When I started my Patreon 5 years ago my goal was to try and do Greyhawk content, giving it away under a Creative Commons license, to be an asset to Greyhawk fans. A huge thank you to those of you who have supported me during this time, and a warm welcome to all those who have joined recently!

This Summer Update will be a bit lengthy as I will try and go over all the things I’m currently working on and what I plan to get started soon.

Heraldry

I’ve created my take on existing Greyhawk heraldry, and created a lot of new heraldry, over 400 all in all. What started out as an experiment turned out to be a lot of fun, and very popular. I like to do heraldry, they are neat little projects to dig into for an hour or tow every other day, and they are very popular.

My latest experiment in this field is simple shields. It was an idea by Michael Mossbarger to create shields used not by the kings, lord and generals, but by the common foot soldier. I did a couple of simple wooden shields on my last livestream. It was fun and might be useful, what do you think?

A Greyhawk peasant militia soldiers’ shield.

And one from Dyvers

There will be more shields, I’m creating them as I read, and re-read Greyhawk lore, and create for my own campaign. Furyondy, Horned Society Iuz are in focus now. But I’m also going through the history and development of the Great Kingdom and its successor states for a reboot of my Rel Deven campaign. Haven’t run an elven focused campaign in decades, so now I’m also prepping ideas for one in a couple of years. A lot of very interesting possibilities, and thanks to their lifespan it will tie into a lot of history.

New Website

This is a sore thumb of mine; my web presence is not up to the job of being a place where it is easy to find my content. The problem is two-sided, there is so much stuff hidden in a myriad of posts, and the ability to effectively search and find stuff is limited. Setting up and running a website is quite an operation, which thankfully has tools to help you do that. My problem is that most tools seem to be focused on blogs and similar sites, not large content repositories.

The most promising solution I’ve seen, and used a bit is Notion, which now has launched a web publishing function. I’m going to try it out and see if it works for what I need it to do. WordPress is way to much work to change something, it takes me a week or so every time I’m doing a site update more than posting. I want to be able to add pages, change layout, add whole sections to my website without having to take a week or two off to do it. I also don’t have to money to pay someone to do it, and this is where I want control, meaning I need to understand how to do things so I’m not reliant on others.

If any of you know of a powerful and flexible tool to create and manage websites that isn’t too pricy, I’m very interested to hear about it!

As piggyback on my GIS project, I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago, properly reference all the places and names on my map.  All the renewed interest in Greyhawk has made this extra important. Help with this is very much appreciated, since it is a huge undertaking. Greyhawk wikis and similar resources have made this easier, but it is still a lot of work. Before the collection and curation of data begins, we need to define what data we need and the technical details like data formats, files etc.  This can start when the GIS data entry is done this fall.

GIS

My project to create a new version of my existing Flanaess Hepmonaland map using GIS is going well. It is a huge undertaking, and after about a year of data entry a first version is in sight later this year.

A New Generation Maps

My current Flanaess Hepmonaland map is getting, while still useful, showing its age being created using tools from the 1990’s. From the Southlands and Midgard maps I did almost a decade ago for Kobold Press to my latest commission, they are created using tools that are decades more advanced. I made a facelift to my current map when I added Hepmonaland some years ago, but it is only so much you can do with a new set of superficial edits.

The GIS conversion will be the last major version of my Flanaess map that will be based on the old stuff. Future maps will be made using tools like GAEA, world Machine and others put together using GIS, Game Engines and of course still rely on editing tools like Photoshop.  

For my Shield Lands campaign, I ambitiously set out to map it in “Porta Potty Scale” at 5ft pixel. Due to World Machine 4 no longer supporting tiled imports that I relied on for this I had to rethink my approach. Now a year later I’m having a new approach that can circumvent the issue and still deliver the detail and quality I crave. The result will be the same and, in some ways, even better, but the process is kind of the opposite. Before I work from the bottom up, now it will be more top down – start with the big and then zoom in for details. I thought you would lose quality and that it would be more difficult going top down, that is why I started with bottom up. Now that I’ve tested both methods, I found out I was partially wrong. Thankfully top down can deliver really good quality even faster, and my drainage issues are less common this way.

The new set of maps I’m working on will have a resolution of 150 ft per pixel and cover an area of 450 x 450 miles whit proper waterflow with lakes and rivers in this area. This is with my current tool World Machine 3, which is now old and but still my go to. With WM3 I can do 16K terrains in a single render without tiling. This is the worst-case scenario, WM3 will be the tool to rely on for remapping the Flanaess. It can be done in a few years, and with areas of special interest like cities at 5ft. per pixel special maps as well.  

Thankfully there is a new tool coming in Gaea 2, that has been in alpha for a few months and is very promising. If it can deliver what is on its roadmap for later this year, I will be able to go from 16K maps to 256K, over 2 million pixels per side renders. And Gaea is not the only tool on the horizon, terrain creation is going from an obscure thing to a major feature. What is driving this is the new generation game engines, and GIS tools that made it possible to work with whole planets in glorious, detailed 3D. This is driving a demand for better tools to create them, and now we have the hardware to handle them, so the future is looking bright in this field and we as gamers can cash in and make good use of it.  

Maps and heraldry have been a great inroad to local and more detailed worldbuilding, which has made me go back and re-read a lot of the old material and have a new look at it. It has given me a lot of new ideas and different takes on things.  To better separate my own version from the “standard” Greyhawk map and other stuff I do, I hope it can be useful to label it MeyerHawk so those that are not that into my stuff can avoid it, and the other way around.  

