News

Ran Lithby's Folly Dungeon Map

2011-12-09T14:57:57Z

So these are images of testing out the Dungeon Notebook 008 on Thaddeus's megadungeon Ran Lithby's Folly. Hopefully with a reliable map record, more progress can be made. (Also I'll need to map out the town of Inkwell that sits next to the dungeon, the next time we play, using the Style VI maps at the beginning of the notebook.)

White Sandbox

2011-12-09T14:33:20Z

I am part of an ongoing campaign, where the DM is using the Wilderness Survival Game map as the basis for the world map. So I thought I would use a style IV map to map it out in 6 Mile hexes.

So this is a map that is gradually being filled in with new locations as they players play the game, and explore the world.

Why I don't number hexes

2011-11-28T21:50:26Z

So quite a few hex map systems use number hexes, frequently in the format xxyy, where xx is the column, and yy is the row. I am not a big fan of that for two reasons.

It takes up space in every single hex, and further obscures the awesome map-ness.
It feels a bit backwards. Number hexes make sense if you are looking up some common data about a hex, such as if there is a big table that tells you how many ducks can be found in that hex. Thus there would be an entry for every single hex, many of which would say "No ducks." But wilderness books don't do that, since that wastes precious page space. Instead they call out only the hexes that have something interesting in them in the notes. But now that means the DM is having to look up each hex to see if those numbers match up with something in the booklet. Hex numbers only make sense if there is something worth saying about every hex.

The approach I am using on the hexbooks is I assume there is about 10-15 interesting locations on any given map. And so I give a list of numbered blanks on on the map page. That way the DM or mapper can just write a little number anywhere something interesting is found in the map, and then give it a name. Someone later using the map can then easily see which hexes have something of interest, and what it is called. They can then consult the notes for more information.

Nertz.

2011-11-11T23:49:33Z

I just caught a big error on the Style V maps while working on the post below. (The distance scale was off for that map, so that it looks like the hex is only 3 miles across.) So contact me if you purchased any of these books prior to now, so I can get you out a replacement:

Hexbook 001
Hexbook 002
Hexbook 005
Hexbook 006

Anyway it is fixed now, so any books shipped out Nov 12 or later should be fine. Sorry about that.

Style V Maps

2011-11-11T20:08:34Z

Style 5 maps show a rectangle of 7 miles wide by 6 miles high. A 6-mile hex is superimposed over the rectangle, to give an idea of the border of the 6 mile hexes in the Type IV map matches up. This map is quite simular to the Judge's Guild Campaign Hexagon System, with the exception that it is not set to a 5 mile hex area.

Within this area, it is gridded out into 1/4th Mile squares, each about 40 acres in area. (Each of these more or less corresponds with a USGS 7.5-minute topographic quadrangle map, btw.) it is a good scale for mapping a forest, swamp, canyon, etc. A manor or a village would easily fit into one of the 1/4 mile squares on this map.

(The Style IV map is found in Hexbook 001 & Hexbook 002, but Hexbook 005 is almost entirely devoted to this map.)

Style IV Maps

2011-11-10T23:58:31Z

(I am going to go through and talk about each map type found in the Hexbooks, and I am starting right in the middle.)

This is your basic Hex map. It is made up of small hexes that are 6 miles from flat side to flat side, or almost exactly 7 miles from corner to corner. Then they are also grouped into larger 24 mile across hexes.

While Judges Guild and classic D&D used 5 mile hexes for the base of their system, there are pretty good reasons to use a six mile hex.

Additionally there is a general rule that 24 miles is about what a person can travel in a day, in good conditions on flat land. Thus the 24 mile hexes are handy for general distance-per-day estimations, and just multiply the number of days by two if the 24-mile hex is full of swamp or mountainous areas.

(The Style IV map is found in Hexbook 001 & Hexbook 002, but Hexbook 004 is almost entirely devoted to this map.)

The Hexbook System

2011-11-10T17:14:34Z

The larger idea behind the hexbooks is that building a world is not something (most) people can or want to do all at once. It is something that happens gradually over years, and dozens of game sessions. But the normal method of mapping out this growing world is to grab some graph paper or hex paper, and fill it in as you go. unfortunetly graphpaper is a valuble resource, and most gamers have multiple ideas bubbling away at anyone time. Thus pages get lost, pads of paper get filled in with an assortment of unrelated maps, and invaribly some impiornet newly found part of the world gets lost after the session.

I am a big fan of notebooks, and I feel naked if I am not carrying one around with me. And initally I thought it would be cool to be able to have one with hexpaper in it rather then normal grpahpaper. But then the more I thought about it, the more I wanted the book to do some of the annoying work of mapping. Specifically I don't want to have to figure out the scale each time I start a new map, and have to try to remeber if that is the same scale as I used last time. And sketching out a world at different scales is handy for offering you different levels of information to share with the players, but a headace to figure out.

Additinally, I figure that for different scales, a map should have different qualities, that make it optimized for how it is going to be used. Hexs are great for larger areas of wilderness, but would be strange for mapping a village or a set iof ruins. But also if each scale of map has a unique layout, then it is hard to get mixed up. (and when a DM is running a game, he has enough on his mind as it is.)

This is the system I eventually settled on, after looking what was out there, and at the same time choosing to go with the 6-mile hex as the basic unit. (more on this in another post.)

(re)Launching the Site

2011-11-06T12:21:31Z

I have had a page up for Albatross Press as a subdomain of my personal site for a few years, but now I am finally turning it into its own site. This allows me to better highlight what I have been working on, and make it a little easier to locate in searches.

I'll be gradually adding content over the next week or so, and hopefully have it fully upto speed by Thanksgiving weekend.