Post Mortem & Results

[The1True]

Post Mortem might be a slightly misleading title since it's shambling along in a state of undeath, but I'm here to talk about the explosive birth, short life and surprisingly long death of our collaborative work as a forensic study in what went wrong, what went right and what we were left with in the end.

My intent when I got this going two years ago, was to engage in an educational process and document it for anyone interested. There had already been discussions on this forum about it being pointless to seek gold or glory but I love working with people and synthesizing content from a cloud of ideas and it seemed like a cool way to give back to the community with lessons drawn from our successes and failures.

Anyway, there was a lot of initial enthusiasm as can be seen in the shear number of sub-threads opened up under the Community WorldBuilding heading. Some great ideas were bandied about and things started to take shape. When we started, I thought we'd be putting together a basic, medieval, European environment but there was a strong push towards the weird and we ended up with enough ideas that the conversation was moved to another site.

I'm still not sure why we did that. There was lively conversation here and sure, people were taking the idea in multiple directions but I don't think we were inordinately cluttering up the forum with our posts and there was space in our shared world to accommodate the variety of different visions. The move may have been the result of organizational competition, but that is pure speculation.

Over at GTC the world took shape. @Grützi came up with a home town in the form of a bandit settlement built in a giant insect carcass, @DangerousPuhson developed a faction of scheming merchants and industrialists, @Commodore gave us the mystic Glass Grippli, Ice gave us the high-altitude Andean desert and Macchu Picchu ideas, I wrote up a hex crawl for the region. There was more from others including @Malrex , @Beoric and Slick and I apologize for any overlooked contributions!

This is getting long and maybe I'll expand with other posts where necessary, but to shorten the story; The more our world solidified the more people disappeared from the project. There was never any butting of heads, so if people were feeling left out, ignored or unhappy with the direction things were going, I never heard about it. There was definitely some push and pull at the administrative level on how to organize the project but it didn't seam acrimonious. In any case; I'm an animator and game artist. This isn't my first failed proposal/demo. People love to come together and bandy about ideas but it takes a titanic application of will on the part of the participants and some kind of epic directorial charisma to get a project off the ground. Ours seemed to have the former at least, but looking back, it seems more and more like it was just me trying to nail things down and tie together concepts into concrete final work. My family was moving between continents at the time and I was unable to do my job and had a ton of time on my hands for writing. I wonder now if one person taking it upon himself to tie all the loose strings together might have driven people away.

It was down to just myself, DP and Grutzi last year when I suggested we pick a small area of our map, detail all the hexes and then string them together in a point crawl as a proof of concept. DP had given us some factions to work with, Grutzi had come up with a home base and an innovative dynamic encounter system and I had the larger hex crawl to draw on. It seemed super simple. As I started to work on a crawl called the Bulls Run, a new design contest came up here and, frustrated with how things were dragging (and realizing I was going to have to go back to my day job soon), I joined the contest to force myself under a deadline.
The result was Irradiated Paradox of the Volatile Skies, a sandbox with an optional storyline. I tried to incorporate as much as possible of the many good ideas we'd come up with at GTC hoping people would see their stuff in a finished product and get inspired. I was pretty happy with the result anyway and got some great criticism which I look forward to applying to a big revision of the text which, combined with some artwork from my buddy Sketchy should make it ready for print.

In the meantime I started messing around more and more with my old 3D software, tinkering with mapping techniques and three dimensional encounter spaces. The result was a series of mini-dungeons and boss battles for the Bulls Run pointcrawl. And that's where I am now, limping along on my own. I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm having a great time grinding away at this thing, but after that, the project is dead. My teammates left some great stuff unfinished. Grutzi's encounter system deserves to see the light of day and invites discussion from greater minds than mine. With his permission I'd love to present it here... DP mapped out 6 levels of a gorgeous megadungeon, I'm not sure how far along the keying is. In the next couple of posts I'm going to post the separate points on my pointcrawl in hopes of receiving comments and criticism before I format and package them for publication. And then that's it I guess. What a blast it's been! I remember seeing the name of this forum and thinking 'Hell YEAH! We are going to get some kickass design up in this bitch!' I've met some very cool people and jammed some imaginative concepts and scenarios and I can't wait to do it again!

