Taking the Weather with You

So apparently, despite my best efforts to hide from bullshit weather, it manages to find me wherever I might hide. This time I brought tornadoes to Texas.

Sorry.

That reputation, of course, being guns. Lots of guns.

In wake of this disaster (and the growing possibility that I may, in fact, be cursed) I went to help out with the relief effort. There, I learned a couple of things. First and foremost, of course, that this is still definitely not New Jersey.

Maybe that shouldn't come as a surprise, but I'm a cynic. Most of these people are goddamned nice. And very, very religious. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. It's just not really the New Jersey way of doing things. We're more likely to hate everyone and everything and blame all our problems on the government. The rest of these people... well, Texas lives up to its reputation.

I've also learned that not even something as apparently simple as disaster relief is bogged down with bureaucratic stupidity. They seemed really organized (they being some faith-based relief group I'd never heard of that I felt a little weird signing on with, but sure, whatever, I'll help wherever when shit's bad) and they seemed like they wanted to help.

And then they handed out these work order forms. We went through this whole little orientation thing on how to deal with debris and where to put it and organize it and how to help, and then were told that we'd mostly be going around and talking to people today. Talking. And handing them paperwork.

Seriously?

"And this is where the tarp would go, if my house still existed."

I don't even like paperwork when everything is good. These people just had their homes thrown halfway across town by a tornado. And we're walking up to the door with a work order form that says 'hey if you need some tarps or something just let us know and we'll get it to you like tomorrow or something.' And this assumes their house is even still there at all. Several were just gone.

Meanwhile, there's a tree through what's left of the front of his house and he's sitting there with a box of stuff he dragged out today without getting crushed by the collapsing roof. I don't think he gives a crap about said tarp or the papers that go with it. Everyone--everyone--declined aid from the stupid paperwork. They don't need help later. They need help now.

So after about 30 minutes of wandering about doing fuckall, we threw the papers into the nearest truck and got to work actually doing something. Still wearing the shirts for this organization that, as far as I could tell, wasn't actually doing anything. Maybe our little team wasn't doing what we were supposed to. Maybe sitting down and helping one or two people down the street wasn't really as effective as getting everyone on the street's number and assessment.

But you know what? It sure felt more productive. Handing bullshit paperwork to people who just lost everything does nothing more than promise aid that may never even show up. Why should I entrust this organization I don't even know (but totally gave me a free shirt, so they're probably okay) to help these people who are looking to us, the volunteers walking down the street, for help?

And, in true Jersey fashion, I wouldn't. If I wanted to push papers, I'd get a normie job. The only reason I walked about with that stupid paper for 30 minutes is because the team leader thought that maybe, somehow, we could help by doing that. 

We didn't. I just hope all the other volunteer teams (of which there were many) tossed out the bureaucracy, too.

Into the Lairs: Self-Flagellation Edition

As promised, I said I'd talk more about the process of building my encounter and what I thought went well, poorly, or somewhere in between.

From an encounter standpoint, I knew I wanted to do something that wasn't always 100% associated with deserts. Gnolls and their ilk were immediately out. While I'm also a diehard supporter of humanity (my friends will vouch for my preference of human over almost every other race), I didn't think a group of human bandits milling about the desert were particularly interesting either.

Kobolds are always a favorite of mine because they're not quite so socially inept they can't talk to you a bit. They might hate you and try to steal your stuff and actually be a little nervous when you start waving your sword around, but they're silly little lizard men and their use of traps and trickery is pretty fun to toy with. I also feel like kobolds are too often trapped (puns, doho~) in their little caves and never get to see the light of day. They're cold-blooded little dragonmen, so why wouldn't they hang out in the sun like lizards in the desert?

It was then I remembered that the desert-themed dragon was the blue scaled fellow. This one never really sat well with me, because if the dragon is anywhere except the clear blue sky he just looks completely out of place. I made my dragon and dragonmen red. The rocks are red, it's hot as hell, it's probably a good place for a guy with some fire resistance to hang out.

When I was building the encounter, I knew I wanted the ambush to be a little challenging... but not overwhelming unless the PCs really asked for it. I tried to set up the map in such a way that there were lots of ways to evade line of sight from the cliffs and plenty of room to duck around and have an almost guerrilla-styled battle across these narrow passages. The addition of a few cheap pit traps that aren't actually pits only helps break up the flow of combat, keeping the PCs moving up and down around the terrain while getting plinked away at by some kobold crossbowmen... and their reinforcements!

The young half-dragon monitor lizard was thrown in there because I wanted some kind of diversity. All kobolds all the time is... meh. But a half-dragon kobold was equally meh. The overlap of templates kind of creates something that might not really match its CR, but I think it has an interesting set of abilities for a relatively low-power encounter. I also sort of wanted it to contrast the kobolds--it's slow and stupid, but more powerful than any of the kobolds individually and arguably more draconic than any of them as well. They sort of have a love-hate relationship with this little pet of their true master.

...Speaking of their true master, I feel like I also suffered from the 'I've got lots of cool stuff but it's not happening here' issue. There's a red dragon in the equation somewhere, and he's only tangentially influencing this particular group. And this group is only a small segment of the whole Red Rock Raiders. There's a whole lot going on beyond this simple encounter, and perhaps that's where I missed the mark. It was called the Lethal Lairs contest, and this doesn't really qualify as a lair by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe I just misinterpreted the directions ("design a Southlands encounter") too literally. Maybe I've been trained by RPGSS to build things in the wrong sort of direction. Whatever it is, I think I have the least lair-like of the entries, and that's definitely a mark against it.

The map itself is definitely one of my better ones. I'm super proud of it, even if its still kind of crap by most people's standards. It took way too long to get it even looking this good. I do not art. I love the little palm trees, though! They're so cute and palmy. The rest of it feels laid out fairly responsibly--the kobolds have built their trap around the spring, the traps feel like they're in the right spots to prevent people from approaching/fleeing, the little houses are far enough back to be hidden but close enough to keep reinforcements nearby, and I feel like everything is in the right spots. It's still not super pretty to look at, which obviously a problem when you're being graded on your map skills, but it's not like it fell down the ugly tree and hit every branch. It's readable and usable and that's a massive step in the right direction.

Structure-wise, though, I think the encounter comes off a little haphazard. When I'm building encounters for my home games, I sort of toss the experience budget out the window and just roll with what feels right. I also tend towards the 'level up when I say so' methodology in many of my games, so just ignoring the XP values lends itself towards that. Here, I knew what I wanted but was quickly chewing up experience without really getting, what I felt, was a challenging encounter. I ended up making the sandpit traps worth nothing because traps apparently don't go low enough in Pathfinder's CR system to represent a cheap CR 1/3 or 1/2 trap. That feels a little like a cop out, and probably not something a real developer would let fly. Conversely, I do feel like the terrain and the beasties and the traps lend themselves to a pretty diverse little encounter.

But is it memorable? Eh. I'm not sure. And I think that's probably what cost me the most here. The winner's encounter is absolutely memorable. Wyvern riders are cool, wyvern riders throwing you off a waterfall are even cooler. (That does call to attention the fact it doesn't really feel desert themed if the main hook is a waterfall, though that's beside the point.)

Into the Lairs

The voting has closed on the Lethal Lairs contest over at Kobold Press! While I did not take first place, I did manage to get second! (If only just barely. But let's not talk about that.) Since I don't have anywhere near 43 friends, I'd like to thank the people that voted for me but will probably never read this. You guys are awesome.

In the spirit of competition, I'd like to give the entries the RPGSS treatment and go through each on the pros and cons. Starting with our winner:

James Haeck's Monument to the Thunderer

Right off the bat, this one hits one of the most important notes: a compelling name. Without reading or knowing anything, this already sounds like a cool place. The map hits all the essentials: key, compass, and scale. It could probably use the map's name somewhere on it, but that's not a make or break detail.

Getting into the meat of it... there's a lot to like. The layout feels a little cramped, but the fight across the water and then up the monument makes for some really cool visuals. In fact, my only real problem with this encounter is there's so much distilling the coolness away from the wyvern riders. There's a bunch of mooks and a death dog. A trollkin that isn't particularly fond of his job. A half-dragon mage tossing spells. Environmental hazards. Clambering up the side of the mountain. And don't get me wrong--these are all good things. But I feel like the real selling point here is wyvern riders on a wyvern monument throwing people over a waterfall. The rest are just... I don't know. Maybe it's just too much in such a small area. It feels more like the assortment of cool things you'd find across a dungeon (or, dare I say, a lair?) rather than in a single encounter write up.

 Andrew Harshman's The Matter of the Oasis

This name is... less exciting. I want to know what the matter is, but I'm not really sold. Likewise, the map is missing the critical components: no key, no scale, no compass. Yes, I don't really need any of those to interpret this map, but those are pretty industry standard. Creatures are also positioned on the map, which is generally a big no-no for anything that might decide to stand up and take a leak five feet to the right of where it's marked.

And while I'm on the bad news, the map in general doesn't really excite. It's a valley with some wet stuff in the middle and no really compelling reason to stand in it (fast healing 5 isn't worth the risk of breaking it!) If the PCs manage to move the oasis early, it just gets replaced with equally boring difficult terrain. The side passages are narrow caves that we've all seen and done before. The most exciting part of the map is the high plateau around the little valley thing--which is only really called attention to in the ways PCs might enter and doesn't do anything cool anywhere else.

