The Weird Wood

1. Behold the Weird Wood. 

The weird wood resides at place isolated from the world- or perhaps, outside of normal time and space altogether. It is an impossible place with a strange secret at its very foundations. 

Honor of the Dwarves

With Mars complete it’s time to move on.
Here is the first map for my next project,  a vanilla setting book titled  “Honor of the Dwarves”

I’m not sure about this map; it may be destined for the trash.

Anyway, it’s going tot take awhile. I have two months of silent running art practice and study time coming up. I gotta level up before I lose my shit.

Planet Zal (Map, handout)

I was rusty as fuck with supers so the entire first session of our ICONS game was a bust. I retconned the entire thing out of existence.
Anyway,  I made this map that got no real use.

Bad Canyon, Player’s Map BX Mars

I have at least 15-20 maps from the play test.
Here’s One:

BX Mars, some arts and maps of Xards and Zerzura

An illustrations and two maops. Yes those peoplae are naked- get used to it. AC on mars is based on class and level, bot armor. Nobody wears shit, for a variet of reasons. 

I have no idea how many illustrations I’ve done for this thing. The other day I found 10 that I’d forgotten about. All the art is by me, beacuse I am both competent (That’s something I would not have written just two years ago) and really cheap. 

Weird canyon MAP

The players map for weird canyon, the curent BX Mars game. 

Planet Four Friday: Xumos

 

 

Planet Four Friday 3: Survey Map

 

Late again.

Next week: Airships.

 

 

Planet Four Friday #2 First Look at the Dead Pump

 

 

 

Yeah, it's Saturday, I'm late.

The Dead Pump

Ages ago, before the seas drained away, in the long forgotten time of the Sky Kings, the Dead Pump functioned as an atmosphere factory- dispersing valuable oxygen and regulating the local climate. Corrupted by some unknown alien influence at some point during its eons of active service, the factory became, slowly, over the centuries, a place of sudden and macabre death. The Sky Kings abandoned the facility, ritually sealed the entrance and left a huge warning marker at the entrance of what is now called Shadow Canyon, as was their custom.

The Skull Monolith marks the Entrance to Shadow Canyon.

 

A stair behind the monolith leads down onto the floor of the canyon.

 

 

Next week I'll go into either airships or continue posting pieces of this. Everything thus far is of course a work in progress.

If there's anything you'd like to see in this segment, give a shout out below.

Map Monday 1 quick post: Gear

Yet another new feature- when will it end?

This is just a quck note for those of you that make physical maps or drawings.

GREAT GALACTUS!!!

Get one of these!

It is a light box; up until just a year or two ago they were much bigger and about 5x the current price. I got this one in may for about 40$ off amazon, and it is magical. It led to immediate improvement in my finished work as it allows a traditional artist to basically work in layers as do digital artists. Most of my current work is whipped into shape on one or two peices of paper and then assembled in a clean version on the light box. This is pretty key for me as roughed up paper is difficult to ink with some of the tools I use.

As an aside, drawing kicks my ass and it took me forever to attain even the borderline adequacy I have acheived, but I don't know that I'll ever feel comfortable using the rerm, "my work" ever.

I may get another post in this evening. I'll be working on a map today and if I get done, which seems unlikely, I'll throw it up.

PS:

A shout out to everyone who has left comments so far, I am having a reply issue with blogger- I'm not ignoring you. I'm a tool, but not that much of a tool. Honest. Thank you for reading!

And Jay Murphy, thanks for all your kind words and good luck with that g+ game, man! (I'm not on plus, but I got an email from a freind last night)

PPS Yesterday would have been King Kirby's 99th birthday! Go read some fucking comics!

 

Cosmic Universe Creation 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

More on Note-maps and Timelines.

When I edit this into a final document, the instructions will be more seamless; as it stands, however, after a period of reflection, I feel like the previous entry was more or less this:

 

 

Let's fix that by:

 

MAKING A COSMIC NOTE-MAP:

 

STEP ONE

 

Answer the question:

What goes on the map?

 

In supers, anything goes. Unused campaign settings for other games make ideal alien worlds- regardless of genre. High fantasy; dinosaur planets; post apocalyptic science fantasy; giant robots; giant monsters; space monsters; worlds or whole sectors of space like the Old West or ancient China; Cthulu or whatever else you can think of, it can almost certainly be encompassed within the boundaries of your superhero universe with little or no trouble.

Make a list of what you want on the map.

Possible entries.

Duplicate Earth

Arena World

Artifact (planet sized or larger)

Robot planet

Center of the universe

God world

Inimical alien empire(s)

A breach in space-time leading to ?

Space storm

Prison planet

Pirate worlds

Demon world

Living planet

Dead worlds, destroyed by war, disaster or time

Fingerprints of the ancients

 

Important: A complete inventory of planets and sundry is not required to begin making the map/working on the timeline (Steps 3-?). You can mark down a few planets and then let your ideas cook for a few days before adding more. Further, this is a good time to work on the timeline, and think about any gods or natural forces that might be tied in with the fabric and history of space-time. Dig?

Today's example is a map of Drift Sector, a volume of space nested within the larger Earth? Universe map shown in part three of this series.

STEP 2:

THE TIMELINE

What goes on the timeline?

Possiblities:

Birth of the universe

Origin of the space gods

Origin of space monster

Birth, rise and fall of great empires

The rise of super powers on earth

Humans go into space

Crisis events

Galactic and or terrestrial wars

Alien invasions

Formation of important groups

 

Below: a sample timeline: I find it helpful to put early events at the top and and move forward in time as I go down the page.

 

STEP THREE

Lay out the map.