 

[The1True]

Sorry, that was long!

As mentioned, I've been working on a pointcrawl sandbox with a story running through it called the Bulls Run. Their are a variety of scenarios in this sandbox including settlements, mini-dungeons, boss fights and a towering exterior dungeon. I plan to present them here since all of this was created with YOUR help and advice, before statting the encounters, formatting the text, commissioning artwork and putting them up on Drivethru for PWYW. I agree with Malrex that if you have a name or a brand you should be demanding some kind of compensation for your work. GTC has neither. If there's enough interest, I will package the separate scenarios up in one book tied together by the Pointcrawl (similar to Irradiated Paradox) and maybe offer a hard copy print run.

Just a warning: None of these documents have had any serious formatting. Please don't needle me about the point form presentation.

To start off with, here's the Hexcrawl detailing an area of the Wastes called the Badawful. Many of these area have been developed into full-blown scenarios. There's a diagram of the Pointcrawl at the end. That and the intertwined stories that tie it all together I'm going to hang onto for now.

The first area I detailed was a roman-style villa called the Sommer Palace. This is meant to be run as a social interaction challenge or a commando raid.

North of the villa the tragic victim/villain of our story lurks in the Tower of the Minotaur, a boss battle set-piece mini-dungeon. Initially this was meant to be the end of the adventure but now it's just the beginning!

I'm still making some edits, but hopefully next week I'll have another two for you including a haunted fuel refinery and a 1000' tree fort!

 

[squeen]

@The1True : As always your enthusiasm is infectious and refreshing. Thanks for sharing that. I also applaud the length of your post!

The Summer Palace map is great, and I love the isometric view. As always, your skill with 3D is very professional looking.
I'll need some time to read through all the details.

 

[Malrex]

Just going to be blunt and honest.

I think for me, I don't like things too weird. The reason is that its sometimes hard for me to imagine it and I lose the focus of the intent. For me personally, there is good 'weird' which brings forth awe, wonder, and interest. Then there is bad 'weird' which brings to life some sort of comedic situation and my interest wanes or there is just too much 'weird' that the 'weird' isn't 'weird' anymore, it becomes normal. It's like I can't get a solid footing in the setting...nothing really matters, etc. For example, the Wastes called Badawful, just doesn't inspire me. This is all my personal taste/quibbles and I don't want to come off as 'hating' or negative on this project as I know some people love the playstyle of my label of 'bad weird'--and that's totally cool--it's just not my strength or expertise and hard for me to visualize.

For the educational process--I liked the idea of all working together on something but I just got too busy in MM projects and Footprints and had to trim off some things and since this was in its infancy stages, figured it would be good to step away instead of getting too involved. Plus, it quickly got into the weird and I got lost.

Now, if you are still with me after reading the above, I do appreciate the amount of creativity that I saw in Irridated Paradox. I thought there was a ton of interesting ideas in there. It was a little hard for me to follow everything in that piece....I took a quick 5 min scan of some of your other links. There is something missing for me in the write-up. I'm not sure what it is...the breakdown descriptions is easy to scan which is a good thing, but for me...it's dry? or something? It's too...factual and just states the description instead of describing it...does that make sense? For example:
Summer Palace
Area B. Training Paddock
Hard packed dirt. Scattered weeds and small cactus.

Area C. Stables
Stone barn. High walls, tall roof. Large wooden doors bang loosely in the breeze.

There is some more descriptions on both of these write-ups but Area C works way better for me whereas Area B just feels dry--because of the wooden doors banging in the breeze. There is some action or something of interest...there is more describing rather than just facts? More opportunity for interaction? I'm doing a piss poor job of explaining this but something isn't jiving with me. When I read adventures for prep, I'm usually trying to visualize my character there so that I can describe it better as a DM--and when things are factual instead of more descriptive (even though its easier to scan) it becomes dry for me and I can't visualize a character to begin with so it falls flat for me. Is this making any sense?

