Current Project

 When it comes to my hobbies I don't so much choose my project is they choose me. I come up with an idea and I chase it as far down the rabbit hole as I'm willing to go. Because of this, some projects get done very quickly, some get put on the back burner. I have several books I'm working on that I do in small doses because they are either such a huge project doing it all at once would be masochistic,, or because I don't feel any time crunch to do the . The ideas that capture my imagination usually get the Lion's share of my energy.

Over the Summer I spent a fair amount of time running a solo game. I used the Mythic GM Emulator, Alone Among the Stars, the Science Fiction Codex of Lists, and RPG Pundit Presents #100: Star Adventurer as the engine let me scratch my itch to explore space in a tiny spaceship with a small crew.

One of my goals was to discover a rich, and lore-filled campaign setting over time. I wanted the joy of discovery as a part of how I was playing. To that end, I use the 'Codex and some random online tables mixed with the Alone Among the Stars to create the worlds I would visit and the alien races I would encounter. Whenever I encountered an alien species or culture, I use the 'Codex to flesh it out until it at least felt like something you might read in a Star Wars is extended universe Wiki entry.

I even used AI to help me enhance the experience. And wrote computer software inspired by the random star system generation tools of Traveler, the Cepheus Engine, the random space jobs generator from Donjon, and the jobs and commodity generators from the 'Codex. Once I had a bare bones, I would let my imagination run wild for several hours to flash in more details until I had entire worlds and cultures built up for my characters to explore in.

It has been a really engaging experience that took up much of the copious free time I had while on vacation in July. Because I was using random alien species in a Sci-Fi setting rather than creatures with a folkloric basis like in Dungeons and Dragons, I was constantly surprised and rewarded by what I learned. And my notes can now comfortably fill a whole role-playing game or a TV series "setting bible."

I even taught myself to use some AI tools to help generate some of the content for myself.

As you can imagine, I have been dying to share more of it with you all. I have a blog of the individual adventures with some of the notes to cover my first five voyages in the setting before I lost my crew to a TPK.

But, as of late, much of my energy has been directed towards building a unique role-playing game that borrows elements from White Star, Star Adventurer, Cepheus Engine, the 'Codex, and far more.

As I've written in the past, one of the biggest obstacles to a good SF setting is its total lack of predefinition. Fantasy games have the benefit of several canons of folklore, pagan mythology, and established conventions to work on, science fiction does not. Science fiction has to put effort into building a world and informing the reader, the viewer, or the player about it well enough that they can immerse themselves in the setting. This is time consuming. The only shortcut that ttrpgs have to this is to build a game based on an existing franchise.

This is why, the majority of SF games are built on franchises such as The Expanse, Star Wars, and Star Trek. Generic science fiction role-playing games are not as common, nor are they usuallysuccessful. Where a science fiction game tries to build itself out of whole cloth, it generally has to do so by spending an immense amount of energy on lore. 

Some games have been quite successful at this. Traveler, Shadowrun, Rifts, Numenéra,, and the Strange have done a great job of building enough lore that players can dive in. In the case of Traveler, Rifts, and Shadowrun, they have done so through years of slowly building a sizable canonwith the help of fan engagement. In the case of Numenéra,, it has been done through very intelligent World design and conventions.

Some science fiction games suffer from over-development. For example, Shadowrun has so much lore now that a player who knows the ins and out of the setting has an even better advantage over a new player that it is even more important than mastery over the rules. The same is definitely true of Rifts. 

I find that sits in a sweet spot where there is enough to go on to run the game well, but it is flexible enough to allow you to put almost anything you want for your scenario in it. You can learn all you need to know by reading just the core book. That is the balance I strive for. Enough information on aliens, culture,and technology to let the players have a sense of what they might be able to accomplish, but, not so much that I am being prescriptive of how the game plays, or giving advantage to someone who memorizes the lore.

