I was introduced to roleplaying and AD&D back in '77 (or was it '78?) by my junior high math teacher. I've played D&D, cyberpunk, White Wolf (which includes Vampire, WereWolf, Mage, and the new Scion), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, and Mech Warrior, and those are just official games! My friends and I have been known to create our own games based off books, movies, you name it!
Up until recently, I'd never played a module... the GM's I'd had always created their own campaigns... and when I became a GM, I followed suit. That was about 20 years ago.
It just so happens, I am a published poet and children's author... and have a novel or two that I work on, when I have spare time... which hasn't been much in the past few years, since I have two kids, and one of them is special needs. They are now teenagers, and as a matter of fact, my oldest turns 18 tomorrow, though he is still in school... so hopefully, I will be getting more time for that.
I'm also a crafter, but that's a different discussion altoghether, and has nothing to do with map making!
Ever since I started GM'ing, I've wanted to make maps for the campaigns I create, but alas, I am not a visual artist. I paint pictures with words... I can't draw worth a flip! The whole reason I purchased CC3+ was to finally be able to map my campaigns.
I will be hitting the big 50 in a couple of months, and I still game! The maps I make are for homebrewed campaigns, although I am working on a commission map for a syfi novel someone else is writing, and if I ever write my own fantasy novels, I will make the map for those as well.
I first got in contact with RPGs back in the late nineties when I got into University and my... well, at my university we used to get "hazing godfathers" who would teach you the ins and outs. Mine was really cool and, besides sparing me from all the hazing rituals, he introduced me both to paganism and RPGs (Vampire Masquerade). I must have played half a game, though, due to him graduating the following year and there not being any other GMs. (I kept on as a Pagan, though I don't advertise it as most people I know are from the skeptical Catholic-born breed and would give me funny looks.)
I kind of completely dropped out of gaming. Actually, it's only started coming out of the closet very recently in Portugal, and most people still don't talk about it as it's seen as kids or young adult stuff. Anyway, as I started writing stories with powered characters, what I had learned about gaming made me start devising specific stats for my story settings so I find myself creating a kind of "RPG game" rules to help me write balanced fights in my stories.
I did use photoshop in the past to create my characters and book covers, but I never enjoyed it for mapping. That's why I ended up here: to create pretty maps for my stories.
Most of my starting players, back in 1980, were women. My siblings, both women, and I are talking about gaming again.
In the past few years, a decade for Crestar, I have extensively made a game world which I hope to add lots more detail to. My Traveller site currently has 1,200 worlds, which I'm currently inventorying so I can make sure of planet names, sub-sectors, etc. and then start editing the fcw files to add capital cities, and downports.
And learn more of Character Artist 3 so I can add people portriats instead of just text descriptions.
Started with Mentzer Red Box in 1981. Played dozens of systems and probably read hundreds! Currently playing a d20 derivative called Radiance RPG and working on a setting for it! I hope to publish that setting here in the future. I've been lurking on the side-lines of the game industry for over a decade but I'm super focused now on publishing my first work.
The core of our current group started playing in the late 80s, AD&D 2nd edition.
That's what got the hook into us.
We've tried Gurps, Rifts/Heroes Unlimited, Vampire/Werewolf/Mage, 3rd/3.5 D&D, 4th edition, and are currently playing Pathfinder RPG.
The current game is Pathfinder.
Characters are built with Hero Lab, and if it cannot be built with HL then it's not a valid build (basically HL is the validity/stacking checker).
Our magic system is Spheres of Power (Drop Dead Studios), which is an alternate magic system (not level based aka Vancian magic); Spheres has an archetype to apply it's system of magic to every Paizo casting class, along with a small smattering of popular 3rd party products.
We use Ultimate Psionics (and Path of War/Exanpanded), both by Dreamscarred Press.
While we play face-to-face, we've recently decided to move to a virtual table top (d20Pro).
Basically the VTT will be the digital battlemap, used at a fairly rudimentary level.
The hit points (with a bleed bar for relative health) and AC/Defense values will be accurate on the VTT, but everything will be done by actual dice rolled by the DM/Players.
