Freehanding Gone Wild

So the 35" x 25" aged 60-pound parchment paper arrived.

Map geek excitement building.  Dare I say my scroll case was pitching a tent.

I immediately developed two uses for my humonguous uber-paper for my Dunlyle campaign:

• Tolkeinesque overland maps, in black & white -- and in Judges Guild style, a player's map showing the "known world" for their own use and exploration (and, yes, marking on it!) and my own DM's map;
• Large freehand custom dungeon maps, in 1" = 5' scale for use as a gridless playing surface.  That's right -- no more wet-erase battlemat!  We will play on the map.  I will also take the opportunity to use color (pencils, mainly) where appropriate, though I'm going for a black & white aesthetic generally.

And then, when we're done with a particular dungeon map, the map will represent mapping by the player-characters.  It will be a map-log of the campaign.  I imagine the players will be making various notes on them -- much like their characters would.

Some practical issues -- obviously, I need to figure out a way to photocopy these before the players get their hands on them.  I don't want to have to redraw them.  Also, they are obviously vulnerable to spills, tears, etc.  Then there is the matter of storage -- I'm thinking of either buying a blueprint tube or getting a large luggage-like portfolio to carry them in.  Lastly, in game play I need to figure out a way to cover up the unseen map sections.

I'll post some pictures in my next post.  Exciting stuff -- it's a lot of work but I'm hoping my first playtest of Dunlyle with my home group goes well.  The first set of maps are for the campaign opening -- after that, at the end of each session I'll be asking them their next intentions so I can keep up with the mapping duties.

P.S. Next time, I'll order more paper.  At $.50 per page as of this writing, more than half the cost was shipping and packaging.

Current Project: Dunlyle

Well I've gone from posting twice daily to once every two weeks.  Rest assured this has not been idle time; the current project: Dunlyle, my campaign setting.  The end result is hoped to be a sandbox setting with optional "story line" elements, along these lines:

• Spiral/"Wire-O" bound (so as to be durable and to open flat) and tabbed, on durable paper stock
• Overview & Area Map
• Important NPCs
• Gazetteer & Local Maps
• Multiple dungeons fleshed out in One Page Dungeon style
• Campaign flowcharts and calendars

All of this, to echo my prior postings, will be done so that it is system-neutral though obviously flavored for D&D at its various offshoots and mutations.  In other words, the goal here is to be content-rich while maintaining utility to a wide range of games and DMs.  The book itself is intended to be both a campaign prep/background document as well as an in-game reference.

At present, the manuscript is completed but I am converting my traditional map & key dungeons into one-page dungeons and removing all system-specific references.

I would welcome your feedback on this proposed format.

Experiments in Drawing and Lettering

After a two-week hiatus caused by garage sales, the demands of parenthood and matrimony, and a job relocation, I return.  Below is Castle Rockabie, a location in my Dunlyle setting.  For those who care, this is on 80# drawing paper, originally drawn in H pencil with the aid of a few stencils, then gone over in sepia ink pen in varying widths: 1mm, .5 mm, and .1 mm.  Some quick notes:

The point of this was threefold: to have fun designing something in my campaign area, to experiment with line drawing and lettering, and to prove to myself that the one-page keyless concept was usable.

I am pleased overall with the line-drawing and design.  On the layout, I wish I'd moved the third floor over a bit and given more separation to the small minimap at the bottom of the page.  My lettering is uneven and as you can see I am struggling to find my own style -- it's a mash of wannabe architect, comic lettering, and my own scrawl.  One of the biggest challenges has been to slow down while lettering.

I am not happy with my weak little castle drawing in the upper right corner.  Bleh.  My attempt at an ivy-covered wall makes it look like a giant bush, fire, cave-in, or some other calamity rather than the regal foliage I had envisioned.  I think I'll always be more of a layout/design guy than an illustrator.

