Return to the World of Greyhawk

 I've been following the Greyhawk blogs of several friends and the youtube channel of a cool guy that goes by the handle of the Greyhawk Grognard.  I have my own homebrew D&D campaign, of course, but more and more I've been drawn back to my late 1970's and early 1980's roots with the World of Greyhawk.

To this end I've picked up some PDFs of some of the box sets and I am reading through those as time permits.  The price of an actual copy of these things can be rather steep.  I would love to have a physical copy of all of the published Greyhawk material but sadly, I don't have thousands of dollars just sitting around waiting to be spent on cool D&D material.  Still, 9 bucks for a PDF download in good quality isn't a bad deal at all.  Our printer has been out of action for some time now and getting into Greyhawk will inspire me to get a replacement, so I can print physical copies of certain maps or materials I'd rather have in a 3 ring binder than only in digital form.

Thursday night drawing

 

Everhome is the isolated house of a magic user who lives alone at the base of Black Horn Mountain.

Trouble has come to the surrounding land and the magician hopes to send some adventurers to investigate the ruins of Eterak Keep.

I recently finished this 20 mile by 20-mile map for my Northern campaign.  I run all of my games in the same Dungeons and Dragons homebrew world which I have written for several decades.  Usually what happens is we wrap up campaigning in one geographic area after the characters reach 8th or 10th level and things seem to have reached a good spot for retirement.

I get to take a good long break, usually six to nine months, and during that time I start working on the region for the next campaign.  I try to mix it up, jumping around the world so my players get to have fun in completely different geographic areas and different flavors of the game.  Then we roll up new characters and launch into the next campaign which might run for two or three or even four years.

This map is special because it is Map Letter Z on my master grid of regional maps.  Yes, I started with map A and then expanded from there as the heroes explored, traveled, and leveled up.  Map Z means I have a total of 26 of these maps completely finished, geographic locations described, monster encounters written up, treasures placed, NPC's developed and dungeons set down and ready for play.  We have played in the Northern region of my campaign world for two years.  We don't seem to be all that close to wrapping up yet and I hope we get another two years out of the area because honestly, I enjoy this one more than most others.

Along with writing some short and hopefully more regular blog posts, I am also getting myself out the door to get a new window's computer.  Right now all I have is this Chromebook and it kind of sucks for handling a lot of important things.  I plan to pick up a basic/solid windows laptop, a new printer with a good-sized scan bed, and a cool portable speaker for when I stream Syrinscape from the laptop during games.

 

Journal Entry 1

 It's been more than a year since I last signed in.  I live in the midwest, in a town I won't divulge here.  Let's call it New Texas since I have come to think of almost everywhere surrounding me as some sort of strange mirror world of the old West.

My name is Joe.  I am older than middle-aged.  No family.  No kids.  I had plenty of friends, good friends going all the way back to my youth but almost all of those lived on one coast or another.  Sometimes I wonder if any of them are still out there and the notion warms me.  I don't dwell on the idea for long because it might tempt me to wander off looking for them.  In some ways having fewer connections was a lucky thing.

There was a crazy shift in the political landscape.  People just got mean.  Nobody wanted to talk.  Everyone wanted to shout.  Everyone was lining up to buy a gun.  Total insanity.  Then came the virus.  That came on quick.  Before you knew it the sickness was everywhere.  Things broke down.  People tried to ride it out for awhile.  Later, a few months later, there was a few weeks of crazy violence.  Men driving around in pick-up trucks with flags and rifles and hauling the neighbors they didn't like or whose things they wanted out into the street.  Thankfully the perpetrators of the lynchings soon discovered that guns and not even masks were any protection from the illness.  Anyone that could catch it, did.  Anyone who did catch it died, usually within a day, maybe two.

I survived to this point for a few reasons.  

First.  I lived in a forgotten part of the old town where almost all of the stores were long since closed, their spaces boarded up and for sale and for lease signs in the windows for so long they had become more of a fixture for the town than the original stores they replaced.  I had a cheap, two-bedroom apartment over an empty law office that had been offered for lease for at least the last six years.  My place was reached by a back door at the top of two flights of iron stairs that rose up the back of the building in a zig-zag from a small back parking lot.  There was a narrow hallway that spanned the length of the building front to back on the second floor.  In this hall, there was a little alcove where the property owner had installed a washer and dryer mean to be shared with the neighbor.  The neighbor in this case was a businessman who leased the place so he would have a spot to land and work when he was in town, working at the company's main headquarters, which was further towards the center of town.  He was a nice guy, a few years older than me.  He was thinking about retirement.  I was lucky in that he was out of town when the virus hit and never returned.  Things fell apart so quickly.  So I had no downstairs neighbors.  No landlord to come looking for me and no neighbor upstairs either to negotiate or share with or to accidentally draw unwanted attention.