So the VTT will show the world/battle region, the tokens and relative health, along with line of sight/length of side and shadowcasting of the obstacles that block line of sight.
The VTT has renewed my interest in Campaign Cartographer, and I'm working my way through the Tome of Ultimate Mapping... having followed along with several of the Sweeney videos.
I bought the D&D Basic Red Box set in about 1980 because I had just finished reading the Dragonlance chronicles and it sounded like fun. Played one game but for one reason or another it wasn't what I expected.
Fast forward 20 years and my wife bought me Baldurs Gate for my birthday. That got me back in. Bought the the D&D3E books (thought it would be good for characterisation, I had aspirations to become a novelist) and found a local group who were playing AD&D 2nd Ed. 2 of the guys and I moved on to play 3rd Ed with some other chaps and we've been playing together for the better part of 2 decades. We started playing 4th Edition but the errata spoiled it for us, though I liked it as a system, very easy to GM. So we hunted around and played Warhammer FRP & Savage Worlds. Now, I'm a huge Michael Moorcock, Eternal Champion fan so when I bought the 3rd Ed rulebooks my game shop had Dagonlords of Melniboné, the D20 version of Elric! But we'd never played it. There was an add for Elric! in the book, which being out of print, led us to Basic Roleplaying. I then discovered that Mongoose had an Elric of Melniboné game and bought that along with the core Runequest book. Man, that was a blast! We had a great campaign that I GM'd using a mix of converted old modules as well as scenarios I made up based off the novels. Then Mongoose lost the rights to Runequest so re-branded their game as Legend, at that time The Design Mechanism released Runequest 6 and as it was by the same authors of my now favourite setting, I had to get it. Anyhow, that is now Mythras and my goto system.
Through the affiliation of Profantasy and Pelgrane Press I've become interested in 13th Age as a system and play in a fortnightly 13th Age Glorantha game (though I know next to nothing of the setting). I also play/GM in a weekly game with some chaps from the Mythras Discord server and I play in a PBP Mythras game as well.
Professionally, I was the developer for Mongoose's, Aracania of Legend: Elementalism a conversion of their D20 product. I've self published an adventure, entered the One Page Dungeon contest in 2017 and due to that and having conversations with Loz at The Design Mechanism do some cartography work for them, in particular their Classic Fantasy (OSR dungeoneering D100 style!) line. I also wrote and obviously did the cartography for a Classic Fantasy adventure, Trouble in Nevermind.
Early to mid 90's we moved from playing outside to indoors. School library had some Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf volumes which tricked us into mostly the local Basic Roleplaying variant, 1st edition Mutant Chronicles, WEG Star Wars - touching on Call of Cthulhu and MERP and some other local specialities also. Primary GM had a thing for creating systems of their own so we did quite alot of that also. Then school was out, youth spent, and we went our seperate ways.
Got back into the hobby proper a few years into the 2000's by way of D&D and the then-local gaming club - also adding 3e Shadowrun, WH40K roleplaying game variants and some Twilight 2000. They tried to get me hooked on ASL but...you know*. D&D shifted to Pathfinder at the club and that pretty much - along with CoC - became the primary outlet over the next decade.
Reconnected with my adolescence pals over VTT for some more Pathfinder. Shifted to virtual platform entirely because of the logistics of family - but also chronic calendar issues with the club crew. Managed to squeeze in some 5e D&D as well before more family logistics.
I have managed to limit my system hoarding to a select few - just enough to facilitate my late stage just-in-case syndrome. I reckon there will be a handful more games to be played before the end - I just haven't settled on which systems yet. So until the stars are right again, I am prepping. And surveying. And prepping. And prepping.
And is it turns out, this state of perpetual prepping goes rather well with mapping, which I got into around the time of transitioning to VTT.
My first introduction to gaming was by my sister-in-law when I was maybe 10 with what I presume were the original rules. They even used chits because they did not have one of them fancy d20s. I did not play again until freshman year in HS and played AD&D 1e in the late 80s. Progressed into AD&D 2ed a bit then drifted from gaming for a few years. Got back into it at the end of college with a home-brew system I help make. Then went whole hog into 3rd edition D&D. While I had dabbled as a DM, I "became" one during this edition. Its likely due to the slow speed of 3rd - I was bored as a player.