I also decided to build my game on PANZA, as the race / background / class  / subclass structure of PCs is actually pretty close to olde-school SF games like Traveler, and that 5e-style engine can actually a lot of fun for a grognard like me, if you throw out a few things. Personally,  I am making the following changes:

• Characters are reduced to 4 attributes instead of 6: Wisdom has become conceptually meaningless, and STR and CON should be interlinked.
• Pcs have randomized starting HP 
• Death saves are gone
• CHA serves as a measure of luck, as well as attractiveness and savoir-faire
• RP inspiration is optional
• B/X D&D morale & NPC reactions (modified slightly) are imported 
• Diplomacy is now a skill governing protocol,  trade, and information gathering, it cannot simply change NPC reactions.
• Doman level play is incorporated by adding rules for colonizing a Star System
• A slot-based encumbrance system is added as non-optional
• Sense Motive, Investigation, and Perception skills are removed; these can be handled by askimg questions from a high-info GM.
• Formalized random encounters are imported to feel more like AD&D's Structure
• Only a few character options grant psionics, rather than the widespreaf magic use of modern systems
• XP system is simplified, CR is discarded
• Monster stats are simplified
• My own eight classes will replace the fantasy-themed ones, each with 2-3 subclasses .

I am hoping this offering will offer a new, original Sci-Fi game experience.  I ha e also built in a way that my game Eternal Ocean can take place in the setting. 

Tinkering and Tumult

 It has been a crazy week for me, readers! My youngest son started school, and I am suddenly back on the job market and trying to figure out where my skills can best serve the world after years of being focused on my children full-time. I'm pursuing a lot of different angles as I get back into figuring out what I want to do "when I grow up."

Honestly, getting back into life coaching with focusing on making lifestyle changes to help handle chronic pain might be the best way to put the last year of difficulties to good use... but I can hardly resist the lure of going back into tech.

To that end, I have been using my role-playing creations as a touchstone to working on reviving and updating old skills and developing new ones.

Machine Learning technology has been a big part of that focus. After all, engineering a good prompt and understanding how "AI" processes language is a new, and probably very useful skill. And I have learned a lot about both generating images and content that could be useful for TTRPGs.

I am going to share a bit of my AI experimentation here, and also talk about why I have decided to ditch some of it.

Example of a World-Driving Rumor Table for a Sci-Fi Game

I am starting a game with my wife in the same setting as my Starfarer game. I needed to set up a starting star system and space station to use as a home base. 8 have some big mysteries and ideas to work with, but I decided to let automated tables do the rest:

I created a star system using the Donjon Star System Generator 

Once I had a star system, I went through and made some notes about how people would live and operate on each of the planets, if they would have a reason to be at them at all.

I came up with a name of a cantina and a marketplace, and a few characters who would be doing vital functions about the space station.

Then I ran the Donjon space jobs generator. I could have also used the space job generator from the Science Fiction Codex of Lists 2e, which I have also used heavily in my solo gaming.

I went through the list and deleted a few repetitive entries. I renamed some characters and to change their species to add a little variety and fit my larger setting. Then I tucked that away in a GM notes document so I knew what was a trap, A scam, or had other difficulties.

I posted most of the jobs on the news board for the space station. Omitting any details of my giveaway surprises, and re-writing them with fees and contacts. 

I then added some flavor posts: a spaceship for sale, but entertainment event, and a couple of items sales to give the sense of the space station as the center of commerce in an active star system.

For every inhabited planet,  I added one or two "flavor jobs" to give a sense of what goes on on that planet. For example, Veles V is a highly volcanic world with a colony on a moon that does experimental hostile environment mining. I got the idea from the fact that it had a moon, and was a volcanically active Rock Planet. Advertising for mineral scanning and engineers to help them work on hostile environment mining Tech seems like a great way to describe that without telling the players what goes on on that planet. 

Likewise, Veles VIII is an ice mining planet with some eccentric, geeky characters turning it into a anarchist party planet. Adds for courtesans, casinos, rock bands, and dangerous sporting events seemed like a great way to get that impression.

In the end, with a little art and flavor added, I've ended up with a very interesting document that I will have beans to the calm link of the player characters when they arrive at the station. It will give them a pretty solid setting with over a dozen hooks in one swoop.

Anything the PCS don't pursue, if it doesn't have a timer already built in, I will give a cumulative 1-in-6 chance of changing or disappearing and being replaced every week (rolling new items from generated tables.)

Here's my final result. (The original tables will follow.)

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WELCOME TO VELES STATION

Please check in with Sergeant Lōm after arriving.

Thirsty? Say hello to Itha-Q6 and Brenna at Bubble & Fizz! Genuine Earth and Uzz-III cuisine.

VELES STATION NEWS

Developing A World Through Encounter Tables

 Random encounter and wandering monster tables are underused; not only from a mechanical standpoint, as thy have fallen out of favor in modern play and so their power to build tension has been lost, but from a world-building angle as well. A good  encounter table is capable of providing hooks and lore by showing, not telling.

