Oh my, there are just too many interesting ideas lately. I'm having trouble absorbing them all. Heck, a lot of times I'll read something intriguing, post a comment, and then
forget where I posted the comment because there are
too many freaking good blogs.
I want to just go up to the mountains and digest it all for a bit, but I can't yet. I thought I was going to do that when I was housesitting last week, but alas I have a smart phone and I was reading your blogs anyway, just on a smaller screen.
Here, I'll volley a few ideas back at you all. Sometimes I worry people are thinking
"what the heck do all these silhouettes have to do with D&D?"
I showed
one possible use of them to try and clarify the transmission of information. Here are two more possibilities:
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| Towards a Heist Map |
The Knights of the Order of the Holy Rood take all heretics that worship St Cecily back to the church that legend says she was burned to death in. Your players want to save one of these heretics. She will be held there a week to pray and reflect on her sins, then burned at the stake. Your players have watched from afar. They know where the guards tend to be.
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| Towards a Wilderness Map with Iconic Monsters |
This springs off of Roger's cool work
here. This is nothing new, war games had those little, iconic chits
long ago, just a matter of finding unencumbered and iconic images that everyone in the community can use. Imagine if Hexographer let you plop these down. (I cut out too much of Roger's info, but if we made the hexes a little larger I think we could add some back while keeping it clean.)
Okay, everyone stop blogging for a while, you're going to melt down my brain. :)
I wholeheartedly agree. Everyday I come home ready to do some gamer stuff, read a book, work on a map and instead I read one blog that cites another blog...and off I go and lose 3 hours scanning the blogs out there. The revolution of gamers creating material on blog is certainly sometimes overwhelming!
ReplyDeleteHexographer will let you do that, if you purchase it. It's an awesome investment, and Joe is good people.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm thinking I want some of those icons... I've got 29,600 odd hexes to fill! :) (and on top of that, those are the 30 mile hexes, so I have all those 5 mile hexes within the 30 mile hexes to fill... )
Oh that's cool. I haven't really used Hexographer myself but name dropped it because I know it's popular.
ReplyDeleteI'll make all my silhouettes available free in png and svgs once I get some more. I just did that centaur today.
I imagine I'll post about this post later this week. :-)
ReplyDeleteActually, there's a number of dingbat fonts out there that provide a good start for silhouettes. My reason for packing the hex with text is strictly functional; at one glance you can tell everything you need to set up an encounter. But the silhouettes *look* so cool ... Tell you what, I've got my next post lined up now.
ReplyDelete@C: no stop, my brain :)
ReplyDelete@Roger: I'm thinking symbols now. Maybe black dots, or bars. I know you mean for it to be self contained which I think is a great goal. I just know for myself, when I'm DMing and the players are asking me a bunch of questions, and I have to make a ruling, It will take me a while to pause and decipher what all the text on the map means. I want to try to streamline that.
I have the same problem with losing comments. I started using the subscribe by email button, but now my email is filling up too fast.
ReplyDeleteI really love the silhouette images you have been sharing. To me, they leave so much to the imagination, but provide just enough to let the viewer understand what they represent. I always loved the silhouettes used in the Call of Cthulhu books for just this reason. So thanks for posting them, and I hope you keep them coming!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Shane. I will.
ReplyDelete