Became a Savage (Savage Worlds) in 2008 - D&D 3rd was too heavy, 4th just did not work for my peeps. Savage Worlds just fit. I have dabbled here and there with other systems (mostly as a player) but basically all Savage Worlds these days as a GM (but I do like that Alien system). Just a shout out to the person that posted about Empire of the Petal Throne - never played it in any version, but I have an original box set - a prized gaming possession! Talk about gorgeous maps!
I have always enjoyed maps. A buddy of mine's parents owned a little print shop back in the late 80s and we tried to print a map or two. I have had various version of CC since the DOS days but never quite got over the hump of making maps. But I was interesting in getting into it even before the pandemic hit full force - I was running more online games and I like to run a tactical fight. Sometimes, its just fun to make a map and use it instead of the endless googles or making some other map kinda fit. So I pushed through it with the manual, the tome of mapping, and the great mapping sessions by the crew here.
I am just about to have a couple of maps published! A buddy of mine (the same guy that I partnered to make the home-brew system) is publishing a "weird west but not Deadlands" adventure for Savage Worlds. I made a regional map using that cool Western Annual and just finish a town map today (thanks to Sue for the Cliffs and the Darklands themes for the town map). While not to publish, I did modify and make my own level of the spaceship that came with that Alien style Annual for a GM that runs a lot of Alien - that recieved some high praise.
Right now I am kinda like a ok golfer - I hit just enough good ones that it keeps me coming back, but not really good enough to want compete for real :)
I forgot to mention that after my Elric campaign sort of fizzled out we ended up playing Pathfinder (I'm a player only). This was mainly to play in Pathfinder Society at Conventions. I attended 2, unfortunately the GM'ing left me flat.
As with many others, I started with the D&D Basic Red Box with the Larry Elmore cover. I later played AD&D 2nd Edition. Eventually I ditched D&D altogether (though I played 5ed at a local con) and moved on to other games like Warhammer, Earthdawn and Shadowrun.
Lately I've been playing Shadow of the Demon Lord, Zweihander and Dragon Age.
Roleplaying games eventually led to writing after I was challenged to write a book and after years of writing I started using Campaign Cartographer as additional value for some of my writing gigs and half-assed attempts at self publishing.
Comments
I was introduced to roleplaying and AD&D back in '77 (or was it '78?) by my junior high math teacher. I've played D&D, cyberpunk, White Wolf (which includes Vampire, WereWolf, Mage, and the new Scion), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, and Mech Warrior, and those are just official games! My friends and I have been known to create our own games based off books, movies, you name it!
Up until recently, I'd never played a module... the GM's I'd had always created their own campaigns... and when I became a GM, I followed suit. That was about 20 years ago.
It just so happens, I am a published poet and children's author... and have a novel or two that I work on, when I have spare time... which hasn't been much in the past few years, since I have two kids, and one of them is special needs. They are now teenagers, and as a matter of fact, my oldest turns 18 tomorrow, though he is still in school... so hopefully, I will be getting more time for that.
I'm also a crafter, but that's a different discussion altoghether, and has nothing to do with map making!
Ever since I started GM'ing, I've wanted to make maps for the campaigns I create, but alas, I am not a visual artist. I paint pictures with words... I can't draw worth a flip! The whole reason I purchased CC3+ was to finally be able to map my campaigns.
I will be hitting the big 50 in a couple of months, and I still game! The maps I make are for homebrewed campaigns, although I am working on a commission map for a syfi novel someone else is writing, and if I ever write my own fantasy novels, I will make the map for those as well.
I kind of completely dropped out of gaming. Actually, it's only started coming out of the closet very recently in Portugal, and most people still don't talk about it as it's seen as kids or young adult stuff. Anyway, as I started writing stories with powered characters, what I had learned about gaming made me start devising specific stats for my story settings so I find myself creating a kind of "RPG game" rules to help me write balanced fights in my stories.