I want to provide an example from my daily blog for the Dungeon23 challenge: Into the Devouring Wilderness. This is a area that runs down the center of the hex crawl I am building,

Here's the original article:

Tools for Creating Gossip

‘He took his place once more on the
bench at the inn-door’
by Arthur Rackham c.1910

If you are running an Open Sandbox style of campaign, you need three things to start: a small area to explore stocked with a few adventure sites, a town or village for a first home base, and information that helps the PCs find the adventure sites from the home base.

That last one can take a number of forms: strange lights or smoke on the horizon, a job from a local patron, the site visible from a distance, someone staggering into the wilderness pleading for help... there are dozens of ways to seed information into your town, but one of the most valuable ways is by having gossip that the players can pick up around town.

Twitter user @SivorKhalid mentioned in response to my article on using gossip as a campaign tracking tool that he has trouble coming up with rumors, so I thought I would try to create a helpful resource. 

Gonzo Up Your A$$!

 Last night it was my incredible privilege to join Aaron the Pedantic and Venger Satanis on their podcast on making gaming weirder, Gonzo Up Your Ass!

We covered a hell of a lot of ground, but some highlights include:

• Rick & Morty, how to plumb it for ideas.
• Adventuring inside monster guts.
• The vastness of the Cosmos.
• Adventuring across parallel worlds.
• How to relax and enjoy the show when players decide to burn the world down.
• Running off and being pirates.
• Courtly intrigue and using historical sources.
• Sleaze and sex in gaming.
• DIY gaming, and the culture of sharing the awesome.
• Why the OSR doesn't need "Dungeons & Dragons" as a brand anymore.
• Offering effective, positive criticism.

Thanks so much Venger and Aaron for a great time!

Simple Adventure Builder

Yesterday, my son foundered badly as a GM. He had no idea how to describe what was in a room, or come up with a role-playing based encounter other than the same wandering peddler character he has been using on and off for months.

To give him a hand, I built a series of random tables that can be used to build a cool five-room dungeon on the fly or with only a few minutes of prep. He intends to use it for Tiny Dungeon 2e, but it is completely system-neutral.

Want a quick and dirty set of dice tables for designing something short and sweet? Simple enough for a little kid to use? Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Simple Adventure Builder

So far, the best creations have been a model castle in a fish tank where a princess has hidden herself away to scheme against her father guarded by magic squid and illusions, and a dungeon where a witch is guarded by goblin servants which is lit by shining bugs and has an entrance to a sea cave with a shipwreck below.

Game Review: Lowlife 2090

Author: Stephen Grodzicki 
Publisher: Pickpocket Press
Marketplace: DrivethruRPG 
Engine: Custom d20 variant 

Over the last year I have got a lot of play out of Low Fantasy Gaming by Stephen Grodzicki. I have played in the campaign that started as baseline Low Fantasy Gaming online, and run both a short adventure series, and a full-length campaign in LFG at home. I like it because it has a simple engine that matches some of the best elements of AD&D2e, Dungeons & Dragons 3e, Warhammer Fantasy Gaming, and Advanced Fighting Fantasy in one clever package mixed with a few of its own innovations. I have become a huge fan of the system 

Another game that I've been passionate about for many years is Shadowrun. I started playing SR in second edition, but ran a campaign in first when my old manual went missing. Since then I have run campaigns in 3rd, 4th and 5th edition Shadowrun. I would guess that I have put in about 2,000 hours of play in the system over the years. 

So, when I heard that Stephen Grodzicki was making a spiritual successor to Shadowrun, but using his Low Fantasy Gaming rules, I was quick to hit him up for a review copy.

(The first time I had been bold enough to do that with anyone.) 

I m very impressed with the final product. It may be up there with Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and Index Card RPG Core 2e in my top 10 role playing games reviewed in the last year.

Character A.I.

 I wanted to share an exercise I did for my Thursday night Low Fantasy Gaming group.

I put this together on a lark for a night where I would not be present. It was, in many ways, a matter of self-parody. I looked at how I played the PCs and made a random table of the thi gs I did most often with my two characters. Then I jokingly gave it to my GM. The funny thing is that he used it, and they worked. My characters continued to be useful, effective, and in-character.