Lastly, I now see the value of getting a drafting table with a T-bar ruler (I forget the correct term for it) so that lines are properly horizontal and vertical.  Eyeballing the registration of my lines produces some uneven results, most easily seen in the "Garden" description text.

Anyway, it was a fun experiment and I will try a similar concept with a dungeon environment, using the text areas as a true key.

More scrapbook map goodness

I've managed to transfer, edit, and expand some of my Dunlyle maps to the 12" square scrapbook paper format.  Not bad for amateur freehand, though I've yet to settle on techniques for lettering, shading, and how to draw more or less squared-off dungeons without using graph paper.  I noticed that, if I didn't rotate the paper or adjust my position, my rectangles started looking more like parallelograms.

A low-level complex, with multiple side-caves sprouting from a large central cavern

One dungeon level, along with exterior and overland mini-maps.

What I'm proudest of, though, is the use of my .1 mm sepia ink pen to key the maps on the maps themselves, for ease of use in running the dungeons.  This kind of shorthand is obviously great for DMs running their own material; many DMs coming to such a product cold will likely want a traditional written key.  Since I'm doing this for my own use and pleasure, however, it's more than acceptable for my own purposes.

Thanks to Zak for the idea (and stunning visual execution) of using the map/key combination, though in his case, he uses his own art, flair, and clip-art images to convey a lot of the information to himself, whereas I'm writing supersmall text on the map.

Skill Systems for pre-3.x D&D

As I've posted over on ENWorld (in the Legacy games sub-forum), I am weighing the various options for a skill system for my planned Dunlyle campaign.  As I explained, there are several options:

1. No skill system at all -- use ability checks with appropriate modifiers
2. Secondary skills only (as per 1st edition)
3. Rules Cyclopedia skill slots
4. 3.x skill points
5. 4e trained/untrained skills
6. The Adventures Dark & Deep system, based on a prior OGL creation, which involves the purchase of skill ranks with experience points, the skills themselves use a modified ability check system.

Flexibility vs. Specialization

At first blush, the "no system" has a lot going for it.  There is something liberating, frankly, about not having a skill system and just winging the outcome with your players.  Obviously, this requires a level of DM flexibility and skill, as well as the trust of the players.  It also requires consistent application.  Over the course of a campaign, the flexibility/"winging it" solution ends up with loosely codified houserules using a variety of modifiers to either the target number or the die roll itself.

My main beef with this (as well as the 1st edition solution) is that it does not allow a PC to excel at a particular skill.  How do you simulate arcane knowledge, tracking, or even being a great horseman in Basic D&D?  Clearly, not everyone has this knowledge -- so you end up with a houserule that says some ability checks are only usable by certain classes.  This creates a de facto "class skill" system where some skills are only usable by trained individuals and others (like stealth, say) are usable untrained.

On the other hand, there are other cans of worms opened with a full-blown skill system exported to pre 3.x D&D.  Many of the rules mechanics (surprise, finding secret doors, falling into traps, etc.) are handled on a flat 1 in 6 or 2 in 6 probability, with no distinctions between different races and classes of PCs.  Once you inject perception, athletics, and other combat and non-combat skills into the mix, you are fundamentally altering how the basic game works -- and not just for the PCs.  You then have to account for these attributes for all of the monsters.  Which is probably why Gary went with a simple mechanic in the first place.

What 4e got right

Yes, my fellow grognards, there were some advances in 4th edition, the biggest one in my mind being the rules for passive perception and insight.  The passive mechanic allows PCs to spot secret doors (in elf-like fashion) without looking for them, and also provides a target for opposing stealth rolls to determine if PCs are surprised.  Passive insight functions like 3.x's Sense Motive skill.  Once you decide that you need a skill system, you need a way to keep it manageable, and passive skills fit the bill.  Passive perception, in particular, helps deal with the trap-finding problem in prior editions, where the paranoid thief/rogue character searches every 10' square with a fine-tooth comb.  Of course, that's what wandering monsters are for, too.

