Observations of the Fox

The Warhammer Fantasy RPG world, which is the same setting as "The Old World" for Warhammer is set in an equivalent era to the late Middle Ages and early Rennaisance...and my research indicates that Tulou were built from the 15th century onwards. So, by these two ideas, Tulou wouldn't be anachronistic in the setting. Similarly, even though there are plenty of other anachronisms in there already, this sort of building would probably be pretty mundane for the world. The catch now is working out how big the structure needs to be, and how many people would live in it. Traditionally, it looks like a couple of hundred people would live in a Tulou, and if this first illustration as anything to go by, there would be 30 to 40 rooms spread around the circle (36 in this case), at 3 storeys of habitation. So that's about 90-120 rooms (with a few people in each room). It was all very egalitarian, with similar sized rooms, and I'm figuring that people would work outside the bui...

It always begins with an idea. The idea was to make some terrain in preparation for the final arrival of the Cathayan miniatures in Warhammer. I posted a link to the video...but here it is again... I've been waiting 30 years for this...well actually I've been waiting for the Nippon miniatures because I wanted to have samurai and ninja running around the table fighting off against Skaven and Chaos cultists and anything else that might be found in the Warhammer Old World... I figure the Nippon might be further down the track, and might be a barely touched spin off like the Brettonian armies, the Kislevites, or the Tilean trade guilds. At least we're getting the Cathayans, and that's a great start. My wife wants a full army (because we've got a queen coming who can magically transform into a dragon, and military hot air balloons), I want a full army... so we'll need some terrain to display our models on and to work as signature pieces to add to a table for conducti...

That's basically it for the folder, except for a couple of key things that I do include, but forgot to add at the beginning of the series. One of the things I like to do is prepare for the unexpected to a limited extent. I've already mentioned that I do this with fragments of maps, and story hooks, but I also do this with random encounters, monsters and NPCs. If I'm playing a heavy game like D&D, Pathfinder, Rolemaster or Warhammer FRP, I'll find a random character generator, or visit one of the SRD websites for the game and download some potential folks and critters for the characters to possibly encounter in the area. For creatures I  might use one of the card sleeve sheets and file away nine typical creatures in the area. I'd roll a pair of d10s and use the lower of the two results to determine what might be encountered in the area when things in the story are getting slow or monotonous (this way I can assign common creatures/encounters to low numbers and rar...

I'm doing two parts with this post because we're getting to the end, and there isn't really a lot to say here. I figure a quick game is a good game, as long as things are fast flowing, you can get away with a lot of hand-waves and plot holes, and it's only later that players will ask "What about this bit?" or "What happened there?" Sometimes the players will forget things, and we can just skip over them, sometimes those things can be addressed as a plot hook to be picked up in a later session. As long as enough storylines see closure at the end of a session, there's an overall feeling of a satisfying story. However, this often means making sure plenty lof quick notes are taken along the way...a few scrawls here, a modification to the relationship map, a word or two describing a sigil or sign that might make a useful plot device later. For tyhese reasons I'll try to make sure there's half a dozen lined sheets, half a dozen plain sheets,...

In the time since I've started this sequence of posts, there's a few interesting things I'd like to observe and critique (like this , which I've been waiting 30 years for). But to avoid disrupting the sequence I'll get to those developments once I've finished this run... ...so, for the moment, back to part 7.

I've got a thing for maps ...all of the top few posts I've created over the years have been about helping people to draw better maps and understand how maps can be better incorporated into their games (for examples, see here , here , and here ).  Sure, there are heaps of Virtual Table-Tops (VTs or VTTs) around these days, but this series is analogue, and I like the feel of making marks on a page with a pen or pencil in my hand.  When I include maps in my gaming folders, I like to make sure to start with things that are immediately relevant for the players. The immediate buildings and landscape around the point where they start, the local region including places they might be able to travel to in the first session, then maybe a wider map of the country/continent/world. If it's a sci-fi game, this might be swapped out for a star system chart and possibly a sector chart. Half a dozen maps to start things off usually covers the "needed" preparations.  Once a map hits ...