Airellian
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Sunny Greenhaven
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Post by Airellian on Apr 24, 2006 7:42:08 GMT -8
I haven't been DMing for very long, mostly for my duration at college. I have a core group of friends I game with, but the games we run have never lasted more than five sessions.
Anyway, these are some observations I've had while DMing. What I want to talk about first is maps. There are no good easy-to-use professional quality map programs out there. Oh, there are programs, but each has its own flaws.
I guess the big one here is Profantasy's Campaign Cartographer 2. The problem with this is that it costs money. However, after securing a not-so-legal copy, I found that I wouldn't use it anyway. It works exactly like an AutoCAD program, so the controls are unintuitive. However, once I worked past that, I was able to get landmasses, roads, and rivers pretty easily. The only problem was getting forests and mountains to work properly. I tried for hours. As it stands, you have to individually place each tree and each hill, which is pretty much the same as drawing them. I also had a good deal of trouble getting elevations to work properly. So, while this program can be "powerful" all it amounts to is directing an artist's potential through a different set of tool. Meaning your mileage will vary depending on the time, patience, and commitment you put into the effort of working with the darned program.
On to the next. After that debacle, I tried out another program I found out about, Fractal Mapper 7.0. This is a little easier to use, but I didn't get fully into the controls, because of a little problem. Fractal Mapper doesn't allow you nearly the same degree of control as Campaign Cartographer. Meaning, the landmasses you draw are not actually drawn by you, they're generated by the program. So, yes, you can designate an area by a square or triangle, but the program pretty much fills in the rest for you. While this may be great for some, for some things, you want to do yourself.
I then saw Rich Burlew's maps when he was doing his New World articles. He used a clean line that was pretty aesthetically pleasing. I surmised that the program he used was Adobe Illustrator, so I tried that out. However, Mr. Burlew is a professional artist, whereas I am not, so of course he'll produce professional quality maps.
What did I learn? You have to have actual artistic talent, no matter what tool or program you use, to produce professional quality maps. Also, they take a long time to draw.
Otherwise, you might as well draw them yourself.
Anyone else have some observations?
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Keith
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Level 4
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Post by Keith on Apr 24, 2006 8:14:39 GMT -8
Well this is actually advice I can use. Creating a fledgling world meself. I have already drawn some maps, and referred to Burlew myself. Adobe Photoshop is what he uses (I'm guessing), which means he doesn't particularly need talent. The program helps immensely. Also, he probably has one of them fancy pen thingies that can draw on a surface and show up on the computer. Personally I take the old fashioned route, despite access to both.
Adds a real kinda feel neh? If they're seeing a map it's undoubtedly hand-drawn. Although that's kind of a lame excuse =P
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Post by Daos on Apr 24, 2006 12:22:19 GMT -8
I just draw them by hand. I never bothered putting any ranks into the Artistic Ability proficiency, so I have no talent at all. (Ironically, according to AD&D rules, I'd be very good at art due to my wisdom score--what does wisdom have to do with art? Oh, well).
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Keith
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Level 4
Posts: 2,307
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Post by Keith on Apr 24, 2006 12:46:18 GMT -8
Wisdom is based on ze accumulation of knowledge neh? Experience too. And art is alllll about practice.
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Post by Daos on Apr 24, 2006 12:49:17 GMT -8
Intelligence is knowledge. Wisdom is the application of knowledge.
And while practice makes perfect, that can be said for ANY skill--whether it's blacksmithing, painting, writing, and swordplay.
There's more to it than that. Art requires some degree of talent, not to mention imagination and creativity. I suppose of the six scores, though, none of them really reflect those things, so they probably used WIS since it either that or INT.
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Keith
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Level 4
Posts: 2,307
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Post by Keith on Apr 24, 2006 13:10:51 GMT -8
Feh I gotta stop thinking in EQ terms. They could possibly apply it to dex too.
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Airellian
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Sunny Greenhaven
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Post by Airellian on May 5, 2006 7:27:56 GMT -8
So, I've been DMing for a while, and it's mostly been the same group of players over different campaigns. One of the things that have annoyed me the most is what I like to call the "Repeated Archetype." There is a player in my group who likes to use the exact same character concept for each game, without any deviation. There is never any variety, so campaigns tend to be the exact same.