Okay, enough abuse, I promise! I really like the layout of this entry. It's got the whole gamut covered. Background. Hook. Plot before and after the PCs get here. Options to diplomance your way. Options to sneaky snake your way in. Options to muck up everything and get screwed out of your pay. It's got intrigue to follow up, and strange rituals to investigate. (Though one has to wonder who the archmage capable of moving an oasis is that then leaves it in the 'capable' hands of his low level mooks.) This actually feels like a great set piece you can pick up and dump into any desert-themed adventure without any other work needed. There's a lot to be said for that adaptability. Conversely--and devil's advocatey--that means that a lot of your 'cool' isn't actually showcased in this entry, but stuff to come.

Zac Corbin's The Red Cliff of Akhal

Another pretty exciting name. I don't know who Akhal is or why he has a red cliff, but when I see the side view of this thing I'm already hype. The map is solid, but again misses the key and compass. Also, my first reaction was 'wow, these are some small rooms.' Then I realized that this was much bigger than the suggested size for the encounter map. This place is huge!

Which, I think, hurts the entry more than helps it. With so much text dedicated to explaining the place and plot, you're left with half the space to explain each room and each encounter within. This has gone well beyond a single encounter and gone straight to the lair! There's a crapload of dudes in this place, and they're not even all here! That all feels like a shame, because I really like the map. It's got a good layout and a nice spiraly structure that isn't super repetitive and the use of disadvantage in the cramped stairways is a clever little tidbit.

Unfortunately, I don't think that really does enough to make it stand out. There's the yuan-ti, but everything else just feels kind of standard. Gnolls in the desert. Bandits in a bandit-themed adventure. Rooms in a lair that (while nicely laid out) don't really feel very exciting. Again, I feel like that's more a problem with the fact this went for too much in too little space. If each of these rooms could have a few hundred words dedicated to them, I'd probably like this a lot more! Also, this earns props for not using water. Water was, apparently, the easy way out this time around.

Charlie Brooks' Ambush at the Oasis

Another half-sell on the name. Okay, so we're being ambushed and there's water but it's desert water. The map hits all marks: key, scale, compass. Small enough not to require numbers to name rooms, which I feel is a big part of making an encounter map for these things. I guess part of the issue is semantics when talking about encounter maps. Are we doing encounter scale (that is, scaled to 5-foot squares) or an actual encounter (being one single fight with whatever)? Regardless, I digress.

This is a pretty cool location with a pretty cool story. Unfortunately, the encounter itself feels sort of bland. The big ticket item here is the fact there's a lamia involved, but its grand strategy is to bring them to the water's edge. To do what? Drown them in a puddle? The water doesn't have any particular negative effect other than being wet, as far as I can tell. I guess drowning sucks, but who's going to stick their face in the water just because some holy woman asked really nicely? There's a lot of cool terrain features (The skeleton! Use the skeleton!!) but they don't amount to anything interesting.

There's also a lot of random mooks that will take a single hit to dispatch but pose really no threat to a group tackling a CR 9 encounter. The only thing anyone will fear here is the lamia and the barbarian. I do like the creature choice, and the use of jackalwere allies creeping about and looking totally innocuous is a smart addition of well-placed mooks. I also like the inclusion of a 'just in case' conclusion. I don't feel like enough things include that (though, really, we don't ever plan to fail) and too many times losing just equals death. Death is boring. I think this one also suffers from 'save my cool for later' with the dragon skeleton. It's such a cool setpiece that it is the whole reason the place exists. But for this encounter it does nothing more than 'bone colored fence.' That's pretty disappointing.

My own Rustrock Spring

I'd like to do a follow-up post on my own entry, evaluating what I did right and wrong and all that, and this is already a pretty long post (as I am apt to do). I'll keep this brief.

My name is bland. I'm not very good at naming things. For characters, a lot of times I just write random letters until I get something that sounds cool and then tweak it to look like an actual name. Bonus points for apostrophes and things. I do the same for places. "Well, the rocks are rusty and there's a spring. Done."

This is, by far, one of my better maps. I make it no secret that I cannot draw maps for shit. This looks almost passable, and hits the mapping essentials. I'm actually proud of this one, even if it still isn't great.

This feels like less of a lair than some of the other entries. I wasn't entirely sure making a lair was the point of the contest so much as the goal for winning the contest (that whole encounter semantics again) and went with what I knew with RPGSS--a single encounter with a set of dudes. I still really like my encounter, fuck the haters, because kobolds are awesome crafty little bastards and I wanted to showcase that in a desert rather than a cave.

More detailed self-critique (self-criticism?) to come in a day or two!

Running Aground in the Southlands

We interrupt the only-roughly-sort-of followed posting schedule for this announcement!

Kobold Press is running a small contest for a desert-themed bandit encounter set in their Southlands setting. While I must regret not having heard of this setting until the contest was linked to me by a friend, I seem to have placed among the finalists!

I'm quite proud that my extended efforts to make maps that are decidedly less shitty have resulted in the Rustrock Spring! So check out all the entries--they're all pretty cool, I think!--and place a vote for your favorite.

[I totally voted for myself.]
[I have no shame.]
[Sorry.]

Wandering: Austin Edition

Wow. How did this much time go by already? It's been a crazy month.

Between the fallout over Fallout and holiday madness and shopping madness and the whole 'uproot your life across the US' thing, the weeks just flew by.

So I've already commented on how very not-New-Jersey this place is. But I kept hearing people talk about Austin like it wasn't a city that should be in Texas. Which sounds exactly like the sort of place I want to go.

And that's exactly what I did. I spent a few days down in Austin and celebrated the T-Day with family at a restaurant that's arguably fancier than any place I should have been in. If I had known it was that sort of place, I might have actually considered shaving. Maybe. The food, at least, was amazing. Expensive and fancy, but awesome.

Which sort of describes my entire experience with food across Austin. Like any good city, they have an obsession with food trucks. Any Rutgers graduate (hell, anyone from Jersey) knows the importance of the grease trucks and the legendary fat sandwiches. They do indeed have a fat sandwich place, and though it isn't in a truck, the place is still right off the college campus and crappy looking enough that it probably could be a truck. The sandwich was, of course, amazing. My experiences with the actual trucks across the city were pretty much the same. Crazy coffee shops, Voodoo donuts... yeah, it's a good place to go eating.

Speaking of wandering around the city, holy crap does this place like murals. They've got everything painted up, and there's a massive graffiti wall where artists apply and reapply their mark on the world.

Which comes around to the city's slogan of "Keep Austin Weird." It certainly is a weird place, but someone gave me the quick tl;dr about it. Apparently the little local businesses united against having major franchises come in and take over the city, which is why so many strange little shops have managed to survive and thrive. Or something along those lines. Whatever it is, the place is strange. 6th Street borrows a page out of Bourbon Street's book (or Key West's Duval, since the two are basically the same place), and SoCo borrows a touch of SoHo in name and spirit. Still, they've got a whole life of their own and are totally worth checking out.

And then, of course, there's the capital building. Austin is still Texas, and they still do things big. Show this picture to someone who doesn't know better, and they'd think this was the US Capital. I think they said it's bigger, too.

And they keep the place frickin' spotless. Very impressive. More signs of people giving a crap about their jobs, which is something we totally do not do in the northeast.

All in all, a worthy stop on my journeys around the port of Texas. I'm still not entirely sure I can ever get used to people being nice, but at least Austin scratched that batshit crazy New Yorker itch. Cities that do that are few and far between!

CRPGs and Storytelling

I would have had another post up earlier but, well... Fallout 4.

Everyone's been talking about it this past week, and I've heard mixed responses to the game's shift to a voiced protagonist and relative dumbing down of the dialogue from previous incarnations in the series.

A little background first: I wouldn't call myself a Fallout purist. I'd always heard about the game, but hadn't ever played the originals. It was only when Fallout 3 was coming to the modern world that I had my first foray into the universe, and I'm sure I'm a heretic for this. It had a very different sort of bend than the Baldur's Gate in post-apocalyptia I'd been expecting, but it scratched that RPG itch really, really well.

And so does Fallout 4. But it's not really the same game. Just like Fallout 3 wasn't its predecessors,the newest entry into the series is not 3 or New Vegas. It's something that took the lessons of its ancestors and built upon them. For the better, I think.

The first thing that really stood out to me is the level of immersion. There's a better graphical fidelity to the vision of the radiation-blasted wasteland, from the houses to the highways, to the cars and even the countless corpses. There's thousands of tiny little details and spots lovingly crafted and inserted in without a single NPC to explain them, a note to detail it, or a map marker to guide you like a laser to its secrets. Fallout 3 had these, too, and my brief experiences with the original seemed to show similar secrets... but something about these feels really well done.

The NPCs, too. But it has to be noted that the dialogue has been gutted. Every dialogue menu has a maximum of 4 responses... possibly a hint of consolitis, but more likely a consequence of the cost of voicing every response from the protagonist twice. The result is a conversation that feels more organic and immersive. No longer are you delivering twelve pizzas to some random NPC who immediately forgets who you are, but actually affecting a difference in the wasteland. People remember you; hell, they come up to you to start conversations sometimes.

That being said, though, it's not entirely seamless. Since conversation options are limited, you do hit a point where you run out of things to say to someone. Talking to them simply results in: "Hey." "Oh, hey X, thanks so much for helping us with that Y and Z problem!" Okay, well, that's losing a little immersion. I'd like to know details and things! But voices cost money. Likewise, the minor NPCs that populate a number of settlements across the wasteland have a whole lot of nothing for dialogue. Every attempt to talk to them results in "Let's trade things!" like the protag is so excited to be dumping his extremely heavy garbage onto these people.

Yes, it would be too much to ask for to have little stories for everyone and everything. That won't stop me from asking.

