So, many of you know that I am underway with the planning and preparation stage for the third Midderlands book, The City of Great Lunden.
As it currently stands, the book is about 20k words in, with a 60-70k target, so still plenty more to do before I launch the Kickstarter between now and beginning of March.
So, what is currently planned:
An A5 hardcover book detailing the city and its surrounding wards.
A reversible A2 folded map of:
Front: Great Lunden and its surroundings.
Rear: The Inner Wards of Great Lunden.
A reversible A2 folded map of:
Front: Some of the rooftops of the Inner Wards (for rooftop chases).
Rear: The sewer network.
Six A5 Pregen character cards (for convention games and pregen use). These will also feature is a short story within the book, written by Richard Marpole.
Other stuff that I have rattling around in my head.
One of the pregenerated characters, Tessa Tennant. She is one of the ‘The Gardeners of Walshale’. This shows the front and rear of the A5 card. Character Art by Juan Ochoa.This is my current WIP map of The City of Great Lunden. There is still A LOT to do on this.This is my current notes on details of the Inner Wards. It’s keeping me on the straight and narrow with regards to street names and such.
To create great artwork or cartography requires some things.
You need tools or programs you can use. Like a pencil, or ArtRage 5.
Some skill. It doesn’t have to be a university level degree.
A basic understanding of physics (such as light and shadow). For example, the same light can’t hit both sides of a roof unless it’s top-down without some variation.
Time. Don’t rush it.
That last one. Yeh, time.
There’s a simple equation to the positive reactions elicited from the final creation of a piece of cartography and artwork. And it’s the most important one.
(I’m clever, me).
Like Shoeless Joe Jackson said, “Build it, and they will come”.
He didn’t say, “Take your time to build it, and they will come.” I did, and I stick by it.
There’s lots of way to save time, like copying and pasting the same icon repeatedly. But it stands out like a sore thumb in most cases and messes with the suspension of disbelief. You don’t tend to have that luxury when drawing traditionally by hand anyway — unless you have a tendency to stipple (which I do) and have access to a Cuttleola Dotspen.
Do I use shortcuts, hell yes — sometimes, but I try to make them as difficult to spot as possible with hue variations, random rotations, slight scale adjustments, etc. Generally speaking, if you look for shortcuts you undermine the wow factor.
The first step is don’t rush it, don’t try and make a self-imposed deadline. Tackle it in stages if it’s looking like a bigger job.
If you spend ALL DAY (8 hours) drawing a map it will look really nice. If you spend 5 days (8 hours a day) it will look fabulous.
Try it. Let go of time as a limitation. It’s probably holding you back.
The Wyrmere has provided for the community known as Sheepfeld for over fifty years. A gathering of the livestock farmers — mainly sheep — the folk have become unwelcoming of late. Tall tales of giant sheepmen stalking the woods at night craving blood have spooked many from visiting the area and the supply of fleeces to the towns up the trade route has now stopped.
Doug Cole is the mastermind behind Gaming Ballistic, and is an all-round great guy. You can often find him getting kidnapped into online chats with Matt Finch over on Uncle Matt’s RPG Studio.
Lost Hall of Tyr (2nd Edition) is a mini-setting and adventure for the Dragon Heresy Roleplaying game. Dragon Heresy is a self-contained complete game in one volume, and the Introductory Set covers Level 1-5.
Lost Hall of Tyr (2nd Edition) contains
A non-linear adventure for 4-7 characters of Level 1-5
A detailed workup of the Viking-inspired town of Isfjall, suitable as either a home port for an extended campaign or a jumping off point for the adventure
Rules for overland journeys in the wild north, several adventuring locations, and of course the quest to rediscover the Lost Hall itself
A bestiary containing all the key creatures from the adventure, including the Dragon Heresy unique stats pre-calculated (Threat DC, Hit DC, wound and control thresholds, wounds, and vigor)
Lost Hall of Tyr is 112 pages long, in full color.
The main maps are already completed, as they were done as part of the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Hall of Judgment version done by me. Here’s one showing the region, and also the Rival Claim encounter location, just across from the Rope Bridge:
Rival Claim
So, let’s take a look at the first map, Rival Claim. In the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Hall of Judgment version, it looks like this:
Rival Claim encounter map in Hall of Judgment
So, the brief was to create an encounter map that was easier to read, and also show the trees and trail leading north, and also the rope bridge to the south. Here’s my rough sketch:
The rope bridge was a little too wide, so I narrowed it in the final. I used ArtRage 5 for this mainly. The final labelling and scale bar/compass was added in Photoshop CC 2019.
A photo of my screen, prior to labels, scale and compass
The stones and trees were created separately as ‘sticker sheets’. I then used a sticker spray brush to place them with a slight variation to the rotation, hue, and scale. I then went back and added consistent highlight and shadow to each element.
And this is the low resolution version of the final map. It came out pretty well.
Carved into the rock, a pillar-lined entrance beckons. A structure, either carved out of the stone at a strange angle, or buried millennia ago and part of the landscape. Inside, the Black River is said to flow onwards to the Black River Chambers, where ‘she’ dwells.
Full version with grid and numbering.
The Inner Section can be cutout and used in the central ‘greyed’ area of the main map.
It’s time to close the shutters for a few days while I recover from a fantastic year for MonkeyBlood Design & Publishing. This was the year that we proudly grabbed a Gold ENnie Award. An astounding achievement.
None of this is achievable without you folks out there, reading this. The commission clients, product customers, fans, friends, supporters, and believers. I want you all to have the best Christmas and New Year ever.
There are piles of things in the pipeline for 2019 and beyond. Look out for another Kickstarter sometime in February, a book of Midderlands hooks, a self-contained RPG/setting about robots, a Serpentlands book, more adventures, and copious amounts of game juice. I’m itching to get started on it all.
In the meantime, have a Cold Hovel battlemap (5-foot gridded and non-gridded versions). Perfect for a cold, northern adventure. Discover what’s under the trapdoor… Don’t die.
It’s US Letter-sized (8.5″ x 11″) so print it out at 1:1.
Cold Hovel – 5ft squaresCold Hovel – ungridded
So to close…
…Thank you so very kindly for all the support over this past year. I am always humbled and thankful. May you and your families have the happiest of holidays.
See you in 2019, with more game juice,
Check out the briefest glimpse of one of the battlemaps I did for the set at 12:07 (underside) and 12:11 (he’s looking at it). It is part of a round tower. That’s one quarter of the four pieces that connect together to make that battlemap).
Check the box out for yourself – https://www.beadleandgrimms.com/.
Expensive as a single purchase, but for a combined gaming group purchase I bet it will give you enough fodder for a year of sessions.
(I’m clever, me).