Now with over 20 years of experience creating maps, and 40 years gaming in Greyhawk, I feel I’m skilled enough to not only map the setting, but also contribute to it in other ways as well. My goal with the MeyerHawk label is to is to signal that this is my take on the setting, and to provide a rich a deep set of lore for Greyhawk gamers, and others to use. It will be Creative Commons as well, so it can be used, tweaked and shared by Greyhawk fans everywhere.

House Rules

The fluff is taken care of under the MeyerHawk label, how about the crunch!? I’ve been working on a house rule project since before the pandemic, when I started to regularly run games virtually and realized that I needed a firmer grounding rule wise. Somehow when you are forced to interact using computers and video calls written rules and structure becomes more apparent and need to be clearer.

Having started out with AD&D1E/2E, then moved to D&D3E and 3.5. Even 4E for a few months before switching to PF1 and then PF2 to ending up with a sort of 5E-A5E mishmash, just making a few house rules was not going to cut it. I needed a proper set of rules that suited my playstyle, so I looked at almost every fantasy TTRPG rule set, that was at least vaguely related to D&D (and a few others as well). Found a lot of things I liked, but not in the same system. It dawned on me that when I didn’t find the map I needed, I set out to create it. Now I’m in the same situation when it comes to the rules I need for my games, so under the name of a house rule project a whole new TTRPG rule set is taking shape.

This is my working title; we will see if it survives. The goal for this project is to create a rules system that support and facilitate heavy sandbox-style games. It should do its job and then get out of the way, medium crunch and lots of possibilities and support flavor. I’m making a rule set I need, and then we will see what happens, but I want to offer it free for everyone to use.  I’m trying to make it easy to learn and hard to impossible master, making long term campaigns viable.

A few holy cows must go to slaughter for Hawk Tales, and that might upset some, but I did it on the altar of my sandbox gaming temple. For example, Armor and AC are overlapping but not the same thing anymore, and Armor softens the blows. Even the mightiest warrior who can face a dragon has a reason to be a little bit wary every time he faces a crowd of commoners.

Another feature is that weapons get deadlier the better you are at using them. A master of daggers can do more damage than a newbie using a greatsword. Big heavy weapons like mauls and greatswords have their advantages but are not the only way to bring down your opponent.

Tactics and crunch are a side of a rules systems that can become too dominant, and you can have lots of cool ideas and the urge is to implement them all. I’m now in the very important phase of trying to streamline and bring better order to things. The goal is to have a system that is easy to understand, but still, it should be able to deliver lots if flavorful outcomes.

The main way Hawk Tales FRP will be different from D&D (and most other fantasy RPG’s) is the main approach in its design. They seem to be based on gameplay, with the rules and its concepts being at the center of the game. Class being such a key concept, it’s a core function of the game and most of the rules are built around it.

My approach is to see the rules as a supporting role in the overall experience. The rules should provide a supportive framework for worldbuilding, gameplay and character progression. I want a world full of people, creatures, magic, epic worlds and exiting adventures, so I want to create a rules structure that support that. A “thief” is a job description, not a set of mechanics. Some thieves would be stealthy and act in the shadows, others would be brutes using intimidation and violence for their illicit activities, or a combination of the two.

Character progression in Hawk Tales FRP will be guided by the desires of the player, which can vary over the career of the character, and what happens during gameplay.  What your character does will to a large degree determine what it will get good at, but there is still room for going on a quest to learn magic even if there is no wizard at hand to teach you. It will just be somewhat more difficult and take more time. Character development, combat and what happens during encounters are a side of the gaming experience that most rule sets focus on and handle well. I intend to make my rules able to keep up with the others, but it is hard to improve on what has already been perfected over decades by way more accomplished game designers that amateur me. The side where I think I can provide the biggest incentive for considering adopting Hawk Tales will be on the Game Mastering side of things.

Like with cartography where I used skills learned in other areas and used them to make setting maps, then it was my understanding navigation and what the world looks like that I relied on. This time I am relying on my understanding of things from physics, electronics, politics and how the world works. How could a medieval-like world with magic, dragons, undead and worse function and still make it fun and interesting to delve into and interact with.

For me it is equally important to have a system for high level magic and a way to play out high stakes power struggles as well as the daggers, swords and magic fights. How do you bring down an evil ruler, or even a god. What can necromancers really do with their power, and what would someone get from serving a demon lord. These are questions I want a set of rules to help answer, not by providing all the exact details, that is up to you and your campaign. The key for me is to provide the imaginary arena and guidelines for how to conduct the play.

Things like how are divine beings created and how they gain and wield their power. In this I’ve even managed to revive the concept of alignment languages, and how does Vecna’s gathering of secrets work, and where is Tharizdun imprisoned. These are all campaign plots that Hawk Tales can help you run campaign around and provides rules and guidelines for fighting cults, liches and more, way beyond the simple statblock.

I will run games using an early form of Hawk Tales at Virtual Gary Con 5, GameHole Con and PAGE 2025 and Gary Con XVII, as well as run online short skirmish play tests starting this fall. I hope you might be interested in joining.

A “Skirmish Alpha” Release will be available this fall, that will cover basic rules, encounters, combat and spellcasting. Come with a sample of characters, some opponents to fight and a list of spells and equipment.  Hopefully enough for you to see if it is something for you to even consider.

Hawk Tales FRP will be published using Creative Common 4.0 -by license in PDF and Markdown formats and will be available to be downloaded and referenced for free on my website.

The CC -by license makes it possible foe anyone to use, alter and share Hawk Tales as they like. In the day of gatekeeping and corporatization of I want to do what I can to help and inspire gamers to have fun, create and share.

Again, thank you Everyone for making it possible for me to work on this, it is your support that pay for my computers, software and covers the bills so I can spend time work on this!!!

I hope you all feel welcome and are exited to join me in exploring and mapping our favorite fantasy world!