Saturday, January 22, 2011

Nine Cave & Lair Geomorphs

Above are nine of the thirty-six cave/lair geomorphs I'm working on for the Jewel Throne. The idea behind this is to present a system for a DM to quickly assemble caves or lairs when the party has random wilderness lair encounter; a treasure map; comes across a hex key lair entry sans map; and so forth, much like the example cave maps from X1: The Isle of Dread. They are also designed to be "semi-compatible" with Dyson's geomorph system.

6 comments:

  1. M.P.January 22, 2011 at 6:06 PM

    Nice!

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  2. ScroungerJanuary 22, 2011 at 6:29 PM

    These are awesome. Sounds like we outta seek out some cave networks tomorrow.

    Do you have hardcopies? I'd dig em for my game. I'll buy the zine from you when it's ready, but shit, it'd be nice to put em to use right away.

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  3. KentJanuary 23, 2011 at 8:29 AM

    I have done something similar but I randomized the process. I think yours are handdrawn.

    http://somekingskent.blogspot.com/2010/12/maps-two-pits-unexpected-sinkhole-and.html

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  4. BlairJanuary 23, 2011 at 9:16 AM

    @ MP: Thanks!

    @ Scrounger: If I was fabulously rick and therefore able to afford printer ink I would, but alas...

    @ Kent: You're correct that they were originally handrawn; I'd say the similarity between my geomorphs and your amazing megadungeon cavern would be akin to the similarity between a child's stack of building blocks and Ziggurat of Ur! I'm fascinated by the snippets of your campaign world that get posted, great stuff!

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  5. KentJanuary 23, 2011 at 12:36 PM

    Thanks!

    I was thinking that if you have 36 of these tiles and you randomly select them as the players advance you already have significant complexity. A few narrow stretches of tunnel would be good the selection of which is biased to keep placing further tunnel sections instead of cavern-rooms. If you allow tiles to be placed at any angle rather than just N S E W you have a vast amount of freedom (if the tiles are placed on a large black sheet the gaps between tiles won't be noticed. Nice work.

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  6. BlairJanuary 23, 2011 at 1:13 PM

    @ Kent: I do have several simple tunnel sections, although not enough for the aforementioned statistical bias...something I'll take into consideration for further iterations.

    A nice aspect of the Dyson Logo's geomorphs is that they can be placed in a staggered fashion rather than in a square grid, allowing for more freedom than the format immediately suggests.

    Thanks for the kind words and suggestions; I can't wait to see what appears on your blog next!

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