Review Lands of Legends Zine

Covers for Lands of Legends: Mundane 
©2021 Axian Spice

Authors: Giuseppe Rotondo, Mauro Longo
Publisher: Axian Spice
System : OSR / Mörk Borg
Marketplace: DrivethruRPG 

Lands of Legends are thus far is two sets (Grim & Mundane) of two zines. Each are presents a series of 10 locations and 10 encounters each for 10 different terrain types commonly used in Dungeons & Dragons. Making each issue 100 encounters or 100 Adventure locations; each described in a single paragraph. These are often completely System Neutral, but roughly a quarter of them have mechanics - usually saving throws - for an OSR game. They include the OGL5 license in the back of the 'zines. 

The Mundane Volume is designed to set the baseline and format for the series. It's locations and encounters will fit in most Fantasy games, no matter what level of magic and fantasism you are using in your game. Most of the events and locations are at least plausible, if not real-life hazards and dangers that a person could stumble across on Earth, or a world very much like it.

The Grim volume is designed with Gothic and grimdark settings in mind. The Encounters in it tend to be Bleak, often full to the gills with body horror, curses, and genuinely horrific and bleak events. It is ideal for use with Mörk Borg* or Lamentations of The Flame Princess. 

*I will confess to not yet owning a copy of Mörk Borg, it is going on my review wish list. I'm going to have to sell a lot of Adventures to be able to pick it up, though.

I've had my eye on lands of Legends for some time, as the project is crossed my Twitter feed once in a while. I have even used elements of the Grim Locations issue in one of my campaigns based on what I read in the demo on drive-thru RPG. When Giuseppe Rotondo offered me a copy of the full for review, I was absolutely ecstatic, and I am most definitely not disappointed! The sheer level of creativity that went into this Zine is staggering.

Lost Mechanics NPC Reactions

Another lost mechanic that I find very valuable is the NPC Reaction Table. I have discussed this in detail in my article on social combat, but I wanted to cover it again in the context of my current project.

NPC reaction tables are a 2d6 mechanic in Dungeons & Dragons, which appear to be the base DNA for the entire Powered by the Apocalypse Engine. Depending on the roll, on NPC can be outight hostile, unfriendly and wishing to be left alone indifferent, mildly friendly and open to persuasion, or downright helpful.

This roll, along with the distance from an NPC and determining who is surprised, were the three things you did at the beginning of every encounter, although any of those things might be pre-scripted for many encounters.

For any reaction other than hostile or friendly, the player characters had a chance to make a good first impression. Their actions in that round could add a bonus to another roll on the next round. If a character with a high Charisma took the lead, their charisma modifier could be added to the roll as well.

If you did not have a pre-scripted reason why a creature might attack, it was actually most likely that it would not act first, but rather be threatening or cautious when the player characters arrived. It was just as likely combat would start because the player characters initiated it as not.

Chaos and Surprise Make GMing more Fun

This month my goal is to finish off some of the long-standing projects I've had sitting about on my computer: I have a dungeon crawl classics adventure that needs only a slight bit of retooling and some art to be complete. I have a second DCC module that's about 80% complete and just needs a little additional text and art. And I have a beautiful digest sized OSR adventure set in an Edo-era Japan analog that just needs a little more attention and a map. And I have an adventure about exploring a volcano to refine.

But, I will attempt to continue to put out quality blog articles this month. Thankfully, the work I'm doing on these unfinished modules gives me a lot to think about... and last night my game gave me a great lesson in Chaos.

"Chung Chao-Yi Automatic Drawing" by Zhaoyi0812

Solo Game: Pacts and Blades II: The Jester's Return Pt.3

The Bandersnatch

I am going to roll the rest of the details for the Bandersnatch now, and test to see if the details they have learned are true:

Body Structure: Organic (⚀ - false), it is actually 1d12: 7: Alien

Size: Large (⚅ - true)

Basic Type: 1d6 - ⚀ Animal

Pact or Blades: Claws and Nature (⚁ - false), it is actually d44: 33 roll three times: 43: a Pact with a fear entity, 11: A Pact with an elemental entity, and 41: Blade: thorny tail

Distinctive Features: Bifurcated Tongue with two heads - one has sentience (⚄ - true)

Motivations: d8: 7: it needs to lay eggs in your dead body

Special Skills: Can bend Time (⚃ - true)

Ye gads, this thing is a horror!

