The inaugural release by the Len Lakofka Archive: LA 2 Devil's Dung
An adventure for character levels 4-6 for AD&D 1st Edition.
Get it here:
LA 2 Devil's Dung
Leaving for Wisconsin and Gary Con XV in a few days and working frantically to get as much as possible ready. As per previous Gary Cons I'm making a 12 x 17 inch folded print to hand out at my seminar.
The outside, front and back show a bit of my Oerth 2.0 model, shoutouts from my website, patreon and the stuff that are available there now.
Below are the "In the Pipeline" section with a screenshot from World Machine showing a bit of Shield Lands terrain, more Oerth 2.0, a MeyerHawk teaser and finally a mentioning of the Altamira project for Troll Lord Games.
The inside are a sneak peak at my new generation of fantasy maps showing Delard on the Nyr Dyv coast, in both 3D and top down view.
and as a special treat, seen from the south from aboard a ship a mile out. It is in the bottom of the page.
A couple of teasing screenshots showing the Serion Keep, as an area map, top down, encounter maps and used in Owlbear Rodeo.
I also included a screenshot of my Obsidian to show of the versatility of maps, especially if they can be customized to your needs, which the Photoshop screenshot indicates.
The purpose for this handout is to give the seminar attendees something to look at that will inspire them to want to know more and to see first hand what my maps looks like. I know too well the quality of presentation equipment at most venues leaves a lot to be desired, so this is way to make sure participants can get a more accurate picture even if the TV or projector are not that great.
Hopefully I can have it printed and ready for the con. I'll post a PDF for you guys here at the time of the con.
I'll post more of my presentation material as it I get it ready.
Tank you so much for making my trip to Gary Con possible, and a special shout out to Josh Popp and Luke Gygax for hosting me!
Symbols are a key part of cartography and equally so for maps of fantasy settings. Their key job is to quickly convey a lot of information in a pleasing way while also blending in with the map itself. When I started mapping Greyhawk I started with the symbology of the Darlene map and it has evolved from the five settlement icons of the 1983 Glossography. My first change was to colorize them, going with a signal yellow.
After using them for my first campaign I realized more defined settlement sizes where needed, and with them came the Metropolis, City, Town, Village etc. The categories and numbers got established for me during my D&E3E/PF1 era of gaming which are the background behind the categories on the map now.
The basic shapes of the symbols are still there, hopefully a bit more clear and easy to read from a distance. Especially the smallest symbols needed some TLC. Now each category have the same shape, Metropolis are squared, cities hexagonal, towns round and so on. The site symbols have been simplified and works better now I hope, along with a proper dungeon symbol.
The color scheme are still there. I really like it and find it useful and hopefully it is useful for other as well. The status colors are very useful but I realize now that I might need to change to floating and submerged colors to brighter blue to make them more visible against water.
In a fantasy setting settlements can be run but various forms of creatures beside humans, so have a set of icons reflecting that is both cool and useful. These are the ones I have developed so far, any more needed?
One of the key aspects when developing a symbol set this complex are how to integrate the various competing aspects. I tried to solve this by changing shape, base color, edge color and center symbol. Another aspect are icon simplicity, but to be able to understand it easily, but also to make it into vector format to be used in GIS.
This is a first draft, that I will use as a base when setting up Oerth GIS.
I'm getting ready for the Fantasy Mapping Show on the LordGosumba channel in a few minutes where I will present these and talk more about map symbols.
Its been a few months since I got my new computer with 24 Cores, 128GB RAM and and lots of other performance enhancements, what is it like to work on a fantasy world using state of the art tools? Well to be honest, overwhelming and awesome at the same time. As most of you are well aware of, I have a tendency (to put it mildly) for details, especially in my cartography. Now for the first time I feel I have what it takes to create the maps have always dreamt of, three dimensional terrain in detail enough to satisfy every setting nerds deepest desires.
Having the tools are a good start but far from the whole story, and the next step to mapping nirvana are to tame the software to do your bidding. My main tools for terrain creation are World Machine and Gaea. Gaea can produce them most awe inspiring terrain but still lacks robust river and lake system tools, which are a key part of large scale terrain building in most cases. So my plan was to stick with World Machine for the grunt work and use Gaea for certain features and for final presentation renders. Its been a lot of "World Machine Spaghetti creation the last couple of months"
The plan is to start using my Porta Potty Scale of 5ft per pixel, and for a 64K map that is 65,536 x 65,536 pixels covering an area 3,600 square miles. After having made the first renders at this scale it started to dawn on me both how immense the task is and how immersive the results are. Below is the Southern Shield Lands with Scragholme Island, the Veng estuary and a large part of the South Western Shield Lands.
