Using tools in unconventional ways to make good art (or music).

[Redrobes]

Its possible that the person playing that guitar was completely self taught without access to any books or video footage to work from much less a tutor showing 'proper' finger positions etc. In that sense they are playing with a unique style driven from a need to get the best sound out not to pass the next grade. I think thats important.

In terms of purpose I see that lacking a lot in many of the maps here. Sometimes you just have to go wild cos there really would be no reason at all for dwarves / goblins or whatever to drive 90 degree 5ft passages through solid rock with no purpose other than to confuse adventurers but in that same vein its what people expect and enjoy from a gaming session so thats whats driving them to make them like it.

The tutorials are great mainly because many of the people who arrive here cant make a map at all and want one. For those people the tutorials are great. Ok its a cookie cutter - pick your cutter ! But its that or nothing. For those here who are great artists or virtuosos with their apps maybe they should try hard to push themselves out of the comfort zone.

With the rivers and stuff - we always say that these only apply when your trying to get your rivers looking like real physical rivers. Theres a special get out clause for magic in all the policing ! If you want to have a mountain with multiple rivers all flowing down then thats great but its not realistic and maybe that's exactly what your aiming for. We have had maps here of lands floating in space with waterfalls off into nothingness etc. I think its just that many people come here wanting a realistic campaign world to run in.

Also I don't think its just Mordor thats crazy. Andiun rolls about 3000km all down the map with mountains at the top of the map and the Mistys down the middle. It implies that if the water is falling in height then the northerly mountains would be absurdly high. The misty mountains are there purely to get Bilbo underground by necessity and therefore find the ring. Otherwise he would have gone around them, lived a quiet normal life and not had any books written about him.

With apps the problem is pretty simple. Were all too lazy to make up lots and lots and lots of tokens to use so we use the ones that come with the map. The real artists here have the advantage of being able to whoop up with quality whatever they want but though I can by tedium strain out something that's at best a bit naff those are my options. The Dundjinni forums have helped loads of people out there its true and you see some tokens popping up a lot cos they are good. What can we do there - dunno really. But again, most people want some battle maps to run their next session with and will reuse the same tokens for convenience.

The only answer I can give to some of these problems is to use some software that does not draw the map for you but suggests things that you could put in based on realism and maybe to somehow AI up some tokens for required items. But how to do that generally I have no idea at this point. We might be able to do something where the scope is more limited like cities and we have been doing that to some degree with terrain but its not an easy task.

[Mark Oliva]

I think we're in complete agreement on most points. I'd like to underscore though that it wasn't my intention to complain about the way that folks do things but rather to throw up some ideas on what might lead to the kind of burnout that Ascension was describing, a kind of burnout that I've experienced at times too.

In terms of purpose I see that lacking a lot in many of the maps here. Sometimes you just have to go wild cos there really would be no reason at all for dwarves / goblins or whatever to drive 90 degree 5ft passages through solid rock with no purpose other than to confuse adventurers but in that same vein its what people expect and enjoy from a gaming session so thats whats driving them to make them like it.

I agree, but I've also found that it can be rewarding to give a gaming party more than just what it wants. This may be what "people expect and enjoy from a gaming session," but it also often ends up being the same thing in effect as Ascension's realization that it's the same map over and over again. In this case, it ends up being the same routine of go in, whack 'em out, steal their treasure and get out again. People do enjoy that, as you say, but only for awhile. Then the excitement evolves into ho-hums and they get out of fantasy RPGing and into something else.

But I also have seen alternatives. The most fantastic is a group of five accountants (one female) at a German nuclear power plant company who have been playing red box D&D (vintage 198X) for nearly 30 years. All five are on or over the threshold of age 60 now, and they still play regularly. Who could imagine German nuclear power plant accountants playing D&D at all, much less for 30 years? I've seen their gaming material, and I understand why they keep going. They write all their own material, with each taking turns being DM and author. Their challenge is to make each new adventure more intriguing, surprising and interesting than the last. Their maps all are handmade sketches, most graphically dull but all with a logic of their own that even an accountant can relate to.

The tutorials are great mainly because many of the people who arrive here cant make a map at all and want one. For those people the tutorials are great. Ok its a cookie cutter - pick your cutter !

Agreed on all points.