Yet the biggest complaint I've heard among my friends is the removal of complete freedom. (Read: the asshole playthrough where you ruin everything and everyone because eviiiiil.) Maybe it's because I'm a huge tabletop RPG nerd, or maybe it's just because I finished and loved Life is Strange. Whatever it is, I'm entirely okay with sharing my agency as a player with the voice of the player character. The resulting character is someone who is not 100% your own self-created insert into the world of Fallout, but rather someone that the storytellers already decided should be there. Someone who has a life and objectives and a literal voice of their own, exerting some of their will to drive the story.

The man is thrown into the Wasteland ill-prepared on a quest that he hasn't a clue where to begin. He's not an evil fellow. I don't think he'd ever be evil. Growing cold and heartless and ruthless as the wasteland forces him to adapt, sure. But coming out of the gate, looking at the first NPC he meets, saying 'give me your things or die'? That isn't the character we're playing, and I'm okay with that.

Instead of shoehorning in some awful 'lol evil' option for every dialogue, you have a much more believable character in a much more believable world. If the price to pay for this level of immersion is a few dialogue options, then it's a price I'm willing to pay. Does that mean it's no longer a true CRPG? I don't know. But I think it's a fair evolution of that genre, taking it someplace different with a few tweaks and changes and new things. And, for the most part, I think they work pretty well. People shouldn't be so quick to hate on the differences. (Asking the internet not to hate something! Hah!)

Granted, I've only put like 20(?) hours into the game so far... and to catch up to New Vegas or Skyrim, it's got a long way to go. New Vegas turned out to be a surprisingly fun romp despite its early-game railroad. Skyrim was a great adventure across the world's most beautiful puddle. Here's hoping that Fallout 4 can live up to the legacy of the series for days to come.

Sailing Into Unknown Waters Once More

I am certainly no stranger to travel. I spent two years surviving on kimchi and cardboard pizza in Korea, have the soul of a pirate, and would sell at least two and a half limbs to live the Margaritaville lifestyle on a beautiful island somewhere.

But I never really expected to end up in Texas.

In wanderlust and the never-ending search for free rent, I've somehow ended up crashing in Texas. The fact that it is much warmer than New Jersey and Jersey's winter is supposed to be awful this year (isn't it always?) may or may not have been a factor in this decision. Snow once a year, maybe? Sign me up!

Granted, it's a little further from the ocean than I'd prefer. And it's not exactly an island by any stretch of the imagination. And there's no Gimbap Land. (Gimbap Land is the shit.) But I am on the side of Dallas that has a nice lake. I'm pretty sure I saw a sailboat out there. That counts for something, probably.

The real kicker is that people here are nice. I know it's a southern thing, but Texas seems to turn that shit up to 11. If the internet has taught me anything, it's that Texas does things big... and big niceness is a thing too?

I mean, okay. I'm used to Jersey, where everyone hates everyone all the time for no particular reason. You can never really be sure who wants to rob you or stab you or just thinks you're looking at them funny and actually why don't you just screw off and mind your own business before we start something here? (This is, of course, followed by a number of injury claims, a whole series of lawsuits, and a really bad TV show that makes us all look even worse than we are.)

Here, the fast food people bring you your food at your table and then give you extra food because the one bit was sort of overcooked by a smidgen and actually... care, I guess. I haven't really been into Dallas proper yet, since I'm crashing in the suburbs.

I sincerely hope those people are as miserable as we are in Jersey. Not because I actually want anyone to be miserable (that's kind of rude, even by Jersey standards) but because I'll never survive in a world of niceness. I can't even imagine a gaming group where everyone is nice. Who the hell is going to flip the table?!


(On an unrelated note, RPGSS Season 9 has concluded. Congrats to Nick Wasko, this year's victor! My commentary forthcoming, late, as always.)

The Captain's Critique: Encounters Part 2

What's that? Behind again? Honestly, though, if you're one of the two people still reading this... you should know better by now.

So the final round of RPGSS Season 9 is up and the polls are open (and soon to be closed). Which means it's finally time for me to talk about the last round, because I am that quick.

The Faceweaver’s Workshop

I've always liked the Soulbound Mannequin, but never had a place to use it. This encounter's a neat little set up for a particularly interesting one. That whole cyborg dilemma. You might last forever, but your existence sucks, ha! But that's alright, because this makes for a lot of really cool interaction with the NPC.

Unfortunately, that's all it has. I feel like it's riding on the coolness factor of a crazy soul-bound-construct. There's some ghouls being dicks to him! Well, yeah. Average ghouls. There's a hole with rot grubs! Okay, still cool. It all fits together nicely. It's a package that makes sense. But none of it really wows me. Nothing here really sticks out as super memorable or particularly interesting, other than the mannequin itself. And he's not really tied to the encounter, or the location, or even the ghouls or anything. I could pick him up and drop him pretty much anywhere in any city in any building and let him start murdering people and... he'd still be just as cool. There's a lot to be said for how cool he is, but there's also a lot to be said for how uninteresting the encounter is otherwise.

I mean, if you do diplomacize the guy, what's left? A fight with two ghouls. In an abandoned building. By the water. No one ever did that before.

Bracken Moor Bridge

Aw yis, Nirmathas. I love this place. Fey and will o wisps and Molthuni turncoats who are actually spies?! Yis, indeed. The story of this encounter is great. It's got a very flavorful buildup with the conflict in the region, the nasties in the Fangwood, and haunts that do exactly what haunts should do--provide narrative while being a reasonable hazard.

Speaking of hazards, this encounter is a bit of a mish-mash. The kelpie and the wisp working together make sense, but the mention of the fungal leshy doesn't even seem necessary. He's just kind of there to be story. And he doesn't even story that hard, since he's just collecting shinies in his garden. I could do that! Then throw in the Molthuni, and you've got (admittedly pretty awesome) fight with just about everything in it. Weather hazards reducing visibility, terrain hazards on the shores, a haunt, some invisible floating thing... I don't know if I really like that many factors all in such a short span and space.

Gnome’s Throw Crossing

I don't really care for clockwork gnomes, so this one's a hard sell on me. Crazy eccentrics with unbound wanderlust? Hell yeah. But mechano-nerds? That feels too WoW for me. (I know, I know, WoW didn't invent mechanically inclined gnomes. But I played that game too long to think otherwise.) That being said, this is another work of madness that I very much appreciate. It's also got just the right touch of gnomish humor without going overboard.

The encounter itself, though, seems deliberately designed as more of a Charisma check than a combat encounter. Yeah, doorkickers might find themselves at odds with the guardians of this portal, but I know my players would have a ball talking to these things. Smashing this particular door just seems rude. Consequently, I don't really think this is a super cinematic encounter because this is really just a really cool roleplaying encounter. Don't get me wrong--I love cool roleplaying encounters. I just think this sort of misses the point of this round? I mean, even if we did fight them... are they even tough enough for a fight? They kind of strike me as little pushovers... like gnomes. Hey-oh.

Dead Man’s End

This is another one with a great set up. A good encounter requires a good story, and this certainly has that. Chasing down vampires and ambushing them at a bridge that sometimes disappears because Desna. Awesome. I almost feel like the delaying bits are cheating, since that's more than just this encounter, but I like them enough to not care. (Rules are for suckers, after all.) (Suckers being people who aren't still playing the RPGSS game. People who are still playing should obviously play by the rules.) (Also, don't even listen to my parenthetical advice.)

Unfortunately, this one also seems to suffer from 'superstars cram lots of stuff on one map' syndrome. We've got a cool chase to a disappearing bridge with some vampires. But also it's been raining a bunch so the river can wash you away. Also it's really cold so better get those endure element spells ready. Except that you can't, because you made the mistake of grabbing the broken handrails! Or worse, you were stuck in the mud! Again, don't get me wrong! I think it all comes together very nicely in this case, making for a very memorable--and wet--encounter with some cool baddies that have a cool story going for them. I would only be particularly concerned about very successful PCs... taking this fight in the daytime seems entirely trivial. I guess that's the point, and they should be rewarded for delaying the vampire enough to make her life miserable, but I feel like the reward should be a legitimate shift to negotiation instead of a 'hey let's talk lol jk we're attacking now' thing. Why would the vampire want to even try starting shit with some adventurers while she's out of commission? Why would they even wait to try and get some protective shadow on that bitch and let her vampire the hell out of things? Also, isn't there something about vampires being unable to cross running water? That's another reason to avoid a fight here. I don't think that's part of Golarion vampire lore, but I'd try to apply something like that in a home game anyway. Negotiate for freedom, and then murder these murderhobos later. Average vampire.



And done!
... Maybe I am just a hater. Or maybe my tastes are just completely off. Either way, the Captain is an unrepentant jerk from Jersey, so that's just how things are.

On Course to Misery

So the first time in a while (first time period?), let me diverge from talking about RPG stuff to talk about other things.

A few days ago, the conclusion to Life is Strange came out. I'm going to keep this spoiler-free for those of you haven't played or purchased it yet. You absolutely should.

The long and short of it a girl stumbles into time travel and shenanigans and misery follow. Given that it is/was Back to the Future day, it was only appropriate to finish out this awesome story today. Unfortunately, anyone who's ever watched Doctor Who has a vague idea of how these things always work out.

That's all I'll say about that.

The ending might be sort of predictable, but I'm not sure the story was ever really about the end of it. The journey getting there was... memorable. After every choice you make, you're always left wondering if you've done the right thing. Have you made the world better or worse? Have you even affected a damn thing? The characters all feel real; all with stories worth telling and experiencing.

Max (our time-stumbling girl) strikes a particular chord with me. Maybe it's that fact that creative folks (all folks?) always seem to exist on the edge of anxiety and depression, that omnipresent and rather overbearing fear of failure. Maybe it's her general hopefulness and excitement over what she's stumbled into; after all, everyone loves time travel. Maybe it's just because we see the world through her eyes and she's both our mouthpiece and window into it. Maybe it's that thirst for adventure and life and all of her dreams and all that youthful vigor. Maybe it's a little of all of that.