 The Thing

---

(Rolling BD&D-style Surprise: Bandersnatch ⚃, Adventurers ⚃; Monster Reaction⚄⚄ = 10: Neutral; Initiative: Bandernatch 5, Mirdon 6, Shanix 6, Lorenz 6, Walken 9)

Shanix stood on an ancient stone balcony overlooking the lava flows below. All around her was a carpet of luminous blue moss and brightly glowing white flowers. Their perfume overwhelmed the stench of brimstone they'd been breathing for hours. Glowing orange fire bees leaving heat trails behind them moved from bloom to bloom, studiously ignoring the human intruder.

For a moment, her permanently chiseled-on smirk fell into open-mouth wonder. She walked slowly, like a child in a yuletide snowfall, to the edge of the balcony and a broken rail. Below, across a broken stone bridge, was a dome of precious metals surrounded by glowing fungus. There, the orange lights of the fire bees shimmered brightly. Strains of alien music came up from below barely audible under the roar and hiss of geysers.

She shook herself from her trance and forced her face back into a scowl. Walking back to the foot of the rope she called up: 

"Get the lead out of your asses! I think I can see the hive."

The twisted, hunchbacked dwarf Mirdon was next, surprisingly nimble coming down the rope. Then the featherweight Lorenz; too pretty and delicate to be a farm boy to her mind. They too, went to the edge to look at the hive as Walken came down last.

He was halfway down when her mind began to stutter. Colors became too bright and all at once muted and washed out. One moment Walken was coming down too fast, the next he seemed to be going up the rope. Time echoed forward and backward assaulting her ears with echoes, some of them sounds not yet made, or that would never be made.

She forced her head towards the origin of the pain and sound and distortion, and saw a horrendous parody of life slithering from a nearby archway.

Solo Game: Pacts & Blades II: The Jester's Return pt.1

Mirdon Returns! Back in July I played a couple of solo adventures to take Lucas Rolim's Pacts and Blades: Moorcockian Fantasy for a spin. I put the journal of the second one up on the blog. Lucas liked it enough that it will be included in an upcoming Pacts & Blades supplement. It also let me show off the dungeon generating tools on Donjon.

I said when I released it that I would do another one as a follow-up. And right now I finally have the time to start a solo play. And, like last time, I plan on using it to discuss ideas that are relevant to people planning, designing, and running games.

I am also showcasing Lucas Rolim's new sourcebook Salamandur Household with expansion rules for Pacts & Blades.

The Last Adventure

Mirdon and his friend Doraleous were searching the Vault of Gloomy Chaos for clues to the location of the lost Dwarf fortress of Koganusân. They won a solid victory against bugbear and goblin in the frigid tomb, but then blundered into an ogre's lair. The Ogre pounced on Doraleous and beat him to a gory pulp in seconds. Mirdon fled for his life narrowly escaping his friend's fate.

Since Then...

Mirdon has sworn vengeance on the ogre and hopes to give Doraleous a proper burial. He has used the pittance of treasure he found on the bugbear to recruit a team of young, would-be adventurers to help him purge the Vault. A veteran of two adventures, Mirdon hopes to use his wits to get his revenge. However, first he wants to prove them...

The Cast

Building an Adventure (pt. 5): Background, Rumours, and Intel

'Woman & T-Rex' by Darksouls1 from Pixabay

Now that we have the meat and bones of an adventure, it's time to give it a skin and the spark of life, in this case the information and background offered to the PCs. It's how we frame the adventure that gets initial buy-in and makes immersion easy.

You can have an almost perfect adventure written, but if you don't frame it effectively then the player characters are not likely to engage with it. Your beautifully-designed dungeon will sit unexplored by players who would rather go off to be pirates.

You frame has three major parts, the hook, rumours, and hard Intel.

Hooks

In order to make sure your dungeon has enough appeal to get player characters into it, you need a hook. Something that will get them wanting to explore that location. 

Hooks for Plot Heavy Home Games

If you have a game where characters have complex story arcs or intrigue, writing a hook is mostly about tying the adventure into something the characters already care about. Whether that is a loved one, a rival, the power of a certain faction, or the safety of their Homeland. These are going to have to be highly personal to the campaign.

Example: My latest home campaign involves people transplanted from Earth to a bizarre fantasy world. That the dinosaurs are recognizable form of Earth life, and with hints of modern technology, I could easily hook that character into wanting to investigate a possible portal to her own world.

Hooks for Other Rationales 

When you are writing a module, for, for that matter, writing for a "beer-and-pretzels" game where the players don't particularly care to spend time on heavy role play and plot development, you need to have a handful of hooks ready that will all point to your adventure location as worth going to.

