For today's Resources article I have three more map-related links for you to check out!
Map to Globe: This incredible tool was shared on the DM Support Group recently, and I couldn't help but push it up on the resources to share here. This tool allows you to take an image and upload to be turned into a globe. Not only can this be rotated but there are plenty of options from which to edit the globe or look at it differently. The direction and intensity of the sun can be adjusted, a pole line can be created, and the background can be manipulated. Screenshots are available to be downloaded, as well as GIFs of the globe rotating! There are also sketch views and a number of map projects that can be applied to the image. Frankly, the ability to take an image and turn it into a globe (even if its virtual) is an awesome tool, plain and simple. To take that and play with it in so many different ways is just fantastic and definitely worth checking out for your home brew worlds.
How Fast Could You Travel?: The great thing about Twitter is the sheer number of random things you can encounter. This was one of those things. The article discusses the change and development of travel in the United States over the course of it's early history. There are maps through out it showing you how far you could have expected in how long. How long would it take to get to Florida from New York City in 1800, for example. The answer? At least 2 weeks. In between all the maps is the article explaining why these things changed as paths and roads were developed and later trains. This is an invaluable resource for getting a good idea of how travel would work in a fantasy setting. Pair it with some quick Google searches for maps with terrain and a distance key and you begin to understand some things a bit better than before. This article is worth the read for anyone who wants a bit more realism / accuracy when they tell players how far things are (something I have a tendancy to just pull out of my ass).
Custom Cloth Maps: There is little more to say about this one. Geekify, Inc has developed a very cool service for us Game Masters. Among the other things you can get from them, they also provide you with an opportunity to take an image of your home brew world's map and get it printed on cloth! Of course, this comes in many sizes and doesn't have to be a map. Perhaps it is a scroll or some other prop for you to use in games. While a bit expensive, it provides an option for you to take your map and prop game to the next level. I know it would certainly surprise my players!
Showing posts with label Cartography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cartography. Show all posts
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Saturday, October 15, 2016
Resources For Every GM: Cartography Part 3
Hello everyone! Sorry for this week's delay but I have been working out some things for Untamed Dice, the next Untamed Rant, and such. Today I have three more cartographer's resources for you, each covering different aspects of what you may need in your mapping needs. Whether it is tiles for battle maps, area maps, or region mapping these links should cover you.
Inkarnate: I love this tool. It is an incredible tool for those who have less time than they would like to practice and work out a hand-drawn continent or region map. The maps it can produce are fantastic looking, and appear drawn out. There a plenty of options for terrain colors and a good amount of options for icons to include on the map. Recently a feature was added that allowed you to upload your own images for use too. Once you are done with the map, which can be saved to your account to work on later, you can download it as a .jpeg to print out or share with your players. Best of all it is all browser based and no need to download any programs to use or access the tool. With some care and a little trial and error great maps can be produced for your campaign. The only problem, and it is a fairly minor one, is that once you use this tool you will easily be able to recognize other maps as having been made with it.
Heroic Maps: This website is one I found recently while trying to prep for my Roll20 D&D game. While the free resources that can be found using the in-app searches work fine, it can be time-consuming to figure out what works well and looks right together. There are plenty of people who make or have made tiles for things like Roll20, but I have found I like this one the best. There are a number of great locations and themes from which to choose from, the only problem you may find is in the necessity to purchase most of them. They do come in themed packs and/or layouts, however, and you can get them right at DriveThruRPG. A word of caution when using them for Roll20. They are BIG files, at least as far as uploading into your library is concerned. There are many you will have to open up and save as .jpegs to make them smaller files. Once this is done, though, you can upload them and resize them to match your grid (and they come with grided & gridless images!). This process what easy for my with photshop, but I imagine it should be just as easy with a free program like Gimp as well.
MSJ Maps: I have had this on my radar since the time I joined Twitter. There are some great area maps and even some tiles for you to take a look at, and the art style is fantastic! It is unique and distinctive with some awesome ideas for battle locations that can inspire your games on their own. I would definitely suggest following MSJ on Twitter and bookmarking his site. If you can also become a patron and reap the rewards of some truly amazing maps! I bet with a little work these too could be used on Roll20 or similar apps as well.
Inkarnate: I love this tool. It is an incredible tool for those who have less time than they would like to practice and work out a hand-drawn continent or region map. The maps it can produce are fantastic looking, and appear drawn out. There a plenty of options for terrain colors and a good amount of options for icons to include on the map. Recently a feature was added that allowed you to upload your own images for use too. Once you are done with the map, which can be saved to your account to work on later, you can download it as a .jpeg to print out or share with your players. Best of all it is all browser based and no need to download any programs to use or access the tool. With some care and a little trial and error great maps can be produced for your campaign. The only problem, and it is a fairly minor one, is that once you use this tool you will easily be able to recognize other maps as having been made with it.
