Resource: Traveling in the Roman World

I’m still working on that side project I mentioned last week, and in fact spent most of the evening rather engrossed in it. I didn’t leave myself much time to write the class analysis of monks I had planned, so instead you get another crappy link. Yay! Laziness! Fortunately for you, my crappy links are the best links on the entire Internet.

This one is called ORBIS. Simply put, it presents the user with a map of the world as the ancient Roman empire knew it. The user can then select a starting point, an ending point, and specify certain conditions. ORBIS will take this information, and present the user with details of the journey, including the route which would be taken, the time necessary, and the cost that would be incurred.

I’ve lost hours tracing the routes a caravan might have taken 2,000 years ago. It’s amazing to see what travelers had to endure just to get from one side of the Empire to another. What dangers might they encounter? What adventures might they experience?

ORBIS has a mountain of features as well, which I suspect I’ve only scratched the surface of. I’ll leave you now with their introductory video:

Seriously, though, thanks for putting up with my shitposts, readerfriends.

Picture Thursday 15: "Roll for Initiative…" by Jon Hodgson

I really have nothing to say about this piece which it does not say itself. A majestic landscape, a threatening beast, and a party who looks small and terrified in the face of this great danger. (But none the less resolute to find themselves some god damned treasure)!

Jon Hodgson is a talented artist who does a lot of work with this kind of composition. Large, dynamic pieces with a lot going on. It’s no surprise his work has appeared in The One Ring RPG. I’m very grateful he allowed me to share this piece with you, and I encourage you to browse through his Deviant Art gallery. There are dozens of gems to be found there!

Resource: Old Maps Online

In an attempt to buy myself some time to work on a side project, I’ll be forgoing my normal Tuesday post. In its place, I have a present for you, gentle readers! One which should be of particular interest to those map-heavy GMs among you: Old Maps Online. It’s a fantastically designed repository of old maps, dating as far back as the 16th century.

The interface is intuitive, and should be relatively familiar to anyone who has ever used google maps, though obviously it works slightly differently without satellite images. You start by zooming in on the part of the world you’d like to explore. As you zoom in and out, the selection of historical maps on the right hand side of the website will change. If you hover your cursor over these maps, you’ll see a highlighted box on the screen which shows the area the selected map details. You can even set a date range for the map between 1000 CE and 2010 (though, as noted, I don’t believe they’ve yet added any maps prior to the mid 1500s). Once you’ve got a map you want to look at, just click it, and you can explore it in all of its high resolution glory.

I’m not much of a cartographer myself, but I would like to improve my skills in that area. And this seems like a marvelous tool! Here are just a handful of samples from the site’s massive collection:

Picture Thursday 14: Sandwich the Drow Paladin by Slants

EDIT: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

This was probably the most verbose entry in the Picture Thursday series I’ve ever written. Most of the time I just put up a 200-300 word assessment of the art. For this piece I had written some 600+ words on why it’s not a cliche, what the piece means to me, and the history of the character. Everything was fine last night, and I checked the post several times. Yet somehow when the post went online this morning, everything but the art itself was gone.

I honestly can’t rewrite what was here. I could try, but by the time I was off of work and free to do so, this post would be 10 hours old, and it’s doubtful anyone would see the revisions. Plus it would make it more difficult for me to get Tomorrow’s post written.

I’m sorry about this. Perhaps I can share Sandwich’s story some other time; for now you can explore her origins on her 1d4Chan entry.

If I can find the missing info, I’ll update this post again.

Picture Thursday 13: Worm That Walks by Wayne Reynolds

The best monster artwork is an inspiration to GMs. When we look through the monster manuals and bestiaries, we instantly know which monstrosities we want to feast on our player’s corpses. And for me, the Worm that Walks from the Epic Level Handbook has always been inspiring. It’s a fresh take on the physical corruption of magical pursuits. One distinct from the lich. If the monster has origins outside of D&D, I don’t know them. All I know is that they haunt my dreams, and I want them to haunt the dreams of my players as well.

I’ve actually repeatedly found the D&D 3.0 Epic Level Handbook to be one of the best supplements ever produced for 3.X. It is one of the very few supplements which focuses less on player options, and more on helping GMs to run their games better. The generator of 100 quest hooks, for example, is very good! The monsters presented are top notch, even if many of them are more powerful iterations of lower level monsters.

I’m kinda surprised I made it 13 weeks without posting anything from Wayne Reynolds before. That dude is prolific, and influential. Pathfinder goblins are his bath sponge.

No, really, they are.

