Time passes 01

[The story so far]

Time passes 01

We've now reached the stage where all the players have dispersed to university etc. so our gaming is likely to be far more spread out, with maybe only a single game session per year. This is the first such gap, but on Friday we're getting the band back together (including a boyfriend and girlfriend who will be exposed to the full oddness of the Averaigne Adventurers en masse). 


So what's been happening since the last session? Well...

The Widow's Lantern

Tweaking the rules for Goblinquest (still not entirely happy with that name...) is progressing nicely enough for me to claim that I 'won' at nagademon 2012 by finishing and playing my game within November. Anyone else who has designed a game will, I hope, understand that just because I think it's going well doesn't mean I've anything to share yet, so for my 120th post I thought give you another Echo of Averaigne and welcome the two most recent followers of this blog, Dreamfish and Tenz - hello chaps!

Right then, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...


Up in the hills towards The Gap there are many remnants of earlier communities, self-styled noblemen and petty kingdoms. Some are undoubtedly still malign, like the Black Hand Barrows, others merely shocking to modern sensibilities, like the frescoes in the Temple of Perpetual Dissipation. Any traveller to nearby towns and villages will, if not driven away by suspicious locals, be treated to tales of heroism and misdeeds, tragedy and treasure about these ruins. One such tale is of the Widow's Lantern.

Picture taken from Coopdevil's tumblr feed - great source of inspiration

All that is left of the castle/great house/private chapel/monastery (depends on the teller of the tale) is one end wall, complete with huge, exquisite window. The glazing is long since lost, but the fineness of the supporting tracery that is still intact tells of a level of workmanship not seen in these days outside the capital. Anyone who looks carefully through the window will notice something odd; tracking a bird or cloud across the sky, they will see that as it passes behind the window it fraction of a second longer than it should before it appears through the window. Indeed, if you stand at the right angle, the bird might still just be visible through the window and have reappeared beyond it. The real mystery, though, is the light that blazes forth from it on midwinter and midsummer nights. In summer, the light is accompanied by the sound of great merriment, as if a host of fine ladies and their paramours were feasting and dancing. At midwinter, the sound is different. Very different. The moaning worms into the listener's very guts, filling them with such sadness and dread that none can stand it. Very few stay long enough to hear the screams, and they never talk of it.

Why the widow's lantern? A learned man from the king's schola came once and decided it was a corruption of 'window' by an illiterate villager many years ago and that simple countryfolk had built superstition around a spelling mistake. The villagers know better. They say the moaning is that of a beautiful maiden from a distant land who was married to a nobleman on midsummer's night in that house. He treated her brutally and shamefully for many months after she objected to his predilection for serving girls until, broken-hearted and broken-spirited, her piteous cries brought down heaven's judgement on that evil man and his corrupted household. At midwinter, fire fell from a cloudless sky, consuming all of the building and its inhabitants, but for that window.

Even now, should a man within five leagues mistreat his wife or sweetheart in any way on midwinter's night he will surely be dead by morning without a mark on him, except for sooty marks around his nose and mouth and the stench of smoke clinging so tight to him such that no washing will remove it!

The stories also tell of those who have been invited to the midsummer wedding feast within the long-vanished hall and have come away laden with gold and jewels handed out as largesse to the guests. Reason enough for any adventurer to try their luck and risk the Widow's displeasure...

Happy geeking, and be good to your lady,
Rab

Hex marks the spot

After a slow couple of weeks, geek-wise, I sat down yesterday evening to put mouse to screen and start making my GM level map of Averaigne. I wanted to keep with the old-school feel of the whole project and produce a hex map. Now, a brief scan of the tubes of the interweb throws up gazillions of hits of varying usefulness: some lovely examples, several competing programs (each with their critics and devotees), and some mindblowingly complex cartographic arguments over the precise representation of various fictional worlds.

Fortunately, there was a clear voice which rang out amidst the clamour, that of Thorfinn (or more succintly Thorf on several OD&D mapping fora). As part of his labour of love (the complete mapping at all scales) of the game world Mystara, he has produced a marvellously useful set of tools for the budding hax-mapper to use in Adobe Illustrator CS. I have CS4 thanks to school, so they've worked like a charm.

You get a hex template like so:

 

You have to add the symbols that come with the download to the correct folder for your installation of Illustrator, but that's a really quick bit of copy and paste. The template consists of half a dozen layers so you have rivers on one, roads and settlements on another, map hexes (trees, mountains, good pasture, volcanoes) on another and so on. The map hexes are done by selecting a hex and choosing to replace it with one of the symbols from the palette. Roads and rivers are done by painting a line and choosing the appropriate style from the included set (major river, track, road etc). Seriously, this is a great piece of kit and a fantastic gift from one geek to the geek world!

Once I'd worked out that pressing 'shift' and clicking allowed multiple selection of hexes, I found it really quick and knocked this up in about 35 minutes. Thirty of them were before I found out about the shift button thing, and five after: I got the same amount done in both sets of time!

It's my first draft of the border marches of Averaigne. I'm learning a LOT about how I want to set things up so that there is a sandbox type experience for the players, but also there are key elements of the history (and therefore likely encounters) of the region that fit with a pseudo-medieval, medium magic, Europe which is my desired outcome. It might not look it, but plenty of thought, pondering, noodling and staring out of the window went into what little is there so far. Unfortunately for non-affected parties, both of the chaps who I hope will play this at some point check in on this blog from time to time, so I can't give spoilers, but shall just leave the teasing note that there is good reason to be afraid of the dark in the Marches. Mwahahahaha...

