Dungeons on Automatic is a new blog written by Kyle Norton. He has recoded a random dungeon generator for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. Find that post HERE. It uses the same generator as Donjon but he has changed the code for GURPS instead of D&D. You can download it and use it offline and it is really a lot of fun to play with!
Here are some screen shots of a random result. Go check it out and have some fun!
On the Dungeon Fantasy Kickstarter you had to go from either the $50 or $70 pledge to the $250 “I want it all” pledge to get the Dungeon Fantasy Companion in print. Frankly the $250 pledge wasn’t worth it for me as I already have the Cardboard Heroes in pdf, and all the Dungeon Fantasy in pdf. Great deal for those just getting into the DF line but not thought out at all for those of us who have already been playing the genre since it came out in 2008.
However the other day Update #91 on the kickstarter released the news that the Dungeon Fantasy Companion, How to Be a GURPS GM, and GURPS Mass Combat were available for Amazon’s new Print on Demand service. So I went to Amazon and place the order and by the next morning it arrived!
Perfect bound, colour cover, black and white pages just like the pdf. If this is what it will take to get GURPS books then I approve. I would have preferred full colour pages like the rest of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG books but this is better than printing the pdf off on my cheap printer and using my comb binder.
After a years wait I finally received my Dungeon Fantasy RPG Powered by GURPS today! To say the least I’m very excited to be giving this a go! I’m home with a flu bug so I will have plenty of time to go through all the books. I’m very impressed with the GM Screen and very glad I shelled out the extra money for it.
I’m wishing now I would have had the money to stretch to the Dungeon Fantasy Companion: A single printed volume containing the content of all the stretch goal PDFs unlocked at the end of the campaign. I have the pdf’s of Dungeon 2, Magic Items, and Traps, so I’m not missing out on the material. I might get them printed via Lulu later.
Well I’m looking forward to playing but I’m going to have to find a new group as everyone from my old group has moved out of the country. I hope it wasn’t something I said.
After finally getting the Maneuver Cards done after about five years of working on them off and on I decided to get moving to the Spell Cards. Like the other cards they are a form that you can fill and print yourself. However since there are so many varieties of spells and what they are capable of doing I only made the Page field permanent. The rest of the cells can be entered by the user. The information panel looks just like the other cards but for the cover I opted for a spell book cover with each College having the same colour represented in GURPS Magic. I also added a symbol for each college.
The symbols are from Game-icons.net 
I’ve made a card for each college and one set of “Generic” Spell cards. Next up will be Psi cards, Path/Book, Ritual, Syntactic, Symbol, and Wild Magic. All but the Psi cards will probably have to have a different format for the information so they may take a little longer.
You can view all the Spell Cards HERE
If you end up using them please send me pictures of your cards!
To reduce the extremely large number of tiles I’m creating I’m adding tokens around the tiles. It may use a bit more ink but it also allows you to get more out of your photo paper as well. The tokens will allow you to place stairs, traps, treasure, etc. anywhere you want on your tiles.
These three style door tokens will allow you place your doors within any area on the tiles for the wider Vertical Corridors. Carefully cut them out with a hobby knife using proper safety procedures and you can then either glue one side and fold in half on the grey dotted line or cut them in half and glue them on to thicker card. The backs of the tokens will have information on the type of door. To make this easier and more customizable for those of you using the tiles all token pdf’s will be form fillable. Which means you can enter your own data. The center token in the picture above is how they will all look with blank data fields where as the other two is a representation of how they will look with the information inserted by the user.
Test it out on this pdf for yourself! You will have to download the pdf, Google Docs won’t let you use the form features in the preview.
Because the Horizontal Corridors have to be slightly reduced in width I have created two types of door tokens for each door type. These also will have a form option on the reverse side.
Here are some of the options you can place from getting from one level to another. I manipulated the pit images in photoshop. The top one is a pit down to another corridor directly below it and the bottom one is just a deep pit. I probably should have placed a skeleton on the bottom for scale. If you fold the pit symbols on the grey lines and glue the trap door parts together then glue the bottom (pitt symbol) to a piece of thick card you can have a pit tile with a working door!
Now to make sure that the pdf’s can be used by both A4 and 8.5″x11″ I’ve placed a red rectangle on my sheet representing the size of 8.5″ by 11″. This will make sure none of the pieces will be cut off due to size. Everyone will have to print them with no margins though.
I’d be interested to know what kind of tokens people would like to see.
I’d like to share the 7 inch hex Battle Tiles that I made back in 2009. You can read about it HERE on the Profantasy forums.
For more information on the battle tiles click on the tags to other posts concerning Geomorphs.
If you end up using them please share pictures and if you tend to use them often and you need a new tile then please let me know and I’ll whip one up for you.
