Cartography II

Colored in regions, added provincial borders, and marked city locations on the map for Flying Swordsmen RPG.  I'm going to have to redo the colors, though.  They don't scan well.  I'm not liking these Korean color pencils I've got to work with.  I'll see if I can dig out my old Japanese ones and re-do the coloring.  Otherwise I'll have to touch it up in GIMP, and I'm not too fond of that option.  I'm guessing it will be a lot more time consuming.

Public Domain is Awesome

Over the past couple of days, I've been collecting public domain pictures that I can use with Flying Swordsmen.  I've got a couple of artists on board, which is great that I can include some new art in it.  I'm really thankful to both Dylan and Jacob.

But there's no way I could get these two to donate enough art to fill what looks like it will be a roughly 120 page book. 

And not even looking for traditional pictures of Chinese monsters (although I do have a few already), I've collected over 120 public domain pictures.  So I'll be able to pick and choose what I like, and should still have enough art to have a picture on each page if I feel like it. 

I don't plan to put a picture on each page, but I could if I wanted to.

The only down side to the public domain images is that many of the human figures come from Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh illustrations, so they're almost all male, and a majority are wearing armor.  Oh well, beggars can't be choosers, and I will be getting some new art to help rectify some of those issues.

Meh...

Not really feeling anything worth posting lately.  Working on the FSRPG map and campaign setting description, doing some reading, playing with my son.  That's my free time these days.  A bit of blog reading as well.  But nothing to write about.

Oh well, inspiration will come soon enough.  Until then, roll some natural 20's, everyone.

Cartography

I spent about 10 minutes yesterday afternoon doing a rough sketch of a map for Flying Swordsmen RPG's campaign world.  I spent some time this morning before my son woke up detailing coastlines, then sketching in mountains and rivers.  This evening, I detailed the mountains and rivers. 

Now I've scanned it just to put it up here and show off where I am so far.  My sketch pad is too big for my scanner, so I had to do it in two parts and edited them together roughly.  The seam is obvious, but this is just for posterity.  I'll be adding in forests and deserts next, then finally cities, roads, and provincial borders and labels over the next few days.

I only got two of my sample characters rolled up so far, but I've been having fun with the map.

Also, I've got another artist lined up to help, Jacob from the Yamanashi Group.  Things are coming along with this little project of mine.

Rolling Up Characters

I've got nothing to say about this week's OSR shield debate.  And I've had limited time for gaming stuff. 

Besides working on some edits of Flying Swordsmen (thanks, Matt and David!) and arranging for some art (thanks, Dylan!), I've been pouring over various Palladium books to try to figure out what sort of character I want to play.

Palladium's biggest problem as far as I'm concerned, is that everything DOES play well together (well, maybe except anything with megadamage).  Still, after going through most of Ninjas & Superspies, and returning to TMNT and Heroes Unlimited (still haven't cracked open Mystic China but I may be OK without it) I think I've figured out what I want to play out of the hundreds of options available.  I'm not sure when Alex is going to get his game prepped and ready to play, but I'm more or less ready to roll up my guy.

I'm also going to be rolling up some sample characters for Flying Swordsmen today and tomorrow.  I'll maybe do a few playtests with them, and I'll be using them both for examples in the rule book and as characters in the flavor text. 

So I've got character generation on the brain, not shields.

Just to set the record straight

I may dump on 4th Edition, or other games I personally don't like here on my blog.  It's my blog, so it's my place to do just that. 

I do not, never have, and never will, go to the blog of some fellow gamer who does happen to like 4E (or any other game I don't like) and dump there.

Self-Inflicted Punishment

Yesterday morning, and again last night, I sat myself down and forced myself to finish reading the 4E Essentials Rules Compendium's chapter on Powers. 

Man, that was a slog.  No wonder I put it off for so long.  It's not only a really boring explanation of all the terms used in powers, it's also apparently written for complete morons.

Seriously, people complain about the Mentzer sets being written at a young reading level, but this was painful. 

The skill chapter comes next, but Powers may have sapped my will to actually figure out 4E.  I mean, that's the heart of the game system right there, folks.  Who cares about the rest when the bread and butter is so stale?