Heroic Maps: This website is one I found recently while trying to prep for my Roll20 D&D game. While the free resources that can be found using the in-app searches work fine, it can be time-consuming to figure out what works well and looks right together. There are plenty of people who make or have made tiles for things like Roll20, but I have found I like this one the best. There are a number of great locations and themes from which to choose from, the only problem you may find is in the necessity to purchase most of them. They do come in themed packs and/or layouts, however, and you can get them right at DriveThruRPG. A word of caution when using them for Roll20. They are BIG files, at least as far as uploading into your library is concerned. There are many you will have to open up and save as .jpegs to make them smaller files. Once this is done, though, you can upload them and resize them to match your grid (and they come with grided & gridless images!). This process what easy for my with photshop, but I imagine it should be just as easy with a free program like Gimp as well.
MSJ Maps: I have had this on my radar since the time I joined Twitter. There are some great area maps and even some tiles for you to take a look at, and the art style is fantastic! It is unique and distinctive with some awesome ideas for battle locations that can inspire your games on their own. I would definitely suggest following MSJ on Twitter and bookmarking his site. If you can also become a patron and reap the rewards of some truly amazing maps! I bet with a little work these too could be used on Roll20 or similar apps as well.
Monday, August 15, 2016
Kickstarters, New Games, And Incoming Tales
Hey everyone! Once again there is plenty to cover from the last week. Today I have a couple of Kickstarter campaigns that I have my eye on, some new stuff coming out to add to your collections, and some more updates for things around here.
Kickstarters You Need To Check Out!
The first campaign you may want to take a look at is the new Worldographer. I have mentioned Hexographer as a mapping program for your RPG needs, and the good people over at Inkwell Ideas have decided to kick it up a notch. Head over here to check out the Kickstarter. After 7 years with Hexographer, they are trying to improve upon the program and create an even more useful tool. The new Worldographer will be able to integrate more details into your map, as well as multiple levels of mapping integrated together. On top of that there will be mini-generators for details on things like cities and ruins. If you are interested there are a few backer levels, some of which even include a download of the current Hexographer. And, if that doesn't sell you, they have a ling to a demo on the campaign's page!
The next campaign that I want to talk about is the type of thing I was hoping would show up. Last week, I mentioned Kobold Press' new Tome of Beasts for 5th Edition. This week, Nord Games has far exceeded their goal for releasing their own 5th addition monster supplement. Called Ultimate Bestiary: Revenge of the Horde, you can check it out over here. What makes this an awesome project worth backing is not the horde of new monsters you will get out of it. Instead, you will be getting a horde of details, stat blocks, and ideas for classic enemies. From goblins to gnolls, you will get a host adversaries for you PCs to tackle. Added on top of this are a number of stretch goals, some of which have already been unlocked. Among those are beasts of the horde and tribe details for the different races. The next goal is racial stats to play these monsters, so be sure to head of and pledge your support!
Yet Another World To Play In
In case all the worlds created for D&D over the years weren't enough, or the worlds now being released with the OGL still aren't quite enough, Green Ronin has announced that Matthew Mercer's world from Critical Role, Exandria, is coming to 5th Edition source books near you. If you haven't been watching Critical Role, than you should understand that the world Mercer has created for his players over the last few years is an incredibly rich one. If you have been watching you know just how awesome this is going to be. You can find the press release here, but the key point is the Tal'Dorei book is already in the works and slated for a Spring 2017 release.
Death Isn't The End
This game caught my eye when it showed up over and over on my Twitter feed during GenCon. Phoenix Dawn Command is a new RPG from Twogether Studios. What caught my eye about it, specifically was the giant, tarot sized deck of cards that comes with it. Apparently the RPG is deck-based, requiring sets of cards to be played in order to overcome the difficulty and complete a task. The artwork looks fantastic and there appears to be a rich world to dive into. When you die, you're not dead forever. Instead, you come back and become stronger learning from your mistakes and adding more cards to your deck. There is a catch though, well two catches. First off, missions are often time sensitive. Die and you could fail. You don't just rise instantly from the place you were killed of course. Additionally, you only have the opportunity to come back 7 times before the end is final. The result is that you can be reckless to get things done, but how reckless is to reckless and is it worth the risk? Check out the game's site and learn more here.
Stories Need Telling....And Scheduling
This week, we have some fun stuff to talk about here at Notes of the Wandering Alchemist. First off, today marked the official beginning of a novelized rendition of the story of the campaign that we spent two years playing and will be continuing (hopefully soon). We played it in the Pathfinder RPG system, in a world of, mostly, my own design. Initially this was going to be written as minor journal entries, but the tale has taken a life of its own in Untamed Scribes hands. The result is that our first entry is around 5 pages long. If you are a patron at the preview level, you can go check that out and download the PDF right now. If you are not, it will be posted up here on the 1st of September. Given the length of the entries, you can expect to see a new one each month. Preview patrons will see it on the 15th and the public will get it on the 1st of the following month.