But I think a big part of it is that since we are Max, for lack of a better way to describe it. She stands on her own as a believable character--it's not like taking over some mook in an FPS game and becoming a god of death. She takes on a bit of who we are. We leave her with little elements of ourselves, as her own personality merges with ours to deal with the evolving story. By the end of the game, as you sit on the precipice of the final decision you have to make, it's not just Max the character choosing her destiny, but you as well.

Admittedly, there are some parts of the game that could be better written. I feel like the ending should be... more substantial. Or something. I don't know. Sometimes the little puzzley bits feel out of place. A sort of 'get back to the story, stop making me jump through hoops.'

But it's still well worth the journey. It's a narrative that proves video games are a perfectly viable medium for telling worthwhile stories. Narratives that can strike us in ways that books or movies can't. Narratives that not only take us on a trip of self discovery and love and sadness, but ones that put you right into the eye of the storm.

Somehow, it's a story as much about yourself as it is about the characters.

tl;dr
helio83: cyrax i finished life is strange and i am sad
helio83: pls send help
Cy: What is "life is strange"?
helio83: misery

The Captain's Critique: Encounters

Apparently time really does fly when you have a blog you're supposed to update. I hadn't realized it'd been this long since my last update.

My bad.

So the voting has finally ended and results are in for Round 4 of RPGSS Season 9! As always, however, I exist in a state of perpetual lateness and am only just now providing my reviews for all eight encounters that were submitted. Since these are a little longer, I'll divide them in half and cover the four that didn't make the cut today and the other four tomorrow (probably/maybe/okay-sometime-this-year).

As before, my judgement comes largely from the cinematic value of an encounter. This is especially true when the challenge basically comes down to 'take this really boring map (so boring we made it a re-usable flip map!) and do something cool with it.' At that point, the actual map is probably less important to the encounter than how fun the encounter actually is...

But I've done enough hating on everything for now. Let's talk critique.

Rimesoul Nexus

Aw yeah, rime-buddies. On a first reading, I was a little thrown by the fey dealing in souls. Night hags aside... is that even a thing? I know that they're mean fey, but isn't it more the domain of daemons and all those bad-plane dwelling folks? I guess it's Irrisen, so all of that sort of fits up there because everyone's a jerk... so I'll just roll with it. I really like how this isn't a strict combat encounter. There's a strong likelihood the PCs are going to end up making a mess, but the set up is all there for a perfectly reasonable monetary exchange for some souls. The fact that the night hag dips out seems a little bit of a pulled punch, to me. Sure, she doesn't care about the market--but why shouldn't she care about a couple of (probably not Irrisani) PCs coming around and mucking things up? Even if she just tossed a couple of spell-likes and stomped off in a huff screaming 'not even worth my time,' that would add more personality and more memorable npcs to these whole scene. And man is there a great little cast here. The redcap butcher, the money-driven forlarren, and a pair of smartly cold-resistant water buds chilling in the water to watch the prisoners. I could see my PCs striking up conversations with any of them--except the redcap, of course, who would probably just enjoy lopping off limbs more than anything.

I'm not so sure I'm buying the cages outside and over the water. Yeah, they're cool, but is that how souls are collected? What happens if the prisoners die from exposure early? Why not just harvest those guys when you get them--is it better to let the souls simmer in the cold for a bit? Likewise, it seems that the biggest threat here isn't the boss of the place--it's the night hag who's pulling bunches because of ???, the redcap in the back room, and a really nasty freezey drowny cage. All of them are a really cool composite, but individually looking at who should be the real challenge of this place, I'm left wondering why the forlarren is in charge of anything.

Laboratory of Unraveling Arcana

Oh, hey, someone used the beginner's box map! Props for using one of the flipmaps I actually enjoy.

This one's got a whole lot of great set up for a dungeon crawl, but the actual encounter here at the start feels like a mishmash of cool features thrown together. There's a really cool NPC who probably wants nothing to do with a real fight because he'll get his shit kicked in, a shadow that lurks there just to piss off said NPC, a neat and relatively unique hazard (and one that feels very Mana-Wastey), a fiendish snake swarm, and some asshole construct. That just about runs the gamut of beasties, and--while pretty cool--feels like it would just end up being a huge hassle to run as a GM. There's just so many disparate elements working together here because 'bad guys said so.' I don't even really buy Turlik's commitment to this whole fight.

Granted, I think it's a very cool fight. There's a big room with lots of detail and all kinds of hazards and things to deal with. Stuff to jump off! Walls to climb on! Crunchy things to ruin your stealth checks! That's a lot of really good detail. But for what this encounter is--a huge truckfest with a construct and a swarm--I'm not sure any of those details are really needed. The other guys are just sort of there. I'd actually think it was cooler is the shadow was also a scorned researcher, forced to work with Turlik and the two absolutely hate each other and everything. Then you'd have two insane NPCs to interact with in hilarious and awesome ways. And, as an added bonus, the encounter with the door-guards wouldn't feel like such a wild mashup of random elements.

Kynoon's Crossing

The set up for this thing is great. More Tian Xia adventures? More kaiju? More cool encounters with Eastern-themed baddies? Yiiiiis. My biggest fault here is that the approaching kaiju making a mess of the land should play out earlier than it does, I think. Does the Consort cross the river right exactly when the PCs get into a fight with the terracotta soldiers? That's a little contrived, and I feel like the PCs should be made well aware of how dangerous the ground itself is becoming well before they get into a fight. Each step should threaten to knock them down--perhaps Kynoon has balanced himself on the bridge to play because it suffers less from each impact. Perhaps whole bits of the bridge could give way over time, or the flash flood could threaten to displace the entire thing! For something that clearly wants to be such a key element of this encounter, the kaiju feels like it's sort of tacked on (and for hazards with no CR value, at that!).

All of that might just lend itself better to my new abhorrence for battlemaps. You don't have to worry about exactly where the bridge is crumbling or where the flood is or where the 'new' ground is as the bridge gives way and starts flowing downriver when there's no actual map to deal with. But, I suppose, that's not the challenge here--even if I think it should be. Given the parameters, I really like this encounter. The tanuki is the sort of NPC I love to play and my players love to interact with. The terracotta soldiers aren't super duper interesting on their own, but they play to a larger story that could be a whole set of awesome adventures. Unfortunately, assuming the PCs ally with Kynoon, the encounter here isn't the most interesting--it's Kynoon himself, and the ever-present force of the offscreen kaiju. 

(Side note: I know Jeff was... not himself while writing this. I think that shows in the actual quality of writing--I've been up sleepless nights writing long enough to know the look of it. I still think it's awesome, though!)

The Petrified Plain

People really seem to enjoy Nex and Geb. I don't really care for either of those places, though I do think the Mana Wastes are a neat concept. Regardless, this has a lot of set up to get there and I think it's a pretty cool set up. Maybe a bit much for an encounter... but it's pretty cool regardless. Petrified, talking, beheaded pirate queens with buried treasure? Sign me up. Oh, the encounter doesn't actually use any of that? O-oh... nevermind. Yes, there's obviously a whole lot of cool adventure to come. Yes, I was totally disappointed this encounter didn't get straight to that business and skip all these generic mooks. 

The encounter itself feels so lackluster compared to the setup. Some wights, some hungry fog, a pair of haunts. The one haunt doesn't even feel haunting--the visions it provides are inspirational if you're blissfully unaware of the results. Perhaps it should end with them all wasting away in death or stone or whatever... something that makes it clear the promises were indeed broken. The other haunt? Now that one is frickin' cool. As they're all turned to stone... you are slowly joining them! Neat. It occurs to me that setting two haunts against one another would be cool. Can haunts even be positive? (I'm going to vote sure, fuck it, why not.) Maybe the inspirational haunt, a remnant of all the hope they had, helps empower the PCs against the calcifying haunt and the mean undead nasties below the bridge. Man, those undead nasties just feel like such an afterthought. "Oh, I guess I need something that can actually attack and stall and/or kill people here." Easily the least interesting part of this encounter, and there's some really cool stuff going on in the rest of it.



And that's that for these encounters! Tune in next time on Dragon Ba- Er, the Captain's Quill to hear all of my debatably curmudgeonly and clearly highly opinionated thoughts about the rest of the encounters!

The Captain's Critique: The Monstrous Art

And, after much delay, the Captain weighs in on this season's monstrous competitors. Just in time for the next round.

I never claimed I was quick. It's a consequence of living a life on island time. I just wish I had an actual island on which to live on island time.

Valemask

Fey are a favorite of mine, and I want to like this creature... There's a lot dedicated to its net, but it doesn't seem like something a small fey with a longbow is ever really going to use. It's evoking this whole 'big game hunter in a tiny body' thing--which I love--but it just doesn't seem to quite line up. There's some talk of the game they play in the description, but then it talks about the darkmoon vale, and how they're too lazy to really hunt things so they just transform stuff into easier prey... except that they're still being transformed into "fearsome Medium animals"? And then there's the whole plant-trap thing, which seems like a cool idea tacked on at the end... maybe if the plants functioned as a net, and these things actually had a reason to use the net?

Kravyad

Flaming death bears. And they're hungry. This one is an instant favorite. It's got all the right bits for an evocative and memorable fight. The abilities all work together and play towards the whole 'I'm really hungry and also on fire' theme that it has. Swallow whole dealing fire damage, some immolation aura (and who doesn't love immolation auras?!), and flames that try to eat you. The howl is a little funky in its execution, but I'm still digging it. My only other complaint is they seem like they might veer too close to to Plane of Fire outsiders--they even speak Ingan! But that's a minor quibble. Just keep these things away from my ship. Like miles away.

