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Post by friartook on Apr 14, 2016 14:35:22 GMT
My group and I are working on building out a new world for our campaign. I have the bones of it; the major themes, timeline, some of the peoples and "nations", etc. My players have helped me flesh out some ideas and build on others. Its been pretty cool! I don't have time for a big world post now, but I am trying out a new process for map creation. I used Fractal Terrains to generate a world that fit some of my ideas, but also let myself be open to the software helping shape the world. I generated a world with a region that fit my scenario and timeline relatively well. I exported a limited area into Campaign Cartographer; not the whole world, just the macro area of the "known world" at the time of our campaign. Its still a pretty big area. I lost the FT file (or, more likely, forgot to save it). I was pretty upset by this at first, then decided it didn't matter. I have this tendency to go too macro, and lose myself in the need for detailing it all. Losing the file was a good thing. Here is a screenshot of the area I exported into CC: ![]()  Its just the coastlines. The green is land. My plan is to use this as a template for a hand drawn map. I've printed it out on 24x36 paper at my office, and have a clean sheet beside to trace out the coasts. I was smart enough to print images from FT of the Climates and the "Gaia" image (which simulates a view from space; think Google Earth). These will help guide me on elevations and where the climate/terrain breaks will be. I'll post the stages here as I go along. Once the map is complete (which should be after a few sessions of our game) I will begin posting bits on the world. It will be good practice for me, as my players have requested a Wiki of the campaign and world. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2016 22:10:32 GMT
Looking forward to see this project develop! When it comes to area design, are you planning to go top-down or bottom-up? That is, start big and work your way down to details, or start with details and work to the bigger picture?
I prefer the former because I feel it generates more cohesion in an area. That is, I find the common elements in a region before deciding what makes specific locations different from one another. When I start small, I find the details form a sort of template by which I must compare every other area. This works out fine if I limit gameplay to a culturally and geographically similar area, but feels inefficient for the scale of my homebrew.
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Post by friartook on Apr 14, 2016 22:37:46 GMT
Looking forward to see this project develop! When it comes to area design, are you planning to go top-down or bottom-up? That is, start big and work your way down to details, or start with details and work to the bigger picture? A bit of both actually. I need to do a regional map for my own reference. I have some historical context that it will be good to get down on paper. The "known world" was conquered by one nation about 250 years before our adventure. I want to get the general regions conquered mapped out, and a few "cultural borders" sketched in for context. For my players, I will mock up a crude map of the region they all know well where our adventure is starting. My plan is to have two maps for each area: one for myself for reference and context, and one that is a more crude, "in world" map. A map the characters may actually have. It will have less detail and be less accurate than my maps. That's the plan anyway. My immediate priority is to get a map of the city where we are starting done. It will be a general map, giving the outlines and structure of the city at large, with a few district lines, but not mapping individual streets or buildings (except a couple major ones). My secondary priorities are to get the full regional/historical map done, scan it and zoom to the local area, then redraw the local region. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2016 5:31:37 GMT
I like the idea of working from two maps (DM and player versions), and seem to recall a discussion about that in another thread. It's probably a bit more work than I care to do myself, but I think it would add a lot of value to the game. Good on you for taking it on!
When it comes to city maps, one little trick you might use is to take existing maps and fiddle with them in an image editor. Copy-paste chunks over one another, stretch and skew, erase, paint in, etc... It doesn't offer as much precision as starting from scratch, but it doesn't sound like precision is your goal (yet), and only takes a fraction of the time. I think I'll slap something together as an example.
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Post by friartook on Apr 15, 2016 6:04:53 GMT
I'm doing it all by hand. I've played with several different digital options. I haven't been able to get what I want out of them. I think it's a UI issue. I've used a bunch of CAD based solutions (I'm a CAD tech by trade), but the output isn't organic enough. I played around with GIMP and Photoshop, but I can't get the same flow of line with a mouse. Until I can swing a Wacom or similar, that's not gonna work.
So, I printed out the coastlines, and I've traced them and annotated the rough areas. Having the coasts be static and reprintable helps. Next step is to zoom in and print out the coastal area the game will start in.
With the city, I'm mostly concerned with the surrounding country and coast for historic purposes, and with the layout of the city walls. There's a river running through the center, a canal system, an university complex, and a complicated network of docks and such built on the bay; boat people and such. I'll post about it this weekend.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2016 6:57:41 GMT
Just wanted to pop in real quick with my slap-dash example. Based on what you just wrote, I understand this approach won't work for you, but it may get others thinking about an easy way to city build. Here's the original map I worked off.  Source: Robert Lazzaretti My goal here was to produce something in under an hour. Also, I found out there was already a black and white version of the original that I wish I had found first, as it would have made this look a lot cleaner. The point in doing this was only to demonstrate the technique as a time saver. If I gave myself another 30 minutes, I'd sharpen up some of the lines and clear up minor anomalies, and add the terrain. A little more time, I'd think up names for different areas and prominent buildings and label them. Short story, I could whip up a more or less complete city in 2 hours. When building this, I intended it as city built on a mountain top with large stairs connecting the two main sections. |
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Post by friartook on Apr 18, 2016 18:57:01 GMT
I think that's a pretty good map for a two hour effort @nevvur.
I haven't been able to put any time into this unfortunately. Super busy weekend and taxes due tonight. First game session is tomorrow evening! Blargh!
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Post by friartook on Apr 26, 2016 20:14:37 GMT
I don't have any updated visuals on my maps to post, but I thought I'd post a little update on how this is going.
We had our first actual session last week. The session began with our Barbarian character being told by the local constable that his shop was being shut down. You see, he is a licenses blacksmith, but not a member of the Imperial Guild. This was frowned upon, but legal. Until now. The constable came in with a superior officer in tow and showed off a new Imperial Decree stating that all licensed blacksmiths must be members of a guild.
