Tolrendor DM's Blog

Map of the Month: Jonathan Roberts Style Battlemaps

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Tolrendordm

Welcome to the debut of a new column, Map of the Month. Here is where I get to share my passion for fantasy cartography, which I’ve been hooked on since I was a kid being read the Narnia and Middle-Earth stories by my Dad.

I’ll be presenting my own mapping efforts and on-going projects, but also looking to share/highlight other work from around the Internet if I find them.

Unfortunately, I have little artistic ability, so I’m dependent on the growing number of technology tools out there to help me in my passion. If I’ve learnt something useful about one of those tools, I share these mapping tips and techniques here also.

For this first column, I’d like to share a couple of encounter maps from a recent adventure:

Battle beneath the Tree ...

Battle within the Tree...

I drew these maps using my main mapping tool of choice, Campaign Cartographer 3, from Profantasy Software, and using the Jonathan Roberts Dungeon Style from the June 2011 Issue of the Cartographers Annual (A subscription-based monthly package of CC3 goodies which I’ve mentioned several times on this blog).

Something I’ve mentioned here also is my admiration for Jonathan Roberts work (here), and these maps represent my first chance to use this style. I’m really happy with the results. Huge thanks to both Robert and Profantasy for bringing this into the toolset of mappers like myself!!

What I really like about the style is that as I said, I’m no artist, but the style allows me to achieve, with it’s beautifully drawn symbols and fills, an almost ‘hand-painted’ effect. What’s more, CC3, once you’re used to it (and I appreciate the fact that there is quite a learning curve, but I believe the effort has definitely paid back!), is pretty efficient, and you can produce this type of map in a relatively short time, plus easily print it out at table-top battle-map scale!

Hope you enjoy the maps! I’ve very interested in any feedback you have on them specifically, or on the column in general.

Yours in Cartography,

TolrendorDM!!

Posted in Cartography, Columns, Encounters, Map of the Month | 6 Comments

Content Corner: Buying a Horse …

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Tolrendordm

As promised in my post ‘Taking Stock…‘, on New Year’s Eve just gone, I’m starting several monthly columns as a way of challenging myself to achieve a regular, albeit light by the standards of many of the great bloggers out there.

This is the debut of Content Corner, which is to be the outlet for my self-publishing goals. My intention is that this column will always have some solid D&D content that I hope is useful to someone out there e.g. encounters and/or short adventures, skill challenges, new monsters, location write-ups etc.

Objectives include:

All content will be 4th Edition compatible. Its the system I play and enjoy, and I certainly don’t have the time to broaden my scope 🙂
Most of the content will be based on my home-brew world Tolrendor, which I am currently developing in 4E after a long hiatus since 2nd Edition!
The target is to post this column at least once per month, but if I’ve got more content, I’ll post more often! Heh, we’ll see …
One of my goals is to learn more about self-publishing, so I’ll be trying out various style and layouts.
Comments, of course, are more than welcome …

So with no more ado, I present my first offering:

Skill Challenge: Buying a Horse…

This skill challenge originally came about in my kid’s campaign, after they had finished their first dungeon adventure, and had hit the town of Fallcrest – their very first experience of a D&D town. Naturally I wanted this to be a ‘experience’; they had money to spend, and buying horses was top of the list (my daughter’s influence, as I’ve mentioned before…)…

… So rather than just consult the Players Handbook and deduct the cash, I wanted to encourage a role-playing session around finding out the best places to buy horses, and the negotiations themselves. I put this together as a skill challenge so there was a framework for how successful the characters were i.e. I wanted there to be actual game benefits (or penalties) involved. This was achieved by having the level of success in the skill challenge drive the outcome in terms of how well the characters managed to negotiate prices, and the quality of the horses they purchased.

It worked out very well in my campaign, so I’ve written it up for this column:

Skill Challenge – Buying a Horse
Please let me know what you think in the comments, on all aspects e.g. content, layout etc.

Happy Gaming,

TolrendorDM

Posted in 4E D&D, Columns, Content Corner, Roleplaying with Kids, Self-publishing, Skill Challenges | 3 Comments

Wizards Watch: Out of the Bag …

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Tolrendordm

Well we all knew it was coming, based on the Legends and Lore columns from 2011 (I posted on these last week…), but I’m still surprised it’s out publicly already: A New Edition of Dungeons and Dragons is on the way!