It is impossible to render anything in that high resolution in a single go, on any desktop computer so it has to be made in tiles. All in all 64 of them, each being 8,192 x 8,192 pixels covering 7.5 x 7.5 miles. The heightmap render of all the tiles took about 12 hours which is is about ten times faster than my old computer, meaning I can do ten times more in the same amount of time. A task of this magnitude is way beyond what my old computer could have handled regardless of time.
The results are good, not perfect but definitely good. The tiling process introduces errors, which are a problem but something I'm very aware of and have worked on trying to solve or at least minimize , for years. The main issue is that WM treats each tile as its own little word not aware of the bigger picture. This affects rivers which sometimes flows in opposite directions towards a tile edge where they meetup. Another issue are the general terrain elevation might be higher in some tiles and when the blending sets in to try and smooth over the difference it creates a straight gradient to make the two tiles fit.
Both of these issues have to be adjusted on a tile-by-tile basis afterwards, trying to work out the best way of doing this and are making progress. Thankfully its not every tile border that have issues so its is hopefully possible to adjust these errors afterwards. A large part of the mapping stream this afternoon will be working on this.
When the terrain is rendered it is back into World Machine to render textures and masks. I figured out fairly early that it was best to separate this into two stages, bot for performance, but also to make sure I have a stable and fully detailed heightmap to work from. The preview terrain in World Machine is only the same seen at the full resolution, so it involves a lot of guesswork. This becomes especially annoying when you creating detail texture work with things like rock, beaches and such appearing either nowhere or everywhere depending on where you move the camera. By rendering and exporting the full resolution height map, and then importing into a new file you can do the detailed texture work on a stable defiled terrain set.
The next step is to render the textures and all the accompanying masks at the same resolution of 5ft per pixel, a whopping 1500 files for each 64K area. They are all necessary or useful for the next step, texture editing in Photoshop. This first editing step is crucial to adjust the general color, tone, saturation, contrast as well as blending the all the different textures better. World Machine programming can only take things this far, the final touch up requires a keen eye and a lot of patients.
The key for this phase is to try and make even the areas that lack ay significant features interesting and natural lookin.
Many billions of pixels spread out over more than a dozen layers are daunting, it is possible to create such a large file in Photoshop but not efficiently working on it. Instead I have decided to go with a "floating" progression, start with a single tile. Enlarge the image to cover the next tile and work on it to match the first area, then save the first area as a separate file, enlarge again and repeat.
This method means that I only need to work on 4 tiles at the most at any given time, which is manageable and still make sure all the tiles fit together. Forest cover, roads and buildings can also be added during this step which makes it much more interesting. Worldbuilding when you have to place settlements, buildings, signs of agriculture, roads and all the other trappings of civilization that can be seen at this resolution is a lot of fun.
Here are alternate versions of the Knurl heraldry for those of you who prefer simpler designs than the cluttered ones from the LG campaign. Above it the County and below is the City.
Thanks to Patrick Schweicher for bringing up this topic!
Time for a little more heraldry, the Furyondian city of Crockport. The design is made by the great Dungeonmeister who have done a lot of Greyhawk related illustrations, you can find his Deviant Art page here: https://www.deviantart.com/dungeonmeister
Here is the simple version of it.
I like the design, it fits the place and its Ferrond and Furyondy roots well.
It is now available on my website!
https://www.annabmeyer.com/atlas-of-the-flanaess-hepmonaland-598-cy-2022-edition/
My campaign is now at late Sunsebb 598 CY and the fall of the Great Kingdom have been an established fact for some years now and I have started to go over how that have affected other part of the setting. My current campaign is focused on the Shield Lands and its bigger neighbour Furyondy plays a role too, and as a part of campaign planning I updated the map of it. Here comes a presentation of the updated map and and my thoughts behind the changes.
