Digital Orc gets a A+ rating!

One of the events I attended at Con on the Cob was a session ran by Dylan Hartwell  of Digital Orc revolving around the Menagerie of the Ice Lord. Dylan is an excellent referee, incredibly enthusiastic and runs a great adventure.

One thing that gets my A+ rating that Dylan subtlety interconnects all the adventures in his product line. He does it with a light touch so each stands on its own but if you want to interconnect them in a campaign the option is there.

So head over to RPGNow or to the Digital Orc and try to give Dylan some of your business. His work deserves to be enjoyed by a wider audience.

And remember to keep your Kirby Hand Strong!

Playing at the World is released!

Playing at the World is written by Jon Peterson and is an exhaustive look at the origins of roleplaying games and wargames of all types. What makes this book valuable and useful is the author's reliance on primary sources. Thanks to the development of the internet, and rise of various collector's communities. (like the Acaeum) Jon had a wealth of material to use as the foundation of his research. The result is one of the first (and hopefully not last) serious and impartial look at the origins of our hobby. I am almost done with the first chapter and while written in dry academic tone it is highly readable and at no time I felt I was being drowned in minutiae.

To his credit the author clearly lays out what the book is and isn't. Notably the book doesn't have much in the way of personal stories about the individuals of the early days. He admits there is plenty of material but he felt it would get of the primary purpose of Playing at the World, which is to document and explain the origins of wargames and tabletop roleplaying. He feels with this book future authors will have a framework around to use when writing about other interesting aspects of the early days of the hobby.

Finally this books marks the public release of the mysterious map of the Great Kingdom of the Castles & Crusades Society. Greyhawk and Blackmoor fans will be surprised at what the map really looks like, I know I was.

Print Copy
Kindle Copy

The Avengers Movie is Amazing

It doesn't quite knock off Superman, Dark Knight, or Spiderman 2 but it definitely belongs with them. It also one of the most pure comic book movies I have seen in the superhero genre. The action is good, the characterizations are spot on and consistent with the preceding movies. Best off all everybody gets a chance to shine. It has funny moments, amazingly the Hulk has the best line, moments that make you go woah! and serious moments. I don't think the 3D adds anything so you won't lose out by seeing it in 2D.

I think this will be an important movie for the superhero genre in that it brought some things that were missing in previous films.  While this being the climax of Marvel's introduction comic book style continuity is important, it also much more action oriented than previous films. The superheroes feel more like well superheroes.

Go see it.

Dungeon Tiles Master Set: The Dungeon Tiles

The part of D&D Esstentials I was looking forward too is the new Dungeon Tile sets. I missed the initial run so I don't have all the basic and I viewed the three sets coming up as an excellent opportunity to finally get them.

I bought the first and it didn't disappoint. The most impressive feature is that the box itself is a dungeon tile. It breaks down into a two inch high platform 9 squares by 12 AND a 1 inch high platform (the cover) 9 squares by 12. The sides are printed with pillars/columns to add to the effect.

Inside there are ten sheets of dungeon tiles. The basics and a few from preexisting sets like the Hall of the Fire Giants. They have the same solid heavy feel as the rest of the dungeon tile series.

Overall this is a good deal at $20 and with the three upcoming sets you pretty much have all the basics covered.

My Impression of Mapping Software

Over here a lively discussion ensued over mapping software.

This is not an in-depth review but my general impression of software for RPG Mapping.

My opinion is that the market goes like this Professional Graphic design software (Adobe, Corel, etc), Campaign Cartographer, Dundjinni, Fractal Mapping, and the rest.

I use CorelDRAW while keeping current with Profantasy's Campaign Cartographer (I buy a add-on every six months or so, and the annual), I keep an eye on Inkscape, and seriously tried using Dundjinni, and Fractal Mapper.

CorelDRAW is my first choice TODAY, because of sheer interia. It was the first good windows based Vector drawing package (we are talking circa 1993 here) My fingers just know how to use it automatically. Plus I have over 20 years worth of symbols and templates that I created.

