Tag Archives: rpg
27 More Mapping Marvels
The World Wide Webosphere contains multitudes of maps for gaming, and is rife with resources like tokens and objects – perfect procurements for your own overhead originals. If you’re looking for fully-finished digital displays for your VTT or inspiration for the blank page sitting in front of you, it is out there. But map-making is much more fun than research, so I did some of the grunt-work for you. Suggested by MapForge’s own Hernan Ruiz Camauer, I’ve assembled a copious cartographic collection, and I hope you find it useful.
40 Magnificent Mapping Resources
The map is often the centerpiece of a game – a visual focal point on which to sketch your story. Players plot their strategies over scrolls depicting the overworld and talk tactics with a dungeon drawing in hand. But good cartography is hard work and we all could use a little help and lot of inspiration.
Action Intro: Explosive Exposition from Scene One
Many games start quietly. A letter summons you to a castle for a civilized meal and a mystery. The train hisses to a halt outside the sleepy, frontier town. And there’s the inescapable, pervasive meeting in a tavern. Sound familiar? Yawn. Skip it! Sidestep the storybook staple and throw your players straight into the fray with an action-packed introduction!
Setting Shift: Same Adventure, Different World
Gamemasters and Storytellers of all types draw our inspiration from the universe of stories that surround us, combining and re-making old legends into new tales. We spin memories together like golden threads and speak sagas into the circle of those who will listen.
It is an art form with no equal.
But enough poetry!
Your gaming group needs a new adventure and you’ve got writer’s block. Or, you’re lazy. Maybe some of both (mostly lazy, though). So, let that fear pass over and through you, Muad’Dib, because there’s an easy way out.
