[QUOTE=Rats808;47645424]I generally don't even draw my maps with combat in mind, since it's rare that a place is going to be [I]built[/I] with people fighting in the space in mind. Generally, I just draw what I imagine the place looks like, and let the players run with what I've given them.
EG if you're doing an office building, you're not gonna be strategically placing the desks and cubicles so people can get good cover while still being able to shoot other people. Just lay it all out as space-efficient as possible, and generally there'll be some obvious spots that work for cover more than others.[/QUOTE]
Usually the places where my combats take place are in less uniform areas like various villages and military bases along with random other outdoor areas which are obviously laid out differently. Plus the system I'm running, Savage Worlds, is heavily based off of a wargame and so most of the rules assume you are using miniatures and such.
For my maps I've recently started using Hexographer. Make a blank map with solid terrain relevant to the area, add a few details and differences with other tiles, done. Takes a few minutes tops depending on the size and intricacy. It's mostly so they know where they are relative to everything else and so they can visualize any area of effects things. If need be I could always slap together a map while GMing, I've done it before.
I've yet to see a map generator that can do urban areas well, line tool + grid snap is just far easier for inside buildings and streets.
Well, luckily, for this map, I just booted up GTAV, and blatantly stole the layout of the Lost's compound in LS. I like having a pretty good level of detail for Shadowrun, since half the fun for players - MY players, I should say - seems to be examining the target and plotting their plots like they're pulling a heist. Luckily for this one, I have in mind another run later that's in a similar compound, so I'll just use it for that. And THAT time, the target will be non-mobile, so they'll HAVE to go in.
Since we play in meat space, we've tried a variety of mapping styles. For some stuff, I used HDMI to hook my laptop up to the big screen and show stuff. Roll20 works for that, too. This week, I bought a pretty decently-sized white board that I can lay on the floor between us and scribble on if I need to show them their immediate surroundings. Since Shadowrun is less obsessively tactical than the d20 games we're used to, I'm figuring it should work pretty good to give everyone a good idea of what's where.
now up to my third time nearly dying in Mutants & Masterminds
I make one joke about being the universe's chew toy and it more or less continues to confirm that I am exactly that
superpowered teen life is hard
M&M was fun though
Hacking away at my nemesis with my laser-chainsaw is rad as hell
Got face fucked by a monkey in weird wars while repairing a tank.
When people write character sheets, gear sheets.. they never once considered what would happen if they give the player more of their own customization, for examples base or vehicles... I'll tell you why they never do it.
135 pages of said customization. GAH. It's going to be interesting to see alpha-players reactions though to being given so much power. Worst of all, more customization = more catalogs = more balancing = more testing. This is either going to be great or fall flat.
[t]http://i.imgur.com/3yX1k4k.jpg[/t]
The welcome page of RearAdmiral's The Strange game.
Man I have such great plans for Chryssalids in my game. It's gonna be fuuuuuun.
Or you can just pull a dnd 3.5 and say fuck it to all ideas of balancing.
You don't have to spend ages to make good looking maps (and thus any "wasted" time is irrelevant), that's a myth that I'd say became common by professional map makers lying for business if I were really cynical about it.
Here's an old example of a map I made. You'll have to settle for a shitty screencap of the beta version since since I've lost my finalized version and even this super compressed version is still 20MB:
[t]http://i.imgur.com/e8Ylequ.jpg[/t]
That took about 30 minutes to make. The map was automatically generated for me via a custom version of MapTool (found on their forums) that uses an impressive (free) tileset library to randomly generate maps (and does a whole lot more if you actually use MapTool as your VTT -- I don't). I changed a few rooms around (given the small size of the map, it used less than 1/4 of the tiles available and I wanted some of the more interesting ones) and spent the majority of time adding fluff. I added mostly blood, bodies and small things specific to the adventure (and a lot of doors). Almost everything there of interest is already part of the tile; furniture, POI, lighting, etc. Takes a lot of the leg work out of the process. The key with that specific tileset is the visual quality (also quantity of tiles), I've yet to find one better.