I did use photoshop in the past to create my characters and book covers, but I never enjoyed it for mapping. That's why I ended up here: to create pretty maps for my stories.
In the past few years, a decade for Crestar, I have extensively made a game world which I hope to add lots more detail to. My Traveller site currently has 1,200 worlds, which I'm currently inventorying so I can make sure of planet names, sub-sectors, etc. and then start editing the fcw files to add capital cities, and downports.
And learn more of Character Artist 3 so I can add people portriats instead of just text descriptions.
That's what got the hook into us.
We've tried Gurps, Rifts/Heroes Unlimited, Vampire/Werewolf/Mage, 3rd/3.5 D&D, 4th edition, and are currently playing Pathfinder RPG.
The current game is Pathfinder.
Characters are built with Hero Lab, and if it cannot be built with HL then it's not a valid build (basically HL is the validity/stacking checker).
Our magic system is Spheres of Power (Drop Dead Studios), which is an alternate magic system (not level based aka Vancian magic); Spheres has an archetype to apply it's system of magic to every Paizo casting class, along with a small smattering of popular 3rd party products.
We use Ultimate Psionics (and Path of War/Exanpanded), both by Dreamscarred Press.
While we play face-to-face, we've recently decided to move to a virtual table top (d20Pro).
Basically the VTT will be the digital battlemap, used at a fairly rudimentary level.
The hit points (with a bleed bar for relative health) and AC/Defense values will be accurate on the VTT, but everything will be done by actual dice rolled by the DM/Players.
So the VTT will show the world/battle region, the tokens and relative health, along with line of sight/length of side and shadowcasting of the obstacles that block line of sight.
The VTT has renewed my interest in Campaign Cartographer, and I'm working my way through the Tome of Ultimate Mapping... having followed along with several of the Sweeney videos.
Late to the party as usual...
I bought the D&D Basic Red Box set in about 1980 because I had just finished reading the Dragonlance chronicles and it sounded like fun. Played one game but for one reason or another it wasn't what I expected.
Fast forward 20 years and my wife bought me Baldurs Gate for my birthday. That got me back in. Bought the the D&D3E books (thought it would be good for characterisation, I had aspirations to become a novelist) and found a local group who were playing AD&D 2nd Ed. 2 of the guys and I moved on to play 3rd Ed with some other chaps and we've been playing together for the better part of 2 decades. We started playing 4th Edition but the errata spoiled it for us, though I liked it as a system, very easy to GM. So we hunted around and played Warhammer FRP & Savage Worlds. Now, I'm a huge Michael Moorcock, Eternal Champion fan so when I bought the 3rd Ed rulebooks my game shop had Dagonlords of Melniboné, the D20 version of Elric! But we'd never played it. There was an add for Elric! in the book, which being out of print, led us to Basic Roleplaying. I then discovered that Mongoose had an Elric of Melniboné game and bought that along with the core Runequest book. Man, that was a blast! We had a great campaign that I GM'd using a mix of converted old modules as well as scenarios I made up based off the novels. Then Mongoose lost the rights to Runequest so re-branded their game as Legend, at that time The Design Mechanism released Runequest 6 and as it was by the same authors of my now favourite setting, I had to get it. Anyhow, that is now Mythras and my goto system.
Through the affiliation of Profantasy and Pelgrane Press I've become interested in 13th Age as a system and play in a fortnightly 13th Age Glorantha game (though I know next to nothing of the setting). I also play/GM in a weekly game with some chaps from the Mythras Discord server and I play in a PBP Mythras game as well.
Professionally, I was the developer for Mongoose's, Aracania of Legend: Elementalism a conversion of their D20 product. I've self published an adventure, entered the One Page Dungeon contest in 2017 and due to that and having conversations with Loz at The Design Mechanism do some cartography work for them, in particular their Classic Fantasy (OSR dungeoneering D100 style!) line. I also wrote and obviously did the cartography for a Classic Fantasy adventure, Trouble in Nevermind.
Interesting ! Thanks for the 'we are out here' posts.