For your hexcrawl, could you provide a paragraph of what this area is all about--to set the scene or a little background? I think that would help me visualize it better on what's going on. Like my brain is stuck in fantasy....is this setting more like a fantasy gamma world? Space western/fantasy? Why is it called Badawful--did a meteor strike this area and things are weird or has it always been like this? You know what's going on in this place--please share with me and transport my brain out of medieval fantasy to your world so I can visualize it better. A little more orientation before diving into the descriptions.

How do you want comments? Do you want it in the written piece itself or just blabbered here? I feel like our styles are different so not sure if I will be much help, but I'm happy to try to look things over, time permitting.

 

[Beoric]

For my part, it really just went in a direction I wasn't interested in. I like modules that have a certain universal, "drop in anywhere", modular aspect to them; I feel like they should fit into almost any campaign, and adding features like megafauna insects so large the carapace can be used as a population centre kind of blows that. Also, I prefer low level stuff to start out kind of mundane; the weird should be somewhere else, and something to progress toward. So it's really just a style preference. Everyone else seemed to like it, so rather than try to swim against the tide I just dropped out.

I also found the forum hard to navigate, and hard to figure out how one project related to the next.

@The1True, WRT the Sommer Palace, the terrain in the detail hex doesn't match the terrain in the overview hex. I expected the east and west to be mostly forest, and the interior to be mostly plain, and it is almost the opposite of that. I don't know if anyone else cares, but that sort of thing bothers me.

 

[Commodore]

I'll chip in to also being turned off by gonzo stuff. Not worth pushing against, if the majority of posts wanted something that didn't interest me then, well, best of luck.

 

[The1True]

I'm too lazy to go back through the mountains of communication, but I honestly have no idea how this turned into a Fantasy Gamma World wasteland. People were throwing in dire chinchillas and vanished races and translucent frog people and incan ruins and I rolled with what I got from everyone and smooshed it all into the lovely big mess that it became. I believe our initial intent was to construct a megadungeon with an interesting landscape and factions built around it that would feed back into it. (and even that went and took a seriously weird turn...)
Anyway, it's funny that the majority of creators disagreed with where things were going and chose to drop out rather than object. It seems like a case of the loudest among us (myself included) steering the ship and making it sound like that's what everyone wanted I guess (sounds like modern politics)

For what it's worth, we cordoned off this region of cursed wastes with mountains and a fade into the truly weird in the south. It's geographically a pretty small region (70ish miles I think?) that could be wedged into an otherwise normal world with the isolation allowing for a liminal space where the rules do not apply. (Actually where the rules are actively fighting against entropic breakdown).

WRT the Sommer Palace, the terrain in the detail hex doesn't match the terrain in the overview hex. I expected the east and west to be mostly forest, and the interior to be mostly plain, and it is almost the opposite of that. I don't know if anyone else cares, but that sort of thing bothers me.

Look closer. The blowup is a tiny 1/4 mile chunk of the big 3 mi hex. The terrain doesn't match because the blowup is just a speck on the big map!

Anyway, cool to see you all here. We lost Ice and Slick along the way (I couldn't @ them). I'm all for doing this again some time in a more conventional environment. I am going to wrap this Vanished Wastes stuff up first since there are enough interesting small scenarios that stand out despite the setting. I'm looking forward to the feedback you might have for me when we get into some of the more 'innovative' mapping techniques I attempted to employ later this week... As well as my attempts to generalize the crunch without giving in to complete rules agnosticism (which I hate).

 

[squeen]

My unsolicited advice is to (re)start small. I just looked at 3e's Return to the Temple of Evil (because of the Melan Interview/podcast).

Look what happened to Hommlet!



Ack! What an ugly, uninspiring, mess! (Looks like a brown turd with bacteria growing on it!)

Point being: less is more.