It's very easy to shotgun a dungeon with tilesets (there are thousands, but quality will vary and ironically the free ones tend to be the best in that regard) and even geomorphs. I've actually been put at huge disadvantage on that due to my own level of perfection in maps and won't tolerate visual inconsistency (my preferred is akin to the screenshot above) -- and I still have a (entirely free) mapping resource folder with over 70,000 individual .png files. If you're open to much more cartoony looking art styles there's an absolute fuck load of free resources on the internet to shortcut map making. If you're willing to spend money then there's an overwhelming amount of resources for that purpose.
Tilesets aren't sufficient for every scenario though and generally don't work well with outdoor environments (unless you get some outdoor tilesets, of which many exist) or extremely personalized ones. Even this has shortcuts, however. For example when I want to make an outdoor environment that has a "free flow" and doesn't feel like a tileset in design (thus I can't use any) I first need to recognize what I need. Almost any outdoor environment will feature foliage and terrain. Creating dense trees, rocks, terrain modification and etc is difficult to make look good, especially if you're doing it by hand and aren't an artist. More importantly it takes time. I'm about efficiency and that means drawing as little as possible (or not at all) but I'm also keen about visual quality -- it's pointless to spend the little amount of time doing this if everything looks like it was drawn in Paint. So I spent some time gathering up mapping trees and am sitting on 1,547 .png files of trees, with the majority being photo realistic representations. Terrain modifications (which are absurdly easy to do anyway as all you need at the most basic level is shadow manipulation), rocks, water, and way too many other things to list are covered with the same visual consistency (often you'll find these things packed together). So to create a dense forest environment I spend about 3 minutes dropping shit on some grass and I have something that looks miles ahead of pencil on graph and it took less effort and time to achieve better results.
Here's another screenshot of some old shit I made with trees in it, this one done entirely on my own:
[t]http://i.imgur.com/mZQL4PH.jpg[/t]
This is one of the poorest excuses for a forest I ever made (and so is that river, bleh). I used only 4 trees if I remember correctly, and didn't even bother with smaller plants. Even then making that overly large forest exterior, which is visually if not mechanically superior to hand drawn, took less than a couple of minutes. Drop a few trees, select all, copy and paste, rotate, paste, move trees around for variety, select all, copy and paste, resize individual trees for variety, change individual tree layers for height variety, select all, copy and paste etc. Takes minutes at most. Even if you splurge on details it's easy to copy and paste "set pieces" and subtly change them around to save time, making the initial creation the longest process. Unless your players are also big into mapping they're not going to notice, and even less will care when they do.
By my standard it still looks like shit and I hate that map to this day, although I [I]did[/I] have to make sacrifices for the sake of file size. I was also lazy as hell and didn't want to spend my time fluffing such an expansive area that the party was never intended to stay in. I don't believe in visual absolutes for mapping anyway. Had the party really wanted to spend time wandering around doing nothing I'd have just made up more interesting things (or just added them to the map on the spot) in the forest. The point of my maps is to give my players something visually appealing to look at and support mechanics if possible, not negate GM narrative fiat or creative freedom. I only made it that big anyway because they were going to sneak into the mansion and needed LoS cover via trees (and they said they wanted to play the sneaking part, not just [I]start[/I] inside the mansion). In a perfect situation you would use mapping resources for the meat of maps alongside drawings for extremely personalized aspects. I don't bother with drawings because I can't draw and won't stand for style inconsistency.
Anyway the overall point here is that making good looking maps isn't hard and it certainly doesn't take a lot of time. What [I]does[/I] take a lot of time is gathering the resources. Do that and the hardest, longest part of the process is over. I used to hate mapping when I first started making mine. Then I decided there had to be a better way, both in visuals and speed, than literally drawing everything and decided to Google dive. Now mapping is one of my favorite parts of being the GM. With so many options it's almost become a game itself.
Shit this post got longer than I intended. Late nights and boredom cue manic typing.
