Maps and Level Design

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.

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Sylvan World #1

use-with-dw-OnLightTwo years ago I ran my first Dungeon World-campaign and it was fun. But thinking back to it I might have not been familiar enough with the AWengine to make it the most memorable. I liked the basic idea in it though – it was a world entirely covered in forest.

This idea did not come up that too often in the few games we played. So when I started thinking about running a new campaign I realised I wasn’t done with that world. So last Saturday I got a new group together and started a new campaign with my favourite fantasy system. And this time we tried out it with Funnel World. Continue reading

Dungeon Builder & #mapvember

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:

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Review: A Dozen Dungeons by Miska Fredman

adozendungeons_cover_thumbnailLast 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).

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The Psychopomp, or My Take on Fall of Magic

We finally managed to play Fall of Magic with the Blog crew. We did have an outside ringer to play this with four players.

What is Fall of Magic? Its actually an interesting concept. The main draw is the scroll, which depicts a map, or more like an itinerary. The idea is that you start from a certain point and you unroll the scroll as you move forwards, thus revealing new places and more information. The plot hook is that there’s a magus, who is on his way to the well of magic, because magic is failing (as per the name). The players represent the maguses entourage. Its a journey, and in fiction journey’s represent personal growth, so in my mind that should be represented in some way, although I chose to take a different route.

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