Anyway, the hex stuff. Thorf's site is: http://mystara.thorf.co.uk/cartography.php

He has a good explanation of the way you can use the layers in his template here: http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2057

And there are plenty of other pointers scattered around that site. I also found loads of youtube videos for how to use Illustrator, which is something I'd never done before yesterday. It really is that straight forward.

Happy geeking,

Rab

Fount of all knowledge

Buy a man a pint and he'll drink your health. Buy pints in a bar often enough and you become that creature beloved of all barkeepers: the regular. To become a regular in the Wounded Gryphon you'll have to earn the trust of Jacques Noir ("Blackjack") and then he'll tell you all the gossip you need, he might even tell you what he really thinks. More likely, though, he'll tell you what you want to hear or what he thinks Baron de Corbin wants to hear. Now, it's your round.

The Baron? Big admirer of Baron Gilbert, me. Not actually ever met him, o’ course but his taxes don’t leave us starving, he doesn’t ‘invite’ our wives and daughters to keep him warm at nights, and his seneschal and soldiers keep the King’s Highway and the towns free of anything major that creeps out of the wilderness. Must have been here twenty winters by my reckoning, round about the harvest time when my eldest was born. I heard he upset the wrong person at court, lost all his holdings but this one and has been exiled here ever since. A proper Marcher now like the rest of us. Mind you, I wouldn’t cross him – might end up having to ‘explain things’ to his nephew, Sir Reynaud, the seneschal. He’s as hard and cold as iron, that one. Maybe you have to become a bit of a monster to be so successful at crushing them?

One evening, down at the Wounded Griffon...

... a group of young farm labourers and woodsmen are just getting into the swing of things. Ale and insults are flowing in equal measure when one of them decides it's his turn to tell a tale.

Look at this, lads! Well it’s a jewel, ain’t it? Yes I know it’s just glass, that’s not the... Look, shutup, will you... What!? Really? Well your sister didn’t complain! OW! Alrightalright, sorrysorrysorry, get off me, will you!

Anyway, this jewel. Got it from one of those wandering preachers this morning, he was up by that dead oak near the crossroads over by old man Fletcher’s place. He was just standing there, eyes closed. I was going to walk past him but he called my name, didn’t even open his eyes to begin with, and said he had a gift for me. “What sort of gift?” I asks. “Wisdom” says he and then hands me this bauble. Great, I think, a bit of broken glass. Some gift. But then he grabs my hand and I can’t pull away, even though he must be about sixty and scrawny as a sick hen. “Look at the jewel,” he says. “See how it has many sides? All the temples focus on a single face and call it their god, but it’s just one face of the Whole. Remember that, boy.” And then, I swear, he just fades away like mist, but I still have the jewel. Perhaps I’ll save it to be a bride-stone for your sister, eh?

Ow, get OFF me, you savage...

A second glance

Trying to fix part of my previous map just screwed it up as I had all my images in the same photoshop layer. Duh! So I cribbed from this great tutorial to use layers properly and made, to my eye, a much better map.

I diverged from the tutorial slightly, using the Pen, rather than Polygon, tool to produce the coastline. I also am not quite sure how I eventually managed to get the Marquee tool to do as suggested. It involved me pressing loads of options at random :/

Anyway, if anyone finds this useful and makes their own maps as a result, do share what you produce! Also, if you have any suggestions for making my map better, do leave a comment.

Happy geeking,
Rab

EDIT - just noticed, this is my 100th post. Yay for me!

Glimpses

The lands that comprise the kingdoms of Averaigne, Calthus, Ferrand and Lombria are not newly inhabited by men. True, the great woodlands once were tended by the elves and the mountains stood firm over the realms of the dwarves, but there were earlier empires of men. Not all were good. Many, indeed, were foully corrupt and brought nought but horror. The echoes of those perversions lies heavy on the wildernesses that encircle the bright points of law that the kingdoms aspire to being.

Echoes of Averaigne

My two boys, aged 4 1/2 and 2, now have their very own sets of 'gem' polydice so their full geek conversion nears completion mwahahaha!

When they are a little bigger, I hope they'll enjoy playing Swords and Wizardry with me (although I doubt darling wife will ever join in). By that time I hope I'll have a well-developed 'world' for them to adventure in. I've made a start on the first part of it: the northen Marches of the Kingdom of Averaigne. Given my overwhelming attraction to all things chivalric, it'll come as no surprise that Averaigne (and its neighbouring kingdoms of Lombria, Calthus and Ferrand) are inspired by western European countries of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

I haven't drawn a map yet (although I have the outline in my head) but I have written a couple of imagined overheard conversations of the folk who scratch out an existence in the Marches. Here's the first, from a pessimistic old fellow, deep in his cups.

Life in the Marches can be hard. 

Not like in the broad vales and wide, gentle plains of the Near Shires with their abundant harvests. Nor like the peaceful Forests in the Earldoms and Baronies of the Founding Families, with their common grazing and the security of the King’s Law. Nor yet like the river and coastal towns, brash and wealthy, fat on trade and the bounty of the sea. Up here the winters are hard and long, the soil scarcely rewards its ploughing and the forests are dark and unwelcoming.

We may not have to worry about armies marching under the banners of other kingdoms during the short-lived wars that flare up around the border towns and fortresses but, nevertheless, we are under constant siege. Too far from the King’s palaces to be considered a prize, we are also too far to attract much notice or concern. Out of sight of the rich and powerful, monsters thrive. In the mountains and the forests, the caves and long abandoned ruins, they make their lairs and strike when bold or desperate enough. It has always been so.

Kings and kingdoms have risen and fallen down in the plains but, whatever flag has fluttered above the seats of power, their writ has never truly extended here so it has ever been a place for the desperate, the mad, the monstrous.

Oh yes, life in the Marches can be hard.