A More Assertive Furyondy
It has been independent for centuries but still it kept a few traditions inherited from its creation under Rauxes. One of them was that Ferrond was only a province of the Great Kingdom, so the constituent parts often had a lower status like viscounty and barony. Their status a minor noble holdings persisted for many years, despite the fact most of these holdings where bigger and more powerful some many a country.
The wars became a (despite all the losses) a national strengthening event. Not in military- or economic might, but in social and cultural sense. Furyondians fought, suffered, died and won together and that created a true sense of nation hood and independence. As a concrete symbol of this its provinces where all elevated to major noble status, on par with a province of sovereign full realm.
The viscounties and baronies are now earldoms, counties or archbaronies. Even Verbobonc was recognized as a major noble hold, by all its neighbours and are now a full county in its own right. There are rumors that Nyrond and the Urnst states are in similar discussions, but nothing concrete have come out of it yet.
More Details
Upgrading the provinces laid the groundwork for adding Furyondy's sub-provinces. To flesh out this sub-provinces I've added towns, villages and more. The names are my inventions and I tried to use names that fit the setting. It is definitely a work in progress and I will add more to it as part of campaign prep, or when I get inspired. A few more baronies are needed I think, there should be more in some of the provinces.
You can get the map here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j3brzo7bcpum5hp/Furyondy-2.jpg?dl=0
For most role players you either play D&D, Pathfinder DCC or some other RPG. For me its a bit different, it is not the rules that are the key, it is the setting. Playing in Greyhawk is more of a key part than using a particular set of rules, I've run my Greyhawk games using AD&D1E, AD&D2E, D&D3E, D&D4E, Pathfinder 1E, Pathfinder 2E, D&D5E and now using Level Up A5E. So changing the rules every five to 10 years have been the norm, and something I can look forward to as it brings new possibilities and variation to my campaigns.
To play in a new setting would be a much bigger change for me, like moving to a another country, not something you do lightly. This is ironic since I have worked and lived in many countries and now moved permanently, for me it is easier to move country than it is to change the setting I run my games in. Worldbuilding in a familiar setting are for me kind of reassurance that is hard to replace.
The ongoing debacle where WotC have really tried hard to alienate D&D players and made it almost impossible to support them in any way, have struck a nerve with me as a long time Greyhawk fan and D&D player. Thankfully I have already moved away from D&D5E and never had a D&D Beyond subscription. The last thing I bought from WotC was the Ghost of Saltmarsh hardback, and I received a copy of Mordenkeinen's Tome of Foes as a gift when I visited WotC HQ. The way WotC is run and how they conduct business have made me take a hard stance against buying anything from them, and I don't see them change any time soon so that will be for the foreseeable future.
Several aspects are important to consider here. Greyhawk's creation and publication history goes back way before WotC was created, and previous regimes at WotC have been great caretakers and proponents of the setting. The fictional world created in the early days of D&D by Gary Gygax and his fellow gamers, added to by great writers and artists over half a century deserves to live on beyond the executive greed and shortsightedness of the current leadership.
This means that during all of its existence, now it is more dependent on us, its fans to, keep it alive and thriving than ever before. This so future generation of gamers can experience its legends, quirks and rich tapestry of lore. I'm sure there might be future products set in the setting when things have changed but now the setting we love needs us more than ever. I urge you to abandon WotC until things improve, but equally important is keep Greyhawk alive and thriving. Play using rules and lore you already have, help your fellow gamers by creating an sharing more of it and support the publishers who have pledged to support true Open Gaming.
I will try my best to support Greyhawk as a setting and at the same time stay away from supporting WotC until they support a truly Open Gaming approach again, which might take years and never even happen. Thankfully there are better RPG's out there that you can use to play in Greyhawk with very little or no modification.
If it where for running my games with my friends, having fun and enjoying it, this would be much of a question any of the many RPG rules sets I already ow would do with some house ruling. Being a creator who intend to share a lot of my monsters, house rules, spells etc, make this a much more of a choice, I want my content to support and be part of an Open Gaming community. I've tried to sort out my needs when it comes to a new rule system.
D&D "ish"
It should be based on, or generally adhere to the basic D&D terms and mechanics. This is important so I can use existing D&D content, and share new spells, monsters and the like to the GH community. This is also important when recruiting players, making it a lot easier to learn and get into.
