I suck at making D&D maps and it makes me sad.
I've tried a couple of programs, and they are easy enough to use, but my maps always look terrible to me. I hem and haw over how much forest, or how many villages, or other stuff that probably doesn't matter all that much in the long run. These elements, however, form a series of mental blocks that cause me to throw my hands in the air in defeat.
An alternate method, and one I used to use back when I ran Stars Without Number, is to generate them randomly. (My generator of choice is Wizardawn) Of late, however, I don't feel a connection to a map I generate randomly, it's not "mine." I don't know why this wasn't a problem back in the day. (Probably because I was gearing up for grad school and I didn't have time to let things like that bother me.)
I'm going to make another attempt tonight with Hex Kit, a program I got in the hugediculous bundle hosted on itch.io earlier this month. The program itself is not complicated or difficult to use... I just hate the maps that I make.
I don't recall this being such a problem when I was a kid, or even in college. Perhaps it's because I didn't have the exposure to map making greats like Dyson Logos and Niklas Wistedt. Maybe I have the map-making equivalent of the mindset that some people have where they think they can't DM because their game isn't like /\/\att /\/\ercer. (That's a whole other can of worms I'm not going to open up.)
I'll give it a last shot, and if I hate them then fuck it, I guess we'll use the Known World or something.
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Shifting Gears
I'm putting my Troika game on ice after we finish the present quest tomorrow.
It looked a certain way in my head, but it's just not turning out that way. Sometimes it's cool when a game takes a direction you didn't expect, and sometimes it's just bleh. This is one of those blehs. If I do return to Troika someday, I want to turn up/emphasize the Spelljammer/Saga vibe I was trying to go for. This might require me to write entirely new backgrounds. I was doing that before the plague hit, but I don't even know where the file is.
I will be running some Old School Essentials for a chunk of my old college gaming group. That's pretty dope. I'm just trying to decide how much of the Advanced Genre Rules book I want to use. Going to go bottom up for the setting, that's for sure.
I hope all of you blog-comrades are doing well.
It looked a certain way in my head, but it's just not turning out that way. Sometimes it's cool when a game takes a direction you didn't expect, and sometimes it's just bleh. This is one of those blehs. If I do return to Troika someday, I want to turn up/emphasize the Spelljammer/Saga vibe I was trying to go for. This might require me to write entirely new backgrounds. I was doing that before the plague hit, but I don't even know where the file is.
I will be running some Old School Essentials for a chunk of my old college gaming group. That's pretty dope. I'm just trying to decide how much of the Advanced Genre Rules book I want to use. Going to go bottom up for the setting, that's for sure.
I hope all of you blog-comrades are doing well.
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