Tatterghoul

The name nearly threw me on this one. Ghouls are overdone, and I'm not a huge fan of them to begin with. The flavor text is also not particularly exciting. But when you get down to the description, I'm so on board. They walk the line of daemon and undead, blending the aspect of death with the vengeful dead. They're the creepy creatures you spot out of the corner of your eye, where you're never really sure if you've seen something at all... It's great fuel for encounters. Its abilities are thematic, but I'm not sure I love them as much as the creature itself. Isolate fits, but... meh. And its super-blur is also fitting, but... meh. I feel like these could be executed better, though I'm not exactly sure how.

Hollow One

The name and feel of this one strike me more as undead than outsider, but I'm alright with creepy nature demons. Creepy organ-collecting is also pretty cool. I don't really get the whole synergy behind the name and function and the demonic corruption, but it all adds up to a really memorable encounter. Trying to save your buddy from having his heart ripped out? That's the stuff of legend. Aside from its creepy-factor, I'm not sure there's a whole lot going for this thing. The lore isn't particularly interesting to me, its description isn't super interesting and could just be some random fey thing, and its array of spell-likes just puts it up with all of the other 'stalk you in the forest' types.

Corpsebound

I might be biased towards the lore on this one because I read Lord of Runes not that long ago (spoiler: Zutha's lore plays a role), but there's something very satisfying about creature that crawl into stuff and use the body against you. The corpsebound does it pretty damn well, and I think the defenses granted by the body represent a body-shell pretty well. Consuming spells is pretty nasty, and I'm not entirely sold on the synergy with binding corpses, but it really makes one of these things scary to deal with. My players have universally terrible luck getting past SR, so I'm not sure they'd ever hurt these things.

Phase Mongrel

Also known as the Jumm-Vubburath. Bleh. I am not a fan of Lovecraftian names, no matter how popular they may be or how horrible the creatures of the deep may be. The name throws me off no matter what, though, since this is some kind of phase-spider-plant-thing. It's got some weird blinky powers to get in and out and pull people with it, but I feel like this has already been done? But it's also got the whole annoying fungus-spore thing, coupled with the equally annoying fungal-infestation thing. Add in a disease that functions more like a poison, and I'm not really sure where this thing is going. I don't think it's treading interesting new territory, as there's already plenty of invasive body snatchers that I don't want anywhere near me.

Malkin

More fey, and this time it's a creepy death cat. For its CR, it sure seems like a very noncombat creature. These strike me more as plot devices than creatures the players would outwardly face--which is totally fine, in my book. I can already imagine a village dying of a horrible sleeping sickness... except that plague is really just one fey cat being a complete dick. The problem is that when you actually come face to face with this thing you either completely trounce it or it manages to subdue you before proceeding to obliterate you with sneak attack and Con damage. Kind of boring for an encounter, but super memorable for its function.

Tranquility Ooze

I think this is a really cool niche for an ooze. Rather than munching on flesh and decomposing everything to the bone... it eats brains! Probably. I'm not so sure its mechanics match up with this, most notably because it's completely mindless and has no wisdom or charisma of its own to speak of. I guess it could have some instinctual hunger for emotions, but then why is it affected by them? With the reference to Jalmeray in the lore, it really seems like this thing wants to be psionic without actually being psionic... I have a long standing hatred for psionics, but I still love the concept of this thing. Then again, that Cha drain. Goddamn. I want to like this, but it just seems to fall short in execution.

Sorrow Stitcher

First off, that's a damn good name. I love the idea behind this thing, stealing emotions to sew into its own existence. I don't really buy into the whole separate shadow thing, and that feels like something better suited for a different creature with a whole dual-self thing. That said, its other abilities definitely tie into the theme. I feel like there's some mechanical and wording cleanup that could be done here, but there's definitely a solid creature here. As for how memorable it is, I can't really say. It has a lot of potential to be really cool, but I feel like 'really sad thing that wants to ruin your day' has been done a thousand times already.

Guillowed

Headless undead are also cool. They're a classic! The lore here is pretty awesome, and I find myself drawn to the extra tidbits of super-guilloweds. Mechanically, I think they're a little low on damage--except when they're not, and then you're dead. These, like the malkin, seem more interesting as noncombat and plot opponents. The actual fight might be cool, but it's one of those things you either win really hard or lose really hard, and those aren't the most memorable fights. They're also not particularly fun, as you just kind of get grappled into a coup de grace and then you're dead. And other than its guillotine power, it's not super interesting. Lots of other things have 'jk, I'm totally not a person' powers.

Thaumigorger

More cat things, but with scales this time. While it could be a case of parallel design, these remind me a lot of these things. They're not on the PRD and they're not really common (the only reason I know of them is because of The Wizard's Mask--which I liked, screw the haters), so it's understandable... but the fact that this is also (sort of) catlike doesn't really help the matter. At least they're different enough to stand on their own. I particularly like the inversion of its DR... vulnerability to mundane? That's crazy! The rest of it just synergizes really well with its theme. This thing does, in fact, eat magic.

Swarmwyrm

"Man, people really love swarms. I'll just make a swarm for my creature!"

Okay, this is cool take on how dragons could be a swarm. It's not a swarm of tiny dragons, but a swarm playing at being a dragon. And it does that pretty well. It's also suitably icky. It's also a pretty nasty combatant, as is befitting of a dragon. The only problem I've got with this is that it doesn't really feel like a normal dragon encounter. It's memorable, sure, but it's one of those types that sneaks into the dragon category without really being a dragon. I'm looking at you, drakes. Yes, you have draconic blood and all those neat immunities and things, but you're not in the same epic-encounter category as a real dragon. Also, swarms. Seriously, I'm tired of swarms.

Scrapshell Oyster

An swashbuckling oyster that collects awesome treasure inside of its shell instead of pearls. As a nautically-inclined fellow, this thing hits home. I... don't even know what to say. It's insane, but it's my kind of insane. The theme is solid, the abilities are on point with that theme, if sword-fighting a clam isn't memorable then I don't know what is, and damn if this thing isn't just downright cool. I'd totally get one for my crew (somehow), and this is the only creature I can say that for.

Matianak

More sad dead things. Apparently sadness is a theme for this season. These are pretty cool for the misguided aid aspect going on. They're just trying to help! In a way that might be moderately painful and extremely discomforting, but it's help. Its abilities are also really, really cool. Making divine things go haywire, while granting random things negative energy affinity? Neat! I'm a little concerned about how their damage would play out, though, since they are trying to help. Also, are they really neutral evil if they're legitimately trying to help in a really roundabout and debatably evil way? *insert paladin falling argument here* These do have a lot of fuel to be memorable encounters, so that's good. I can easily see them as incredibly annoying support creatures for a host of undead things or misguided 'healers' that are totally helping.

Despoiler

In my head I have this image of a Starcraft defiler. Damn similar names.

Fortunately, these are nothing alike. Because these are awesome. I love its use of a limited resource and how everything ties into its use of shards. I'm a little sad not to see the shards get tossed as negative energy javelins, but I can't have everything. (Admittedly, I just want to see one of these with class levels hurling black shards 20 miles to impale people.) The only thing I'm not really buying for this are its lore and name. So it forms from good-aligned clerics, because their bodies are good for storing bad-aligned energy. I'm also not really getting any despoiling from its actions... I mean, yeah it's got a desecrate aura and a super-altar it can lay down, but meh. I feel like its shards are a much cooler thing to go with for name and purpose.



And so that's it for this round of monsters! Sadly with only 15 of them, thanks to the possibly-legendary DQs of Season 9.

The Monstrous Art

Holy crap, how is it Friday already? I swear I was just drafting a post about RPGSS S9's monster round... and suddenly the week is over.

Spoiler: I haven't finished writing my critiques of the monsters, but I will most certainly get to them all. Unfortunately due to (yet another) DQ that I probably don't agree with, there's only a Top 15 this year. This has not helped me get my questionably critical ass in gear.

But that's not what this post is about. This is a preface to the monstrous art of monster creation--and it truly is an art. Sure, there's a ton of statistics for what each CR should have and how things should work and how things need to be balanced. That's not what making a creature is about, as is very clearly demonstrated with the entries in RPGSS this year. They're much more art than science, and while you can break the rules for items or maps or encounters or whatever to make them interesting, breaking the rules for your monster is ten times more important.

A monster needs to shine. Just as we do our mapping a little differently on my ship, I've got a different sort of love for monsters. In much the same vein as mapping, it's all about the cinematic value of a monster for me. I want a monster to evoke a really awesome scene, creating memories and stories shared for years after the encounter.

Obviously, not every encounter can be super-duper memorable. (That'd be a helluva lot of memories.) There's a need for random gobbos and kobolds and orcs to wade into the PCs and get slaughtered for glorious, glorious treasure. After all, the mighty dragon and his very memorable encounter would never have his hoard if he hadn't murdered countless innocents for it.

I'm also not a stickler for balance. Like, at all. I am 100% supportive of throwing entirely unfair fights at my players. Maybe I trust their experience a little too much, or maybe they trust that I'll fudge the dice behind my GM screen just a bit more than usual, or perhaps we all just enjoy seeing underdogs overcome tremendous odds in a mutual storytelling session. Whatever the reason, I've got no eye for the numbers. Overpowered, underpowered: what's the point if the fight doesn't stick in my mind as one worth remembering?

And that, dear readers, brings me to the point of this post.

 The reefclaw.

