Magic Door Standees, just for fun…..Make your own…!!!

Ok, I drew these magic doors for my campaign, to be used as printed hand outs. I realized I could resize them to make door standees two inches wide to fit a standard 1″=5′ grid / tile system. So I did, and here they are in Black and White, for you to download and use. Here is the link to the Standee Magic Doors PDF file. As always, enjoy and have a great weekend everyone.

Here is one in use, not colored, no base color….Just how it looks on a tile.

….”Friday’s Mystery Meat”….An encounter from last week’s Game.

~ Attention. Here’s an update on tonight’s dinner. It was veal. I repeat, veal. The winner of tonight’s mystery meat contest is Jeffrey Corbin who guessed “some kind of beef.”~

I felt the need to post something, and figured I would start posting “Fridaqy Mystery Meat” posts again. These posts are just for anything I feel like sharing, and or showing off.

This week’s is a small map / encounter straight out of my campaign notebook. The party is currently tracking down a mysterious force that almost broke through a strong magical door under Odyssious’s wizard tower (An NPC). Odyssious was drained trying to keep the force from breaking through the door. He called on the party to help find out what it was that almost broke through from the sewers into his tower. Being a strong ally of the party, and Marvollo the party’s wizard in particular, this was a no brainer for them.

After their first encounter in the sewers vs. some ratmen and a large rat ogre, they found a secret door that lead down some very old stairs. This was the encounter straight out of my DM’s notebook, just a picture, unedited, in all it’s ugly, messy glory. The stats and to hit numbers I use from AD&D / Osric. The centipede stats are from AD&D, I need to update it with Osric stats (Which are usually exactly the same, but once in awhile I find differences.) For example in AD&D a level one and level two fighter use the same to hit numbers, in Osric a level one fighter might hit on say a 14, while a level two hits on a 13. The orange highlighted line is what the corpse needs to hit the AC’s listed above it. The blue and green highlighted lines are what my group’s characters need to hit the animated corpse. It’s a way for me to keep all the info I need to run the encounter right there on the same page.

Some more Sewer Tiles

I scanned in some more of the sewer tiles I made this weekend. I cut them out and glued them to some black foamboard, then cut those out. It was a lot faster than actually drawing them in the first place. Now I can just print them out, instead of spending all that time drawing them. I will be adding some “flats” wooden bridges, doors, barrels, crates, etc. then combine them all into a single PDF you all can download and print for yourselves. Enjoy!

Tiles I cut out, ready to be pasted on to black foam core sheets.

Just WIP picture, with the sheet of small encounter maps (which is what startedthis whole thing)

Intersection I did this weekend.

3×6 Floor Tiles

Assorted Floor Tiles.

ISO Sewers, cutting and pasting for the hell of it.

So, I had that isomorph sewer map in photo shop. Decided to do a little cutting and pasting, with a touch of editing, just for the hell of it. It was fun, I can see how I could make some basic elements then toss them all together in random combinations. Might work on that sometime. The black and white rat men I drew just so I could populate the map with an interesting visual (at least I think it’s interesting.) I love playing around with this stuff in photoshop. As always, enjoy.

First Sewer Tiles Group

I have scanned in a few of the sewer tiles I cut out the other night, thought I would share these right now. I will be scanning in some more tonight, then combining them into a single PDF to download, hopefully. Enjoy.

Playing in the Sewers and other ISO Map Shenanigans.

I have been very busy keeping up with my current D&D campaign, we have a very regular group of players and the sandbox style game I play has mushroomed out of control in a fun and insane way. The characters have taken to exploring and surviving in the sewers beneath Deepfall. I decided to play around with an isometric map. I have drawn multiple versions of this, and am learning that less is more when it comes to drawing and my line work. (I tend to over do it, the fieldstone brick walls on this one is a perfect example of that.)

I will be posting some more like this, and soon I want post my sewer tiles I have been working on. Enjoy.

Here is a teaser on my sewer tiles.

My Campaign HEX Maps with Experimental Color….

Ok, I am not proud of these two maps. I drew them a few months ago for my campaign. I needed them to run it, I wasn’t sure which way the party would head so I drew two of them. (They ended up going to the Old Fishing Village on the Tucketville Map, in search of Bob the Halfling. He is the son of Alfredo Fogwind, a member of the Raven’s Loft Gentleman’s Club in Sledgemoor. It was a test to see if they were qualified enough to go on the Slith Expedition that the Gentleman’s club is funding, they did in fact rescue Bob, and were hired for the expedition.) See the Expedition Notice below.

