Time for a much overdue update!

The last weeks have been the most hectic I have experienced in my decade or so doing this full time. Two conventions almost back to back, Virtual Greyhawk Con 5 and now Gamehole Con in a few days, wrapping up a big commission for Gamehole Publishing, running games that debuting Hawk Tales FRP. New solutions, software and more, so let’s dig into it.

Virtual Greyhawk Con 5

I had a bast playing, watching and interacting with all you fellow Greyhawk fans. An extended weekend of gaming galore, that could be conveniently experienced at my desk. I’m starting to like virtual conventions more and more. My seminar centered around my new generation Greyhawk maps and Hawk Tales FRP.

I played in some great games, which emphasized the fact that one of the best aspects of conventions are the different gaming experiences they offer, wonderful way to be inspired and learn new ways of doing things. Hawk Tales had its first real game run at VGHC5, and it was fun, and I hope the players had fun going after Iuzians east of Critwall. Considering it was the first real game run using an alpha version of the rules, it ran reasonably well. Proper character sheets were sorely needed, which I’m fixing for Gamehole Con next week.

Warden of the Eastern Marches

A setting by Gamehole Publishing for their new organized play program, and I did the map for it.

https://gameholepublishing.com/wardens-of-the-eastern-marches/explore-the-setting/

I did a map of this area some years ago, this was only going to be an update. My backup routines half a decade ago weren’t as rigorous as they are now (perfect backup cost a lot and are technically challenging) so I had lost my source files. This meant that as a punishment I had to start from scratch and redo the whole map in much more detail. In hindsight I’m glad I had to redo the map at a new improved standard.

It took me a few months where I spent most of my time away from Greyhawk. I’m now back  in Greyhawk again and after Gamehole it will be full time Greyhawk with several projects lined up.

Commissions

I will make two maps for Troy over at Canibaal Publishing. A quick one that is on a tight schedule and needs to be ready in a couple of weeks, and a longer-term project. More on both soon.  

Another Greyhawk related commission is on the horizon, I don’t know much yet and can share even less, but it might have my maps in it. The good thing with these commissions are that they are all set in Greyhawk, which is the reason I said yet to do them.

A Miracle

Yesterday something happened that almost deserve to be described as a miracle, a new version of World Machine. I have not played with it yet, will do that on Friday on my twitch stream I think.

The release notes mention a whole range of new and improved goodies, and yes the Tiled Input bug that almost derailed me, is fixed. Now I have to re-evaluate which approach to take, there are several new options that might be better. I will take a couple of weeks to evaluate the new version when I get back from Wisconsin and see what it can do, then its time to see if “porta potty the whole way” or large areas first” are the best strategy. I’m also going to see how I can utilize Gaea 2’s strengths in this as well.

Great upgraded in the WM version are, a new memory management, GPU utilization and MUCH faster render.  Seems like most large scenes can be rendered in less than half the time, I’m fast moving away from rendering being the bottleneck to editing and touch-up holding me back. This is good for several reasons, more people can do Photoshop than have really fast computers, so teamwork can be easier to do. It is also a lot more fun to doodle in Photoshop that it is to manage renders, and with faster renders the inevitable crashes matters less. If the results are not good enough, changing things and render again is much easier, which means the end result will be improved.

I’m also intrigued by the new Erosion options in the new WM, hopefully it will bring it up on par with Gaea that has been leading in this field for a while. The few samples I’ve seen means much better maps. What used to seem like a distant dream with at least a decade of work, to map the Flanaess in high detail, is now something I plan for.

The combination of hardware improvements and now software catching up, means it feels like the 1990’s again. Getting started on a whole new cartography journey again, this time its not looking at Greyhawk from a huge distance, now its down in the weeds seeing the sights.

Gamehole Con

Early next week I’m off to my second Gamehole Con XI. My first one was Gamehole Con VII, and from what I’ve understood it has grown a lot since then. Meeting a lot of friends and colleagues in the business is always the best with conventions, and this year I’ve signed up for a lot of seminars to learn and see what is going on.     

I will have a seminar myself on Friday night, and run a 6 hour game on Saturday, the next episode of my Shield Lands Campaign, again using Hawk Tales FRP. I have more new monsters, and more Iuzian magic ready to unleash!