 I don't know who drew this, but I love you.

Yep, they're death lobsters. Murderous, poisonous, intelligent death lobsters. And they're delicious.

In my mind, this thing embodies the spirit of creature design--and not just because I can fish for them using stowaways. They take a simple concept and perfect it. "Okay, so hear me out--it's a lobster, but on some serious drugs."

So you've got this low CR monster will a thousand different cool things it can do. It's got a pair of claw attacks, because one claw is for babies. It's got grab, so you can't get away. It's poisonous, so you're not going anywhere with your 6 points of Strength damage. It's amphibious, so don't even think about being safe on the shoreline. It's got ferocity, so it doesn't actually die when it should be dead. And even when it does die, it's got death frenzy to bring you with it. Oh, and it's smart enough to understand you. Better not share your battle tactics out loud, because it might just know which one of you to murder first.

It's just a basic monster. It could be just as boring as every run-of-the-mill kobold. "Oh great, it's got claws again. Meh." But it's not. It's a toolbox of synergy between cinematic value, flavor, and mechanics. You know what's worse than a crocodile death rolling you into the water? Of course you do.

Let's just say my players are more afraid of water in my games than when playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Also, did I mention they're delicious? What's better than a lobster but a giant death lobster made fat on the blood of my enemies?

The Captain's Cartography Critque (Part 2)

With the winners of this round announced, I almost feel like I'm kicking the cartographer while he's down. I--almost--feel a little bad about it. Almost.

Mercy is not in this Captain's line of work. Nor was it present in anyone else's when telling me how awful my map was. But that's okay, because I already knew that.

(Also, I'm going to go through these without double-checking which ones made the cut. As if that somehow made a difference in my exceedingly opinionated ranting.)

The Weeping Garden of Naderi

The layout of this one feels really well done. It's a walled garden in a bustling city, and it sure feels that way. While symmetry often feels boring on these maps, it sort of works here. The location isn't so big or closed-in that the symmetry feels forced or bland. It really kind of contributes the circular nature of it.

It's also filled with haunts, which are cool, I guess. What concerns me most here would be interesting encounters. Sure, there's a bunch of haunts in these little garden chamber things and it's a nice location for a big open fight or something... but I guess the most interesting thing that could happen here is a creature charging through the bushes and ignoring the grass walls. And then, really, all you have is a big circle with a couple of sight-blocking obstacles and some haunts you probably don't want to poke.

Feedlot CL-477

Man, I am so jealous of people that can draw. "Here's an awesome map that looks really well done on the grid and hey, here's an isometric view of the building just 'cuz." I can't even draw stick figures well. You guys suck.

I mean, you don't suck. That's the problem. This is place is awesome. And by that I mean it's awful. Holy crap is this place terrible. It's goddamn glorious in its awfulness. This is another case of symmetry done right. It looks amazing from the isometric view, and looks amazing from the game-grid view. And it's insanely cinematic. This is the stuff of nightmares and oft-retold RPG stories.

Apiary of the Aurulent Brothers

I have no idea what's going on here. There's like two different buildings and a side view and an explanation that doesn't really help at all. There's a lot going on here and not a whole lot of cinematic value to this. There's a mad herbalist! Living in a box, apparently? A box he has to waddle to on stepping stones over a pond? A pond.. on the terrace? And there's bees! Bees! I'm just not really seeing a point to this. I'm more interested in the main temple structure, but there's a lot of focus on this terrace thing that I just don't get. There's nothing here that I can really see interesting me as a GM or being super memorable as a player.

Temple of Exquisite Anguish

I was a little sad this wasn't for Zon-Kuthon. Exquisite Anguish? That's so ZK's thing. Hurt me more, Snake. Derros are much less cool.

This one's got some cool stuff going on with two crazy obscure gods. The whole 'force prisoners down some path of awful' seems a little... meh, I guess? And then the whole thing just boils down to sacrifices to some evil god on some evil altar by little evil dudes. We've seen that a million times before, and this one doesn't seem any more interesting than the others. Maybe if you were caught and forced to undergo the crazy ritual trial things... but even then, it's a hallway. Meh.

Hakima Ajit's Balcony

Whoa, that's a crazy awesome floor pattern. Whoa, that does absolutely nothing. Whoa, there's nothing... else... happening? What? It's a big empty room. With a crazy awesome floor pattern. That does nothing. No traps, no chessboard-floor-death-machine, nothing. The big reveal is 'haha, you've fallen thirty feet!' You've got to be kidding me. This could be the location for a super cinematic encounter, if only something happened! It's a beautiful location with absolutely fuckall to do! (Coincidentally, this is how I described Skyrim to people. A really big and beautiful puddle that as soon as you touch it to see how deep it goes, you realize it's just a puddle.)

Waiting in the Depths

The first thing that catches my eye here is how dark it is. This could use a little brightening up for blind people like myself. The second thing that catches my eye is how nice it all looks. It's set up well. I could definitely see an encounter here.

But it's not the kind of encounter I'm going to remember. It's a ditch with some tents and some trees and a hole in the ground. I'm not sure what kind of awesomeness you'd have to pull out to make that memorable... but it would have to be insanely epic to make this map memorable. It's a damn fine map. Solid, well done, well executed for what it is. But it's not what I want in a Superstar map. (And I still don't care what the rules for this round say, I'm judging these by my standards.)

Abandoned Shory Botany Laboratory

Another isometric view? Goddamn, people. Stop making work in the business so hard for people who can't draw!

This one's also got a case of the symmetricals. I'm not sure how much I like it here. Yeah, okay, one side's overgrown. Meh. The real centerpiece of this one is the crumbling front end. The dangers of those gears grinding up a PC are just too good to pass up. The actual greenhouse part? Meh. Uninterested. The fact that the whole thing flies is a moot point. It could be the lair of clockwork botanists and be just as awesome for the use of death gears. That's the sort of thing I want to see when clockwork stuff gets involved. Big ass gears and old clunky steampunk-ish tech makes for cinematic encounters and memorable events. I guess there's a bunch of exposed gears and even more chance of being thrown into the meatgrinder, but I'd be hard pressed to find a PC dumb enough to stick his face in that. Overall, there's a lot going on here that I just really like.

Reaping Stars Refinery

Fifty word description text doesn't use the Oxford comma? DQ'd for barbarism, next contestant.

Are those 1-foot wide bridges over molten metal? Who the hell is walking there? That's a recipe for horrible. Other than that, I'm not really seeing anything interesting here. It's a building that serves some purpose for some NPCs that no one gives a shit about. A fight in a big industrial room with motel metal could be really cool, but this one looks boring as all hell. There's just random pools of death, and then nothing. No machinery, no death hooks to swing across on, no chutes or ladders or get out of jail free cards, nothing. And then there's the rest of the map, which is like 'Yeah, it's a building! With stuff.' Stuff no one cares about at all. 'Yeah we put horses over here.' Okay.

Flintyreach Cliff Harbor Ascent

I really feel like I should have saved my chutes and ladders joke for this map. Just pretend that I did. Switchbacks are cool, and while I've seen them a bunch, I've not often seen them done particularly well. This one's awesome because it's not just a simple back-n-forth boring mountain climb. There's a lot of cool stuff going on as you slugfest up the switchbacks between cover and dodging arrows and avoiding rockslides and falling to your death. This is the kind of gauntlet I want to run.

The big problem is, I'm not sure it really requires a map to be effective. I could describe a series of switchbacks without a map and say people are getting sniped at and they have X turns at their move speed to get to the top, and it'd be basically the same thing. If I was going to use a switchback map, I frickin' love this one. Except, I'm not sure I like how it ends in a ladder. I'd rather see a stone staircase built in, or just let the damn slope finish it out to the top. A ladder there feels... silly.

The Howdah of Mogaru’s Consort

Please stop isometr- okay, you know what? This one's too good to even complain about. What the hell, man?

I don't even know if there's anything I can say here. It's a castle, riding on a kaiju, and it's full of bad dudes and stuff, and it's riding on a kaiju. This is about as insanely cinematic as it comes. Just getting to the map is the stuff of legend. Then going through the map? While shit's going on? Hell, imagine being trapped in this thing while the kaiju is trucking it out against Gypsy Danger? I am so very, very sold on this map. And even without the kaiju, the castle is still well done. It doesn't suffer the symmetrys, it's got some nice varied terrain and architecture and did I mention I love this map?

Den of the Ice Devil

Size issues aside, this one seems sort of bland. It's the lair of an ice devil! Brrr! There's ice stuff! And it's evil! I don't know, there's a lot of stuff crammed into what is really just one big room with, apparently, an ice devil. None of it really adds up to anything I care about. Yeah, there's some interesting hazards and things to go around and a room(fort?) you're fighting to at the far end... but why? It just doesn't inspire a particularly cool encounter. Nothing here feels really memorable. There could be something happening here, with another gauntlet-style truckfight with the ice devil as he retreats to what should probably be more than just 'fort.'

Ustradi Sunken Ruins (Mana Wastes)

I'm not sure why this is set in the Mana Wastes. This could be 'ruined swamp temple' just about anywhere. I'm not going to hold that against the map, which I think does 'ruined swamp temple' pretty well. The waters are gross and the mist (which is where?) is grosser, and there's a big skull on a pedestal. Except... I'm not sure why I care about the skull. You slog your way up the road to the skull, and then walk up to the top and then... what? Is there some super cool encounter supposed to happen here? I could see some cool mana-waste-crocodiles ruining everyone's day, but that's not really specific to this map. There's nothing here that says something interesting or memorable will happen here. Nothing that's here looks particularly memorable without an encounter to go along with it.