I also like the concept of the trained/untrained skill in 4e, though I'm not a fan of the execution.  Trained skills in 4e are essentially ability checks against a set DC, delivering a flat +5 bonus for training, and all skills go up with character level automatically.  I think this could be adapted to basic with tiers of bonuses for each rank of training (which is very similar to the Adventures Dark and Deep implementation).

How Skills are "bought"

If you have a skill system, you then have to decide how they are acquired.  The Rules Cyclopedia uses a weapon proficiency analogue called skill slots, and allows the expenditure of multiple slots to simulate greater expertise.  3.x uses skill points and is by far the most customizable system.  4th edition essentially uses skill slots. 

Adventures Dark and Deep uses an interesting xp purchase option, trading off xp for skills with a maximum number of ranks per level.  I am lukewarm on this last option, simply because it is such a giant tradeoff for a player to learn an interesting "flavor" skill (like a social interaction skill) at the cost of hard-won xp.  This system feels more like a GURPS-like, character-point driven game where character advancement is piecemeal (do you want to increase your skills or other abilities?) rather than level-based.  I like point-buy games, having played Champions for years, but to me this runs counter to the level mechanic in all versions of D&D and I'm hard pressed to see where a player would want to learn any skills until he was of a fairly high level and the xp costs involved were proportionately less painful.

At the moment, I'm leaning heavily towards the Rules Cyclopedia as a way to provide some structure and specialization to skills in pre-3.x without getting overloaded in details or having to create monster skills to oppose PC skills.  I also think having some kind of rules makes it more clear to the players how actions will be adjudicated.  But I would love to hear how you deal with skills in your games.

That Old Feelin'

It started when I put my computer game habit to the side and picked up my pen & paper games again.  I'd never let go of PnP gaming, having maintained a place in Brodie's 3e/4e game as a player and 3e DM for the last 12 years, more or less.  But I noticed, frankly, that I wasn't being the kind of husband, father, and man I wanted to be while fully absorbed in computer games.  I started seeing clients whose marriages were falling apart due to computer and video games.  It was time to let it go.

But D&D is a different animal, to me anyway. It's a hobby, theater of the mind, a creative outlet, and a social occasion.  For me, computer games were a suppressant, a tranquilizer.  D&D expands my real life and engages both sides of my aging brain.

So the box(es) of D&D materials beckoned, and the writing started.  Once the writing (blogging, and campaign-building) began, a need for an audience formed with it.  I suspect this is a partial reason why people blog -- the dual need to "get it all down on paper" and express oneself combined with the very basic need to communicate on a brain-to-brain basis with those of a similar bent.

And then the old feeling came -- the need to DM again.  I suppose I knew it all along, but having written up Dunlyle, I needed to experience it, and not just to playtest it either.  I wasn't ready to just file it away or be content to occasionally pull it out and tweak it.  I needed to feel it and let it live.  Cue the Dr. Frankenstein analogies.

It will also give me a chance to playtest Joe Bloch's excellent Adventures Dark & Deep.

Freehand Mapping and My Unmanly Secret

In the course of writing my sandbox mini-setting of Dunlyle, I sketched several outdoor maps (about 5 miles to the inch) using different media and paper.  I tried pencil, pen, crayon (surprisingly effective, actually) and used plain paper, graph paper, and hexgrid.  I can now, of course, sketch out a Dunlyle map in my sleep.  But something was missing.

Over at the Cartographer's Guild I saw what was missing, other than artistic talent.  My maps just weren't cool.  Lacking in both patience and ability to use the computer drawing programs like Hexographer, I decided to go old school and abandon the grid (for now) ... which is where the Unmanliness crept in.

For you see, today I discovered the joy of scrapbooking materials.

