Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Fat Goblins Games is having a huge $1 sale


So Rick Hershey of Fat Goblin Games is buying a house and needs cash so he is having a $1 dollar sales on 95% of the Fat Goblin Games inventory over on DriveThruRPG.

He has a variety of RPG supplements and is an excellent artist to boot. I used a few of his pieces in the Wilderlands of the Magic Realm. This is an excellent deal to stock up on art or just looking for useful things for your campaign.

DriveThruRPG Store
Fat Goblin Games Stock Art

Saturday, April 13, 2019

James Smith of Dreams of Mythic Fantasy passed away


Sadly James of Dreams of Mythic Fantasy passed away a few days ago. He enriched us all with his love of our hobby. More than that he went above and beyond by collecting information about what other folks were doing and letting the rest of us know with OSR News

He will be missed

James Albert Smith Jr (1968-2019)


Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Four more Maps! The Wilderlands of the Magic Realm, Revised Edition is released!

I am pleased to announce the release of the Wilderlands of the Magic Realm. This is one of four products covering the eighteen maps that encompasses the Judges Guild Wilderlands setting. This product covers five of the maps as detailed below. The four sets combined will cover a region equal in size to Western Europe providing years and decades of adventuring for you and your group.

Unlike many setting products, the Wilderlands sketches out the overview and history in light detail. Then presents a comprehensive list of local detail in a compact format that is customizable. This eliminates much of the tedious work involved in creating a setting and allows the referee to focus on the campaign and the grand adventures the players face as their characters.

This is presented as two products both in PDF and Print on Demand.

This product is a 48 page Guidebook for the four maps of the Wilderlands of the Magic Realm. The books has an introduction and commentary by Robert S. Conley who has used the Wilderlands as his main fantasy campaign for nearly forty years. Each map is detailed with the following listings: Villages, Castles and Citadels, Idyllic Isles, Ruins and Relics, and Lurid Lairs.

Due to the extensive use of monsters from the supplements to the original edition, this release details 17 monsters and provides full statistics suitable for use with Swords & Wizardry and similar RPGs.

Because the maps for Wilderlands of the Magic Realm are dominated by ocean; charts, tables, and rules concerning water adventures have been included from various Judges Guild publications. A three page summary of the ships presented in Dave Sering's Wave Riders & Sea Steeds are also included along with ship illustrations.

Included with the Guidebook PDFs are letter sized blank map of the Wilderlands that can be used to take notes during a campaign. A PDF with the map legend. A letter size black and white guide to the placement of each of the 18 maps within the Wilderlands. This guidebook covers the Ghinor Map 11, Isle of the Blest Map 12, Ebony Coast Map 13, Ament Tundra Map 14.

Finally a giant sized preliminary version of the master map that I used to crop the individual maps from. With the right printer this can be printed as a full scale map 5 feet wide and 8 feet long. With the PDF you can selectively copy out regions as complete maps that overlap the borders of the 18 maps. After the release of the final set of maps this file will be updated as a layered PDF allowing for custom maps of the Wilderlands to be copied or created.



The second product is a set of four maps:  Ghinor Map Eleven, Isle of the Blest Map Twelve, Ebony Coast Map Thirteen, Ament Tundra Map Fourteen. When ordered via print on the demand they are printed in two overlapping halves each on a 12" by 18" poster. In addition each map is presented as a 22" by 17" PDF file.

The maps have been redrawn from the original in a color style. Instead of the distinct symbols of the original maps, terrain has been drawn as a  transparent fill and vegetation represented by colored areas. This allows both terrain and vegetation to overlap. Representing more accurately the complexity and diversity of the Wilderland's geography.

This release will be followed by the Wilderlands of the Fantastic Reaches covering the last four maps of the Wilderlands.

A preview PDF

The Wilderlands of the Magic Realm Guidebook

The Wilderlands of the Magic Realm Color Map



Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Figuring out the scale of Viridstan's Map

One of the mysteries of the original run of Judges Guild products is the scale of the map of the hexes on the City State of the World Emperor.


Nowhere on the above the map or in the text of CSWE is how big each hex is and has remained a minor mystery for the past 35 years.

Recently I realized that the city map to Tarantis is drawn in a similar style to CSWE. While it doesn't have hexes it does have a scale.

So I superimposed a section of Tarantis on top of CSWE and resized Tarantis until the main street, alleys, and building look comparable to the same on the CSWE map.


I then made the Tarantis map transparent and moved the scale over on of Viridstan's hexes. And viola! It looks like each hex is 120 feet.


While my works is an elaborate guess it makes a lot of sense. It unlikely to be 240' feet, but it could have been 60 feet. Or the 60 yards of the Thunderhold Map. Making the scale 120' would make the size of the building comparable to those in Tarantis.

If I ever get around to drawing the City State of the World Emperor that the scale I will go with.