When Campaign Cartographer came out I gave it a serious shot. I have nearly the entire Wilderlands mapped out in a CC file. Something that not really possible with CorelDRAW. I don't continue to use CC because it is particularly difficult for me but because it not CorelDRAW (which true of all the alternatives I tried).

Now if YOU try to use Campaign Cartographer I will put a $1 up that 2/3 of you will go WTF! CC's user interface is definitely not windows standards. This is because it originated as a CAD program. Worse it originated as a DOS CAD Program. It was built on top of a program called FastCAD.

Back in the day's of DOS, graphics were limited. The UI adopted by nearly all CAD software was a BIG innovation. For one thing it worked well where the only input device was a keyboard and graphics capability was limited. However the CAD way of handling a GUI was not the way adopted by the Mac, Windows and later Linux. (CAD: command then select object, Windows/Mac/etc select object then command)

So hence nearly everybody enountering Campaign Cartographer or any CAD (FastCAD, AutoCAD, etc) for the first time is going to go WTF!

So why doesn't CC change? Well when software has a legacy, it is very very hard to change without a lot of severe consquence. I know because my day job involves developing metal cutting software that has existed since 1985. Lucky for me we made the right bet on how GUIs is going to turn out. So switching to Windows was not as painful as it could have been.

But Campaign Cartographer was not so lucky. But it did have was a customer base from it's initial DOS version. This was a good thing and a bad thing. Good because you have people that will buy your expensive to develop windows version. Bad because if you want them to buy you going to have to be compatible both in file format and UI with your DOS version.

Compounding all this is the fact that RPG Mapping is a limited market compared to the rest of the CAD market. So you have to make sure that the money and time spent is going to payoff.

Then comes long Fractal Mapper. Fractal Mapper is a Windows Program through and through. In addition it has the ability to draw complex land features easily because it uses the math of fractals introduce detail into what you draw.

Then comes the kick in the pants introduced by Dundjinni. What Dundjinni does very well is allow people to use individual bitmaps that are professionally drawn to make incredible looking maps. They had to develop several things other than a fancy stamp tool to make this happen (transparency, shadowing, etc). The results are stunning and allow ordinary people to make incredible looking maps. And on top of it, like Fractal Mapper, it used standard Windows conventions in it's UI.

The only limitation is that you are limited to the palette of bitmaps that you have bought. Also they have a very annoying license if you want to use the software for professional use.

Campaign Cartographer had some serious challenges to overcome. When you are a company that is staddled with the legacy of your older versions, the trick to overcome the competition is to do things that nobody else can. Another trick is to use your legacy to give depth to what your software can do.

Those two areas are the strength of Campaign Cartographer. CC and it's addons give more tools to use than any other RPG Mapping software. Just as important many of those tools are not found in other software. Finally while it still wrapped up in the CAD UI, it has adopted many of the features of Fractal Mapper and Dundjinni. The challenge of Dundjinni was the main reason for the release of Campaign Cartographer 3.

CC3 continues the race with Dundjinni by allowing a variety of lenses and filters to applied selectively to your map. So you can draw a simple curve for your coastline and easily apply a soft blur or a shadow effect to give the illusion of depth. More sophsicated effects allow you to create shaded relief maps perhaps one of the hardiest techniques to do right in cartography.

I admit I am a Campaign Cartographer fan. However I feel that the past couple of years has been a golden age for RPG Mapping Programs with a wealth of options. If you pick any of the leading three you are going to be making great maps.

If you are going to making professional maps You are better off learning to use a professional graphic software. That because if you use the DEFAULT tools of any of the three your map will have a distinctive look that publishers will recognize. In general the publishers don't like to have a map that looks like it was made with CC, Fractal Mapper, or Dundjinni. If you can spend the time developing your own symbols and graphics then you will be able to use any of the three on a professional level.

A final note is that AutoRealm is probably the best of the rest. Unfortunally it's development is stalled due to the author being in the middle of rewriting the base of the software. Which is a cautionary note to those of you involved in software development.

Campaign Cartographer
Fractal Mapping
Dundjinni
AutoRealm

Free professional style graphic programs
Inkscape
GIMP