I certainly have mixed feelings about this, as I enjoy 4E a lot, and after a long hiatus from role-playing, it was 4E that re-energised me. Also of course, I’ve put a reasonable investment into the product – I’m not the type that buys every product just because its out there, but still…

Personally I’m finding it hard to imagine how a single game can cater for the wide variety of gaming viewpoints, especially given the vitriol with which some people express those viewpoints, without making the game unrecognisable for one or other camp. Still I’ll keep an open mind for now, and I’ve signed up for the playtest – at least Wizards seem to be recognising this time that it’s dangerous to tamper with ‘sacred cows’ without at least involving the community 🙂

What do I want to see from the new edition (apart from not having one …)?

My key list would include:

* Simple core gaming engine – combat and role-playing are both important

* Good DM prep tools and simple stats

* Ability to provide setting and character flavour through consistent mechanics.

Sound familiar? In my opinion 4E already provides these, but there’s one thing it certainly doesn’t that I would like to see:

* Much better 3rd party licensing!!!

I got my latest Kobold Quarterly magazine last night, and only 4 out of 14 articles are for 4E, and even then 2 of the articles tagged 4E are not system specific. I believe freelancers and 3rd party publishers are moving away from 4E work because unless you’re publishing through the ‘official’ WOTC channels, its pretty hard to publish ‘current’ 4E material when there has been no update of the GSL since Feb 2009! Please can we have an OGL version of the game back again!!

And then there is the question about what happens to the DDI Tools i.e. Character Builder and Adventure Tools, for those that want to stick with 4E?

But that’s for another column …

Life goes on 🙂

Posted in 4E D&D, Columns, DnD Next, Self-publishing, Wizards Watch | Leave a comment

January Update

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Tolrendordm

Six days on from my ‘Taking Stock…‘ post, and already I feel like things have changed for the better! Of course this is common to New Year’s resolutions: start off with a hiss and bang with post holiday energy … and then fade out as reality bites once again! 🙂

Still, so far I’ve drafted the debut post for most of my columns, and I’ve got outlines fleshed out for planned February posts, so a bit of a pipeline building already. Can’t complain!

In January, look out for the following posts:

Wizards Watch: Christmas Presents – published already on the 4th. A look at some holiday season offerings on the Wizards website.

[Update]Content Corner: Buying a Horse… ~~will be published on the 11th~~ is now published, and presents a Skill Challenge centred round an adventurers’ shopping expedition!

[Update]Map of the Month: Jonathan Roberts Style Battlemaps. ~~Scheduled for the 18th Jan.~~ is now published!

[Edit – Column Renamed]~~Campaigning with Kids~~DM for Kids: The Menagerie. Look out on the 25th Jan as the intrepid adventurers … and their beastie companions, roll into town.[Update] Now published!

[Update] RPG Tech Talk: 5E Tech. ~~We round out the month on the 31st with a discussion of my tech tools for Campaign info~~. Given the major announcement from Wizards of the Coast, the topic was changed a look at potential technology options for the next iteration of D&D! The column was published on Jan 31st.

Hope your gaming 2012 has started well!

TolrendorDM

Posted in Columns, Miscellaneous | Leave a comment

Wizards Watch: Christmas Presents…

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Tolrendordm

Kudos to Wizards of the Coast for managing to keep up their publishing schedule over the holiday period. I must admit that I was expecting nothing on the web-site all week, so it was a pleasant surprise – a bit like coming down on Christmas morning and discovering a couple of presents under the tree that you weren’t expecting! 🙂

Of course, as is often the way with unexpected presents, some are just what you wanted, but maybe thought you’d never get, while others are the sort you open with a fixed grimace … you know like that striped pair of socks from your great-aunt!

The unexpected offerings were the 2011 compilations of two regular weekly columns on the D&D site: Dungeon Master Experience by Chris Perkins, and Legends and Lore, by Mike Mearls originally, with Monte Cooke stepping in more recently. Given that WOTC stopped producing monthly compilations of Dungeon and Dragon magazines some time ago, this was definitely a surprise!

In the case of the Dungeon Master Experience column, this was definitely a good thing!! I’ve been ‘collecting’ this column for a few months now i.e. printing each new column to PDF and archiving it away, so to find a full year’s compilation to save me the effort of all the back issues I haven’t got round to … major bonus!! 🙂 In my opinion this column is the best advert for 4E D&D that Wizards could have come up with: its brilliantly written by one of their top guys, with loads of great advice and ideas, and it completely debunks the myth that you can’t role-play with 4E!! What fun it must be to play in one of Mr Perkin’s campaigns – I just hope he doesn’t run out of material for the column anytime soon…

But the Legends and Lore column, I’m afraid that’s another thing entirely. I mean, both Mike and Monte are great designers, and I know at least half of what they’re writing in this column is just to gather feedback and opinion, but when I read it I can’t help the uneasy knowledge that at some point all this is going to result in another significant change!!

