Ep 26: the black wyrm of Brandonsford

[JimMonsoon]

Walid it’s faun vs fawn

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Also you guys should get Beau Rancourt onto the podcast (edit: or just read and respond to his work). I don’t agree with all his tuff, but he has very strong opinions on adventure writing and puts in the work for some very detailed critiques. He discusses this module in depth on his blog.

[sam_the_bold]

Hehehe you're not the first person to bring up the faun/fawn distinction. For reference, Black Wyrm does indeed specify "faun" with a 'U', suggesting it's goat boys rather than baby deer. 

As for Rancourt, I think it's unlikely. I've read his blog before from time to time, but I find he's a little too "white room" analytical for my tastes, too interested in following the precise letter (or number) of the law rather than its practical applications. That, and he's too comfy praising the chuds. 

We're thinking about guests on the show otherwise, though! Maybe something for a future special episode.

[misha]

Also you guys should get Beau Rancourt onto the podcast (edit: or just read and respond to his work). I don’t agree with all his tuff, but he has very strong opinions on adventure writing and puts in the work for some very detailed critiques. He discusses this module in depth on his blog.

There's some internal debate on guest appearances--I think if we had one I'd probably want a writer or designer over a critic.

I'd read Beau's Arden Vul retrospective and found it very in depth, if not always in line with my takes on the book. I checked out his Black Wyrm post and was pretty surprised at how much overlap it has with the episode--if anything he's even more hardline on legwork than we are, which is a fun change of pace.

And then I found his reddit posts from the last 24 hours (posted after you suggested him). Saying that if you wouldn't yell at someone for boosting a drunk driver you can't yell at someone for boosting a bigot (because bigotry is less of a big deal than drunk driving) is a wild take. R.I.P.

[JimMonsoon]

Ok yeah I was getting the impression he was ok with content creators and/or platforms that I’m not, but didn’t look that hard into it. I guess ideally getting Luke Gearing, Chris McDowall, etc. would be cool

[Wall_eed]

I still feel like baby deer offering me wine would be a way freakier image 

[500poundsofnothing]

The ever so brief mention of the muppets in this episode reminded me of just how fruitful evoking that as a touchstone can be. I do want to try and running through this module some time soon and using a house rule I originally cooked up for troika where you roll a d6 and on a 1 you are a human, otherwise a muppet.

[Idraluna]

I thought the topos/topography/topology discussion was really interesting. It made me want to spend more time figuring out specific techniques for de-abstracting maps -- how do you add to-scale detail in a way that is usable and readable?

When running a past OD&D campaign, I used a version of the Outdoor Survival map with pseudo-realistic hillshaded terrain. Being able to narrate very specific ridges and creeks and hills was pretty cool. But many feature of the map (PoIs, forests) we're still abstracted at the level of the 5-mile hex.

Similarly, I recently ran Tom Mecredy's D-Day WUTC hack "He Ain't Gonna Jump No More" and got a lot of mileage out of clipping real-world aerial photos of Normandy into the digital whiteboard we were using.

[sam_the_bold]

Using IRL aerial photos of Normandy is so sick.

One thing I did some experimentation with a few years ago was using a ton of colors for elevation changes, specifically in the context of underdark cave maps. I had I think a twelve or sixteen-step color gradient, which meant I could shift elevation up by ~fifty feet per step while still having a total elevation change in the hundreds of feet. In a digital context, I think vector maps are super underexplored.

[JimMonsoon]

In theory one could utilize Google earth* api to zoom in on some remote area, delete or edit the labels to fit your setting and get real detailed.

*if this still exists

[KurlyJ]

In regard to the argument about the map, I would say that an interesting example of where I think Sam's approach makes a lot of sense is in the Dragonbane maps in the boxed set and their later campaign book (Path of Glory?), where there are a huge number of details stuck in that are not discussed in the adventure materials. In the campaign book, there's actually a whole region that is basically left to the GM to do something with.

I really wonder what the direction given to Francisca Baerald, who did the maps. (She's running a Kickstarter right now, so I suppose she may be available for questions, though I am not backing it, so I ain't asking.)

One way or the other, she definitely added a lot of material in the map that a GM can use to flavor the travel between the books' POIs.