[QUOTE=draugur;47649827]Or you can just pull a dnd 3.5 and say fuck it to all ideas of balancing.[/QUOTE]
alternatively, pull an Exalted 2e and actively try to wreck any remaining, shallow bit of balance there may or may not have existed at one point.
[QUOTE=Te Great Skeeve;47649445]When people write character sheets, gear sheets.. they never once considered what would happen if they give the player more of their own customization, for examples base or vehicles... I'll tell you why they never do it.
135 pages of said customization. GAH. It's going to be interesting to see alpha-players reactions though to being given so much power. Worst of all, more customization = more catalogs = more balancing = more testing. This is either going to be great or fall flat.[/QUOTE]
I like stuff. Give me more stuff. Stuff!
did someone say balancing
[img]http://puu.sh/hzKZH/a6014bae65.png[/img]
[img]http://puu.sh/hzKRm/ccc9339309.png[/img]
[img]http://puu.sh/hzKTi/3fff78785f.png[/img]
[img]http://puu.sh/hzKUf/cf4abeca9e.png[/img]
Where we're going we don't need no fucking balancing
[QUOTE=Axznma;47650182][t]http://i.imgur.com/mZQL4PH.jpg[/t].[/QUOTE]
but where does the hole in the middle of the forest lead, i gotta know
[QUOTE=Glent;47650379]but where does the hole in the middle of the forest lead, i gotta know[/QUOTE]
Underground cave that the BBEG escapes through since his lair is obviously in the basement of the mansion. :v:
[QUOTE=elowin;47650196]alternatively, pull an Exalted 2e and actively try to wreck any remaining, shallow bit of balance there may or may not have existed at one point.
I like stuff. Give me more stuff. Stuff![/QUOTE]
I based the idea of off playing D&D with friends (their first time, don't play tabletop games regularly) while they loved customizing their characters and talking + adventure, they found combat boring. The target audience isn't hardcore tabletop fans but rather people just looking to play for an hour, the only person that -has- to dedicate massive amounts of time for the game is the GM himself, which mostly comprises of building the table and setting up missions.
I ahh.. haven't explained much about the game itself, but i'll give a rundown after at least some testing has been done and the game is actually in a playable state.
Another feature, that people find difficult is music. Were producing a massive, roughly 120 minute soundtrack specifically for actions in the game. The most difficult part is finding the right mood for music, the correct volume so you can keep playing, seamless looping of said music. It's not a regular soundtrack since it doesn't compliment anything, it's meant to be in the background, mostly un-noticed but can change the mood and just give some flavor to the experience. Nobody wants to listen to fighting / hardcore battle music for 30 minutes while a battle plays out. It's just meant to be there.
Finally, been buying some LED's and attaching them to a expandable frame that can fit to the bottom/top of any table (as long as it's a rectangular or square shape) - all attached to a control board which changes the music and lights at the push of a button! Should really turn some heads, hopefully.
[editline]a[/editline]
Also, on the subject of cheap, 10 minute maps
[URL="http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online/"]http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online[/URL]
Best.
[QUOTE=Glent;47650379]but where does the hole in the middle of the forest lead, i gotta know[/QUOTE]
It's a well, with an added ladder!
[img]http://i.imgur.com/xbRT84G.png[/img]
That leads to the sewer and body disposal system. These are wealthy and intelligent cultists we're dealing with, they don't want unnecessary evidence of their plots laying around. Sewers are more or less to scale and match with the location of the well, I'm picky about map consistency when using multiple floors.
I originally was going to have a dull sewer system for the party, if they investigated the area and followed the clues to the well; their reward would be sneaking into the heart of the mansion without possibly setting off alarms. But I realized that the size of the sewer system would make for a boring trip if they snuck in that way and decided to break one of my own rules by creating a "dungeon piece", i.e something that's cool but illogical for our more realistic world of Pathfinder. So I created a giant garbage disposal. That alone isn't enough though, so I thought about the location of the mansion (relevant to the world map, not so much my own) and came up with the scenario of their sewer encroaching upon a monsters home. So the cultist put up barricades to try and keep the monster out of their important part of the sewer, which naturally could broken down if the party uses the well. The idea is to push the party down toward the disposal unit, both because it presents a danger to them and it's the only viable way to destroy the creature (as it regenerates when under water). Given my parties level and class makeup I knew they had no method of outright stopping the creature.