Note- the creator should feel free to modify any and all of this from materials to paper size to format.

For this map, we're going to use a sheet of standard printer paper in landscape orientation.

 

Make borders of 1 inch at the top and bottom of the page, and 1 1/2 inch on either side. Within this frame, thinking about the worlds you want in your setting, lightly draw in some circles and other shapes to represent the planets and such. Name stuff. Think about the inhabitants and the heroes and villains associated with the sector and its planets. Take notes on the side. If you are short on ideas, look at the list in step one- or read the homework.

 

Add some detail to the planets and other objects. A few lines here and there make a big difference. Be expressive!

 

Write a few words about each of the map's features in the margins. You need not be comprehensive. For instance, in the example below, I have yet to key the eight moons of Dominion; I am still mulling over their exact nature.

 

The map is perfectly servicable as it is, but you may wish to add Ink and color. I colored mine with the ipad app, Art Studio. I also cleaned up the text and added some campaign ideas I had while working on the map.

 

Okay, now it is your turn. Make a map.

Reading suggestions:

The Mighty Thor 131-133, Thor's first true foray into deep space.

Tom Strong 11-12, a great story featuring a "counter" earth.

Next time a world map, and some NPCs, or such is the plan.

 

[Maps] BX Cosmonaut Expanded Preview

I am adding a second class, Cosmonaut Esper; a starting adventure which links into to a weird wilderness, which in turn links into Equitorial Empire Province: Karakul (map on your right, follow the tags from there). The EE/ Age of Lead stuff was originally concieved as a setting for cosmonaut nonsense and I may include an introductory Age of Lead appendix as well.

Here are some maps:

I don't wish to give too much away, but one major challenge of the minisetting is finding a way past the Barrier

 

 

Making Maps 1, Making Mountains

I have too many projects going on; here is a by product of the expanded B/X cosmonaut, which I worked on over the weekend. I promised to do some posts on stuff like this long long long ago, but never did...

NOW IS THE TIME FOR OATHS ONCE BROKEN TO BE FILFILLED! LET US RIDE MY BROTHERS!

Anyway, mountains (you get a bigger image if you open it in a separate tab):

 

 

[MAP] Age of Lead, campaign area, version one.

Lots of composition issues here. I need to redraw, obviosly. The idea is to make something for both AoL and B/X Cosmonaut. SHED is the PC base town.

 

 

[Map] Karakul Province

For the thing, which I am calling Age of Lead.

I am about done with the player text, and have a number of images done. Everything that has come before here, exists now as an idea farm, so some things may be familiar, but I assure you the final product is like nothing you have seen before. I could probably release next week, but I have ideas, see, and I may go all summer.

Here is the inkiest map you likely to see this morning. Comments are closed, but shoot me a mail if you have something to say.

 

 

 

 

[Map] Old Mars, campaign area in color...

 

 

(Sketches) Martians and Mars

Christmas day quickly approaches, and I have a lot left to do for the mars game, which will probably commence on the 24th.

Tangentally, I am trying to improve my art, and a surprisingly large part of that is loosening up and drawing faster. So here are a bunch of sketches done, as a rule in under 20 minutes, working mostly, but with a couple of exceptions, from the bestiary. I have upped the contrast and junk on most of these, but they are mostly raw. A lot of this I just pulled out of my ass, but a couple major sources of inspiration were Samurai Jack, and preproduction stills/art from the JC movie.

 

The accompanying text is at the sketch stage as well in most cases.

This is an exception in that it wasn't timed. It is my current version of campaign area, although I am going to move Waroon into the SE corner, I think.

 

Red martian

 

Albino Apes: (D/R)

Martian apes are not true primates, but rather humanoid creatures closely resembling terrestrial monotremes. Great hairy beasts, albino apes range from 8-12 feet in height, and have four arms.

Favored attack: combination bearhug and beating.

 

 

Anth: (D/R)

Pseudo-leonine saurian beast with eight legs. Ambush predator. Usually hunt in pairs

 

 

Aspidochelone

 

Airship

 

 

Warrior monk of the Rahn, the Sun God.

Highly trained assassin/ninja/priests.

 

Bhool

Monkey-like ab-dead creatures, bhool usually travel in troupes and haunt ruins. Ravenous monstrosities, bhool enjoy the flesh of the living and the dead with equal enthusiasm

 

Green Warrior

 

 

Gargan (scarlet ape)

 

 

Cyclopede

Huge, centipede like creatures, cyclopedes lay dormant for long periods of time between hunts. These catastrophically destructive creatures are rare enough and their depredations infamous enough that some of them have earned named.

 

Dragon (Mars):

Puny shades of their puissant ancestors, the dragons of Old Mars are, nevertheless, huge, fearsome and and possessed of a high degree of intelligence. They communicate with their riders, and vis versa through psycho-phermons. Dragons delight in slaughter and destruction.

 

Dragonaught:

Rapacious red warriors, dragonaughts share a special bond with their mounts. It is unclear who serves who, dragon or rider.

 

 

[MAP] XARDZ, OLD MARS

 

Larger Version.

 

[Maps] Ziturr, Old Mars

 

 

 

[Maps] God Kings of Old Mars, Stark's Reach, notes.

So I was workong on my Mars xmass game thing when it occured to me that some things I'd done earlier, namely Skull and the Deep Desert stuff in the left sidebar, were better suited to Mars than they were to Metal Earth- and suddenly I have the backbone of a settng and, with some correction and alteration, a campaign area.

Anyway the first map is new. No effort has been made at any kind of accuracy.

Bigger version.

And this is the campaign area, a reworked version of an older map.

Bigger Version