So as far as the hex maps go, I did them in my normal black and white line drawings, down and dirty and quick. I needed them for the game. I am not very happy with them because, there is not much detail, not enough interesting locales, the Guargant Swamp Trees are way, way, way out of scale…(One Tree Per Hex would be about the correct scale for them, as 1 Hex=1.4 Miles.) After I finish drawing them, I felt like experimenting with color, so I pulled out my big box of Crayola Colored Pencils and had fun coloring them. I am a perfectionist, so I will be re-doing these maps in the future. Normally I would not post something that is not good enough (in my opinion). I just said WTF, they are not perfect, but they are kind of pretty so I decided to post them as is. I am trying to shrug off that damned perfectionism. Perfectionism just slows you down, does no one any good, and leads to weeks, months, or (In my case) years between blog posts…..LOL….!!!! So here goes, enjoy!

The Raven’s Loft Gentleman’s Club Expedition Notice. Went on the “Adventurer’s Wanted Bulletin Board” But that is for another Post…..and it’s pretty cool…!!!

The Sledgemoor Tucketville Hex Map, with the the Guargant Swamp Trees that are way, way, way, way, way too big.

The Sledgemoor Ruins of Slith Map.

SIDE NOTE: In the previous campaign session, the party had just arrived in Trollshire. After all the various hijinks that ensued, they found the “Adventurer’s Wanted Bulletin Board” at Uncle Salty’s Tavern and Inn. As a DM I had them pick the next session’s adventure from said bulletin board, which the did. Then, when this session started, they totally ignored it and chose the “Expedition Notice” instead. I was totally unprepared for that one, but I had a printed copy of my “Moldvay Random Dungeon Experiment” which I had printed out days before. I had printed that copy thinking I might expand on it to post here, and I had it in with all my prepared adventure notes. It was my lifesaver that session!!!! (That’s why they had to rescue Bob, the halfling, it was all I had with me to use.)

The joys of running a sandbox campaign…..!!!!

Red Cap and The Haunted Tower: A peek into my own DM Notebook…!!!

Many, many years ago I bought a copy of Brian Froud’s book “Faeries”. One particular image stood out for me, along with his short backstory and that was Red Cap. I totally loved the concept of a hard core goblin regularly soaking his hat in human blood.

REDCAP is one of the most evil of the old border goblins. He lives in old ruined towers and castles, particularly those with a history of wickedness. He re-dies his red cap in human blood. Image from Brian Froud’s book “Faeries”

This image and the concept stewed inside my brain for years. In my current campaign I finally created Redcap, his minions Bladze, Stinger, and Chopper. Gave him two Dire Wolves, Chomper and Ripper. He became a reoccurring villain in the campaign. He harassed the characters several times over the course of several sessions. They totally hated him, they tracked him down to his lair in the haunted tower, where over the course of another two sessions they managed to finally kill him and his minions. I am sharing some images of the miniatures I used, along with my actual notes and maps of the first three levels of his lair as written in my DM notebook, warts and all.

Redcap and his minions, Bladze, Stinger, and Chopper. Miniatures are from Reaper Miniatures, hand painted by me, many years ago.

Chomper and Ripper, Redcap’s pet Dire Wolves. Reaper Miniatures painted last year by me.

A handful of Redcap’s Goblin Hordes (I have a lot of these that I used)! Games Workshop miniatures, painted like 20 years ago by me.

The Haunted Tower – Redcap’s Lair: Actual pages of my DM notebook for this adventure. I use a mash-up of old Holmes Bluebook rules with Advanced D&D rulebooks. (That and I make up a lot of shit as I go, so don’t get weird or butt hurt on me and my stats/rules)

Next Pages

Level 2

Next Pages

Level 3 and rules on the “Pit”

Next pages

Last page (I Think) for Level 3

Level 4 is the Big Happy Spikey Fun Ball maze, Level 5 is the caverns where Redcap makes his final stand against the party. I may post those up here on the blog at a later time, or maybe I should just type all this up and publish it as a PDF on RPG Drivethru sometime? What do you kids think? Would anyone in their right mind, actually pay for an adventure module like this? Comment and let me know what you think.

The doorway to the “Big Happy Spikey Fun Ball” Maze.