Publishing Format
I need the rules and other content legally available in both PDF and online format. PDF format so I can learn and reference it using my android tablet or computers. An online database with all (or most of them) available to copy (legally) so I can use them in Obsidian as part of my campaign management.
"Fully" Featured
With this I mean make use of the full range of rule inventions of D&D, meaning skills, feats etc. Even if a rule system doesn't have all the features as standard, I intend to house rule a lot, so a simpler system that can plug in features might be preferable over one that has everything from the start.
"Old" or "New" - "Crunch" or "Fluff"
I've played using everything from Basic D&D, Pathfinder 1E and 2E, to 5E , and thoroughly enjoyed every edition I've used. In fact I still like to play in games using both old and new editions. When it comes to run my long term campaigns the rules need to do more than just entertain me, they need to be a effective vehicle for worldbuilding, storytelling as well as character development, run encounters, combat and exploration.
When it comes to emphasis of Crunch vs Fluff, that doesn't necessary have to be a limitation of the rules. Rules can certainly cover everything but that in itself can often cause "rules overload" and hamper story telling. It took me a long time to see this and realize that absence of rules can be a virtue and guide the game play as well a wealth of rules. Rules are important both in how they do things, what they cover, and what they doesn't cover.
Old school gaming had a lot of GM fiat to allow the "tit-for-tat" style games where it was the GM's duty to place intricate and creative obstacles in front of the characters, and the players job to outwit the GM by coming up with smart ways to overcome those obstacles. This requires a set of rules to make this fun, quick and resolve the inevitable conflicts in a reasonable way.
My style is much more "world immersion", exploration and storytelling. The goal is not for me to outsmart the players. It is to present a rich detailed world with inhabitants and environment reacting to what the characters are up to in interesting, believable and consistent ways. This requires a system of rules with less emphasis on limitations and conflict management, and more on discovery, categorisation and varied outcomes.
I prefer story based play a bit over tactical management, but I see this as a long sliding scale and not binary. I rather have more rules for crafting or knowledge and less complicated crit-tables for examples. The crafting rules are more for me as a guide for who create what artifacts and what the characters need to do do destroy it. A lot of the rules I desire are guidelines for me as a GM to help me create and manage rather than being used to control what the characters can do in encounters. Of course a combat system and rules for initiative etc are needed, but I'm willing to sacrifice in this department for a more robust system for magic use on in the Feywild or the limitations of divine magic.
When it comes to the encounters and combat I want to have rules that have a grit and danger in abundance, but not necessary more deadly. Varying conditions that are easy to implement, and add variety to encounters without being crippling. I have some ideas for how to house rule this that I'm going to test out as well.
Non WotC
The past couple of weeks have shown that relying on a large corporation's benevolence and willingness to play fair and consistent can force you as a creator to rethink what you do. If all I intended to do was to play with my friends and nothing more, I would just pick any of the D&D editions. I already have the rules for them all on my bookshelves and on my computers. Being a creator who would have to relay on it professionally as well, the license it is published under is a key thing. It needs to allow me to share and even monetize content I create for that rule system.
With the uncertainty around WotC controlled OGL, I cannot use a game system published under that license. Might be a problem at the moment but should be solves fairly soon since most third party publishers are moving their products away from the OGL.
Level Up - Advanced 5th Edition
I'm currently using Level Up or Advanced 5E, from EN Publishing. A5E is a slightly enhanced clone of 5E, very much like PF1 was a development of D&D3.5. I'm happy with it, it fulfills most of my key requirement listed above, except that it is published using OGL v1.0a. If EN Publishing can come out with a new version not dependent on the good will of WotC it is a contender as my system going forward.
Pathfinder 2k
Used PF2 for over a year when it came out and it is a great system that fulfills all of my key requirement, and most of them very well. It remains a top contender, now more than ever.
Castles & Crusades
C&C might be a bit too old school for me as it stands, but it is easily modifiable, great publisher, and is well supported and used in the GH community.
Core Fantasy (Black Flag)
Kobold Press up coming system that is will be ready for playtest very soon. This will probably be a similar to A5E and very 5E compatible, from a publisher I worked with and love so it is a top contender as a future system for me.
Honorable mentions are Savage Worlds, Cypher System, Symbaroum, True20 and probably another half dozen or so that have peaked my interest but is probably not enough to fulfill my needs for one reason or another.
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