My wife had been a scrapbooker for years and had all of the fancy papers, paper-cutters, stamps, stickers, and all of the paraphrenalia that goes along with this most Girly of hobbies.  What I found out, though, while perusing my local art supply store, was that scrapbooking has everything we gamers need for extremely cool maps -- while at the same time providing a built-in storage and protection system.

First, there's the paper.  Scrapbooking paper is wonderful.  I picked up a bunch of parchment-style cardstock paper that happened to be on sale.  So you have this durable, weighty bit of parchment-looking paper just waiting for your fantasy world or dungeon to explode upon it.

The size of scrapbooking paper (12" square) is also handy, providing roughly 50% more surface area upon which to sketch compared to 8 1/2" x 11" or A4 paper.  I find this to be a more naturally pleasing drawing surface; the shape of the paper is no longer an influence on my creative muse.

Here's Dunlyle on scrapbook parchment cardstock, after a few hours of my amateur artistic and calligraphic labors:

But wait, you say!  What about the hexgrid or square grid?

No problem, my budding Marco Polo.  Just run that bad boy through the printer, before or after you've freehanded the map.  Personally, I will be putting the grid on afterwords, if at all -- I don't want the presence of the grid to guide my pencil.

The scrapbooking accessories are also spot-on.  Want to dress up your maps with symbols you will use repeatedly?  Get a stamp and just ink that bad boy.  How about a cool border for your crypt, using skulls or black lace?  You can make it as kitschy or campy as you want.  Throw a Scooby-Doo sticker on there if it floats your boat.  Or, if you're an artiste like Zak, you could throw some web images on there and cut and paste yourself to an impressionistic dungeon masterpiece.

And then there is the scrapbook itself, a perfect place to store, transport, and admire your beautiful map.  It is bound so that the scrapbook paper doesn't have to be holepunched ... the holes are in the sheet protectors.  And those sheet protectors?  You can write on them with a wet-erase pen and never mark up your precious maps!

It gets even better when you realize that you could do entire dungeons on facing-page scrapbook pages ... map on one side, key on the other.

On Creativity

While writing my manuscript for Dunlyle (a fantasy mini-setting), about which I will likely blog more later, I stumbled onto a bit of a metawriting dilemma, to wit: how much creativity is enough?

In Fantasy RPGs, the Greats of fiction (the usual suspects) and those of the hobby itself (EGG et al) cast long shadows.  Layered on top of these genre expectations are our inherent Western cultural biases, myths, and legends.  Toss on top of that a few rulebooks written by fellow members of that culture, and any red-blooded American aspiring to write an adventure is bound to end up with a finished product that looks somewhat familiar, with castles and wizards and hairy-footed small humanoids.  Stranger still, I confess that I still find this familiarity comforting; Northern European flavored roleplaying appears to be my default setting.

This is insecapeable to some degree; we're all products of our culture.  No doubt a native of Japan, say, would have a prediliction to create settings, characters, and situations that are familiar to him.  Most creative people, however, eventually reach a second stage where, rather like the Beatles going to India, they want to inject new elements into their creative output.  Eventually, a fusion of sorts results between the artist's original formative influences and the stimuli to which he is exposed.  M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel is the classic example of a deliberate attempt to exert both artistic and intellectual creativity to break away from Tolkein-based fantasy fiction and gaming.

The question then becomes whether the artist's audience can maintain its interest in the new creative fusion.  How many citar-focused Beatles songs do their fans want to hear?  How much creativity is enough?  The "same only different" motto has to apply to one degree or another if the creative output is going to have any resonance with its intended audience.  While the artist's medium can certainly mold the audience in ways it was not intending to be affected, it must meet that audience's preexisting needs in some respect.

Quality is a factor, too.  We can tolerate something lacking in creativity (Ravenloft comes to mind) when it is well-done; and what is not new -- or even a cliche -- in the big-picture sense can certainly exhibit substantial creativity in the details.

The conclusion I have reached is this: to inject as much creativity and quality in the details as possible, even if the subject matter has been overdone for decades.