So they made their way to Freeport, the nearest large city and the last of the Free Cities. Freeport is a major strategic port, with a double ring of sturdy walls and a very defensible harbor. A very large river flows through Freeport and provides shipping routes upstream to what was once known as the Free Territories; a collection of City States that maintained their own independent governments, but had a lot of inter-connections through trade and culture (think the Greeks; Athens and Sparta and all that). The lands around them are rocky; the foothills of a large north south mountain range. Difficult terrain.
When the Empire came in to conquer the area, they had a choice: a long protracted march from the south over rough terrain and through hostile lands, or a rough protracted march from the north over slightly less rough terrain, but very near the domains of the Horsemen (nomadic tribes, generally not hostile, but not happy to have armies passing through their lands). Lastly, they could take the port of Freeport and make their way upriver to the lands beyond. However, Freeport is not easily taken. So the Imperials met with the council of Freeport and cut a deal. They would allow Freeport to maintain its "independent" status, for the council to stay in power, in exchange for free passage upriver and submitting to a purge of their Libraries by the state Church. The alternative was a long protracted siege which would leave both Freeport and the Imperial army much the worse for wear.
The council was smart, and had heard of the Imperial tactics and tenacity. They understood the subtext: If you make us take your city, which we will in the long run, it will cost us dearly and you will pay dearly. So they cut a deal. The Church Inquisitors and the Paladins of the Natural Order entered the University and built great bonfires of "heretical texts". Thousands of books were burned and hundreds of scholars were thrown (alive it is rumored) into the midst of the great towering fires. The armies took their small longboats upriver and laid waste to the Free Territories, which today are known simply as the Territories.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 29, 2016 6:06:21 GMT
Something that occurred to me as I read this was how it feels like you are writing from the perspective of Freeport. I mention this because there are some major similarities between our settings, but when I describe events in my timeline, it's heavily influenced by the imperial perspective.
I suspect we both used Earth history, especially Roman imperialism, as a basis for the political climate of our worlds. Of course, the rise and fall of empires is a common theme in fiction, fantasy or otherwise, so maybe I'm wrong about yours.
In any case, the empire in my setting was certainly guilty of such atrocities as you describe, but it's been kind of white washed in my official timeline. There's mention of forced religious conversion, and how this played into revolution down the road, but I personally regard the empire as a stabilizing force in a world newly awakened to magic, and I think this influences how I write about the world in general. Were I to write more from the perspective of Shensedai or the Federation, two other major political factions in my setting's present day, I reckon the tone would be rather different.
As an example, the empire in my setting was quick to force magic users into politically controlled organizations. The narrative of my timeline describes it as a means of exercising control over magic to ensure the safety of non-magic using citizens. From the perspective of the Federation, it probably looked more like a greedy power grab.
Frankly, I think it would be prohibitively difficult and time consuming to give a fair shake to every political perspective about every major event. Still, it's something to think about as we both continue work on our homebrews.
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Post by friartook on Apr 29, 2016 13:58:08 GMT
Something that occurred to me as I read this was how it feels like you are writing from the perspective of Freeport. I mention this because there are some major similarities between our settings, but when I describe events in my timeline, it's heavily influenced by the imperial perspective. I suspect we both used Earth history, especially Roman imperialism, as a basis for the political climate of our worlds. Of course, the rise and fall of empires is a common theme in fiction, fantasy or otherwise, so maybe I'm wrong about yours. How interesting! I was influenced more by the Persian Empire of the ancient world rather than Roman Imperialism. The Imperials in my setting always preferred to use diplomacy, economics, and the like to conquer other lands, but there was always the threat of vicious violence very shallowly under the surface of all negotiations. They possessed "superior technology" (the forging of steel weapons and armor) and had a reputation for vicious fighting. The Free Territories were very resistant to Imperial control, and because of the geography/geology of the are they were in, very difficult to threaten militarily. Freeport offered the entry to the rest of the Territories in exchange for some measure of autonomy. None of what I write here is "official" history. Such things exist and are most definitely skewed to the Imperial perspective, but the timeline of this era is analogous to the ancient world of Earth; pre-medieval. Travel and communication are heavily regulated and restricted; its illegal for average people to own horses, in order to travel from city to city you need "walking papers", and shipping requires a special "caravan license". There is no official "postal service" for the common folk. So there are official histories, but they are mostly for the elites. The Imperials are an ethnic group as well; they all come from the same source nation, and are divided by a rigid caste system. The Church is the more influential propaganda force, but most of their propaganda is against magic and the use of magic, and oppressing other religions with their "one true god" ideals. In the current era, magic is folklore. Most folk, even the faithful, consider the Church's "anti-magic" stance to be superstition, symbolism, or references to practices long dead. The Church waged a campaign of death, destruction and book burning to rid the known world of magic knowledge, and were successful to the point where most folk consider magic itself to be a myth of the old world, much as we would view the stories of the Ancient Greeks. The travel restrictions were inspired by Feudal Japan. However, the amount of land mass involved in my setting is much, much larger, making these laws harder to enforce. In practice, you can get away with a lot so long as you stay in the vast unsettled stretches between civilized areas. But when you enter a city or if you happen to encounter an Imperial patrol, you better have your papers in order! Politically, the Empire is in a state of unrest, though the PCs are currently unaware of this. The Emperor recently died under mysterious circumstances, and his young son (around age 10) has taken the throne. The son is actually just a puppet being manipulated by powerful forces behind the scenes, but again, this is nothing the PCs would know. There is also rebellion brewing in many areas. People whisper that the Imperial House has lost its divine mandate to rule, and that it is time for a change. Old powers thought long removed from the world are stirring and waking. Games are afoot. We'll see where the PCs end up in all that. |
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