Heh, cool. Almost half of the first two pages when I google ‘fantastic locations’ have to do with this carnival. Throw in ‘rpg blog carnival’ and it was page six before I started finding more than one or two per page that weren’t directly related. Sweet!
Here is this week’s roundup for the RPG Blog Carnival: Fantastic Locations. In fact, this will be the last weekly roundup for this carnival, there is less than a week left before it’s over.
Which reminds me, I still need to finish writing up Rime Tower.
I don’t know if David Guyll is aware of the Carnival, but this post at Points of Light about a Sundered World: The City by the Sun certainly fits the bill. There are similar posts for Thunderspire and Acamar, the Corpse Star (though he doesn’t say much about the latter, since it’s intended to be something of a surprise for his players). He also describes the Drafting a Sundered World for us, including his base ideas and how he plans to go about it (at a high level).
Tonybro001 from roleplay-geek reminds us of Mega City One, the setting of Judge Dredd. Definitely a fantastic location by my standards, and I’d completely forgotten it. To be fair, though, it was somewhat over twenty years ago and only about three or four sessions before we moved to another game.
Fitz of the Gassy Gnoll spends some time pondering What Makes a Location Fantastic. Like several other posters on this topic, he favors a minimalist presentation to his players and to let them bring forth the fantastic.
Ameron of Dungeon’s Master describes Toronto’s PATH, a subterranean semi-labyrinth (they aren’t trying to be confusing, and post maps so you can find your way, but it can be disorienting) that joins up a significant amount of downtown Toronto. This idea excites me; Vancouver has something like this, but it sounds much smaller than Toronto’s. I can easily see how this can be a source of inspiration for gamers, without the dangers of abandoned steam tunnels. I’m almost tempted to go to Toronto to check this out (and just realized — a GPS would be no use here). Exploring the tunnels, even well-lit, and finding the various exits (into large courtyards — nice image, Ameron) and landmarks and whatnot… fantastic location indeed.
I almost missed Ravyn’s posts this week — in fact, I ended up going specifically to her site to see if there were any (the pingbacks didn’t reach me this time, weird). First she talks about Marring Perfection, taking a setting or location known to the players and changing it dramatically for greatest impact on the players. The second is on Impractical Applications (Variations on a Perfect Location), describing how a the feel of and reaction to a place can be changed dramatically in more than one way merely by shifting a few details.
A lot to think about in this week’s posts.
Okay, I’m caught up through January 17, I’m going to call it a wrap for this week’s links.
… but they’re not calling it that. Wizards of the Coast announced they are working toward the ‘next iteration’ of D&D (they are being coy about calling it 5e, but many people aren’t).
To anyone likely to be reading this blog, it is unlikely to be news. As expected, this has pretty much set the RPG blogs on fire.
I do not expect to be posting much about it, though I have been invited to a playtest group from someone I respect and I plan to take part. However, when I find a particularly insightful post I may mention it here.
This week I’ve stumbled on three posts describing managing overland travel using a node graph rather than just the pictorial or hex map.
The weird thing is that I have designed my scenarios and campaigns for years using node graphs, but I had never considered exposing that to the players. Blue Boxer Rebellion, Hill Cantons, and Twenty Sided all describe using such maps in relatively transparent fashion, and it makes sense to me to do so. You could hide it so the players have to crawl through the hexes in order to get where they are going, but I’m at a loss to say why this is a good idea.
This project is almost half way funded, and there is still more than two weeks left. The project is half funded, and I’d really like to see this one come through.
Here is a picture showing examples of what you can expect to see on the tokens. They are not necessarily to scale (I’m pretty sure those dragons should be bigger compared to the smaller humanoids).
As best I can tell, this will be some pretty solid quality and good volume for the price, and I expect to be able to put them to good use.
Not so many posts for the RPG Blog Carnival on Fantastic Locations this week, but some quite good ones. I had aimed to post every day myself, and that plan was pretty solidly kicked in the teeth about this time last week (I’ve given up on the Links of the Week post that would have gone up three days ago, it’ll be rolled into the next one). I still want to finish my work on Rime Tower from last week.
Houserule’s podcast on January 13, 2012 (Episode 18: Old Enough) discussed (at length; I make it about 50 minutes of the 70-minute podcast) fantastic locations, including reminiscing about fantastic locations and incredible encounters from their own gaming past. I am particularly tickled that they never made it to the third topic planned, not because the third topic got dropped but because they just… never got there because they were spending so much time on this one.
Thanks to Greg Christopher for bringing this to my attention.
seaofstarsrpg brings us the Snowfall of Irasosia. Literally a cool place, there is a ‘waterfall of magic snow’. Interesting, integrated with the world (drives an entire industry), and inexplicable. A good combination.
I even enjoyed it despite having our first snowfall of the year last night and spending two hours making our driveway passable (and two hours with a snowblower is a long time).
I’m not entirely certain Ravyn ever sleeps. She’s posting other material to her site, and three more articles relating to this carnival. First is a discussion of Perfect Locations, discussing the ideal form of each location and how to present it, along with considerations of how to vary from that ideal. Seeing the Light explores the use and description of light in setting a scene, and Who’s There? talks about how some scenes and locations have little meaning without people present.
I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, Ravyn. Your posts are quite different from what I expected to see in this carnival, while remaining solidly on topic and making me think, and that delights me.