Resource Spotlight: Purple Sorcerer Games

Time to boost the signal! This September I am planning on doing a roundup of some favourite resources for Table Top Role Playing Games. Most of which are free and online.

Purple Sorcerer Logo
©2020 Purple Sorcerer Games 

Purple Sorcerer Games 

Purple Sorcerer Games is an online resource site for Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG (and it's offshoot Mutant Crawl Classics RPG). It includes an incredible array of LAMP-based in-browser tools, as well as adventures and video tutorials about playing Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Tools

Anyone who has played DCC RPG for any length of time, probably uses Purple Sorcerer. It offers quick and easy ways to create 0 level characters, or even higher-level characters, using it range of rolling and build methods. It also has tools for generating demons, dragons, magic weapons, Mercurial magic effects, and more, scrolls, and unique monsters.

Resource Spotlight: The WTF? Engine

Note: Cussin'. Lots of it. No children of any age.

The What the Fuck? Engine is an open source LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) program that you can instsll on most web servers with minimal headaches. It generates a statement based on a series of random, often nested, tables each time you view or refresh the page.

If you are a LAMP Code-monkey like me, you can grab the source code here on Github.

WTF? Was originally made to create a page entitled What the Fuck Should I Make for Dinner? A handy site for the uninspired and meal-plan challenged.

The role-playing community saw this engine and ran with it in a big way, creating their own foul-mouthed and funny character and adventure generators. Here are a few of my facourites:

Resource Spotlight: Donjon

Example of random dungeon map
generated by the scripts in Donjon

Donjon is a collection of Perl-based CGI scripts and LAMP apps created by the developer "Drow" and were originally hosted on his website Demonweb.

These scripts offer a wide range of random generation tools for TTRPGs. Some of which offer incredible complexity.

Random Dungeon Generator

My favourite of these is the random dungeon generator. There are variations for generic fantasy, AD&D, d20 Fantasy, Microlite 20, Pathfinder, and the 4th and 5th editions of Dungeons & Dragons.

You set a name (although a randomly generated one is provided), set the level and size of the party, and choose a motif, which flavours the environment and types of encounters. You can also change the style of the map: determining the size of the map, number of entrances, general layout, etc.

The end result is a map, along with a by-room description of the rooms and corridors, with traps, mysterious effects, evocative detsils, notes on entrances, etc. Even better, the msp is hyperlinked so that clicking on a room automatically takes you to its description in the text below.

Making Magic Items Stand Out

@JustMrLeeds on Twitter asked an astute question:

#TTRPG question for both DMs and players: How do you let your players / does your DM let you know you found magic item without just saying it’s a magic item?

I tell my players they taste iron in the air letting them know there is a magic item around they don’t already own.

I gave a short reply, but wanted to expand on it:

Image by Mystic Art Design
 from Pixabay

The Language of Magic

The first thing you may want to do is set up a language of magic items. These are descriptors, embellishments, and other memes within the campaign world that, if they are used consistently, scream "Magic item here!" when a player hears it. This also lets you add an element of Hard Magic to your campaign, as PCs will know that to get magic to stay in object X, element Y has to be added.

For example you might add one of the following to several magic item's description:

• "It is covered in engraved ancient Suloise knotwork"
• "It glows faintly blue when it gets close to the area of effect of your spells."*
• "It includes Dwarven markings embedded with a shimmering red stone."
• "It has a goetic seal drawn on it."
• "It smells of something almost like citrus."

After you use any one of these more than once, the players will start seeing a pattern. If they ran into two magic items that had an orihalcuhm stud in the fabric, the next time you drop " The hatband is decorated with metal studs, mostly silver, but one looks to be orichalchum ." They will instantly get excited and proud of themselves for noticing the pattern.

Resource Spotlight: Worldographer

In the early days of D&D, there were no rules for outdoor travel. When overland journeys had to take place, the manuals had recommendations for other war and exploration games whose rules would handle the job well. This kind of piecemeal game-jumping and rules hacking was a huge part of the 'zine-driven war game culture of the 1970s.

"Gettysburg" Game Board (1988 ed.)
© Avalon Hill

The most popular tools for large-scale exploration and warfare were hexographic maps. They are significantly better than square grids for accurately measuring travel distance. Games like Gettysburg made Hex' maps the gokd syandard in war games snd tactical simulations.