Wizardawn-Tabletop Games: Village Awesomeness…!!!

    I was looking at some blog stats the other day and noticed some hits coming in from Wizardawn-Tabltop Games .  So I went to check it out and I found this cool little Settlement Maps generator!   The part I liked the most was that it was using my Village Geomorphs ! It makes some nice little villages, sometimes you get some funky mirrored image sections, but for the most part it generates some nice looking maps (of course I’m a little biased)! If you go to the Fantasy Settlements section, you can completely key and populate the map using OSRIC or Tunnels & Trolls rules. It generates a TON of details when everything is turned on.

    Anyway, I am thrilled to see some of my simple drawing turned into something so awesome!! I’m sure most everyone else already knew about this, but it was something new to me. Now I am going to have to draw up some more village geomorphs and hope they get added to the generator. Below is a a village map I generated using the Settlement Maps generator, just a simple 2×2 config with no numbers. It took me about 20 to 25 tries before I got both the tower and the large Inn type building on the same map, but I like the way they break it up a little.

Dyson Logos….WTF..!!!!!

    I want to congratulate Dyson for just going over One Million Hits!!! It sort of amazes him and he doesn’t quite understand why so many people keep checking out his stuff.  In his post about this cool milestone he says, and I quote:

“WTF people? Don’t you have anything better to do than look at someone’s characters for RPGs and a bunch of single-draft hand-drawn maps with no cool high tech work involved in them?

Hell, my maps don’t even include a grid!

Now you’ve gone and brought me over the one million hit mark. It’s almost like I should keep posting to this blog or something.”

   Here is my humble opinion as to why so many people keep checking in on what Dyson is doing. Simply put,  his work is honest!  There is an honest quality in Dyson’s work and maps, when I first came upon his blog a few years back, it was that honest quality that drew me in. His hand drawn maps, with that distinctive cross hatching style and no grid inspired me at the time. He had developed his own style and for me, after seeing it for the first time, it inspired me. It drew me in so much, that I felt a creative need to emulate it. It wasn’t that I ever wanted to copy his style, but seeing his stuff made me want to play with that type of map drawing. My geomorphs were all done in his style, but over time my style has evolved just a tiny bit.

   His maps are not simplistic, but there is a simple elegance to his style of mapping that makes his maps stand out. I won’t call it “art”, as I would never dream of calling  my maps “art”. Looking at Dyson’s maps though, you can see he has a keen eye for design and aesthetic, there is always a flow, along with good use of positive and negative space. Besides all that he pumps out new stuff, quality stuff  like a machine. It’s not just his maps either, some of his writing and ideas are very creative as well, very much outside the “Box” so to speak.

   In closing I want to say “Congratulations Dyson” for your 1 million hits thus far, but instead of saying WTF? (as in how can this be?) it should be more like WTF? (what took so long) …LOL. Keep up the amazing work Dyson!!!!!

Moleskin Maps….By Matt Jackson….

    I have always been a big fan of Matt Jackson’s work, I finally got around to ordering and downloading his Moleskin Map series (I got all three volumes for just over 10 bucks!) One of the things Matt does best is keep it simple, so his maps are very easy to use from a gaming standpoint. Since they are only available as PDF’s you can easily print them out and write notes all over them for your games. 

Moleskin Maps Volume 1: There are 11 maps here each full page along with a “One Page Dungeon” style notes sheet with a smaller image of the map in the upper right hand corner. It would be easy to stock several these ahead of time and have them ready for unplanned encounters or scenarios should the need arise. Matt also has several outdoor encounter style maps of campsites, a farm type layout, a village etc. along with standard cavern and dungeon maps. The outdoor areas are something you don’t see a lot of from other mappers (Myself included) so they can come in quite handy.

Moleskin Maps Volume 2: Again there are 11 maps here, each with it’s encounter sheet as well. Most of these maps are caverns and lair maps. I love the waterfall included in the map on pages 5-6. The ruined tower linked with secret tunnels to underground caves (which themselves are linked only through secret tunnels) is another map I like.

Moleskin Maps Volume 3: Is my personal favorite of the set. There are only 10 maps in this set, but they are the best in the series. Here Matt switches to a more detailed style, there are a few simpler, smaller maps but most are larger, more complex dungeon sprawls. A lot more dungeon style maps with a mix of caverns. Lots more detail and unique angles and lines make this set of maps an absolute joy to look at.

If you struggle drawing maps, or need some maps to help create some random locations or encounters, these will help a lot. Volume 1 is $3.50, Volume 2 is $2.99 and Volume 3 is $2.99 which is reasonable to me. In my humble opinion of the entire set, Volume Three could easily be the best value. Then again Volume one has the campsites\outdoor encounter areas, hell just buy all three and be done with it…!!! Keep up the great work Matt!!!