The Ashen Forge Incursion

This one feels a lot like the super Abaddon map, except done way better. It's got coherence. It's got story. It's got just as much interesting layout and features and stuff, but it feels like a place that was once populated by some Broadins of Torag, who trapped the wrong dudes. Wrong dudes who prayed to Drobro the Jerk, who then opened a portal of awful to screw with the Broadins of Torag and ruin everyone's day. And all of that is clear without a single word dedicated to the encounter set up. This is damn good work. This whole adventure would be memorable, and that's not even touching the super crazy cinematic fight bound to happen in the main anvil chamber.

Aberrant Excavation

This one feels like two disparate things glued together. There's a dig site with some stuff happening, and then there's a fallen lighthouse that just happens to be right next door with some stuff happening, and it's all on a cliffside that just happens to be there. The discovery of an aboleth skull isn't super intriguing--that's why NPC archaeologists exist. The lighthouse isn't particularly interesting. There's signs of something interesting happening with the holes and the tablet, but it doesn't really come together as anything interesting for me. And--more importantly--not something important enough to need a map. I can describe this aloud and do everything this map does without any paper on the table.

Ice Dam

That Ice King dam, though. In addition to looking really cool, there's potential for a lot of cinematic stuff going on here. Fighting below the dam while the BBEG is opening up the floodgates to wash you away. Fighting on the dam while something bad is happening below. Rushing to close the floodgates because it's killing your allies downriver. Whatever! And fighting on a reasonably large dam with some really cool water hazard things happening and also it's all made of ice because yeah is a pretty memorable thing. There seems to be a weird focus on breaking the dam, which I guess is cool, too. If I was standing in front of it, I sure wouldn't want to break the damned thing.

Meandering Oasis of Nex

It's that tiny little planet thing from Dragon Ball Z! Aw, yeah. And there's some really neat features here, with the whole manor and the lake and the extra moons flying around the tiny planet. This has a lot of potential to be really cool. It also has a lot of potential to be really frickin' annoying, because you're playing 2-D map mode on a sphere. Charging from the topside to the bottomside and all kinds of weirdness when you add fly into the mix and the rotational speeds of the main island and its moons and its speed through the air as it's flying and if you're using fly do you stay 'above' the island or do you stay relative to the primary planet's plane of gravity and wow, this is complicated. There's definitely some potential for some crazy cinematic encounter here, but nothing that's hinted at by the description or the map. And if it weren't for the fact it was a tiny little planet with tinier little moons, it wouldn't be very interesting at all. And... I'm not sure that's exactly a good place to be.

[The DQ'd maps follow]

The Hallowed Falls

I don't really get how this one is put together. There's a whole lot of rapids and stuff above the falls that doesn't do anything? And then there's a cave, but it's like... under the water? Or behind the water? And the cave isn't... interesting. This has a lot of potential, as waterfall caves are cool. But as far as I can tell, there's nothing happening here. There's some hazards you'll probably never run into, and there's some (okay, a lot) of space you don't really care about.

Swamp-Submerged Temple

"I'd just like to point out I'm following the rules."

"Not anymore! Bam!"

I don't want to rant on this again, but I really kind of do. One day this ranting will come back to bite me, but I don't even care. I'm from Jersey and this is how we do things. So: Paizo's coming off real jerky this time around. I know it's supposed to be hard and professional and all that shit. But wow, guys. Wow. Give like, a warning, or something. There's a huge difference between saying 'I did xyz because of abc' and saying 'I'm pretty sure I'm following the rules, please don't think poorly of me because I think I'm following these really fucking vague and arbitrary rules.' If you don't want people to talk about their shit, then just say that. Mute their goddamn accounts or something. Or better yet, keep them anonymous. No more popularity contest crap, and then you can't even talk about how you're in the Top X because you're under a quasi-NDA and isn't that really what the 'don't talk' rule is all about? Argh! So frustrating and I'm not even playing this game.

And really, I like this map. I like how it's set up with a structure sinking into the swamps and the lower level reflects that it's now like 15 feet under the swamp or something. It's a really solid location. There's definitely some cinematic value to be had in that main chamber. I like the interplay of the upper and lower levels being so wide open. The entrance walkway is... bland.

The Slime Vaults

This is another big ass room with a whole lot of nothing. I guess there's like three rooms here, and there's some slime with stuff in it. I don't know what stuff, and I'm not intrigued enough to care. The rooms themselves are bland other than the slime. There's no indication of why I'd want to see what's inside the slime vault. There's no reason I'd want to touch the slime vault with a ten-foot pole. There's no sign that there's going to be anything happening here that is particularly memorable or exciting. As far as I know, this is just another moderately gross chamber that is forgotten 10 minutes after the game. Also, there's nothing here that really needs a map to be done. No really clever layout, no super exciting tactical decisions to be made. It's a lot of the good old trope of 'don't stand in the fire,' but the fire is slime.



And on that note, them's the maps and them's my thoughts. I apologize to any of the cartographers who may have been offended by my insensitive ramblings. But hey, look on the bright side: you're all better cartographers than me.

That's why I pay someone to draw up maps on my ship.

And by 'pay' I mean ask one of my buddies really nicely until they draw stuff for me. And by 'one of my buddies,' I mean Cy.

The Captain's Cartography Critique (Part 1)

Look at that alliteration. It gives me chills, and it's not even particularly good alliteration.

So voting for the RPGSS S9 maps has officially closed, which means I can talk about the maps in good faith without influencing the two people who are probably reading this. I feel like I should add the foreword that not only am I critiquing these in a manner that completely ignores the rules for the round (Make it suitable for a flipmat, but cool enough to be superstar! I didn't know the oxymoron police were judging this), but I am awful at maps. I have already mentioned this at length. More often than not, I prefer my games to play out in the theater of my mind. Maps are great and all... but when you lack the tools to reproduce them on the table, the drawing skills to replicate them on a battlemap effectively, and the minis to really fill them out properly... they kind of take a back seat to the cinematic value of a location.

That's really how I'm going to be judging these. Does the location strike me as a place that would make for interesting gameplay? I want places that both me as a GM and the players are going to remember. I want stories to be told.

"Holy shit, remember that time we invaded the X to save the Y from Z and then some A busted in the window with his B?"

"Yeah, dude. I do. That shit was nuts."

It should also be noted before I begin that due to some DQs in the contest, I'm going to have to sort through and find those guys after I get through the two columns of maps. (On a related note, those DQs were bullshit. A lot of this round is bullshit. I'll rant on this another time, though.)

The Grimple Playhouse

This one is something that could have been simple and boring, but is executed really well. Run down playhouses are cool, though I'm not sure I'd have gone with 'it's really gross now!' as a main hook for it. That being said, the pit trap at the door with the slope to the icky pit of gross that lines up with the centerpiece hole in front of the stage? That's about as cinematic as it comes, there. The only problem I have with this map is it's supposed to be all grimpley, but I'm not feeling it at all. Urban squalor leads to gremlins messing with stuff and being all gross, sure, but... meh. When I saw the tunnels and the vermin connection, I was immediately thinking mites. I mean we've got a roach coach and some rat warrens and some spider-filled pillows... there's almost too much going on here for me to give a crap about the grimples. I'd rather take the basics of this, fill it with some crazy frickin' mites, and have them led by a mite bard 'genius' who is claiming the playhouse to write his people's masterpiece.

I am also a pirate bard at heart, so I may be biased.

Ruined Mountaintop Temple of Hei Feng

"This map was sent to us tiny!"

"Can I like, upload it again? I wish there was a preview button for the submit map tool. I can preview my text, but not the thing I'm actually being judged on. I mean, come on?"

"No. That's breaking DA RULZ."

"Um, alright. Guess I lose, then."

Look, I get it. People in the contest need to be competent enough to follow rules. But if you are a wannabe freelancer man (read: me) and are told to make a map and upload it and share it with the whole goddamn internet in three days or less... give a man a fucking break. Many of the people trying their hand at this RPGSS thing are trying their hand at this because they want to get into doing RPG stuff. They don't have any idea what DPI or dimensions or any of that shit means. (Read: me again.)

"Yeah, but if you sent this to your cartographer..."

He'd probably send you an email back and be like 'bro, you done messed up, fix it?' And you'd send him the real version with a 'haha oops my bad, bro.' Total time elapsed, 2 minutes, tops.

And the worst part of this is, I can't see shit. I can't even judge this thing. And that sucks, because it looks bitchin'. I can see there's something going on with elevations and a bridge, or something. I can see something awesome happening in that courtyard for sure. There's some stairs that go... somewhere? I can't tell if it's supposed to be on this map or not.

Man, I wish I was an ant right now, because I'd totally love to see this map.

[Edit: The round ended and the ant-map has successfully passed the muster of the miniature RPG player. The full-sized map is about as incredible as I expected it to be, with all of the awesome cinematic value I'd hoped for!]

The Clockworks

Meh. It's a lumberyard, but instead of making lumber they're using it to build a clock tower right smack here in the middle of a lumberyard. Nothing about the layout looks particularly exciting. Nothing about a clock tower in a lumberyard makes me want to adventure there. Nothing about this clock tower is particularly cinematic in nature. The damn thing's not big enough to have one of those crazy 'fighting all on top of these clockwork mechanisms' fights, and it's not even done.

That said, it's a solid map. It's a location that works. Everything that should be there is there. But why are they building a clock tower in the middle of their yard?