Video: 'The Reward' from Animation Workshop

Bill Amend just tweeted this. I guess it’s a student film from Denmark or something. It’s also a perfect encapsulation, in my mind, of what a D&D campaign ought to be. Seeking gold and glory, and having a grand adventure along the way. Excelsior!

The Reward from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

I have no idea why I can’t center video by the way. Sorry about that. Also, is anyone else reminded of Torin’s Passage while watching this?

Picture Thursday 12? Webbed by Jeff Dee

Okay, so, I realize that this edition of Picture Thursday is, in fact, going up on Wednesday. That’s my bad. But I have a super good excuse, I swear.

See, as you may have heard, Wizards of the Coast recently released a massive amount of their back-catalog in PDF form. Which includes many (or all, I’m not sure) of the modules produced by TSR in the ’70s and ’80s. Which means I finally had a simple means of acquiring modules G 1-2-3, D 1-2-3, and Q1, which have always sounded like a blast to me. Upon purchasing them, I promptly spent the entire evening reading them. Leaving me no time to compose a post for you all.

This piece, “Webbed” by Jeff Dee is on the back cover of Q1, “Queen of the Demonweb Pits.” And while the character’s pose is a little ridiculous (as my ladyfriend commented, he’s drawn in the kind of spine twisting ass-boob pose often used in sexualized art), I still have no end of love for the piece. I feel the character’s peril. Not only is he trapped on the web, but those tiny red spiders are terrifying, and he’s no doubt moments away from his doom.

Interestingly, about a year ago, Jeff Dee ran a relevant kickstarter. Apparently all of his original art from “Queen of the Demonweb Pits” had been destroyed, and he needed funds to re-create the originals. In the year since he’s completed a lot, including a reproduction of this very piece. Though I find I like this older print better. It seems less…shiny?

Also relevant, Jeff Dee has another kickstarter going, which you may want to check out if you’re a fan of Empire of the Petal Throne.

Me? I’m going back to reading about the giants. I can’t wait to run some players through this thing.

Picture Thursday 11: Inheritance by Eeliskyttanen

I first encountered this piece while browsing DeviantArt at random. I felt compelled to find an image which presented a fantastical world for the viewer to explore. And that’s precisely what this piece by eeliskyttanen, titled “Inheritance,” does.

I don’t really have a lot to say about it. I, like the tiny warrior, merely stare at it and wonder what awaits me in these pristine edifices of forgotten kingdoms.

Picture Thursday 10: Death from Below by Samwise Didier

I like warcraft. I like the RTS games, I like the MMORPG, and I like the style of art. I love the oversized shoulder pads, the ridiculous swords, and the pink haired gnomes. Because fantasy is make believe. I enjoy realistic swords and armor as much as the next grognard, but that doesn’t preclude me from enjoying the over-the-top style of Samwise as well.

What I particularly love about Samwise drawing style (and, by extension, the Blizzard art style he helped to define) is that even though his characters have grossly exaggerated muscles and preposterously bulky armor, I’m able to suspend my disbelief and become engrossed in the fictional reality of the drawing.

I particularly enjoy the energy in this piece. Running, swinging, cutting, falling. And at the center of it all a gnome with pink pigtails. Beautiful.

Picture Thursday 9: The Iron Orb of the Duergar by Scott Burdick

I had hoped to find a copy of this image without the Dungeon magazine logo, but unfortunately there were none available. In fact there were no high resolution images of this cover at all, and I had to scan in my own copy. Fortunately there’s not a lot of clutter, so I thought the image was still worthy of posting.

As I grow older, I find that I’m more drawn to painted artwork such as this piece by Scott Burdick, as opposed to more intricately detailed digital art in the style of Wayne Reynolds (who created the artistic style which Pathfinder uses in all of its books.) Which isn’t to say that Reynolds’ work isn’t remarkable, but I wonder if my mind doesn’t just interpret the abundance of detail as clutter, and ignore it. While here, there is a distinct lack of fine detail, my mind instead fills in the blanks. Take the woman’s face for example. Did you notice she doesn’t have one? I didn’t, until I spent several minutes examining the picture.

The painting has a lot going for it aside from simply style, too. I love the way so much space is given to the environment, while the characters occupy perhaps 25% of the space. The room doesn’t have a lot to look at within it, but you get a sense of the cavernous depths which these adventurers find themselves in. And, as always, I love depictions of faceless characters on an adventure. Fantasy art is filled with character portraits and remarkable creatures. It’s a little more rare to find scenes like this where the characters aren’t the focus–their adventure is.