Lunchtime Letter
Hey,
Things are progressing on my adventure series (I'd use "adventure path" but I don't know if Paizo has that TM'd), just slowly. I've mentioned my tendency towards being laconic, so no update doesn't mean nothing's happening, just no significant (from my perspective) advances. My co-writer and I are having scheduling difficulties getting together for the next brainstorming session, but I want to do the next one before he gets sent to Nigeria for a couple weeks.
My current stumbling block writing-wise is the background session. I know how much to put in for an RPGA mod, but I'm not certain how much is too much for a full on mod that will take 3-4 sessions to finish. Some of the information about the location will go into an associated article that will be published at the same time, but I still need to explain to the DM what led to the beginning of the adventure. I think no more than a single, two column page will do it, but I may want to trim it shorter - I don't know.
The first part will cover the PCs getting together and traveling to where the adventure is. Travel encounters are good for giving a sense what the terrain the PCs are traveling through is like - frontier or civilized, forest or desert, and so forth. The down-side is that too much of it and the adventure pacing suffers. The fantasy game I'm currently playing in suffered from that and enthusiasm for the campaign dwindled much as a result. Things are shaping back up, but we've just lost our fourth player to being re-activated in the reserves, so we may switch to an alternate set of characters for a bit.
Now I've run a long-term travel adventure where the characters were questing for a series of ingredients for a major ritual. I thought it went well and I was worried about it dragging out, so I tried to keep the number of encounters down and directly plot related. I see now that my perception of the adventure as a GM may be different than as a player. I'll need to poll my players about it (asking them to set their brain on "way-back" mode as it's been over two years since I ran that).
I've also started updating maps and identifying things that need to be mapped. The freeware I've been using (AutoREALM) updated since I switched computers and I discovered some of the symbol sets were no longer valid. As a result, I spent some time on their Yahoo group getting updated symbol sets yesterday. I like using vector-based software for map development, but I am not proficient enough in Illustrator to do more than modify existing work. I like the ability to filter layers and generate multiple output. The issue with AutoREALM (for me, anyways) is the imprecise ability to output exactly what I want. And sometimes the scrolling is very buggy, but it's freeware, so there is always a price to be paid. At the moment I'm developing my world map with MS Paint, but I may port over the base map and see how far I can stretch AutoREALM before it breaks. The base map is 36 in x 62 in. It is the second map I've worked on in Paint at that size, the first an old school hexmap, while this one will be a bit more free-form with a grid layer that can be over-laid. I hope.
Yes, I really enjoy world creation and making maps.
Later!
Things are progressing on my adventure series (I'd use "adventure path" but I don't know if Paizo has that TM'd), just slowly. I've mentioned my tendency towards being laconic, so no update doesn't mean nothing's happening, just no significant (from my perspective) advances. My co-writer and I are having scheduling difficulties getting together for the next brainstorming session, but I want to do the next one before he gets sent to Nigeria for a couple weeks.
My current stumbling block writing-wise is the background session. I know how much to put in for an RPGA mod, but I'm not certain how much is too much for a full on mod that will take 3-4 sessions to finish. Some of the information about the location will go into an associated article that will be published at the same time, but I still need to explain to the DM what led to the beginning of the adventure. I think no more than a single, two column page will do it, but I may want to trim it shorter - I don't know.
The first part will cover the PCs getting together and traveling to where the adventure is. Travel encounters are good for giving a sense what the terrain the PCs are traveling through is like - frontier or civilized, forest or desert, and so forth. The down-side is that too much of it and the adventure pacing suffers. The fantasy game I'm currently playing in suffered from that and enthusiasm for the campaign dwindled much as a result. Things are shaping back up, but we've just lost our fourth player to being re-activated in the reserves, so we may switch to an alternate set of characters for a bit.
Now I've run a long-term travel adventure where the characters were questing for a series of ingredients for a major ritual. I thought it went well and I was worried about it dragging out, so I tried to keep the number of encounters down and directly plot related. I see now that my perception of the adventure as a GM may be different than as a player. I'll need to poll my players about it (asking them to set their brain on "way-back" mode as it's been over two years since I ran that).
I've also started updating maps and identifying things that need to be mapped. The freeware I've been using (AutoREALM) updated since I switched computers and I discovered some of the symbol sets were no longer valid. As a result, I spent some time on their Yahoo group getting updated symbol sets yesterday. I like using vector-based software for map development, but I am not proficient enough in Illustrator to do more than modify existing work. I like the ability to filter layers and generate multiple output. The issue with AutoREALM (for me, anyways) is the imprecise ability to output exactly what I want. And sometimes the scrolling is very buggy, but it's freeware, so there is always a price to be paid. At the moment I'm developing my world map with MS Paint, but I may port over the base map and see how far I can stretch AutoREALM before it breaks. The base map is 36 in x 62 in. It is the second map I've worked on in Paint at that size, the first an old school hexmap, while this one will be a bit more free-form with a grid layer that can be over-laid. I hope.
Yes, I really enjoy world creation and making maps.
Later!