I’m managed very little in the way of writing these last few weeks. In fact I’ve managed very little anything these last few weeks but the one thing I have managed to work on is my campaign settings map.

There has been a few questions asked over the last month or so about the scale of the main map that we’re working from. Each hex was anything from 250 to 500 miles point to point depending on who you talked to. I decided to go with 250 for my own maps on the basis that if its the later the distance between the islands would have been too great. If the setting goes with a 500 mile scale I’ll just keep developing the setting but I guess I won’t be taking part in the collaborative side of things.

Anyway there’s been a few changes and improvements on the map so far. I’ve messed about with the mountains and hills a little, added a bit of colour to offset the blanket green it seemed to have, worked out where the major rivers were, named the islands and placed the towns and villages on the map.

click for bigger picture

For those that are interested the names are all of Scots Gaelic origin although I cannot vouch that they actually make sense in Gaelic as I joined a few names that looked good together without really caring for the correct structure.

• Fàsach na Fear (Mountain of Man)
• DÌthreabh bho Dheas (Southern Wilderness)
• Eileach bho Thuath (Stoney North)
• Linnhe Dubh (Dark Pool)
• An Frith Feàrna (Small Wooded Land)

The red dots are the capitols/main town of each island. The yellow dots are the permanent towns and villages that have been built up around natural resources. The blue dots are the temporary longphorts where the boats have came ashore to over-winter or to set up trading posts.

Any thoughts?

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So this months Blog Carnival is about gaming goals and resolutions. Uncle Bear is hosting this month and even if your getting a little tired of resolution posts you should check out the rest of his site and I can get lost in there! Everyone seems to have had the same idea of posting up a top three/five list of what they aim to achieve so I’m going to try and be a little different.

I got into this blogging game because a: I like writing and b: I like gaming. I never thought for a second when the idea first popped into my head that I’d end up as part of the RPG Bloggers Network or that I’d meet so many like minded people. Were I to live in the USA I’d make a point of attending one of the larger Cons in an attempt to meet these aforementioned folk but life is not that easy. I’ll just stick to berating them on Twitter or finding some way to trek across the city and throw fruit at Games of State’s windows.

So how does this post fit into the carnival this month? Well I think 2009 is going to be a year of collaboration. Someone pointed me in the direction of a blog post last night that hit a chord. With the worldwide recession hitting us there are no startups really making it big with big money backers but there are plenty of people with shared interests getting together, watching each others backs and getting things done. The The RPG Bloggers Network is one example and the CMF Advertising Network is another. A group of people with the same idea working towards the same goal and it’s working. Look at how well the RPG Bloggers Network has been received and how quickly it’s grown. I see great things coming from those guys in 2009.

Over on the RPG Bloggers Network Google Group (We really need to come up with a quick and snazzy acronym for that) an idea has been floated about a network wide collaboration. The aim of which will end up with a campaign setting for anyone to use. The specifics are still being discussed between those interested and those that floated the original idea but I think it’s going to be huge. Not only do we get to give to the community with our every post and the network provides us with many readers but we will all be able to contribute to something that we can give back to the readers. I can’t wait to get stuck into that project.

Even if this does not go ahead I’m hoping to bring in another writer or two to give my own campaign settings a good kick and get them finished and written up.

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Mapping.

That one word as a GM fills me with dread. Why create a maze of irrelevant intersections only to have your players deliberate over every decision when all you need them to do is get to the bottom?

And who in their right mind still thinks having their players map the dungeon/maze/where ever on squared paper is conducive to a good gaming experience? Of the many times we’ve tried that there has not been a single occasion where the player mapping hasn’t made a mistake at some point which has completely ruined the map. An intersection wrongly marked or a tunnel 5 squares long instead of 6. I’ve yet to see an aspect of gaming that wastes more time and cause more unnecessary arguments than mapping.

But how do you get around explaining the players locale without it? Bear in mind I very rarely use minatures and hate being limited by using pre-built dungeon cardboard cut-outs.

You could take the route of just giving/selling them a ‘complete’ without any of your encounters or items marked on it. At least that way there is no arguments over layouts but you can’t do that every time. It’s the equivalent of handing your players a bag of holding because they just happen to want to carry every item they have ever looted about with them at all times. It’s far to easy a trap to fall into at the best of times.

Going on past experiences the best way I’ve found to deal with this problem is to first of all stop designing huge dungeons. Unless you are just going to miss out most of the map and just tell the players they have found a way to the secret room you still get a decent level of exploration on small scale tunnels. The other method is to produce several copies of the same map. One with all your notes on it, a blank one without the notes and several copies of the blank one that has for example everything but the opening few rooms blanked out and then one with the next section showing. Use a blank bit of paper and sketch the initial tunnels/rooms until they have discovered most of what’s on the first sectioned map and then replace the scribble with the actual map section. Keep doing this until they end up with the almost completed map in their hands.

It may sound like an awful lot of work but if you limit it to a few map sections it’s the quickest and most accurate way I’ve found yet whilst not boring the players have to death.

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