I did very little game writing over the holidays. One thing I have done is start writing up the setting I use, a sandbox world I can drop adventures into. This is a pastiche of a bunch of my previous GMing notes, but focusing more on the swords & sorcery and open-ended ideas, instead of the claustrophobic medieval horror I often go for.
Mapping is always a difficulty. I’ve previously used map editing software, and written my own, and never liked the results. So instead I’m doing it the software over-engineering way: Writing a little Javascript library that scans a page and turns preformatted ASCII-art maps into tile maps, mostly from David Gervais’ set which I used in Perilar. I thought about doing hex maps or an isometric view, but that takes more math and art resources, and I grew up with Ultimas and JRPGs, so I think of the world as a brightly-colored tile grid. I can hear the chiptune music now.
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii pi~~~~~~~iippppppppi ~~~~~~~~~~ptttttttpp ~~~~~~~~~~t~tttt~tt~ ++~~~~~~~~~~~1~~~~~~ 5~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~333 ++~~~~~~~~~~222~~~~3 ~~+~~~~~~~~2~~~2~~33 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~3 ~~~~~~~~~~~44444444~ CtCCLCCCAC tSttMttDCC ttttM,,,ht ttHhZ,,R^h hhhMh.Th^~ bhhM..hh^~ bW.MG++vv~ ~~~M+~~~V~ ~~~~++~~~~
The Hyperborea map details that one door/skull tile on the world map, and I’ll make wilderness maps at 10km scale for each grid players enter. I still need to put labels and grid coords on these, likely to do that today.
Mark Rolls Dice 