[t]http://i.imgur.com/kBPvlLI.png[/t]
Following my "illogical" approach I made the disposal unit require teamwork to function. First they have to open the interior doors to access the main area of the unit, this requires two levers be pulled at the same time. One member of the party must brave the broken bridge to get to the other side (at this point the monster would be ripping apart the barricades, which I gave HP values so as to avoid too much narrative fiat interference). Once the doors are open they can enter the main unit. Obviously the intention here is that they lure the creature into the room and wound it enough to push it into the blades. The creature would be making swim checks opposed to their damage rolls (and modified by its current health) to determine how far it got pushed back each attack.
I had to place ladders in the water (actually collapsed crisscrossed bridges the cultists had used to easily dump bodies into the unit) in the (likely) event a party member got nabbed and thrown into the water by the creature (which at this point would be using hit and run tactics on them -- unopposed it can swim through the DC of the blades pull). I believe for a person it would pull them back 5 feet every round if they failed their Swim check, which gave maybe 5 or 6 tries of straight failure. It doesn't pull directly like a line, the water is swirling like a whirlpool because of the blade, so failing the check pulls you in further but also moves you along the waters flow which gives you more time before you're disposed of (grids, what can you say).
[t]http://i.imgur.com/Ldsp0An.jpg[/t]
If they managed to kill the creature then they could proceed as normal, using two people to open the left interior doors and making their way to the mansion proper. If they decided to run away from the creature (toward the mansion) they'd do the same thing, but under the pressure of the creature looming over them.
Or they could have just said fuck it and climbed back up the ladder. I made the encounter more as a side thing, knowing they'd probably never even enter the sewer but figured if they wanted to explore they'd get an interesting time out of it. Designing that encounter took more time to make than the entirety of the other three maps for the mansion, but I had fun making it.
As an aside my favorite thing I made for that map was the mansion sewer access:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/HyYFL26.png[/img]
So much detail for something the players would barely see or care about.
[QUOTE=Rats808;47651183]Underground cave that the BBEG escapes through since his lair is obviously in the basement of the mansion. :v:[/QUOTE]
BBEG is actually on the third floor attempting to open a portal to the Abyss. :v:
Well that went well
8 hour session of Rogue Trader
including gang fights, an ork invasion, and the super-powerful child psyker continuing to ask the arch-militant all the hard questions
I love GMing this game
So I just finished my university course for the year and was looking for something to kill time with. I'm thinking of creating a [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1463199"]Killing Floor[/URL] based PnP RPG to run for a few weeks using a somewhat watered down version of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. System (what Fallout uses), and I'd like to do an interest check to see if anybody would be interested in playing. If you are interested in the concept contact me on Steam and I'll answer any questions you might have.
Looking for at least 3 players if I'm going to go ahead with this idea, I don't think there'll be maximum amount though. It won't be an entirely serious campaign and it'll be pretty short.
[QUOTE=ThatSprite;47656838], I don't think there'll be maximum amount though. It won't be an entirely serious campaign and it'll be pretty short.[/QUOTE]
1000 player game
[QUOTE=elowin;47656892]1000 player game[/QUOTE]
Fighting in a weed grow-op for that true modded server experience.
[editline]4th May 2015[/editline]
KF-420-Ganja-Farm-Reweeded was the best map
[QUOTE=elowin;47656892]1000 player game[/QUOTE]
1000 players as Mr Foster throwing money at a fleshpound to kill it with 10 strength rating
[QUOTE=ThatSprite;47656838]So I just finished my university course for the year and was looking for something to kill time with. I'm thinking of creating a [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1463199"]Killing Floor[/URL] based PnP RPG to run for a few weeks using a somewhat watered down version of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. System (what Fallout uses), and I'd like to do an interest check to see if anybody would be interested in playing. If you are interested in the concept contact me on Steam and I'll answer any questions you might have.