With the rivers and stuff - we always say that these only apply when your trying to get your rivers looking like real physical rivers. Theres a special get out clause for magic in all the policing ! If you want to have a mountain with multiple rivers all flowing down then thats great but its not realistic and maybe that's exactly what your aiming for. We have had maps here of lands floating in space with waterfalls off into nothingness etc.

The get-out clause for magic is too easy an out too often. The point I was trying to make (and didn't very clearly) is that the world, region or whatever that you're mapping needs to have its own logic if it veers from the logic of the real world. In our case with Jörðgarð (TM), our original goal - a challenge from our own viewpoint - was to start out with some of the really wild world logic found in mythology and to try to make a sensible, logical fantasy RPG setting out of it.

If you read the Eddas, you learn that at the top of the world near Ásgarð stands the great ash tree of life. The squirrel Ratatosk is busy gnawing away at it, and the hart Eikthyrnir is eating its branches. A huge stream of water flows out of Eikthyrnir's antlers into Hvergelmir, feeding the spring, which overflows at 11 different points forming the 11 great rivers. Making a river flow upstream is nothing in comparison to trying to make something sensible and usable out of this. To sum things up, we dropped Ratatosk and Eikthyrnir but decided to keep Hvergelmir and the 11 great rivers.

To make something with its own logic out of this, we need to make clear to our users that this world was made in a different manner from our own real world and that some things function differently but according to their own rules with their own logic. So it goes somewhat beyond the question of whether we just want a mountain with 11 rivers flowing from a single mountain spring. Your reaction that it's "not realistic" is not quite correct. It's very realistic in terms of its own realities, just like halflings and dwarves and elves are very realistic in terms of the virtual realities of most fantasy RPGs.

I think its just that many people come here wanting a realistic campaign world to run in.

I agree with you, but in the more extended sense of realistic being logical rather then only a replica of the real world. I think most folks will accept alternate virtual realities if they make a sense of their own. After all, that's what they already are doing in accepting the real-world-unreal realities of their fantasy RPGs.

Also I don't think its just Mordor thats crazy. Andiun rolls about 3000km all down the map with mountains at the top of the map and the Mistys down the middle. It implies that if the water is falling in height then the northerly mountains would be absurdly high. The misty mountains are there purely to get Bilbo underground by necessity and therefore find the ring. Otherwise he would have gone around them, lived a quiet normal life and not had any books written about him.

Agreed and agreed again. However, I think this underlines my point about the willingness of most people in our field to accept other realities. I don't think any worlds that any of us here might create ever will have the faithful following that Prof. Tolkien's Middle Earth has. Nor will any of our maps ever be so absolutely adored as his simple handmade maps of Middle Earth.

With apps the problem is pretty simple. Were all too lazy to make up lots and lots and lots of tokens to use so we use the ones that come with the map. The real artists here have the advantage of being able to whoop up with quality whatever they want but though I can by tedium strain out something that's at best a bit naff those are my options. The Dundjinni forums have helped loads of people out there its true and you see some tokens popping up a lot cos they are good. What can we do there - dunno really. But again, most people want some battle maps to run their next session with and will reuse the same tokens for convenience.

Well, sure, laziness can be one of the causes of the kind of burnout that Ascension was describing. Laziness is the main reason why I end up having to redo things at times that I had checked off as being done. But it really isn't necessary to make one's own graphical objects. The three members of our projects group all have hundreds of textures available on our machines and a library of symbols (objects) the topples the 15,000 mark. We made only about 1,000 of them ourselves. Our objects and all of the others available to us are available to everyone for free downloading and are okayed for personal and commercial use. I consider many of them to be of much better graphical quality than the symbols (objects) that one gets with CC3, Fractal Mapper 8 or Dundjinni, and I also consider them to be of much better graphical quality than the add-on symbols and art packs that one can buy from the manufacturers of Dundjinni, Fractal Mapper 8 or CC3. The material is there. It's the laziness that leads to the problems.

Happy weekend!

[Mark Oliva]

I thought it might be a good idea to show the current draft [WIP] of the hemisphere map that includes Hvergelmir, the well that spouts the 11 great rivers, which I mentioned above. The current version, Build 318, can be viewed in the maps forum at:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...642#post105642