The portfolio and blog of David Bennett

Category: Roleplaying Games (Page 3 of 3)

Mapping Monday: My Gamma World Campaign – Mapping the World

Hiero’s Journey and The Unforsaken Hiero

One of the longest running campaigns I’ve ever run was a Gamma World game based on the original first edition rules. In building the world, I used not only elements from the setting sketched out in the book, but elements from other game settings like The Morrow Project and Aftermath along with ideas from film and fiction. The most direct lift was the territory controlled by the Eleveners, a direct lift from Hiero’s Journey by Sterling E. Lanier and its sequel, though the actual details of their society included elements from Miller’s A Canticle for Liebowitz and was a combination of Healers and Restorationists as presented as Cryptic Alliances in the setting. Lifewise, the Brotherhood of the Unclean became simply The Unclean as the dark side to the Restorationists with a healthy dose of other antagonists thrown in including, most predominantly, Radioactivists.

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Mapping Monday: Designer Pete Fenlon

The maps of Middle Earth have always held a special place with me, whether it’s been the original maps by J.R.R. Tolkien himself, the version by Pauline Baynes from the calendar that I owned once upon a time, or the detailed maps by Karen Wynn Fonstad that appeared in her Atlas of Middle Earth. The idea of a world with depth and history is always appealing and I must have explored every corner of the world, not only following the path of the Fellowship, but also the places mentioned in the stories or shown on the maps that were peripheral to the saga.

Lake Evendim and surrounds from the map by J.R.R. Tolkien

Of particular note was the lost kingdom of Arnor and the remains of its capital city, Annúminas, on the southern shore of Nenuial, also known as Lake Evendim. This is, without a doubt, my single most favorite place in Middle Earth. As the ruins of a once-great city, it barely merits a footnote in the story apart from being a special place to the Rangers of the North, the descendents of the northern Dúnedain.

Which brings us to Pete Fenlon and his work over a decade and a half working at Iron Crown Enterprises working on their Middle Earth roleplaying game and the numerous supplements detailing parts of the world, expanding on the works of Tolkien, and creating new adventures. Many of us were inspired by his work and have so many great memories of each and every map. The Pete Fenlon style has influenced not just gamers like myself, but other map designers, as well.
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Mapping Monday: Isometric Maps

The Magic Users’ school from Pellinore

One of the most difficult things with maps, particularly in those for roleplaying games, is capturing three-dimensional spaces. Since the early days of computer games like Colossal Cave Adventure and various dungeon delves, the result is the flattening of complex structures onto two-dimensional planes.

My experiences as an early gamer were rather insular and even TSR’s Dwellers of the Forbidden City (I1) passed me by at the time, much like many of the works out of the UK including the Pellinore game setting. As a result, I think my first exposure to isometric maps were the ones from the Dragonlance adventures and those blew my mind.

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Mapping Monday: Old Personal Maps

Decades ago, I used to draw maps. I’ve always enjoyed maps of imaginary places and I’ve drawn more than a few of my own. As much as I enjoyed drawing them, I really fell off in completing new maps or even in sketching out ideas.

For 2018, my goal is to rediscover my love of maps, to share the maps and artists who have inspired me, and to create more maps of my own along with the process from inception to completion.

Two-level map of a partially ruined castle


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Unforgotten Legends

blackmoor_supplementThere have been many game designers and creators of game systems who I admire, but few as much as Dave Arneson. So I was saddened to hear he had passed away last week on April 7th. For someone like me who remembers the original three book Dungeons and Dragons books (as do many others), the Blackmoor supplement remains one of my favorites of all time and the first setting to really capture my imagination and to hold it more than the many others over the years.

Matt Blum wrote in his Wired Magazine column, “It was Arneson’s spark that transformed Gygax’s game Chainmail into the first edition of D&D, and begat everything that followed.” In his career, he was a man of many talents, combining a love of games not just as the developer of D&D, but as a teacher and creator in other mediums including computer games. In the Star Tribune (article no longer available), his daughter said, “…her father enjoyed teaching at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla., in recent years, where he inspired future game creators, and taught students to make a solid set of rules for their games.” His approach to games makes more sense to me than that of other designers and probably why some of my earliest favorite computer games tend to resemble computer versions of Arneson’s Temple of the Frog, among them games like Telengard, Temple of Apshai and Wizardry. There are some great insights in this previously unpublished interview with Dave Arneson from 2004.

Though’ll he’ll be missed, we’ll always be grateful for the person he was and the legacy he left. It’s truly a great one.

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