Looking for at least 3 players if I'm going to go ahead with this idea, I don't think there'll be maximum amount though. It won't be an entirely serious campaign and it'll be pretty short.[/QUOTE]
I don't really think that's a good system to use, KF is very focused on having swarms of enemies and even thinking about trying to do that in the Fallout PNP system is a horrifying thing to think about
how not entirely serious are we talking here? if you want something that's still grounded, I'd go for Savage Worlds. if you want balls out action movie stuff, Feng Shui 2 is about to drop as far as I know, so you could just use that and lightly hack the system to remove the sorcery/chi stuff (or not, depending on what you wanna do)
you could just use the first Feng Shui too but it's kinda dated at this point, honestly, and from what I hear 2 is a massive improvement in terms of combat rules.
[editline]4th May 2015[/editline]
or, y'know, your system of choice with rules for handling mooks, these are just the first two that came to mind. :v:
[QUOTE=M.Ciaster;47656942]I don't really think that's a good system to use, KF is very focused on having swarms of enemies and even thinking about trying to do that in the Fallout PNP system is a horrifying thing to think about
how not entirely serious are we talking here? if you want something that's still grounded, I'd go for Savage Worlds. if you want balls out action movie stuff, Feng Shui 2 is about to drop as far as I know, so you could just use that and lightly hack the system to remove the sorcery/chi stuff (or not, depending on what you wanna do)
you could just use the first Feng Shui too but it's kinda dated at this point, honestly, and from what I hear 2 is a massive improvement in terms of combat rules.[/QUOTE]
it's not the Fallout PnP system, it's a system that's more faithful to the first 2 fallout games if anything. It comes with stuff like burst fire mechanics for attacking multiple enemies at once and the likes, so I don't think horde combat would be that difficult to pull off
there's a few systems with that name knocking around, but I was talking about Jason Mical's one which is what seems you're talking about as well - it's basically Fallout/F2 transplanted onto tabletop wholesale.
[editline]4th May 2015[/editline]
also I rebalanced it to make shit less useless so trust me, I've been so deep in the guts of that thing I know it's not really a good fit
Yeah, it's based off of that same system, combat works exactly the same.
[QUOTE=elowin;47656892]1000 player game[/QUOTE]
I was chatting with Glent about an Only War game, he suggested the concept of a multi-party OW game.
Each party is another group in a larger theatre of war, one party might be tasked with running a supply line and get ambushed, they could escape in their vehicles but leave the supply trucks. If they save the trucks another party would be better equipped, then this party might be tasked with taking over a hill so artillery guns can be set up and how well they succeed would depend on how much support party three gets when they storm an enemy stronghold.
We even touched on the idea that you would have some black crusade players on one side and Only War players on another and the campaign is basically a risk style map where the parties are trying to take over a planet... the whole thing being orchestrated by a pair Rouge trader parties who are profiting from the way.
Then for the hell of it we though that we may as well have some DH parties running around in there gathering "evidence" for an inquisitor.
[QUOTE=thisguy123;47658035]I was chatting with Glent about an Only War game, he suggested the concept of a multi-party OW game.
Each party is another group in a larger theatre of war, one party might be tasked with running a supply line and get ambushed, they could escape in their vehicles but leave the supply trucks. If they save the trucks another party would be better equipped, then this party might be tasked with taking over a hill so artillery guns can be set up and how well they succeed would depend on how much support party three gets when they storm an enemy stronghold.
We even touched on the idea that you would have some black crusade players on one side and Only War players on another and the campaign is basically a risk style map where the parties are trying to take over a planet... the whole thing being orchestrated by a pair Rouge trader parties who are profiting from the way.
Then for the hell of it we though that we may as well have some DH parties running around in there gathering "evidence" for an inquisitor.[/QUOTE]
That sounds pretty fuckin' neato
[QUOTE=Mellowbloom;47658169]That sounds pretty fuckin' neato[/QUOTE]
Good luck finding enough people to do it, and then actually getting it to work out, though.
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