This Blog Has Moved

This Blog now has a new home, where it's now much more tightly integrated with my wiki of the same name.


You can find the new version of this blog here, complete with all the old posts imported and in some cases annotated with a few footnotes.

This version of the Blog will no longer be updated.

Lilly and the Outsiders: They've got character sheets

I've just finished the GURPS character sheets for the Outsiders.

Teka turned out far more deadly than I thought he would be. His favorite attack (an arrow in each eye) is an immediate kill on just about anything with a brain.

You can find the wiki page that links to their character sheets here.

Lilly and the Outsiders: Introduction

I've finished jumping through the annoying hoops required to put the introduction in the wiki.

You can find it here.

I just wish Wikispaces had some way to do paragraph indentation. I had to turn all the tabs I used for indenting into blank lines. It looks all wrong, but I've gotten quite sick of struggling with the editor. This is not the first occasion where I've had to fight with the thing, either.

Not that this blog will let me do paragraph indentation, either.

Argh!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the beginning of the somewhat mangled story.

Hopefully I'll find some way to properly format it at some point in the future and then I can fix it.

Lilly and the Outsiders

I've been working on a story in my spare time that I thought others would enjoy reading.

It uses Islands of War for the setting and is about one of the adventuring parties that I'm building.

The group isn't listed in the wiki yet, but they're called Lilly and the Outsiders.

Here's a list of the party members (by order of appearance in the story):
Lilliam "Lilly" Branche (Leader of the Party, Fighter)
Katelynn Maroguin, better known as Daughter of Shadow (Priest, Martial Artist, Rogue)
Burton Russello (Jack of all trades, Entertainer)
Odnom Orazzib (Warlock)
Teka, the Dead Eye (Blind Archer)

Lilly, Daughter of Shadow and Burton already have character sheets in the wiki, but will likely require some updates to bring them in line with events in the story. For example, Lilly is taught quite a bit about leadership behind the scenes by Teka.

Odnom is almost finished and I've yet to start on Teka.

Their first adventure is Clearing the Gnomish Mines. I'm still writing that bit out, but I'll post as each section is completed.

I'll put completed sections in the wiki here.

Wiki dumps for Islands of War

I just thought some of you out there would be interested to know that I've setup a repository for dumps of the Islands of War Wiki.

They're available here. There's also a list of the dump archives, here, in the Wiki.

Drawing Maps, Part II

I just thought someone out there might like to see an updated version of the map of the Archipelago from Islands of War.

I've added ocean depth and mountain detail. This works much like adding topographical detail to a traditional map, with a slight twist: I colored it to make it appear similar to a satellite map.

If you compare to the previous map drawing post, I believe you'll find this version far more beautiful.

I guess after I finally get around to finishing the mountains I should add a compass and a distance scale. That will require deciding what that scale should be. So far I've been a bit deliberately vague about how far apart everything is, but I guess the whole area is probably the size of a medium continent.

On the other hand, I could slap a "Not to Scale" label on it and continue being vague. Heh.

Still alive...

I just wanted to tell everybody that I'm still alive.

I haven't been updating the Islands of War Wiki very much because I'm currently running a side campaign involving an anti-alien unit of soldiers.

I should be getting back around to Islands of War soon, so you should see some updates soon.

Every once in a while, it's just good to do something different. Hence the short-term anti-alien campaign.

Dungeon Mapping in Inkscape

Just today, I started experimenting with drawing dungeon maps in Inkscape.

I've built a nice little file for this with pre-made bits you can copy and paste on to a map.

If you open it in Inkscape, it should be nicely setup and ready to go. I don't know if any other SVG-capable program will be so friendly.

You'll find it here along with instructions on how to use it.

Pre-generated Characters

I've been mulling an idea through my head for a while now.

For any RPG campaign I run in the future, I'm going to build at least seven or eight characters that would fit in the campaign.

This serves a few purposes:

• Players new to GURPS won't have to build their own character while still learning the system. This gives them a chance to play without being overwhelmed with decisions.
  
• Players new to the group won't have to build their own character while still deciding if they even want to play in the group.
• Players get a whole bunch of example characters that they can compare to and get ideas from.
• New players will get to see characters that are actually balanced and they'll consider giving their characters more than just combat skills.
• If a player likes one of my example characters, they can just keep it and I just build another one. With GCS (see previous posts), this is easy enough and fairly quick.
• My players will see some of my very unique creations from their side of the table, instead of having to fight them.
  

Near as I can tell, there's only one down side to this plan. I have to build seven or eight characters for each campaign, in addition to everything else I have to prepare. I think it's worth it.

Drawing Maps, Part I

For quite a long time, I've been looking for a map drawing tool for my various campaigns. I tried a few programs, but didn't quite like any of them.

Yesterday I read a suggestion from a slashdot.org user recommending using a regular vector-based drawing program instead of a map drawing program. It was in an Ask Slashdot article asking for suggestions on such programs.

I decided to try Inkscape, since I've heard of it before and it's available in Ubuntu's repositories.

I'm satisfied with the results so far. My first map is somewhat crude, but it's better than nothing and it's enough to play with. By the way, it's for my campaign setting wiki, Islands of War. Check it out if you haven't already. It's growing every day and getting more detailed with each edit.