My capital city is only about 2000 citizens. Everything is down-scaled to be manageable by the DM (me). Three inn or taverns sketched out are sufficient to give the illusion of "big".

Also, we have this quote from the Melan Interview which I think is also good advice:

"I don't know everything about my campaign world. I don't detail them obsessively. I have some basic things of where this are going and what might exist. Some kind of basic setting logic. But things just come up during play and fall into their places."

 

[The1True]

Ack!

One of the very few truly awesome official 3e adventures, but yeah, that map is a disaster.
I really wanted to provide a product where there were no blank spaces. Some people hate it, but I and many others love hex crawling. Love that process of clearing away the fog of war to reveal a map. Too many products provide a hex-mapped environment but then barely detail what's to be found if the PC's wander off the narrative. I wanted to create an environment where there's tons to do (more than just really heavily nested random encounter procedurals) and even find a way to have these activities point back to the central narrative in one way or another. You are correct however as Irradiated and Bulls have proved, that giant Wasteland sandbox was too damn big to just support one megadungeon and even a 6x7 hex grid is a lot of content!

 

[squeen]

Settembrini was actually singing the praises of Return in the interview, but noted that in this case 3e---with it's deep stats---was a barrier to a DM's creativity. To crack Return's heavily-crafted design in order to add content takes considerable effort. I grabbed a copy of it to see if I could unravel his critique.

In contrast is Melan's preferred "light" OD&D(?) keying.

 

[squeen]

I do love the notion of "depth" or onion-layers to an environment. By in my experience, they take years to fill in with solid detail.

For site spacing, I like to measure in terms of days-of-travel. "Close" is a half day. "Remote" is a week.

 

[The1True]

Just going to be blunt and honest.

Yes please!

Badawful

Oh man, I love the way it rolls off the tongue. The kind of name that would come from the hard-bitten men and mutants who travel this cursed patch of wastes. I assure you there's no jaded humour behind that name.

Plus, it quickly got into the weird and I got lost.

No worries. Stuff gets lost in writing, so to be clear, there is no accusation of anyone implied here. I've been in the creative industry for 26 years. People have good ideas, they get others involved who have even more good ideas and then it all peters out 99.999% of the time. You've got to love the process otherwise the lack of results will make you lose your mind! Everyone's being pretty frank about their motivations (or lack thereof) here and I'm really appreciating that. It makes for a good post mortem!

Summer Palace
Area B. Training Paddock
Hard packed dirt. Scattered weeds and small cactus.

There's a definite progression to these scenarios. Summer Palace was my first and I did it before Irradiated Paradox. My initial intent was to create a 1-Page Dungeon for each of the major events in the sandbox, thereby avoiding page-bloat. Even with this super-stripped-down style though I was unable to fit all the keying on the Palace map (even with page dimensions set to a 2-page spread) but I was left with a decision to rewrite everything or keep moving with the other scenarios. Laziness won. You are right, I will have to flesh the writing out on this and probably do something to standardize my writing voice across a year's worth of writing.

For your hexcrawl, could you provide a paragraph of what this area is all about--to set the scene or a little background?

Yeah sorry, the hexcrawl doesn't exist in a vacuum obviously, but I didn't want to bog things down with the details of the central document. My objective is to present these scenarios as standalone products intended to be collected at a future date. I'll put this up for a while for the purposes of this conversation, but I'll probably take it back down again later. The central premise of the story is that a Minotaur merchant/mercenary much liked in the Mos Eisley-like settlement of Arnlaug's Carcass has gone missing and is reported to be raiding patrols and caravans in a poisonous stretch of Wastes known as the Badawful. It turns out he stole from a corrupt Hospitaller Knight named Proctor Lund in the process of starting up a business breeding insect mounts at a ruined villa. It becomes clear that while at the villa, he and his business partner became interested in a mythical iron-age hero and he went missing while tracking this legend down. The PC's can get involved in the bug-rustling drama, or go looking for the tomb of the lost hero, or try to figure out what's killing the mutants of the Badawful, or just clear hexes and see what they turn up.

