Maps. Most roleplayers (that I know of) like them. Some (like me) are even fascinated by them. In my opinion they make many situations in games easier to handle and might even inspire the players. Last night while playing Eldritch Sigils the group explored the subway tunnels under Berlin and I happened to draw a map I was exceptionally contended with. This made me think about mapping while playing in general and I decided to share a few of my thoughts.
Once again it’s time for the annual #mapvember! In essence #mapvember was started by Miska Fredman. It is challenge to create one map per day for the whole November. I clearly forgot this but will still try to spend this month with maps in mind.
I actually was almost on time since I found the Dungeon Builder Kickstarter last week. I posted in on our forum and downloaded the demo. But since it was weekend I kind of forgot all about it. Until yesterday evening when I spotted a new map at Miska’s Instagram. With that in mind I woke up and tried to Dungeon Builder demo and this is what I was able to produce in five minutes:
Last November I stumbled on Miska Fredman‘s Instagram account and noticed he was drawing maps with #Mapvember. I got hooked. I even draw some maps myself too and Aki wrote about automated map generation.
Since then Miska has gone on Patreon and is drawing maps in addition to his job as the founder of Ironspine (Finnish rpg publisher). It seems like his map drawing has really paid off. At the end of August he published a neat booklet called A Dozen Dungeons (link to DriveThruRPG).
Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Nightvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign as a human ranger (deep stalker) and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!
It took us four sessions (and then some) to get into the ages old question in a roleplaying game: Who is our party leader?
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Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!
Thanks WotC for ruining my perfect blogging title. After the third session I reached the 3rd level. I was going to choose hunter for my ranger as an Archtype but Mikko brought to my attention that Wizards had published an Unearthed Arcana that included a new Archtype for rangers – Deep Stalker.
In essence this means that I got darkvision and the whole concept of my character was about to change. I even joked about not choosing this path but while thinking about my character it seemed like to natural way to go.
Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!
After the second session I was not that sure if I liked where things were going. I really do not have a lot of free time for gaming anymore and I usually like to spend it on games that are interesting and entertaining. And lets face it – random encounters are not high on my list of “interesting and entertaining”.
I was a bit hesitant about the third session but Sami (DM) had been telling me that he had been planing the upcoming session and was prepared to enhance the story aspects of the game. And since the undertone of Out of the Abyss is quite excellent I (luckily) came to my senses and took part to this third session.
Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!
Second session for my human ranger on his way Out of the Abyss was a bit different from the first session. Or for any other session I have played since high school for that matter. It was a series of random encounters of which only one dealt with something else than fighting the horrible monsters of the Underdark.
As there is not that much to tell about the session itself I think that this time I could discuss the nuances of the game. Which pretty much sum up into “Underdark without nightivision”.
Spoiler Warning! Underdark Without Darkvision is a based on my experiences on playing Out of the Abyss campaign and will include a host of spoilers. Thread carefully!
This week we started yet another campaign and in this one I get to take the seat of a player for a change. The game in question will be the Out of the Abyss campaign for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition.
Sami will be the DM for the campaign (he ran the famous Duck Tales game as well as the Sailor at the Starless Sea last year). He introduced this campaign to me as a “horror game set into the Underdark” and I was immediately sold. We are trying to play this biweekly and hopefully get to finish this (not a given fact considering our past success with campaigns…).
In this series “Underdark Without Darkvision” I will discuss the game as it progresses. I will be playing a human ranger without darkvision (hence the name).
With all the OCR-stuff going on dungeons are getting better rep than in ages. Dungeon World is a certain classic and a game I would be willing to play at any time. Almost a year ago I talked about making dungeons on the fly and this subject raised its ugly head last Tuesday when the party descended into an ancient underground city in Egypt. Granted I was pretty tired then but I still think I had something good going on.
We are going to continue our descend into this forgotten tomb tomorrow and while I was searching the web for ideas and made notes about how to get it right I came into a conclusion that what I am actually doing is building a dungeon while I thought I was making a scenario for Call of Cthulhuish game.
We had a Chrismas party a week ago. Instead of board games, I said I could run World of Dungeons. It’s an ultralight hack of Dungeon World which I hadn’t run it before, so we took it on a spin. Because nobody believed that we could play entirely sober, I decided on a full improv session. It degenerated slowly, but inevitably—and undeniably gloriously—into player vs. player mayhem, which surprised me very little. Despite my mistakes as a drunken GM, we had a whole lot of fun, and I learned a few important lessons. These are my notes from the GM’s standpoint. Continue reading