Next, there was a small corner grocery at the end of my block which was a narrowly packed row of buildings nearly connected into one mass.  The grocery closed when the virus hit and the reports of the nut jobs driving around with guns hit the radio.  I had supplies of my own.  I had what I'd decided to stash when news of the virus first hit plus I had everything in the neighbor's pantry.  I admit I was selfish and maybe a little ruthless but early on I had a sense that things were going to slide and continue to slide and the best option was holing up for a very long time.  Months if I could manage it.  

So one night I climbed out a window onto a flat section of roof and made my way from roof to roof to the roof access above the grocery store and I broke in.  I was honestly surprised that no loud alarm went off.  I assumed that some silent alarm was probably being sent to the police, if any were still out there listening for that kind of thing.  I propped the door open with a brick and I left.  I went home.  That day I stood vigil, watching between the slats of the window blinds for the police, the owner, a neighbor, anyone.  I had a little excitement when one of the pickup trucks full of gun-toting patriots slowly rolled past.  They didn't spare so much as a look in my direction.  They were probably headed downtown where there was a pawn shop, bars, and more interesting places to loot and people to harass.  The next night I went back with a big box and a red filtered flashlight.  I spent eight hours carefully, quietly emptying the place across the rooftop.  I had plenty of food.  Plenty of pop, beer, liquor, and cigarettes if I wanted them to,  Stacks and stacks.

Lastly, I assumed the worst.  After my break-in was ignored I decided in for a penny, in for a pound and I broke into the neighbors place too.   He had some nice things.  Best of all he had a large collection of books.  This was good both as a means to pass the time and because it meant he had an impressive collection of bookcases.  Some of these I dismantled and used the wood to board up most of the upstairs windows.  I did this from the inside.  Almost all of my block and the neighboring blocks had been boarded up for years.  I added my very own FOR LEASE sign in the windows facing the street in front and the parking lot in the rear.  For all intents and purposes, my place became just another locked up, empty and boarded up, run down dusty old nothing of a place above a similar such office space downstairs.

Even during the normal days before everything happened, I might not see a single soul walking on the street outside of my place for two, three days in a row.  After the break-in and the truck driving by it got quiet.  Not necessarily quiet in the city beyond but in the immediate area, quiet.  It was a month before the power began to become unreliable.  I had the advantage of having my stolen stash of a hundred or so batteries, more than enough to keep my old cd player and radio going.  I listened to the news from the world outside quietly, with an earphone.  I made it a point to keep the lights out.  Most of the power off.  I kept my head down and I didn't leave the upstairs apartment area again for four solid months.  One hundred and twenty-one days to be exact.

Dungeon Masters

First of all.  How bad am I at keeping up with this blog?!?  Gee wiz.  I need to organize my life.  Its not like I'm not busy.  Here are projects I am either currently engaged in or wrapping up for publication.

Cartography - This year I've done six maps for clients.  One map is a full sheet on parchment.  Huge.  That is an interior illustration for a novel for a client who is a published screenwriter and author with shows on Netflix, etc...  Pretty excited about that one.

Self Publishing - The Tomb of the Good King  This is a compact but exciting stand alone dungeon adventure that I will self publish on RPG now this month.  April.  Phew.  Gotta make that happen but its written and the maps are done.  All I have left is the cover.

Online Campaign and Youtube Channel - We just finished recording session nine of my online B/X campaign on my RetroDM youtube channel.  RetroDM is about old school homebrew for games like Basic Dungeons and Dragons and AD&D with demos, discussions and examples of campaign play.  I have a little over 60 subscribers now after only about 2 months of having the channel.  So working on that several times a week.  Considering upgrading or expanding to doing a twitch broadcast of the game.  That might be fun.  Also thinking of taking recordings of our live play games and my ramble youtubes onto a podcast channel.  That might also be fun.

I think the missing piece is bring it all together with this blog.  A surprising number of the OSR community members still enjoy reading print in blogs.  Its a nice way to post and keep a record of projects and thoughts.

So.  This blog post is supposed to be about Dungeon Masters.