And that is the crux. I like 4E, its the current system I’ve invested time and money into, and I think although there has been quite a bit of confusion out there regarding the non-Essentials and Essentials stuff, at heart its a pretty effective set of core mechanics. I don’t really want to see that thrown away, especially when it seems to me that the main reason Wizards are doing this is to try and bring disaffected previous edition players back into the fold, which to be honest I don’t think is going to happen without massive change!

From my perspective, I don’t really care that much about the nitty-gritty details of the rules as long as they’re easy to DM, easy to prep for, fun to play, and make it possible to bring out the flavour of your setting and adventure through the mechanics of the rules i.e. I don’t mean the rules have to cover everything, but if a monster or character has an iconic power for instance, you want that reflected with an in-game mechanic.

For me, 4E has this in spades (which is not to say other editions do not btw – I was quite happy with Basic, 1E and 2E as well – I can’t comment on 3E/3.5E/PF as I have never played them), and I’d rather WOTC spent their energies in demonstrating the best of that by publishling great products, rather than changing the system massively to combat the anti-4E vitriol 🙂

Anyway, enough of that; I did also get one real, ‘in-your-hand’ gaming related present – a copy of Heroes of the Feywild. This is an interesting one for me, as its the first ‘Players Option’ book that I’ve gotten hold of. My next Wizards Watch column will include my thoughts on this…

Until then,

Happy Gaming!

Posted in Columns, Miscellaneous, Wizards Watch | 2 Comments

Taking Stock …

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Tolrendordm

The New Year approaches, and with it comes the traditional time of reminiscing about the year just gone, and crystal ball gazing into the many possibilities of the coming one…

I started this blog back in January 2011, with no specific targets in terms of the amount of posting I would achieve, but a few loose goals as to the type of posts I was planning to write. Looking back, I can see that I have covered most of my key topics, with the exception of RPG Technology.

What I definitely haven’t achieved however is a consistent level of posting!! I have some mitigating reasons for this, as do many people I’m sure, but the point still stands. It was ok for the first few months, and then life intervened with long periods of no posting at all!

Thus, looking forward to 2012, it seems clear that I need to structure things differently and give myself some realistic targets to achieve. It has become apparent I don’t have the time or energy to post at the frequency so many other bloggers manage (kudos to them!!), but what I’d like to acheive is consistency and quality. I would like to post regularly at a sustainable (for me) frequency, and I want my posts to be strong in content that is (, or may be…,) useful to other people.

My new plan is that I’m going to start a small number (4?) of monthly columns, which will give me the target of a set number of quality posts per month. Any extra posts, whether on similar, or completely different, topics, will be seen as an added bonus. Hopefully, with a bit of forward planning, I’ll be able to achieve a small pipeline of posts available to cover the periods where other commitments get in the way…(we’ll see!)

Initial ideas for these columns are:

Map of the Month – it doesn’t take long perusing this blog to work out that RPG Cartography is one of my primary loves! This column feeds straight from that, presenting my favourite efforts, discussing current projects, or highlighting some of the great work that is out on the Internet (most of which is far greater in quality than mine …).
RPG Tech Talk – a look at the technology tools available for us gaming geeks. The column will cover the tools I use, other tools out there, and discussion of my technology wishlist!
Content Corner – one of my main goals for this blog was to publish my own D&D content. This column will be my outlet for that. Expect new monsters, location write-ups, encounters, skill challenges etc. One idea is that I’ll get more achieved in the short term by publishing snippets of content, rather than attempting larger-scale projects.
Campaigning with Kids – my main actual role-playing activity at the moment is running a 4E D&D campaign for my 12 year-old daughter and 10-year old son. This column will cover this learning experience … 🙂
Wizards Watch – my opinion piece! I play 4E pretty exclusively as I’ve only got the time for one system, so this my place for reviews and commentary on what’s coming out from Wizards of the Coast.

Ok, so that’s ended up at 5!! Can I sustain 5 solid posts a month?? I realise this is nothing compared to a lot of RPG blogs out there, but I’m trying to be realistic for me.

Anyway, its a target, so wish me luck. These columns will debut on the site over January, and we’ll take it from there … if anyone has any comments, or ideas/topics you’d like me to cover, feel free to let me know!

A Happy and Prosperous New Year in gaming to you all!

Posted in Miscellaneous | 4 Comments

A Merry Gaming Christmas …

Posted on December 25, 2011 by Tolrendordm

So what gaming goodness did Santa bring you, and what did you give a fellow gamer??

