Wyvern
Wyvern
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Yet Another Wargame Map set in ...
I suspect my (ongoing) connection to miniatures (and scenery, and everything else that goes with it) is because I started out as a model-maker, and only got involved in wargaming proper a few years after that, at the end of the '60s and early 1970s. Many tabletop rule systems are, and always were slow, but most of what I've done has been for my own interest and solo, so that was never a great issue for me. And a lot of the larger-area battles are fought using the miniatures as little more than markers, so I quite understand your "scale" problems.
I never understood why so many wargames have to be "balanced", when reality very rarely is (unless somebody's really screwed-up their reconnaissance and planning), which I think is why I never took to needing a group to game with. That was just too much like chess to me, whereas I wanted to try to better understand real, or potentially real, situations.
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Yet Another Wargame Map set in ...
You make some good points Mike. I must admit, I never thought hex map boardgames worked all that well for tactical-level wargames, where I always felt using models and miniatures on a physical tabletop was much more useful and instructive as an attempt at simulating something of the realities. All the board wargames I still own, and occasionally play (not sure how I found the time when I was younger; never seem to have enough now!), were of a far more strategic level (so where a single turn is always at least a day, for those less familiar, and the ground scale is matchingly large).
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Community Atlas: Errynor - Shark Bridge
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Community Atlas: Errynor - Shark Bridge
Continuing with the sea-floor mapping begun with the Aak and the Aak Hills maps from "my" corner of Alarius, this time I swapped to the opposite corner of Errynor Map 01, to map the Kachayan stronghold marked by the mysterious sea-bed bridge structure crossing the Clawmark fissure line labelled "10" there:
I'd decided already there should be watchtowers on the bridge, and cave strongholds below it, one on each side of the fissure's cliffs. While it might have been nice to visualise the bridge as like the Map 01 symbol, a classic hump-backed arch rising high over the fissure itself, given the fissure was to be around 3,000 feet (over 900 metres) wide at the nominal "crossing point", that seemed impractical - and maybe a bit too "goldfish bowl ornament". So I opted for an arch set in the fissure, with a level bridge top resting on it instead. A vast arch by medieval standards, regardless.
Then I hand-sketched some to-scale ideas from these parameters, and quickly realised I needed a series of drawings to better visualise the general area around the bridge, give an impression of its size and nature, and show where the various Kachayan settlements were on and around it. This led to the Shark Bridge map, albeit it was actually the last map prepared in CC3+, because I needed a clear impression of the appearance of the towers and caverns first to be able to add them correctly to it.
The two versions allow switching between Imperial and Metric scales (via a toggle in the Atlas version, if all goes to plan).
Partly because I'd been mapping extensively in another style for quite some time to reach this point, partly for contrast, and as an opportunity to explore a - to me - new mapping style, I chose the Treasure Maps style from the October 2011 Cartographer's Annual, including its Treasure Map Deadhand font. I rather like this parchment-look texture, where you can't be quite certain it isn't really the surface of an old driftwood plank, with the map lightly cut into its surface in gentle relief.
It has the added advantage of coming with vector symbols drawn in a style that's quite easy to copy, so I drew-up my own not-symbols (they're just drawn shapes in CC3+, not "true" symbols) for the near-sea floor features I'd randomly added from an amended version of my deep-sea encounters & features lists prepared for the original Errynor mapping. As usual, there's more detail in the accompanying PDF and text-file notes.
For the detailed mapping, like Aak, I chose another black-and-white style - monochrome vision only in the lightless deep oceans! This time, I went with the Black & White Dungeons style from the December 2010 CA, labelled using the Avalon Quest font from the 2012 CA. Three maps for the towers along the bridge top, each with a vertical section and individual floor plans, plus a toggle option to show Metric or Imperial scale lines (though the grid is standardised at five-feet-squares only):
Then one more each for the West and East caverns respectively (floor plans only), again with the option of alternating scalebars:
Each separate map comes with its own PDF and text-file notes.
The tower designs were based on my own previous notes regarding Kachayan sea-bed surface architecture, while the Caverns used mildly reworked versions of more random layouts created by the Curufea's Random Cave Map Generator website, like that for Aak village.
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City of Nyxotos for the Community Atlas
Mystara rather passed me by @Tonnichiwa, as I'd moved on to my own version of D&D, and other RPG systems, even by the time it first featured, as the Known World (in Module X1 "The Isle of Dread" according to online sources, in 1981). I have gone back in more recent times and looked over some of what was published for the Known World/Mystara setting, though after getting back strongly involved with D&D only when 5e appeared, I've concentrated more on finding past details for the Forgotten Realms setting, because of its intimate connection with 5e from the outset.