In addition to that we have ever-more updates on Untamed Dice. If you have been following along on Twitter then you know why things have been late this bast few days. Games and time spent with visiting friends (one Aikos Lord of Cakes & Pastries, God of the Harvest and Brew). Expect Brave New Worlds to come this week instead and D&Donuts shortly. Also watch for that poll I mentioned as it will finally be going up tomorrow at some point.
Tomorrow I will also have a re-skinning article with some suggestions on re-flavoring things to make something unique. Wednesday i am going to try and squeeze in a new update as to my progress on the various projects I am working on and why some of those are taking longer than they should. Thursday will feature the regular Resources article. Friday will get you an update on the state of Untamed Dice games and our plans for recording, while Saturday will actually get you the episode (finally!).
Until next time!
Kickstarters You Need To Check Out!
The first campaign you may want to take a look at is the new Worldographer. I have mentioned Hexographer as a mapping program for your RPG needs, and the good people over at Inkwell Ideas have decided to kick it up a notch. Head over here to check out the Kickstarter. After 7 years with Hexographer, they are trying to improve upon the program and create an even more useful tool. The new Worldographer will be able to integrate more details into your map, as well as multiple levels of mapping integrated together. On top of that there will be mini-generators for details on things like cities and ruins. If you are interested there are a few backer levels, some of which even include a download of the current Hexographer. And, if that doesn't sell you, they have a ling to a demo on the campaign's page!
The next campaign that I want to talk about is the type of thing I was hoping would show up. Last week, I mentioned Kobold Press' new Tome of Beasts for 5th Edition. This week, Nord Games has far exceeded their goal for releasing their own 5th addition monster supplement. Called Ultimate Bestiary: Revenge of the Horde, you can check it out over here. What makes this an awesome project worth backing is not the horde of new monsters you will get out of it. Instead, you will be getting a horde of details, stat blocks, and ideas for classic enemies. From goblins to gnolls, you will get a host adversaries for you PCs to tackle. Added on top of this are a number of stretch goals, some of which have already been unlocked. Among those are beasts of the horde and tribe details for the different races. The next goal is racial stats to play these monsters, so be sure to head of and pledge your support!
Yet Another World To Play In
In case all the worlds created for D&D over the years weren't enough, or the worlds now being released with the OGL still aren't quite enough, Green Ronin has announced that Matthew Mercer's world from Critical Role, Exandria, is coming to 5th Edition source books near you. If you haven't been watching Critical Role, than you should understand that the world Mercer has created for his players over the last few years is an incredibly rich one. If you have been watching you know just how awesome this is going to be. You can find the press release here, but the key point is the Tal'Dorei book is already in the works and slated for a Spring 2017 release.
Death Isn't The End
This game caught my eye when it showed up over and over on my Twitter feed during GenCon. Phoenix Dawn Command is a new RPG from Twogether Studios. What caught my eye about it, specifically was the giant, tarot sized deck of cards that comes with it. Apparently the RPG is deck-based, requiring sets of cards to be played in order to overcome the difficulty and complete a task. The artwork looks fantastic and there appears to be a rich world to dive into. When you die, you're not dead forever. Instead, you come back and become stronger learning from your mistakes and adding more cards to your deck. There is a catch though, well two catches. First off, missions are often time sensitive. Die and you could fail. You don't just rise instantly from the place you were killed of course. Additionally, you only have the opportunity to come back 7 times before the end is final. The result is that you can be reckless to get things done, but how reckless is to reckless and is it worth the risk? Check out the game's site and learn more here.
Stories Need Telling....And Scheduling
This week, we have some fun stuff to talk about here at Notes of the Wandering Alchemist. First off, today marked the official beginning of a novelized rendition of the story of the campaign that we spent two years playing and will be continuing (hopefully soon). We played it in the Pathfinder RPG system, in a world of, mostly, my own design. Initially this was going to be written as minor journal entries, but the tale has taken a life of its own in Untamed Scribes hands. The result is that our first entry is around 5 pages long. If you are a patron at the preview level, you can go check that out and download the PDF right now. If you are not, it will be posted up here on the 1st of September. Given the length of the entries, you can expect to see a new one each month. Preview patrons will see it on the 15th and the public will get it on the 1st of the following month.
In addition to that we have ever-more updates on Untamed Dice. If you have been following along on Twitter then you know why things have been late this bast few days. Games and time spent with visiting friends (one Aikos Lord of Cakes & Pastries, God of the Harvest and Brew). Expect Brave New Worlds to come this week instead and D&Donuts shortly. Also watch for that poll I mentioned as it will finally be going up tomorrow at some point.
Tomorrow I will also have a re-skinning article with some suggestions on re-flavoring things to make something unique. Wednesday i am going to try and squeeze in a new update as to my progress on the various projects I am working on and why some of those are taking longer than they should. Thursday will feature the regular Resources article. Friday will get you an update on the state of Untamed Dice games and our plans for recording, while Saturday will actually get you the episode (finally!).
Until next time!
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