Last time I discussed, in my own disorganised way, my thoughts on 7″ hex tiles. Now I’m going to delve into the 4″ hex tile. As I’ve stated a few times before the thought first came to me when I saw the Tabletop Hex Terrain Toolkit on Kickstarter. This is going to be a great tool for making some wonderful terrain for both RPG’s and Wargames. However the scale is just slightly off for my tastes (as discussed here). I may eventually redesign the tool for use with proper one inch horizontal hexes, until then I am making four inch tiles to use for my GURPS Dungeon Fantasy games.
The 4″ Tiles can only support single and double width corridors (1 hex = 3′) compared to the three widths in the 7″ tiles. Also the number of connections is reduced dramatically to the four examples in the following image, compared to the 9 images for 7″ tiles.
Corridor options
Although there are fewer options I don’t think the four inch tiles are inferior to the seven inch. The four inch tiles will certainly allow for more dense dungeons, and with a bit of thought and planning will be able to offer some very complex designs. Also you can make any Hex Dungeon look just like any Square dungeon. All it takes is manipulating the width of the horizontal corridors. If the corridors are the same width they will not match up when a horizontal corridor attaches to a vertical corridor. The horizontal corridor will be too wide.
Both horizontal and vertical corridors are the same width, the horizontal is too wide
The horizontal corridor is now slightly smaller than the vertical. H: 3.43, V: 3.9
I can live with this slight alteration as it now gives me more options when designing. I can now have corridors that turn at 90° just like you would with a square tiled dungeon.
90° left hand turn
Single width corridors and room tiles, just a fraction of the possibilities
An example of what can be made 1 hex = 3′ (1 meter)
What I like from the example above is how at any given time the orientation of the dungeon can turn 60° giving the dungeon a more natural feel. If you’re digging a dungeon why would you limit yourself to a grid? Also once you add the double width corridors your increasing your options and complexity. I’ll be adding more as I have time.
I’ve got plans to make full 3D dungeons using the 4 inch tiles and plaster molds such as those you can get from Hirst Arts, Linka World, and 4bot Industries. The issue is I will have to make a lot of custom pieces and custom molds so I’m going to be shelving this project for the mean time.
I think switching from the 7″ to the 4″ tiles was the right choice for me. When I get time I will go ahead and place the 30+ 7″ colour tiles I’ve already made if anyone is interested in trying them out. I’ll do the same for the 4″ but not until I get a large amount ready.
Pro
Con
If you read back through the blog you can see my slow (very slow) transition of how I make my geomorphs. I started with just making the rooms and corridors and cutting them out at the wall. Looks good, you can do a lot with it, however you need to make separate vertical and horizontal parts for each option. Not very efficient.
October 2008
2008 using Dungeon Siege textures, these are “Flower Hex” tiles
Then after several discussions with people I know, one of which was Andorax, from the World Works Games forums (now defunct). The idea of making the tiles Hexagonal in shape that way you can rotate them in any direction without the need to make Vertical and Horizontal versions for each tile.
March 2009
March 2009
I made the tiles 7 inches from flat side to flat side to reduce the paper waste. One of these hexes would fit on either A4 or US 8.5×11 sheet of paper. If your using high quality photo paper then you really don’t want to be throwing a bunch of it away. The other nice thing about the 7 inch tile was you could have single (3′), double, and triple width corridors giving you a varied dungeon. Now to connect the walls together when you’re running them at a 60° turn means that the horizontal corridor has to be slightly smaller for the walls to match up at the edge. This way you can place your 4 way cross roads and all four corridors will match up to the next tile no matter how you rotate them. Plus you then don’t have to be confined to just 60° turns as I’ve seen many people do.
I also played around with how to make 3D Hex Dungeons
January 2008
January 2008
2009-2010
2009-2010
These were overly complex but a good start. Unfortunately I no longer have the files for these. Then last November during my routine searches for Hex Maps and Hex Dungeons I found the Kickstarter for Tabletop Hex Terrain. You can read my thoughts about it in the blog post linked above. I now have the Hex jigs but I think I’m going to scale them up to get a true 1″ hex and have them laser cut. I can still use the original Hex Jigs for Battletech and Mechwarrior: Dark Age.
Then in December the Hexomorfo System came out using the same conclusions I was using (but only using vertical corridors not horizontal as well) but the smaller scaled 4″ tiles, a bit like the Hex Jig that I discussed in November. My only issue with the 4″ tiles is you can not have triple wide corridors without needing four hexes for the length of two that you would need for single or double wide. I had considered going to 6″ tiles but it would be bulky for the 3D version although easier to build using Hirst Arts bricks. However I’m going to have to custom make 1″ hex tiles for the Hirst Arts as Bruce doesn’t seem interested in making any.
So now I’m currently making tiles for the 4″ system and I’m hoping to get about 100-150 done before experimenting with the 3D tiles. I’ll keep posting updates when I reach them.
HEXOMORFO SYSTEM is created by Eneko Menica and Eneko Palencia and the design is similar to what I have been working on for the new Tabletop Hex Terrain. I’m really pleased as this shows me I was on the right track! They have made it available for 15mm and 25/28mm miniatures. I like to see that Hex Dungeons are catching on! They have even mentioned that they may be making more designs!
