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Royal Scribe

Royal Scribe

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Royal Scribe
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Birthday
February 5, 1968
Location
San Francisco, California
Real Name
Kevin
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Mapmaker
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  • [WIP] The Wizard of Schley

    Here are the dungeons -- er, basements.

    Basement 1

    Halfway down the spiral staircase, there's a secret door that leads to a secret passageway with stairs that descend into a hidden treasure chamber. This chamber also has a secret door that leads to a double-trapped secret tunnel that in turn leads into a secret cavern with more secret treasure.

    The non-secret areas of this basement include a larder, laundry room with furnace, and stairs locked with a sturdy stone door* that descend to the sewers.

    * I have discovered that Mike Schley's dungeons do not have metal doors.

    Basement 2

    The second basement is really just access to the municipal sewers. I love the idea of adventurers using the sewers for heists, escapes, or other shenanigans.


    MonsenQuentenDon Anderson Jr.LoopysueGlitchseycyrusRalf
  • [WIP] Research Saucer Shuttle

    I intended to have three decks, but ended up pushing it to four because it was hard to squeeze medical and living quarters into a single deck. And even then, I had to make compromises (like bunk beds, and deciding to have a standard crew of six rather than eight).

    Deck 1: Engineering & Cargo

    This is the lowest deck. On the left side is an airlock door with an (unseen) retractable ramp, for planet surface landings. The center has a ring hatch for connecting with other space craft. A tractor beam can also pull objects into the craft from here. The ship's main computers and engineering systems are here, including life support, artificial gravity generators, shield deflectors, the cloaking device, propulsion systems, sensors, weapons, communications, and more.

    Cargo (mostly specimens collected from the planet) can also be stored here wherever there's a little spare space.

    Deck 2: Medical & Cryo

    This floor is dedicated to medical care and biological research (including a lab table where local fauna can be...examined). There are four cryogenic tanks here for emergencies -- not enough for the entire crew because this is not an interstellar space craft and the cryo tanks are for emergencies. Usually that means keeping an injured crew member on life support until the ship can return to the parent vessel or space station. Sometimes if a shuttle is stranded, it can keep the crew alive (in rotating shifts) until help can arrive.

    Deck 3: Habitat

    This is where the crew lives when they aren't on duty. As this ship is only intended for short missions of a day or so, sometimes a week, the living quarters can be more cramped than on their parent ship. The crew even has to sleep in bunk beds in a shared room. There are two bathrooms with showers.

    The other floors were already posted and haven't changed. I'll see if there's any feedback and then post the final set.

    LoopysueQuentenGlitchRickoRyan ThomasRalf
  • Ideas and Wishes for Monthly Dungeon Symbols

    Reviving this old thread to throw out one more idea, though I wouldn't be surprised if Mike is all booked up until it's time to shift to cities or something.

    I love all of the stuff that Mike has added this year -- and I've managed to add a little something from each month's to my new Schley-style wizard's tower. But in furnishing the tower, there was one area I noticed could use a bit more: food and beverage. There are plates of food, but DD3, in comparison, also has individual food items, as well as solo plates, bowls, silverware, etc. I would love to see something like a Tavern update that includes food items as well as, in particular:

    • Drinking vessels (goblets, mugs, tankards, etc.)
    • Bottles upright and on their side (which I've used in DD3 to create racks of wine in wine cellars)
    • Bar counter that curves on one side
    • Individual food items (roasted meats, baked goods, eggs, fruit, etc.)
    • Individual plates, bowls, silverware

    Fully understand if Mike's plate is full (pun intended) but figured I'd throw that out there.

    QuentenRickoboffo
  • [WIP] The Wizard of Schley

    Still haven't finished the basement (got sidetracked with Cosmographer), but revisiting this to add some of the newest monthly symbols. I experimented with adding tombstones #4 and #5 from Mike Schley's latest monthly as decorations on the top of the tower, like where gargoyles and grotesques would go, but I couldn't get them to look right. And creating a little graveyard outside of the tower looked weird on such a small hill. But I couldn't resist doing something with the new symbols, so I added tombstone #4 as a statue amidst the trees on the western side, and the wheelbarrow next to the vegetable garden.

    I think I've managed to get something from each of the 2025 monthly dungeon-scale symbols into one or more of these Wizard of Schley maps.


    Don Anderson Jr.MonsenRickoroflo1QuentenRalfGlitchseycyrus
  • [WIP] Research Saucer Shuttle

    Here is the saucer shuttle from below.

    I named this shuttle The Osprey. It is of a class of saucer ships that I've named a Nimbus Class. These shuttles are assigned to either a space station or larger interstellar vessel. In this case, it is part of The Perception, a research ship from a class of ships that I am calling the Copernicus Class.

    On the left side, the airlock hatch can be opened planetside to extend a ramp. The very center has a docking ring for connecting to The Perception or other vessels or space stations. The twelve glowing disks are meant to be some sort of magnetic propulsion thrusters (the side thrusters are more for steering and course correction, not liftoff or acceleration). They were made using one of the sun symbols that come with Cosmographer. And the six metal disks are meant to be places where retractable legs can extend when on planet.

    The text labels on the right are for toggles in the FCW file. They are off the map border and normally don't print, but I wanted to show it to you. They are mostly on/off toggles, but the Tractor Beam is a little more complex, which I will get to. Here is the syntax for the thrusters, as demonstrated in Remy @Monsen's recent Village Battlemap tutorial. It toggles between hiding and unhiding the layer called "Symbols - Thrusters".

    GOLAYER BACKGROUND
    TOGL Symbols - Thrusters
    NULL
    

    As Remy's tutorial explains, the GOLAYER line is done to make sure you aren't on the layer you're trying to hide, because active layers cannot be hidden. And the NULL line is to make sure that toggling a layer is not your most recent command.

    Here's the map with the center docking ring open:

    The docking ring is actually two separate symbols, with the closed hatch symbol on top of the open hatch. The "Docking Ring" toggle hides or unhides the sheet that the closed hatch symbol is on, allowing the hatch to go back and forth between open and closed.

    In addition to using the center hatch for docking with other vessels, a tractor beam can be activated to lift cargo or specimens into the shuttle (like cows or battered pickup trucks in the deserts of Nevada). Here is the tractor beam activated (it's one of the varicolor suns):

    The toggling of the tractor beam was a little tricky. I suppose I could have made it just be on top of the hatch symbols, but I decided to make it as separate "on" and "off" options. Clicking "on" simultaneous hides the layer that both docking hatch symbols are on while unhiding the layer that the tractor beam is on. Here's the syntax for turning it on:

    GOLAYER BACKGROUND
    HIDE Docking Hatch
    SHOW Tractor Beam
    NULL
    

    Clicking the "Off" link reverses this, hiding the tractor beam layer and showing the docking hatch layer.

    On to the Habitat and Engineering decks!

    LoopysueQuentenRyan Thomas