Tabletop Hex Terrain

I just backed a kickstarter for MDF Jigs to make hex terrain with!  Each hex is 100mm Vertical Hex (point to point)

 

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A mock of what a dungeon might look like using this system. Remember each of those hexes are 100mm vertical.

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I wasn’t sure if I was going to back it at first.  For GURPS I use 1″ (25.4mm) horizontal hexes and for this system it is 100mm vertically which allows for 25mm vertical hexes.  However I’ve decided that I’m not going to let it bother me as it looks so nice!  Here are the differences between the two.

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GURPS standard on the right side, Hex Terrain Tool Kit on the left side. 14.7485% decrease in size

It will mean that some miniature bases will overlap the hex.  However it looks so nice!

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Look how amazing that looks!  With the risers it would be really easy to place a dungeon underneath the ground and terrain on top!  They are expected to arrive in March which will give me two months before Dungeon Fantasy Powered by GURPS arrives in May!

Also I will be able to use these for my wargaming as well.

 

Linmead Burrow

In my attempt to get back into my underground campaign world I’ve created the Burrow of Linmead.  See About my Dungeon World for a description of my Dungeon Fantasy setting.

Linmead Burrow

Total population:37
Humans:25
Mountain Elves :7
Half-elves:5

Druid: 1
Guards: 6
Inn Staff: 4
Troubadour: 1
Labourers: 15
Merchants: 1

Water Source: Yes
Ventilated: Yes
Light Source: None, Residents use Fire Pits, Candles, and Lanterns
Sanitation: None, chamber pots are collected. Urine goes into barrels which are sold off, feces is turned into fertilizer.
Country Rock: Rhyolite (light gray in colour)
Trade: Mead, Cider, and water are the main exports. Import fuel, basic food stuffs, clothing, etc.
Main Features: Pocket Dimension (315 acres), Laughing Bee Inn (3 levels), Linmead Meadery (4 levels)

Linmead is a very special Burrow as it has it’s own clean water source, it has only one entrance so it is defensible. However more importantly they have their own gardens for growing food and they have their own pocket dimension which they use to produce honey for the Linmead Meadery.  The Linmead pocket dimension is an impressive 315 acres of clover and wild flowers and 250 Apple Trees which they also make Cider from.  There is one round house within the pocket dimension which is used by the caretaker of the grounds.  The L.P.D. (Linmead Pocket Dimension) has four seasons that are just perfect for growing apples.  The bees produce a good quantity of honey and have no predators.

The Laughing Bee Inn is rarely less than half full as they do steady trade in Cider, Mead, and water. Most of the buildings resemble Iron Age round houses on the inside.  Some will have ladders to upper or lower levels, every house has a fire pit in the center.  Linmead also has a mushroom farm.  The water comes from one pool in the Burrows communal area.  It is a very large domed room lit with lanterns with the pool in the center and bioluminescence vegetable and fruit plants in large clay pots around the edges.

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I hope to digitise the map soon and to get to the other two levels of the Laughing Bee Inn created

Adventure ideas

The Orchard has been invaded by a Awd Goggie (a type of Bogie who haunts forests and orchards, and kidnaps children). The adventurers have been contracted to remove the Fae without damaging the Orchard or the Hives.

A group of Bandits have set up a blockade against Linmead Burrow and a conglomerate of Inn Keepers and Merchants have offered a bounty for the capture of the ring leader(s), the rest are wanted dead or alive.

All is not as it seems in friendly Linmead. You have been hired to track down a missing couple of newlyweds who have disappeared.  Your investigations lead you to Linmead where the couple will be sacrificed to a Harvest Spirit. Can you save them in time?

The characters have been sent to Linmead to retrieve an ancient artifact, however the local Druid uses the artifact to perform Harvest rituals. Without the artifact they will be required to perform sacrifice during the ritual.

2010 & 2011 Cartographer’s Annual

I just purchased the 2010 & 2011 Cartographer’s Annual from Profantasy Software.  I’m most looking forward to 2010 March issue which is Dungeon Geomorphs and 2011 February and June issues which also deals with dungeons.   The 2011 August issue is vertical geomorphs which I will be exploring first to give a sense of depth to this crazy Megadungeon.