Same, @jmabbott lol
Early to mid 90's we moved from playing outside to indoors. School library had some Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf volumes which tricked us into mostly the local Basic Roleplaying variant, 1st edition Mutant Chronicles, WEG Star Wars - touching on Call of Cthulhu and MERP and some other local specialities also. Primary GM had a thing for creating systems of their own so we did quite alot of that also. Then school was out, youth spent, and we went our seperate ways.
Got back into the hobby proper a few years into the 2000's by way of D&D and the then-local gaming club - also adding 3e Shadowrun, WH40K roleplaying game variants and some Twilight 2000. They tried to get me hooked on ASL but...you know*. D&D shifted to Pathfinder at the club and that pretty much - along with CoC - became the primary outlet over the next decade.
Reconnected with my adolescence pals over VTT for some more Pathfinder. Shifted to virtual platform entirely because of the logistics of family - but also chronic calendar issues with the club crew. Managed to squeeze in some 5e D&D as well before more family logistics.
I have managed to limit my system hoarding to a select few - just enough to facilitate my late stage just-in-case syndrome. I reckon there will be a handful more games to be played before the end - I just haven't settled on which systems yet. So until the stars are right again, I am prepping. And surveying. And prepping. And prepping.
And is it turns out, this state of perpetual prepping goes rather well with mapping, which I got into around the time of transitioning to VTT.
*It's all just punched paper and bureaucracy, isn't it.
A great thread!
My first introduction to gaming was by my sister-in-law when I was maybe 10 with what I presume were the original rules. They even used chits because they did not have one of them fancy d20s. I did not play again until freshman year in HS and played AD&D 1e in the late 80s. Progressed into AD&D 2ed a bit then drifted from gaming for a few years. Got back into it at the end of college with a home-brew system I help make. Then went whole hog into 3rd edition D&D. While I had dabbled as a DM, I "became" one during this edition. Its likely due to the slow speed of 3rd - I was bored as a player.
Became a Savage (Savage Worlds) in 2008 - D&D 3rd was too heavy, 4th just did not work for my peeps. Savage Worlds just fit. I have dabbled here and there with other systems (mostly as a player) but basically all Savage Worlds these days as a GM (but I do like that Alien system). Just a shout out to the person that posted about Empire of the Petal Throne - never played it in any version, but I have an original box set - a prized gaming possession! Talk about gorgeous maps!
I have always enjoyed maps. A buddy of mine's parents owned a little print shop back in the late 80s and we tried to print a map or two. I have had various version of CC since the DOS days but never quite got over the hump of making maps. But I was interesting in getting into it even before the pandemic hit full force - I was running more online games and I like to run a tactical fight. Sometimes, its just fun to make a map and use it instead of the endless googles or making some other map kinda fit. So I pushed through it with the manual, the tome of mapping, and the great mapping sessions by the crew here.
I am just about to have a couple of maps published! A buddy of mine (the same guy that I partnered to make the home-brew system) is publishing a "weird west but not Deadlands" adventure for Savage Worlds. I made a regional map using that cool Western Annual and just finish a town map today (thanks to Sue for the Cliffs and the Darklands themes for the town map). While not to publish, I did modify and make my own level of the spaceship that came with that Alien style Annual for a GM that runs a lot of Alien - that recieved some high praise.
Right now I am kinda like a ok golfer - I hit just enough good ones that it keeps me coming back, but not really good enough to want compete for real :)
I forgot to mention that after my Elric campaign sort of fizzled out we ended up playing Pathfinder (I'm a player only). This was mainly to play in Pathfinder Society at Conventions. I attended 2, unfortunately the GM'ing left me flat.
As with many others, I started with the D&D Basic Red Box with the Larry Elmore cover. I later played AD&D 2nd Edition. Eventually I ditched D&D altogether (though I played 5ed at a local con) and moved on to other games like Warhammer, Earthdawn and Shadowrun.
Lately I've been playing Shadow of the Demon Lord, Zweihander and Dragon Age.
Roleplaying games eventually led to writing after I was challenged to write a book and after years of writing I started using Campaign Cartographer as additional value for some of my writing gigs and half-assed attempts at self publishing.