“Big Happy Spikey Fun Ball” Miniature from Privateer Press, painted by me.

Deepfall and Local Area – Large Campaign Hex

In our current campaign, we have one player who just got deployed overseas. As a group we discussed it, and we will start another adventuring party in the same campaign world with the remaining players. (Depending on schedules we will also try to get our deployed member into the game with a video call or something.) I had the remaining group pick an area on the first campaign map they got, the Merewood/Blackthorne Forest map. They chose the city of Deepfall to start the new adventuring group in. So I began working on the Deepfall area for the next few sessions of our game.

Image of the DM Hex Map

This actually coincided with some YouTube videos I recently watched about Old School D&D and that originally the way Gary Gygax envisioned a D&D campaign of 4 to 50 players, in separate adventuring parties all playing in the same campaign world. In our game we had already started doing this. Some of the original group of players decided they wanted to create some new characters for the journey to Sledgemoor Swamp, two of the players kept their original characters, while the other two created new ones. The original characters stayed in the fortress that they had cleared out with their henchman and hirelings. Currently depending on who can play on game night we can either play sessions in Sledgemoor/Trollshire or at the home fortress near Blackthorne.

Here are the links to those YouTube videos, I highly recommend both of these channels, I have been watching and am subscribed to both of them. Dungeon Craft w/ Professor Dungeon Master has a lot of really great ideas about how to run better D&D games. Questing Beast does a lot of the same, running games, reviews on RPG’s etc. Again if you have never watched these guys, check them out. They are amazing and their content alone is worth the price of admission. (Which is free…)

Dungeon Craft Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWKWg3aQN-A

Questing Beast Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slBsxmHs070

So here is the original Merewood / Blackthorne campaign map. The players chose to start in Deepfall, a small city in the upper right corner of the map.

Here is an image of the large hex and it’s location on the campaign map expanded out.

Here is an image of the Dungeon Master’s copy of Deepfall & Local Area large hex map.

Here is the Dungeon Master large Hex Map of Deepfall and the local area. The large hex is 24 miles across from corner to opposite corner, which makes each small hex roughly 1.4 miles.

Here is the Player Map of Deepfall & Local Area: Both the DM and the Player Maps are on the maps page with links to the PDF’s.

….”Friday’s Mystery Meat”….Village Geomorphs w/ Rivers….

~ Attention. Here’s an update on tonight’s dinner. It was veal. I repeat, veal. The winner of tonight’s mystery meat contest is Jeffrey Corbin who guessed “some kind of beef.”~

Well, I somehow broke one of the pins to my USB connection on my printer/scanner…Damn!!! Even though it is a wireless device as well, I can not get the wireless part to work right now. In the past when it lost the wireless connection I would have to reload the drivers and the software using the USB cable to get the wireless functionality back. It was always such a hassle, I just quit using the wireless capability. Last night I spent a couple of hours working on it, I could see it on my laptop, but without the USB connection I could not get the driver to install properly for some dumb-ass reason. So I gave up for now, I will probably just have to buy a new one soon. Hell if I could just open the case (which I see no way of doing with out seriously breaking it apart) I could just solder a new USB connector onto the circuit board…problem solved. The good news is I can adjust some settings on a scanner at work so I can scan my stuff in until I get a new one, the bad news is I just spent $60 on new printer cartridges for the damned thing. Such is life, and if that is the worst thing that happened to me this week…then life is still pretty damned good.

I told you all this, because I wanted to post something else for this week’s “Friday Mystery Meat” but I could not scan it. So instead, I have this set of village geomorphs with a river, I really like how these turned out…and I have another set of these done as well. I created these for the new Village and City sets of Dungeonmorph Dice that Joe Wetzel started on Kickstarter, but we’re not sure we will be making a set of dice with rivers this time around. The first two drawings are just concept drawings for river geomorphs, I did them just to get my head wrapped around the best way to make rivers flow on geomorphs. Besides that I had a lot of fun drawing these, if anyone wants the PDF’s for these let me know and I will link them up. I am not sure if they would be of any use for gaming but I do love how the second one looks for some odd reason…it was just fun for me.

First drawing of River Geomorphs Concepts: This one I do not like so much.

 

Second Concept Drawing of River Geomorph concepts: This one I like so much more, its much more organic, and for what it’s worth….I really enjoyed drawing this….!!!!

 And finally here are the Village with Rivers Geomorphs, click on the image for a full page PDF. As always, Enjoy!