Boggart-infested saltmarsh and boathouse

I'm not really seeing a flooded marina here. I'm seeing a swampland with a wooden walkway leading out to some island that was obviously there before the place flooded, but is still there even with the flooding. Also the walkway is still here and above water. Instead, the structures that are clearly not flooded are damaged. And there's marshy terrain. You're in a swamp. Also there's some things across the water on some other island you probably don't care about. If this place is flooded, let's see it. String your docks across the islands and have 75% of the walkway just be gone. Have the remaining pieces standing on their moorings (or whatever those things are called?) just in the middle of nothing. Give us an incentive to cross the water, not just some bland 'there's boggards in dem waters.' Really, this doesn't even feel like a marina at all. It's just some guy's cabin and his wharf. And his house fell down, or something.

Brokeferry Bridge

This... sort of reminds me of my map, but way better. River centerpiece, busted bridge, old and abandoned stone structures overlooking said river. There's a lot going on here. The one thing that gets me is why the hell did the Gozrehites build a crooked bridge. "Welp, Frank, the water's gone. We're outta a job." "Damn. I guess we should build a bridge, then." "Why?" "Why not." "Because we're not going to get paid for building a bridge." "Nah see, let's just build it all crooked and stuff. Just to fuck with all those losers crossing on foot. Real men use boats. We used boats." "That's true, Frank. That's very true."

I'd almost say this map suffers from too much going on in one spot. I think it's the boggard village that puts it over the top. I'd rather have someone who has taken up residence in the old temple and claimed the crossing bridge-troll style. Boggards can be there too, but let's move their village just a bit further away. It's crowding my style.

Dwarven Brewery

I wonder if dwarves resent the stereotype. They sort of come off as badasses, but alcoholism is no joke, people. I wonder if dwarves have AA. They should.

I do like how we get real dwarven in here. Using magma and underground rivers and shit. So Dwarf Fortress up in here. Aside from these marvelous dwarven additions to the brewing process, this place does absolutely nothing for me. It's a brewery with a huge open room and some natural hazards on either side and a not-particularly-interesting hook. You know what I'd have liked to see? An elven brewery. Climbing up the side of a tree, using sap added directly to the casks for the natural flavor. Make it a series of vertical chambers and rooms with lots of elevators and pulley systems. Add in monsters clever enough to make good use of the vertical space. Bam, fight to remember.

Cabin in the Woods

Cabin in the Woods or House on the Beach? You be the judge. I can't be the only one seeing the green as palm trees and the yellow as sand and the dark blue spots as waves and the pantry is a deck for chilling and drinking mai tais and... yeah. Also, I really like what was done with the words allowed here. The seeds are sown for all kinds of adventures you can put here, without actually saying what's here. All the toys are in the box, but which one do you want to use? It's like having 600 games on Steam and never knowing what to play.

Unfortunately, the map itself isn't really inspiring. It's a structure and it's functional with doors and rooms and a place to poop. The most intriguing part is is the cellar. Who goes in those cells? What are they used for? Who's been locking people in the beach house against their will? Why? The rest is just... a beach house that isn't actually at the beach. It's not memorable enough to care.

Standoff at River Logjam

This is another map that suffers from 'not memorable enough to care.' It's a fine idea. Fighting atop logs in a rushing river while everything is moving all over the place and it's wet and oh crap don't fall in... it's cool. But the map tells me absolutely fuckall about anything. I could have gotten the map from the title of the map. There's a logjam. You're fightin' on it. Done. And that's a real shame, because that has a lot of potential to be a cool encounter people remember. It just doesn't need a map at all.

(Are we fighting on it? There's a setup with lumberjacks and fey. Where do the PCs come into this?)

Abaddon Breach Temple

Cool, a whirlpool. Whirlpools feel overdone, but that doesn't really detract from anything. Though if I was a devilfish and I was constantly spinning in circles, I'd want to cut that shit right out. This also seems like a strangely dead end for something that just happens to be in the sewers. And mostly devoid of water in the wings, despite being in a sewer. I'd almost argue this is another one that suffers from too much going on in too small an area. I'd rather it just take a single aspect of Abbadon and run with it. The four clerics guarding the portal are also super, super different. Like, not a single one of them just happens to be a random human? They've all got to be some snowflake monster-cleric? It all strikes me as playing upon coolness factor, while detracting from the core theme.

This is still a really, really cool map. (And I think that was the point.) I'm just struggling to make sense of it, even if there's a lot of potential for some really memorable encounters here.

Desecrated Sanctuary

This is another really solid map. It does what it sets out to do really well. It's put together nicely, it's not just super symmetrical cathedral, it's got some obvious places to do some obvious encounters with... but none of that adds up to particularly memorable. So there's some vampires in a crypt below some chapel, and they're making a big mess! Alright, but players have fought in temples a thousand times before. There's nothing particularly exciting about the temple that makes me want to remember this fight forever, and that's the only real problem I've got with this map. (Other than my previously stated gripes over this content's hard headed adherence to rules that shouldn't matter as much as they do. Give people the chance they deserve, rather than fucking them before they get that chance.)

Torvin Academy Quadrangle

I get the idea of this and the minecraft style doesn't even bug me. It's the layout that makes no sense. So you've prisoners that get dragged in on some lumpy carpet because why not. Unless you're a mage, because then you get dragged in from the other side and drowned first for good measure. Or unless you're a book, because then you've somehow ended up behind everything with the councilman's entrance. But the councilmen have to cross the whole courtyard to get up in their balcony, because putting a door behind the balcony would have been too hard. And it all adds up to a whole lot of why. Why am I here? Why do I care? What do these random 'NPCs do things here!' spots have to do with anything I'm doing? Is there an encounter here I'm not seeing? Am I supposed to fight over the final blade? Why? Who in their right mind would do that?

Cyclogenesis - Eye of Abendego

As someone who wanted to get a lot of 'there's a big ass storm here wrecking everything' in his own map and failed, I think this does a much better job at accomplishing that. I'm just not sure it works on a small scale. The hurricane spiral ends up looking like it's 20 feet across, and that's kind of silly. I like the clouds linked together by chains. Cloud islands chained together are not only super cinematic, they're badass. There's a lot of cool stuff that could be happening on these clouds. But the structures are... lackluster. The empty space is... empty. There's a toilet. (Two, even!) I'd rather have seen a series of interlocked clouds with different hazards on them. One row of clouds is trapped in the gale, constantly pushing you [some cardinal direction] at [some windspeed]. Another is a raging thundercloud, spitting thunderbolts at any who pass on or near. Another is the broken soul of a raincloud, and it rains up. Because magic. 

Abandoned Noble Cemetery, Isarn, Galt

This one's nicely done. It's got circles, because circles look good, but things aren't centered perfectly so it has a good organic feel. It's got the ruined aspect down perfectly, while having buildings standing well enough to be explored and used and whatevered. It's got a good thematic thing going (and I don't even like Galt). And while that's all nice, it still doesn't feel particularly memorable.

Maybe it's my hate for Galt, or maybe it's the over-saturation of zombie stuff making graveyards old hat, or maybe it's just the lack of any one particular wow factor on the map. Whatever it is, there's nothing that really says to me I'm going to remember this map and whatever happened on it for a long time. I might, just because it looks really cool and I could definitely do cool things here, but it doesn't look that way.

Runic Hurricane Laboratory

At least everyone's remembering the toilet this time around. Seriously, don't most medieval era fellows just have chamber pots? If you're not using your unseen servant to dump your chamber pot, you're missing out.

Seriously, though, I think this is a solid map. It's not 'stuff as many cool things into one space as possible.' It takes a theme and runs with it. Who's in the summoning circle? What's making the wind go? What happens when you try to enter the place? It feels a little cramped for what I'd probably want to be some badass demon encounter with a mad cleric, but it does what it does well. 

Black Dragon's Retreat

Black dragons never retreat. Except when they get old and lazier than they probably were already, because then they dig a hole and lay in it all day. Also even though they're totally minding their own business, everyone wants to kick 'em out of this hole. It's such a damn nice hole, go away.

It's a map with a dragon and a ton of natural hazards. Difficult terrain and methane explosion traps and different elevations and smoke and, the hell with it, let's just throw acid in the dragon's bath. This feels like another case of 'I need to make this cool, so let's put everything cool.' Granted, methane traps are not a common hazard. That's cool. Mud is also rarely used effectively, so that's good, too. But is this the dragon encounter I really want? The dragon's going to be flying. If I'm fighting an elderly black dragon, I'm probably flying too. Actually, if I know the elder black dragon is here, why aren't I in his lair just waiting? I could take his whole hoard and set up a brick wall of explosive runes in its place in the time this bastard's taking a bath.

Dragon encounters are supposed to feel memorable and cinematic. I think this one might be too cramped to actually do it justice. Triple the size of the map, give it some ten-foot squares and various chambers dedicated to their hazards with clear ways for the dragon to take advantage of the traps he's left in his bathroom. Which begs the question: where's the dragon's toilet?

Hot Springs Trail

My first thought was 'wow, that's a small wagon.' My second was 'wow, that's a really tiny hazard to even bother calling out at all.' You've spent half your fifty words explaining a 10x10 area no one is even going to walk into because there's plenty of room to walk around it. Nothing else is even really happening here, as far as I can tell. This all boils down to a terrible shame, because I think a fight with geysers blowing up all around you could be really frickin' cool. But put something there I care about. Give me a reason to walk around in the geysers. Give me a reason to care! I want to have them explode on my character while he's picking up something fancy and shiny and actually the geysers aren't powered by a hot spring, but by a steam elemental and he's pissed.

"Oh no, there's a log!" "We pick up the log and move it." "Oh no, there's glass!" "I'm not a smelly halfling, I wear shoes." "Alright, you're past the geyser field and are only 12 miles out of the nearest town..." "Brb, Cheetos."



Whew. Going through this many maps is a serious slugfest. The rest to follow soon, possibly with the DQ'd maps.