Paint Night!!! Also Some Maps.

I'm super excited for paint night tonight.  I'm just back from a lovey family vacation, the kiddo is sleeping over at the in-laws and I've got free time to apply paint to miniatures.  The plan is to get one or two rats finished up for use in the Tuesday game.

Also for sharing are a couple maps I drew after being inspired by the blog Dyson's Dodecahedron, which I found out about through Geek and Sundry's Signal Boost! show. They're for locations in an future RPG campaign I'd like to run. Not being an artist myself they're much rougher than I'd like, but I think with some copying and revisions I could make them quite presentable.

A Druid's Home

First up is A Druid's Home. To the east of Dunahara lives a druid.  He keeps entirely to himself, living in the hollow trunk of an enormous tree stump. A stream flows from left to right and a small path cuts across at two shallow points. The trail leading to the stump can be difficult for visitors to find as the druid has encouraged a wall of brambles to grow up around his home. The druid is entirely self sufficient. A patch of bushes provides berries and a small fish trap gives a bit of meat. Anything else the druid might need he gets by transforming into various forest beasts and hunting game.

Dunahara

Dunahara itself is a fishing town of moderate size. A great storm passed through many years ago, sinking a large vessel just off the coast. Many fisherman live in huts practically hanging off the cliff side, but there are a few larger buildings like a tavern and stable. A number of farms in the surrounding area supplement the local diet and economy. The capital lies three days cart ride to the south but less than a day by boat.  Dunahara's fish arrive fresh daily and are much sought after by the capital's citizens.

More Rats

skitter, scratch, stab

Work has been progressing on the rat-folk models for the pathfinder campaign.  The skaven assassin I'm using for my character is almost complete.  He'll be going on the base with the tall archway on it. I've also started putting together a module for pcgen (a fantastic program for creating and tracking a character) that includes some things that we're using in our campaign.  It's got the ironskin spell that we wanted to use but wasn't already in a module.  It's also got some updates to the monk class and ratfolk race for options that we wanted to use but that weren't there.  It's up on github so you can use it if you're interested. Check it out here.

We've got skeleton guards protecting our loot.

I've also put together a map of the dungeon we're currently exploring. We were teleported into it by our employer (and now nemesis) and doors have been slowly opening up, leading to new locations full of folk who want to kill us. I'm no artist, so the tiles were made using a free tileset created by Buch over on OpenGameArt.org. Go here to get it for yourself.


I'm gearing up to start an RPG campaign that I'll be running myself.  The beast trainer adventure that I've mentioned before will be part of that. Right now I'm thinking about how the world works and what the major players are.  To foment conflict I'm looking at having four factions I can draw upon when the players want to be explore in a particular direction. Political, religious, economic and military powers are the broad strokes I'll rely upon to create conflict and tension in the world.

Engineer Beauty Shots

The whole family left town on vacation this week so no progress on this month's hobby goals.  I did get a few minutes to snap some shots of my finished Empire Engineer.

Checking range on the enemy!

I did get some time to think about the RPG adventure I'm cooking up. One important element for any adventure is the addition of a cinematic scene.  This will usually occur during a battle and act as a set piece for the whole adventure. It's a chance as the adventure writer to describe something memorable for the players.

In the case of the beast trainer adventure I'm cooking up I've got some little dragonling/kobold guys and the dogs they've been training.  I've already decided on having the trainers holed up in a cave for the adventurers to explore. Setting this in the cave creates a scene with few routes of escape and a heightened urgency. Since dragons and fire are pretty much synonymous I thought to have the elite dragonlings spit fire.  This led to consideration of the players being trapped in a conflagration and having to escape. Images of smoke filled rooms and crazed, burning animals filled my head and I figured I had the perfect setting for a climactic battle. 

Oh Noes - Deadline Approaching

The deadline for the 2011 One Page Dungeon contest is April 1. Only eight days away and I didn't even think to see when this year's contest was taking place. My submission last year didn't get me any prizes, but I had a lot of fun putting it together and I was planning on entering this year. This is what I get for not paying attention to the calendar I guess.

So it's time to start brainstorming ideas and break out my favorite graphics program. The WotC Dungeon Tiles Mapper is still active so I'll probably use that for laying out the dungeon again. I think the judges prefer hand drawn maps to maps made with that program, but I think the final product looks better with professionally done graphics.

Last year I did something rooted in fantasy. This year I'm going to go for something different. The steampunk world of Warmachine has me leaning that direction, and I played some Mansions of Madness this weekend which has me thinking about the horror genre. Anyone have any opinions? Horror or Steampunk?

Also, submissions are due April 1. There's still time for anyone to put together a submission. There are 42 prizes and only 24 entries at the moment, so plenty of loot to go around!

One Page Dungeon Contest

Like I said in my first post, this blog isn't just about Warhammer 40K. I'm also an avid roleplay gamer. Over at the Cartographer's Guild they're running a contest for one page dungeons. My entry is Tower of Light, Tunnel of Stone.
The map was created with the Wizards of the Coast Dungeon Tile Mapper. You can use it to get a bigger version of my map. I should note that I've made some hand edits to the tower sections, specifically to the placement and number of stairs. Just cut and paste the code below when you select Import New from the Tile Mapper's toolbox menu.

2010OnePageDungeon,3.7.A.0.592.288.5....,3.7.A.0.400.288.6....,1.24.A.180.448.96.7....,1.25.A.0.304.64.8....,3.7.A.270.592.480.9....,3.7.A.90.592.416.10....,3.7.A.90.464.352.11....,3.7.A.180.528.416.12....,3.7.A.180.656.288.13....,3.7.A.270.464.288.14....,3.23.A.90.640.368.15....,3.2.A.0.480.464.16....,3.19.B.90.640.432.17....,3.8.A.90.400.288.18....,3.8.A.90.432.288.19....,3.5.A.0.400.416.20....,3.8.A.90.432.352.21....,3.7.A.0.464.416.22....,3.18.B.180.608.464.23....,3.21.A.180.448.464.24....,0.15.A.0.304.464.25....,0.14.B.90.272.432.26....,0.14.B.90.272.368.27....,0.14.B.0.240.336.28....,0.4.A.90.224.336.29....,0.19.B.0.96.288.30....,0.5.A.90.96.312.31....,0.11.A.0.128.312.32....,1.24.A.0.592.208.33....,3.19.B.270.496.464.34....,3.8.A.90.400.368.35....,3.19.B.270.608.432.36....,0.5.A.90.96.312.37....,3.2.A.90.496.496.38....

The adventure was mainly designed to be used in a fantasy setting, but since it's not tied to a particular system it could easily be used as a Rogue Trader adventure by replacing the monsters in the encounter with something setting appropriate.