Cartography: New Continent

I've delved back into the world of map making over the past week. Instead of gently dipping my toes in, I dove in head first! It's been at least a year since I made a digital map like this, and I missed it.

Feel free to use this map for personal use- a D&D campaign, for example. All other use is prohibited. Feel free to link/reblog/share the DeviantArt page, but do not upload it anywhere else.

Class Creations: The Necrodancer

A figure steps from the shadows, dangling a spiked chain inches from the bloodied ground. He closes his eyes and begins to feel the pulsing rhythms of  life and death around him, and begins to dance. Faster and more frenzied he becomes, his chain lashing out with each spin and step. Energy begins to pour from his body, seeping deep into the earth The undead rise from below like blood bubbling from a wound, and turn their gaze upon the enemy.

The Necrodancer is the product of a strange dream I had many years ago, likely induced by playing too much World of Darkness and watching too many tribal dances on the Discovery channel. I've always have a sweet spot for necromancers of various sorts, and as is typical for my dreaming self, this love decided to mutate itself as the above dream.

His enemies slain, the man continues to dance, spurred on by the frenzy of death around him. He struggles to release himself from this dance of death, as the undead begin to turn their gaze upon him. At the last minute his strength of will takes hold, and he banishes the undead from sight. He collapses to his knees, breathing heavily, and savors the victory over both his enemy and himself.

One of the things that intrigued me the most was the apparent loss of control that the dancer had to deal with. This seemed like a viable drawback to a class that could potentially be so powerful, so I took the idea to my husband.

After much math, caffeine, play-testing, and more caffeine, we finally created a class for the man in my dreams. I realize the concept may be a bit odd, but when you have a dream as vivid as I did, you have to do something about it.

Another thing this "weakness" brought to mind, was that this kind of magic was likely spontaneous, possibly something one was born with, like a sorcerer. Interpret this as you will, but that sounds right to me.

Somewhere, in the bowels of my hardrive, I have an alternate version of the class based on singing. I'll share it if I can find it.

Below you can view and download all the information of the Necrodancer in .pdf format.

Necrodancer PDF

Enjoy! And as always, feedback is welcome!

Looking ahead...

Apologies for disappearing for a little while. Had some life issues to take care of, but everything is fine. So I thought I'd present you with a sneak-peek at some of my future posts and segments.

Articles in  purple are 4th edition D&D  only, red is 3rd edition D&D only, green is cross system, and black is generic/neutral.

Another Flavor: Like the way a race, power, monster, or anything else works, but hate the flavor for it? These articles will include my own flavor ideas. I'll even be taking requests, eventually.

Monster Menagerie: My own monstrous creations, including homebrew, modifications, and lore.

Class Creations: Entire classes, sub-classes, builds, powers, variants and more.
Craft: Tutorials and private showcase or homemade and modified roleplaying gear. Miniatures, terrain, maps and more. May eventually include some crass-posting from my art blog(which is still under construction).

These won't be the entire scope of my blog. I plan to post the occasional review, host polls and opinion posts, and share roleplaying news I find interesting. Who knows what else?

Edit: Yes, I will eventually add articles pertaining to other roleplaying systems such as World of Darkness, GURPs, and possibly D6. I'm simply focusing on what I'm most experienced with first.

Gaming Accessories for Cheapskates, part 1

There are many accessories for the avid gamer now a days, but I’ve heard complaints about the cost and lack of convenient availability of said accessories. The goal of this article is to provide options for those of you who can’t (or don’t wish to) spend a lot of money on gaming supplies. I won’t be covering cheap options for books, as there aren’t a lot of choices outside of buying new, used, or pdf. I will instead be focusing on things such as miniatures, maps and tiles, condition markers, and terrain.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, and is more to get you headed in the right direction. I plan to post tutorials for some of the things I have created in the future.

MAPS & TILES

Printables

Custom Graph Paper

Incompetech’s graph paper generator is an amazing online tool for gamers of any genre. You can generate sheets of square, hex, and triangle grinds, among others. The size, line color and width,  and border width are all adjustable. After putting in your specs, the grid is created as a pdf, which you can save for later. There’s no need to download and install a program either, so you can use this site anywhere you have access to the internet.

Make Your Own!

Below are l inks to several tutorials on making your own tiles/maps. Some of these require you to buy supplies to create them, but this is still cheaper in the long-term than purchasing boxes of tiles and ordering fold-out maps. There are many more tutorials out there, get looking!

Homemade Dungeon tiles

Cheap Resin Water Tiles

A note about size: You maps and tiles don't have to be one-inch in scale. If  you plan on using something smaller for your miniatures (beads, cheerios, et cetera), make your maps reflect this. Using a smaller scale can allow you to fit more on the board as well.

MINIATURES

Glass Tokens

These glass tokens are sold as vase fillers and aquarium décor in many craft stores, and many gaming suppliers have picked up on using them on battle grids. The problem? Most gaming supplies sell around 40 of these for $5. Why do that, when you can walk into your local craft store, buy a bag full of a variety of colors ,for around $2.99? You’ll get more for your money, you won’t have to pay shipping, and with the amount of token in one bag, you can split them with friends to save even more money! (My husband and I purchased a large bead box from a garage sale for $1 and use it to divide out colors).

Lego Men: I'm not the first to come up with this, and I won't be the last. Go to a garage sale, your local dollar store, pick up some Legos and start building.

You can also use beads, cereal pieces (eat the defeated monsters!), clay tokens, push pins in cardboard, paper minis, and just about anything else that will fit on your grid. I even have a friend who uses various eraser toppers. All of these are cheaper alternatives to buying box after box of miniatures. For swarms and larger creatures, cut out circles in the appropriate size and tape or glue some kind of token in the middle for ease of use.

  

CONDITION MARKERS

Colored Rubber Bands

There are many items you can purchase to use as condition markers, but by far, the cheapest are colored rubber bands. You can order these online for only $1, of check the beauty section of your local drug store. If there aren’t enough colors in the bag, buy a bag of plain beige ones, and a bag of black to supplement. One advantage with rubber bands is you can stretch them to fit any miniature. Take an index card, list the colors, and assign a color to a status effect (we use yellow for shaken &  rattled, for example).

Jump Rings: You can do the same thing with colored jump rings (used for jewelry), though these are more expensive. They do come in more colors that the rubber bands, however.

Clay Markers: If you have some air dry or oven bake clay on hand, make simple, flat shapes to mark conditions. You could use different shapes for each condition, paint them different colors, or write on them with a permanent marker. Don’t have any clay? Make your own!

Welcome to "Yes, They're Natural"

We'll start things off with an explanation- What the hell does the title have to do with gaming? It's a joke, you see, we mean natural 20's.

My husband and I are avid gamers, and between the two of us we have experince with tabletop RPGs such as 1st-4th edition D&D*, New and Old WOD, GURPs, Rifts, D6 Star Wars, Conan D20,  Pathfinder, and several home-brew, as well as the miniatures games Warhammer 40k and Mage Knights.

I personally have a decent amount of experience in creating terrain, maps and painting miniatures.

The purpose of this blog, rather obviously, is to share our ideas and musings with the gaming community, and get much needed feedback. We look forward to several authors joining us in the future as well.

If you have any suggestions or requests of what you'd like to see here, please, don't hesitate to let us know!

*Our first years playing D&D were a hodge-podge of an old 1st edition box set, a 2nd edition Monstrous Compendium, and anything we could glean off the internet. It wasn't until 3rd edition that we were able to purchase books ourselves.