Specifically, I wanted to take a moment to share an observation about Dungeon Masters in the wider community.  Man.  What a competitive bunch of people. 

I just watched a great creative talent and leader one of the communities to which I belong basically pack up his stuff to stop sharing because he wasn't feeling happy with the response he was getting.  Man.  I sure hope he feels differently after he gets to take a couple of days off, because I admire and love his work.  He does some of the coolest stuff. 

Now I also do cool stuff.  I'm not the best at cartography and art but what I can do I'm solid in.  Because of this sometimes I run across people that kind of throw some snarky jazz my way because of this stupid overly competitive thing some DM's have going on.  Also, sometimes I'll join a community and someone is super active posting cool stuff and then I'll post some stuff and all of the sudden its like the other guy whose work is amazing and better than mine by far will just stop posting.  Like they just got bumped out of pocket because of some goofy jazz that I've posted. 

So.  Dungeon Masters.  You've got to stop being so uber competitive with these other creative people who are also DM's.  First.  There are always going to be fifty other DM's that are better at some aspect of the hobby than you are, no matter who you are.  This is the ocean we all swim in as creative people.  Its not about who is the bigger fish.  Its a big ocean and you get to be the coolest fish you can be in it and still share that ocean with all the rest of the fish.  Also.  That dude that you sometimes feel discouraged by because of this or that reason, their cooler youtube channel or larger following or more awesome artwork or cooler miniatures that they paint - whatever it is - probably admires YOU just as much for something awesome that YOU do better than them.

Its like some of these DMs.  Not all the time but sometimes.  Its like there's this unspoken comparison and competition or need to build some kind of a pecking order that happens in these communities when really, there is plenty of room for everyone to share and be creative and innovative.

Sure.  We all have things we might want to improve in and that's good.  Even so, take some time to appreciate yourself and all the creative cool stuff that you already CAN do well.  Dungeon Masters, you are already pretty cool, creative people hosting fun games for your friends.  Embrace that.  Feel good about that.  When we learn to feel good about ourselves and accept ourselves for who we are then all that crazy pecking order, competition stuff kind of fades into the background.

Sure.  I want to be about to share the enjoyment I have in this hobby in our online communities but even more I want to read about and learn from all of your great experiences and ideas too. 

As to the DM that is taking a break from sharing his stuff, I understand.  Sometimes you just need to take a little break from the online community.  That said, man I hope you come back real soon and post more of your material.  It is SO good.  Some of the most enjoyable stuff I read online.  Don't worry about views or responses.  Its all kind of random anyway.  Some posts get a great response and some don't.  Just keep posting and keep being you and over time you'll build the following you want.

Back in the Saddle

Well, here I am, back in the dungeons of the Vintage DM.

Sorry for the long silence.  Life happens and then you get back to doing the things you like.

Here we are in March of 2020.  I have a small book project on the table for the coming months.  I have two huge client maps I am working on.  I invest a good two to three hours into each map, every day.  These are full sheets, so 22" x 30" maps and they are hand drawn.  That is an insane number of mountains, hills and little trees.  Gaw...so many tiny trees.

Still, so excited to have maps to do for clients.

I finished two others up - both village maps earlier this month.   One I even painted with watercolors and it turned out great.  Looking forward to doing more of those.

I have a new youtube channel up.  There seems to be a lot more potential interests in my maps and art and writing than there ever has been.  So this greatly motivates me to put myself out there again.

I am also feeling much more confident now, which helps.

Well looking forward to occasionally writing something here again.

I have plenty to talk about but I'm not sure right now how much I want to share.  Man, there is some wack and fucked up shit going down behind the scenes at some of these small press publishing companies. 

I stay out of it - but man.  I could write an entire book of my own just about THE CRAZY.

=D

Have a good week everyone.

The Village of Gallowsthorn

Using Inkarnate to do simple ISO maps of the villages and settlements on my regional map. This is the village of Gallowsthorn. Back during the bad old days of the Kingdom of Asmogar there was a prison here where they used to inter and execute those who fought against the Wraith King. The prison is just a ruins now although one of the wizened old hanging trees can still be seen out front.

There is a comfortable Inn in the small village, The Rosethorn Inn, which was built before the Kingdom of Asmorgar and has been the only tavern and Inn within the village for nearly three hundred years.

An overgrown old segment of road, now a barely visible trail leads off to the Southwest where another tumbled ruins from the Kingdom of Asmorgar sits.