Kickstarter Picks – 03 June 2013

Modular Wargaming Terrain – Cool sci-fi / gothic / modern modular terrain. Great for skirmish games.

Magnetic Status Markers – Simple round markers to maintain the status of your characters in miniature combat games. No more knocked over dice.

DnD Map Tile Generator – New Features

I’ve added two small new features to the DnD map tile generator.

Neither will be particularly earth shattering, but they should make it a better experience overall.

First off, your settings will be remembered across visits, so if you find a combination of sizes that generates useful tiles then those settings will be used by default every time you visit the generator.

Secondly, if you generate a board that removes all the squares from a row then that row will no longer be shown. Hiding empty rows will mean the board always displays in the same place, no more risk of losing one to lots of blank rows.

Building on Past Work

No-one ever became a success overnight. If it looks like they did, then you are probably missing out on a lot of low level prep work they didn’t before you noticed their ‘overnight’ success.

Building a strong foundation, sticking to and repeating your core message and perfecting your craft are all ways to build up to that success.

My most popular work is always the Dungeons and Dragons map tile generator. It has slowly gained in popularity over time, and now drives the vast majority of visits to the toadflaxgames site. In the spirit of building on foundations to promote successes, I’m going to be making some improvements to the generator, to make it the best it can be.

Let me know if there are any improvements you’d like to see, and I’ll look at implementing them.

DnD Map Tile Generator – User Accounts

I’ve done some more work on user accounts, you can now create one with a standard user name and password combo.

Just hop on over to the Map Tile Generator and create an account once you are ready, to get access to all of the extra features, different tile styles, savable layouts and dungeon furniture.

As usual I would like to hear about your experiences, and will drop a few credits to anyone providing constructive feedback.

DnD Map Tile Generator – Additional Items

Another new feature for the DnD Map Tile Generator, I’ve added the ability to click and drag in items of furniture into the dungeon.

It’s really simple to use, create an account and log-in. Purchase access to the Dungeon Furniture Pack 1, and you’ll be able to see a scrolling list of the available items. Generate your board, then click on an item to add it to the tile. You should then be able to drag the items around on the tile, and place them where you want.

Printing needs to be done in landscape mode to make the items line up over the board correctly. Saving doesn’t currently include the additional items, I’ll work on this if people want it.

I’ll give some credits to anyone who wants to help test out this new feature. Drop me a line here or on e-mail and I’ll set you up with something, just let me know your account details.

Map Tile Generator – Save boards

I’ve upgraded the DnD map tile generator to use a newer version of the OpenID login code, which means it should work for a wider variety of OpenID providers.

You can now also save your favourite boards. Once you’ve created an account you’ll be able to give a generated board a name, save it, and return to it later.

DnD Map Tile Generator – User Accounts

I’ve just implement user accounts for my DnD Map Tile Generator. You can register for an account using your favourite OpenID provider.

At the moment you can use an account to buy credits that allow you to access new board styles. There’s only one style there to start us off, it’s very much a Beta test at the moment.

I’ll be adding more styles, and more features (special options, saving of favourite tiles and more). They’ll only be available if you have an account, so register and enjoy the benefits.

I’ll drop some free credits to the first few people to register, or to anyone who can report a bug to me, either in comments or directly via e-mail.

A Believable World

A game of Dungeons and Dragons is more than just dungeon bashing, picking up loot and killing monsters. It doesn’t have to be much more than this, but even a little effort to build a world can make a big difference.

The two biggest things to bear in mind are believability and consistency. Nail these two, and the rest will fall into place.

Believability is important. You are playing in a fantasy world, but that doesn’t mean that everything is different, or that nothing really happens for a reason. Start from the real world, think about what differences magic might make, and make those changes believable. Do Kings need magical advisers? How does Castle design change when magic is common? Street lighting and sanitation in cities, are they magically created? If you can answer these questions, you can put your players in a world that feels real, and that they are more likely to care about.

Consistency is making sure that things are the same when they should be the same. The King won’t change from week to week, if you name him, record it somewhere, so you can use the same name again. If things change, they should change for a reason, even if it’s not immediately obvious to your players, you need to know what that reason is.

If the characters sell their loot at a local town, use a recurring NPC (like the Jeweller) to build consistency and familiarity. This NPC can develop a character over time, and turn a mechanical experience (loot to money) into a roleplay experience. Once a rapport is built with a recurring NPC, the players might care about them. You can use this as a GM to produce new adventure hooks. Kidnapping or killing a favourite NPC can lead the PCs into an adventure, or series of adventures. Alternatively, the NPC can give quests to the PCs, with rewards tied to how well they have worked on creating a friendship with the NPC.

Consistency and believability are the keys to build a world that your players can have fun in, and can take a dungeon bash up to the next level of play.

Release early, release often

I’ve suggested that you should try and keep the rules of a game as fixed as possible once you’ve released it. It gives people a chance to learn them, to play on the same field, and to not have to deal with collating a difficult set of errata and rules updates into a coherent document.

When you are dealing with gaming aids and resources, there’s a lot more freedom. Here I think you should release early, getting a version out as soon as is possible, so people can start making use of what you’ve done. You should also release often. Add incremental features and content as and when it’s available, don’t save it up.

I’m following my own advice with the Map Tile Generator I’ve developed for DnD. It’s had a couple of improvements, so every map should now be guaranteed to include some doors, and to have the number of missing pieces you select. It also generates a map tile automatically on loading the page for the first time.

I’ll be adding more improvements in the days ahead, I’d like to make it so that the tiles are always fully connected, and I’ve got some work to do on the layout of the page. If you think of any other features you’d like to see, drop me a line, and I’ll see what I can do.

Dungeons and Dragons: Map Tile Generator

I’ve just released the first version of a Dungeons and Dragons Map Tile Generator. It lets you pick a board size, number and size of doors and a number of spaces to remove from the grid. It will then generate a random board within these parameters.

It’s brand new, so can generate some strange and useless boards, but if it does that, just create another, until you get something useful. I’ve found that leaving the settings on random will generate a cool tile about once in every 10-15 attempts.

I’ve only tested in Firefox so far, please let me know if you have any problems, I’ll be improving this as time goes on, and I’ll prioritise feedback suggestions to give me somewhere to target my efforts.

Don’t forget to check out my other DnD resources for characters, scenarios and other ideas for use in your games.