Well, from the list from the left, I was lucky enough to receive Player’s Option: Heroes of the Feywild! Very much looking forward to perusing this in depth – I’m sure I’ll be posting some comments here in the coming weeks!

I also had the pleasure of seeing my son open his new Lizardmen Warhammer Fantasy army set. Lots of fun assembling and painting, and of course battling, ahead …

So we can’t complain in this household, how about you??

I hope you’ve all got some fun gaming activities planned for the holiday period! In my kids’ 4E campaign, the PCs are currently halfway up an evil sentient tree in a dark Fey forest, trying to rescue a unicorn foal. Looking forward to the Boxing Day session…

Meery Christmas All, and Happy Gaming!

Posted in Miscellaneous | Leave a comment

Wizards Watch: Fey Paragon Paths

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Tolrendordm

The Feywild is one of the best additions, IMHO, to the 4E D&D cosmos. My current campaign strongly features the overlap of the normal world and its Fey and Shadow ‘mirrors’. Right now, some of the PCs (run by my kids), despite only being 2nd level, have ventured into a dark Fey forest to attempt the rescue of a unicorn foal…

… which is why yesterday’s publication of ‘Paragons of Fey Valour’ by Claudio Pozas caught my eye. The article presents 3 paragon paths linked to the Feywild. Normally, I have to admit, paragon path articles tend to leave me a bit cold, and are quickly browsed at best. As I’ve posted before, in my opinion, there is already far too much 4E player content around!

However, I found this a great article. The first path, ‘White Horn Knight’ has great possibilites for my campaign, and matched my PC’s interests, so that obviously helps, but what I really liked was that the paths had really clear story and adventure hooks, and powers that really support the flavour of the path. All three paths generated ideas that even if they do not suit my PCs when they reach the Paragon Tier, will be useful to me as a DM as adventure hooks, or flavoursome powers for my villains!!

Claudio is one of the designers of Player’s Option: Heroes of the Feywild, so if this article is representative of the content of the book, I can’t wait for my copy to arrive (very soon now…)!

Posted in 4E D&D, Columns, Reviews, Roleplaying with Kids, Wizards Watch | 1 Comment

Cartographer’s Annual 2012

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Tolrendordm

Yes, it’s that time of year again! The 2012 Cartographer’s Annual for 2012 from www.profantasy.com has been announced … and I’ve subscribed already.

For anyone that uses Campaign Cartographer software, I can’t recommend this product enough. Over the last few years Profantasy have been doing this, its completely changed my mapping skills and enjoyment. For £27.95 (night at the pub…??), you get a 12+ (it normally a baker’s dozen of goodness) issues of great content – styles, symbols, fills etc., – and always a guide on how best to use the new goodies.

If you love mapping, just get it!

Posted in Cartography | Leave a comment

The Monte Cook Question

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Tolrendordm

There seems to have been a fair bit of discussion around the web over Mike Mearls’ annoucement that Monte Cook was rejoining the R&D team at Wizards of the Coast. What did it mean? Where are they going this time? Well, Monte’s first column is up today, so what does it mean… ??

Most people seem to think it proves there’s a brand new edition on the way … others question whether Monte (who after all co-designed 3rd Edition) is going to bend it all back that direction…

Well, I’ve got a lot of time for Monte Cook – I’m a subscriber to Dungeon-A-Day, which was started up by Monte before he turned it over to Super Genius Games (and in which he used to write a regular ‘musings about DMing’ blog, actually quite similar to the Legends and Lore column), and I’ve got his Ptolus setting, which just has to rank as one of the greatest ever city settings. So I’m looking forward to the columns …

… BUT, you know what, I kinda hope there’s not too much change on the way! I like 4E! I liked Basic D&D as well…and AD&D, and 2nd Edition!! 3E and 3.5E I can’t comment on, as I never played them.

I don’t get to play (or write for) D&D nearly as much as I’d like, so really despite the several years since the 4E release, I feel there’s a huge amount more to explore…and really I can’t be bothered with all the change that a new edition would bring. I think the core rules engine is pretty solid, and the tactical nature of combat is cool. There’s a load of flavour possibilities and role-playing options to work with, despite what the nay-sayers say.

Wizards, here’s my take: Looking forward to what Monte has to say, but please, don’t listen to everything the moaners have to say. There’s a lot of people out there (I believe) that are pretty happy with what they’ve got…

Now, if you would just concentrate on producing more cool adventures and settings, rather than endless player options … 🙂

Posted in 4E D&D | Leave a comment