Community

Long ago, at the dawn of time, the gods Jharell and Daemoth fought for control of the world. Daemoth commanded armies of foul beings, sickly and evil. Jharell was the lord of righteous warriors and pious priests who served him in joy. Many, many wounds were inflicted on both sides, but the battle raged on over thousands upon thousands of years.

In the last one thousand years, Vinramar has been turned upside down. The War of Evermore, which has raged since the creation, continues to afflict and maim every kingdom of the world. In the year 300 of the Annoloth, or Years of Woe, King Elechoth II of Trentsmund allied with the great Confederacy of Daelgorog, an axis of all nations that serve the god Daemoth and his thralls. This political shift proved disastrous to the last surviving followers

This weekend, I'm going to test a new (for me) method of handling my battle maps.  But first, some background.

For a long time, I've used physical maps in my weekly game.  At first, it was a mix of poster maps (love 3Es Fantastic Locations series), small Dungeon Tiles maps, and basic maps hand-drawn on a quad-ruled easel pad.  I have a decent collection of D&D Minis that I use, and a pack of several colors of clay from an art supply store for color-coded effects from the PCs (white for the fighter's mark, black for Warlock's Curse, etc.).  It has worked well.

Then I introduced a new complication.  I invited one of my friends (you might see him around here as Thenlar) who can't make the drive on a weeknight.  He already played in a game using a webcam and voice chat, with Gametable

I just posted several maps and pics for use in adventures - lots more to come

I just realized that the Points of Light conceit is not limited to the mortal planes. Even the Astral Sea is mostly wild, dangerous wilderness, with only a few points of light to break up the darkness. I mean, we all knew that most dnd deities, good and bad, have domains there, but the inhospitality of the plane as a whole is really brought home when you look at the sizes of the domains.

By longest (approximate) measurement, first the points of light (according to Manual of the Planes, there are only three):

Arvandor - 400 miles

Celestia - 120+ miles

Hestavar - 30 miles

The worst and darkest "wilderness" domains of the Astral:

9 hells - 7000 miles

Tytherion - 800+ miles

Pandemonium - 600 miles

Each of the worst is larger than each of the PoL, and hell could contain all 3 heavens at least

An industrious fellow by the name of Sean Pecor has put together a top-down battlemap projector and was kind enough to post complete instructions online. Check 'em out!

I wanted to put my toe in the water of encounter creation, leading to adventure creation & campaigns. But how to do it? record the results? make it something you can put in a folder and come back to? 

I spent a bit of time with omnigraffle, and Pages on my mac. I'm happy with the result - check it out over here.

[edit: URL changed. base site is web.me.com/ligalog ]

Ok, not sure if I've violated copyright. I hope not! however, I'm pretty chuffed with what I've done over the last week. 

The idea is that I have a sustainable set of tools that allow me to focus on the creative part without getting in the way. Along the way I've seen a lot of other tools. MapTool from rptools looks good as does DundJinni. But - they are not as intuitive as the native mac tools. Or they are multipurposed,

I wanted to put my toe in the water of encounter creation, leading to adventure creation & campaigns. But how to do it? record the results? make it something you can put in a folder and come back to? 

I spent a bit of time with omnigraffle, and Pages on my mac. I'm happy with the result - check it out over here.

Ok, not sure if I've violated copyright. I hope not! however, I'm pretty chuffed with what I've done over the last week. 

The idea is that I have a sustainable set of tools that allow me to focus on the creative part without getting in the way. Along the way I've seen a lot of other tools. MapTool from rptools looks good as does DundJinni. But - they are not as intuitive as the native mac tools. Or they are multipurposed, whereas Pages is about layout, and omnigraffle about drawing

Hi all,

I have posted a D&D Simple map maker stencil to graffletopia. You should be able to search in your stencil pallette in omnigraffle and it'll be available for download. Don't forget to rate it! and give me any feedback you like. 

I had a look at the mapping in the 4e DM's guide and did an omnigraffle version of those symbols (or some of them) and added in basic walls, corners, corridors so you can quickly assemble up an encounter map.

The results are not eye-candy, but it's quick and will do the job. 

My next task will be to get a pages encounter template going that will use this. 

Comments? thoughts?