Observations of the Fox

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 ...

Here's where things might go a bit differently to what other people would put in their folders. I've discussed relationship maps on the blog before (also here and here ), because they're a really useful tool for quickly seeing how different factions and individuals react to one another. Relationship maps can really help to establish the structure and politics of a setting. Vast factional maps can give ideas of what different kingdoms/countries/empires/corporations think of each other openly. Detailed maps can provide the specific favours and grudges that might drive the motivations of specific characters. I like the consider them to be working documents that are subject to change depending on how the actions of the characters impact the world around them. If player characters are included in the relation ship maps in some way, I'll only include the reactions and attitudes of the NPC/Supporting-Characters on the map, because the player will need to decide their attitud...