, as monthly subscription. My campaign is Roman themed, so I haven't partaken in that yet. I did purchased the e1 Icon pack when I bough the software. It allows me to make maps that look a bit like the Greyhawk campaign map. I love it.

You can give it a try with very few limitations from the store section of their main site. The free version doesn't nag or limit you too much. It is mean to just give you a taste.

I can't help but tinker. My setting is a peninsula with a vast savanna, I needed acacia trees. The set of icons I had didn't have any, so I modified a regular tree into one using the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

It reminded me of modding Civilization Icons. You need a transparent background. Did you ever try that? I used to have great fun adding dinosaurs and Veritechs to the game.

Anyway, back to my campaign. I have a large Romanesque city. Romans lived in villas and apartments. The software had a half dozen choices, but I need to populate a massive area. Repetition stands out like a sore thumb, so I got modding.

In the first version of my city, the buildings looked very medieval. I decided to make the whole area more Roman by making most structures either ramshackle wooden or Spanish tile like.

  
You can see those Spanish like rooves from 35,000 feet. Nice.

Then I wanted new villas. Just two choices didn't give a lot of variety.

I now have 4 or five variations. Square or rectangular and so on. One thing I discovered while working is, if you leave the courtyard area transparent, you can trees and other structures to the yard. Nice touch. The other thing is you can use the software to flip, rotate and scale the same building so even a copy doesn't look exactly like the one next to it.

For my last trick, and this is completely outside of the scope of Worldographer, I decided to add my party.

It is completely useless for game play, but I thought it was a nice trick. I have two wagons and 5 horses, to match my party. If you zoom in too much, there is zero detail, so the trick loses it's charm. But I enjoyed giving it a shot.

Inkwell Ideas, Worldographer Software

Worldographer map from this year. 

I purchased the Pro version of every product by Inkwell Ideas. My favorite is Worldographer, which can create world and continent sized maps, regional maps, city maps, and battlemats. The software is so comprehensive and rich, that I often find that I need a bit of help to get what I want done.

Hand drawn map from 2 years ago.

I usually just google answers and when combined with Inkwell Ideas' forums and the Manual I can get things done.

Today I googled something and discovered that Inkwell is using some of my maps as examples.

I love that!

Session 3 preview - North Market

The mapping of my town continues. This is the North Market area, which is "north" of the forum. This area is a mixed use zone, where row houses have popped up in a rather regular way in the North East section of this insula. However, down in the South West quadrant, the row houses are rather rough. 

The southern row houses look ruder because they are older, not because the people that live there are poor. It was a slap-dash build for people looking to get into the city fast. As you can see, there are a couple of rich villas right in with the row houses, separated by some green space. This is just a little off of the center of the city, so its still high society.

I am really loving this software and this style of map. It allows me to cover huge areas quickly, so that I can spend a few minutes mapping each day.

Each area has it's own little story in my mind and I can come back and add details later. I am probably not making the best use of Worldographer using the battlemat like this, but this town is hardly organic. It is relatively sterile and uniform as opposed to a town that sprung up from a chance placement of one house, or town square.

Bird's Eye View of Worldographer Map - City of Nace

I am having a wonderful time with Worldographer, by Inkwell Ideas. I have been kicking out maps for my current campaign using the software. The image below is my campaign map (in progress) for just one city. 

The City of Nace is made up of 64 insula, or blocks. I made a mistake by creating this as a battlemat. My reason was to have square blocks, rather than hexes. By completing a map in this fashion, what I will actually have is 64 individual maps. (Actually, 63 because the forum takes up two insula.) Each insula is 180 yards across, north to south and east to west. By the time I am done, my players will have over a square mile of gaming locations and I will have at least a vague idea of what is happening... everywhere.

I have barely scratched the surface of what Worldographer can do, but I figure this practice will help me master it someday.

.jar files under XFCE, especially for Chromebooks

Good Evening, I recently purchased some wonderful software from Inkwell Ideas and came across a little hiccup. Under XFCE, for some reason, I cannot use the GUI window to flag my .jar as an executable.

It's not a huge deal, but some versions of Linux simply have a checkbox. I like easy. The "hard way" of opening or running a .jar file is to open the terminal and type:

java -jar filename.jar

Not so hard, I guess. But what if I simply want to double click that .jar file and have it open for me? The command is:

chmod +x filename.jar  

Reading the command makes me chuckle. "put the x in the box" is the command. Why not an easy little box. This is handy terminal usage information for all .jar files from Minecraft to Hexographer. One note on HexOgrapher is don't forget the little "o" between x and g. For whatever reason, I say "Hexgrapher" and then want to type it that way. It does not work, don't bother doing that.

I can't wait to review this software. It looks amazing. If you are wondering how you came to be here from MeWe, I am the author at These Old Games. The Unpwnd website is my tech site, which is not typically useful to RPG and OSR gamers. Not much can go wrong with pen and paper, so I like to keep them separated.