Do you want it in the written piece itself or just blabbered here?

I don't think any of my documents are open to editing (at least I HOPE they're not) so hit me here. Rip me to shreds, this is a learning opportunity for everyone! And thanks all for the feedback so far. Keep it coming!

 

[The1True]

I do love the notion of "depth" or onion-layers to an environment. By in my experience, they take years to fill in with solid detail.

For site spacing, I like to measure in terms of days-of-travel. "Close" is a half day. "Remote" is a week.

I've been experimenting with smaller hexes. It came from looking at the amount of interesting stuff around my parents' rural residence. You can cram a surprising amount of stuff into just a 3 mi hex. I've even been trying out 1 mi hexes on my more long-running project. The only downside is having to set up artificial obstacles to fast overland movement so you can have multi-day travel within a small area per Trollsmyth's Sherwood Forest example.

 

[Beoric]

One of the very few truly awesome official 3e adventures, but yeah, that map is a disaster.
I really wanted to provide a product where there were no blank spaces. Some people hate it, but I and many others love hex crawling. Love that process of clearing away the fog of war to reveal a map. Too many products provide a hex-mapped environment but then barely detail what's to be found if the PC's wander off the narrative. I wanted to create an environment where there's tons to do (more than just really heavily nested random encounter procedurals) and even find a way to have these activities point back to the central narrative in one way or another. You are correct however as Irradiated and Bulls have proved, that giant Wasteland sandbox was too damn big to just support one megadungeon and even a 6x7 hex grid is a lot of content!

I think a hex map with blank space is one of the few places where it is useful to include procedural generation in a product. Detail the areas where players will probably go (those that are visible landmarks, have findable maps leading to them, or that are on the road system), and use procedural generation for those areas where they can go but probably won't.

 

[squeen]

Neat post. Sort of B2/T1 scale? I think that density makes sense for civilized regions, but I have a hard time with different factions being so-much in each other's face. Also "lost" stuff needs to be a bit harder to get to. And heck, I just like the feeling of "travel".

 

[The1True]

Neat post. Sort of B2/T1 scale? I think that density makes sense for civilized regions, but I have a hard time with different factions being so-much in each other's face. Also "lost" stuff needs to be a bit harder to get to. And heck, I just like the feeling of "travel".

Sure. What I'm finding is that if an area is rugged enough it actually takes quite a lot of time to travel short distances and this multiplies if you add exploration, foraging and cautious movement to the mix. So I started working with smaller scales. Some of these hex maps where it's 120 miles of hexes to the old fort are ridiculous.

use procedural generation for those areas where they can go but probably won't.

I'm a big fan of nested tables but there's been a lot of complaint here about the soullessness of procedurally generated features, and at the scale I'm working at here, I would tend to agree that there can and should be a little something in almost every hex and the rest can be filled out with a robust encounter system.
If you want to do a man vs nature trek across a vast wilderness then yeah, that's where you go procedural since it's more about covering great distances and surviving than exploration and investigation. That's not really my jam though.

 

[Grützi]

Nice Thread The1True

Regarding my personal involvement in the GTC:
All in all I had great fun I didn't really drop out but rather wandered away elsewhere :/
Some RL stuff came up at the time, my involvement with Malrex and the Merciless Merchants got more intense and I sometimes felt a bit lost with the pace the GTC was galloping forward

The Random Encounter system:
By all means post away good sir. You have my full permission to post and dissect my encounter system here

 

[Beoric]

I'm a big fan of nested tables but there's been a lot of complaint here about the soullessness of procedurally generated features, and at the scale I'm working at here, I would tend to agree that there can and should be a little something in almost every hex and the rest can be filled out with a robust encounter system.

I think the complaints are more about when procedural generation is used for the main adventure. I'm talking about procedural generation to help the DM when the players colour outside the lines.

 

[Osrnoob]

What if next time we enforce good vanilla and keep contributions short?

Something like a word limit?

 

[The1True]

Something like a word limit?

How DARE you!