CSIO City Map With Popup Text Project

I stumbled across the CSIO City Map With Popup Text Project over on Dragonsfoot. It looks an interesting idea so I've helped out where I can.

The idea is to use Rob Conley's excellent CSIO city map and include all the snippets of text from the original CSIO guide book and for any locations left with no text snippets make them up trying to re-create Bob Bledsaw's original style. It is this part that I am helping out with.

New D&D 5e Campaign - Deserts & Dragons

Whilst my choice of RPG is D&D B/X I'm not adverse to a bit of D&D 5e and play in a couple of monthly campaigns. The latest of these started a couple of weekends ago at a local games shop, Distinct Gaming, in Belper. The DM, Jono, ran a campaign of loosely related one shots last year and I enjoyed them immensely so I signed up immediately to his new campaign.

The new campaign, that we appear to have called Deserts & Dragons, is set in a world (possibly Forgotten Realms) after a devastating war that has destroyed most of civilisation. Our characters start out in a city bursting at the seams and running out of resources. The party must set out into the surrounding badlands and explore it, mapping it out and  reporting back to the city council what has been found.

The sessions in this year's campaign are all day, from 10:30 - 16:30 as opposed to the half day sessions last year.

The sessions are an open table, although there are a core of regular players, myself included.

An added twist is that there will be at least one other party playing in the campaign and the idea is that the parties will be able to interact by reporting back to the city council who will make information available to other parties.

The first session was most enjoyable with little combat and friendly relations tried with an orc we captured and a tribe of Kobolds we came across. It's like the old fashioned hex crawls of old and it's nice to see there is still room for this sort of campaign in this day and age.

The players and characters were:
Ollie: Baern Ungart, Dwarven Cleric
Paul: Vigharthur Thorogod, Human Sorcerer

Alex: Leto III, Dwarven Ranger

Glyn: Eric, Dwarven Ranger 

Andy:Tarkquin, Human Bard

Chris:Norixius Kriv, Dragonborn Fighter
And our GM is Jono Hemsley

The Isle of Dread

I was lucky enough to see a post on Facebook from one of my local gaming shops, Chimera, indicating that they had Goodman Games Isle of Dread book in stock.

Needless to say I messaged them to reserve a copy and picked it up after work the same day.

The Goodman Games reproductions of these classic modules are real gems; not just the republishing of the original modules or the conversion to D&D 5e but also the articles with luminaries associated with The Isle of Dread. I can't recommend this product enough.

My challenge now is to integrate The Isle of Dread into my Wilderlands campaign!

Island Book I by Judges Guild Acquirement

I spotted this for sale on eBay and managed to pick it up pretty cheaply. It's in decent nick for a book almost 40 years old! No writing in it that I can detect.

I was thinking of using it as a quick island generator within the Wilderlands

I already have two of the Judges aids, Temple Book 1 & Village Book 2, both bought back in the 1980s. The Temple book I don't think I've ever used but the village book I have a few times and have colour coded some of the buildings in the villages. BTW, I've no idea why I have Village Book 2 & not Village Book 1. I can only assume book 2 was the only one available when I visited my local games shop back  in the day ..

I guess there are probably better resources available nowadays but I like the idea of using the JG books for a Wilderlands campaign wherever possible.

The books itself is softback & follows a fairly typical JG structure of three main sections:

1. A section of pages with a list of pages down the left hand side & headings like Hex No, Name, Population, Type etc across the top with blank areas for the judge to fill in once they have decided how they have allocated each islands. 
2. A section of random generation tables that allow the judge to generate islands details by rolling dice and looking up the result on the tables. You can generate anything from weather to "Mysterious finds"
3. The final section is a map of each island in a large hex subdivided into smaller hexes. Various features are mapped such as the coastline, trees, buildings, contour indicators etc.

It seems like a useful addition to my collection that could be used to spice up any islands encountered ..

Into The Borderlands

 Late to the party as usual but my Christmas present to myself arrived today, Goodman Games' Into The Borderlands

Like many gamers who started playing RPGs in the early 1980s Keep on the Borderlands was an essential part of my initiation. In my case it was the first module I can remember DMing. I still have my original copy which even has pencil marks from that one and only time I ran it still written in the pages.

One of the problems with getting hold of Goodman Games products when you live in the UK like I do is the cost of the postage, which effectively doubles the cost of the product. I tried to source Into the Borderlands at a couple of local games shops without success and finally tracked a copy down over Christmas on eBay with a UK seller.

My initial thoughts are what a weighty tome! It must be the heaviest book in my RPG collection. There is certainly no chance of me struggling to find it on the bookshelf!

I can't wait to have a gander through the pages. Some of the commentary looks very interesting.

Of course, I own a copy of the Moldvay versions of B1 & B2. The former was a recent acquisition but the latter is my original 1981 Magenta Box copy, complete with pencil annotations from the only time I can remember running B2, as my first module I DMed back in 1981

Bat In The Attic Wilderlands Maps : Wilderlands of the Magic Realm Release Hopefully Soon!

Rob Conley, the author the Bat In the Attic's Wilderlands maps was kind enough to reply to a query I posted in this  Piazza Wilderlands Forum Post asking when the next installment of this Wilderlands maps, Wilderlands of the Magic Realm, would be released. He's aiming for end of January/beginning of February so fingers crossed.

I'm a massive fan of Judge's Guild's Wilderlands campaign after getting City State of the World Emperor as a Christmas Present off my parents back in 1981. Sadly I never got around to running it as a campaign but I'm aiming to finally put that to rights by putting together a campaign based around map 6 (CSWE). I'm using Scabard to set up my Wilderlands Campaign.