I hope to post more pictures soon.

Revised Sewer Tiles

Here is the revised Sewer battle Tiles for Level One of the Mega Dungeon.  The walk ways are 3′ and the water channel is 6′

 

 

 

 

 

I’m still working on the CC3 Effects but I like what I have so far.  The brick pattern from the first sewer test was just not doing it for me.  I’ve had to add and move the Sheet effects around.  Here is what I have on them so far, each with one or more effects.

  • Floor Sunken
  • Floor Depressed
  • Floors
  • Water
  • Deep Water
  • Floor Raised
  • Walls
  • Shadows

I’m debating on whether or not to have lighting effects.  There will be narrow water channels of 3′ with no walk ways as well.

A few simple Geomorphs

So I’m feeling a bit better and quickly created these three Geomorphs.  I wanted to see if it mattered visually placing a 3′ corridor to a 6′ corridor without some kind of transition, or if a corridor going to a dead end at the edge of the geomorph looked odd.  Well in some places they may look a bit odd, but creating a cave in would solve that problems fairly quickly.

The Grub Tavern
The Grub Tavern

Not all Geomorphs have to be a random assortment of rooms and corridors.  I give you “The Grub Tavern” a place that is safe to drink and rest up while exploring the never ending passages of the under world.  It features a large common area, 12 rooms for rent (from the stairs not shown on Geomorph) good food and ale.

Cross Roads

Random Geomorph 1

Once I get a good assortment of Geomorphs made I will place them in a pdf for use.  What size should each tile print at?  3″, 4″ or 6″ tiles?  I have not decided yet.

I’m also exploring the random and themed Geomorph.  I’m not going to go too much into explaining why all this is here, that just takes the fun out of Mega Dungeons, but I would like some organisation to them other than just the random mess that you see in old school mega dungeons.  Don’t get me wrong I plan on using random mess as well.  Hey if it is not broke why fix it.

Planning my Mega Dungeon Part 1

So where to start?

Well lets start out with what you need for maps to play any version of GURPS.  GURPS uses a Hexagonal Grid with one hex = 3 feet.  This is much different then the standard D&D of 1 square = 5 feet (or 10 feet in some maps).

Well I started by using a square map with a hexagonal grid.

Now this looks nice and works really well except for one problem.  You can only rotate it 180 degrees.  If you rotate it 90 degrees the hexagon grid becomes vertical not horizontal so this means you have to make two versions of this tile, one with a vertical hexagon and the other with a horizontal hexagon in order to be able to rotate it.  This is not exactly what I had in mind.

After several discussions on the World Works Games forums I decided that it was possible using a hexagonal tile.  The advantages to this is you can freely rotate them and they will always match up with the next tile!

This allows me to create battle tiles for use with miniatures and have them line up with the other tiles.  I made the tiles as large as I could to fit on either US letter or A4 paper.  Some of the things I notice is that when you have corridors meeting diagonally across the edge of the tile it needs to be slightly smaller than if it meets head on.  The image above is a perfect example.  The north/south corridor meets the edge head on and is 6 feet wide.  The east/west corridor will be slightly off if matched with another tile that goes head on so it needs to be adjusted.  I’ve discussed with on the Steve Jackson Games forums and figured out that for a 6′ corridor I need to reduce the size to 5′-6″ if it runs diagonally to the tile edge in Campaign Cartographer.  Case solved.

However what about large scale maps?  It is fine to make a whole bunch of random battle tiles but even your standard square grid tiles require several battle tiles to make a descent layout.  So after several discussions with people (including Kuroshima) I came up with this design.  The hex tile above will be the main geomorph tile.  It contains 13 full size battle maps and 6 half tile battle maps.  Now I can draw geomorphs on this tile and if needed easily transfer them to a full size battle tile for use with miniatures.  There will be two connecting points per side.  So one tile that looked like this can be duplicated and rotated to create this maze of corridors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So far I’m happy with the results. I will continue to keep everyone updated on my progress as I come up with a way to easily create large scale dungeons for GURPS games.