Another annoyance I've encountered, which all my players are guilty of, is "The Fad." Whatever the player is currently immersed in is what he'll invariably play. An example of this is when we watched the anime Read or Die. Immediately, one of my players created a character for a new camapaign. His character's name? Yomiko Readman.
A combination of these two problems is what begets the player who happens to be a good friend. When we saw Legend of the Drunken Master, my friend immediately wanted to play a monk. Who drank a lot. And utilized Drunken Fist. In fact, that has been his "Archetype" for nearly five to six years, with him building upon it with whatever movie or book he reads. For example, when Zatoichi came out, he wanted to play a blind, drunken monk. In a currently dead campaign that I was not a DM for, he played a monk named Wong Fei Hong. This has happened across multiple game systems.
I can't really tell which problem is more annoying. When my friend isn't playing his favorite Archetype, he invariably is drawn in by the Fad. When he didn't play a monk, he played an elven bard, who happened to be named Deedlit. After that, he played a thief named Garrett. Yes, his hood was generally on, and he spoke in a deep voice.
I've actually considered giving out an XP penalty to whomever succumbs to the Archetype or the Fad. That, however, would be too harsh. However, I have talked to him about it, but talking didn't really help. Later, he threw me a curveball and wanted to play a psionic.
But that's a whole other problem.
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Post by Daos on May 5, 2006 13:30:31 GMT -8
Of all the references you just made, the only one I recognized was Deedlit.
Anyway, I remember The Fad back in KC, but it's never happened in my game. If someone came to me wanting to play a blue-haired, big-eyed, katana-wielding anime character, I'd tell them to go play BESM. I simply would not let such a character into my game. Unless it was an Oriental setting, but even then, I wouldn't allow any super-sayians, or whatever.
I hate it when people try to cross fandoms.
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Airellian
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Sunny Greenhaven
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Post by Airellian on May 5, 2006 13:52:50 GMT -8
References, for people who didn't know what I was talking about.
Yomiko Readman is the main character in an OAV called Read or Die. She had powers related to paper. I think it's out in the U.S. on DVD or something.
Legend of Drunken Master stars Jackie Chan playing a popular Chinese folk hero named Wong Fei Hong. Wong Fei Hong actually existed, but they put a Jackie Chan twist on his character by making him a lazy, good-for-nothing nice guy who happened to be a genius at Drunken Fist. Now, I don't know if Wong Fei Hong actually knew Drunken Fist or not, but it's a good movie. It was made in 1994, so it came before what I like to call Jackie Chan's "twilight period," i.e. when he started doing movies like The Tuxedo or The Medallion.
Zatoichi is about a blind samurai. I never actually watched it.
Garrett is a character in the video game serios, Thief. He wore all black and had a hood. He would act very thieflike. I never actually played this video game. Apparently, it's a stealth action game set in a Middle Ages setting.
Crossing fandoms doesn't bother me so much. It's when it's so very obvious that it becomes annoying. I don't care if the person got the concept from Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, or any other fantasy setting, if they lifted it wholly without change or creative thought, that drives me crazy. Borrowing concepts and expanding upon them is fine by me. After all, some archetypes are so overused, that you'll bump into something someone's done before sooner rather than later.
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Post by Daos on May 5, 2006 14:02:32 GMT -8
True story:
I once had a player who had a paladin named Caramon Brightblade.
This was long before I knew anything about Dragonlance, though.
His character before that was a good aligned drow ranger with twin scimitars.
Again, before I knew anything about Forgotten Realms.
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Airellian
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Sunny Greenhaven
Posts: 1,284
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Post by Airellian on May 15, 2006 7:22:39 GMT -8
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Airellian
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Sunny Greenhaven
Posts: 1,284
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Post by Airellian on May 15, 2006 14:35:08 GMT -8
So, some comments. I took a Language and Mind course, so I kind of know what's going on when the articles talk about "phonology," "fricatives," "roundedness," etc. I originally took that course as an easy A, but it turned out to be one of my harder courses. So reading these articles took me back to those troubled times.
The articles themselves are remarkably similar. In fact, the layouts are completely the same, almost. What the last two articles do is expand upon some points that the original article didn't, which I suppose is helpful.
Mostly, it's just a list of things to consider when creating your own language. Things like different phonologies, grammar, syntax, vocabulary, alphabet, etc. It's quite comprehensive, and there's a lot of examples of constructed languages.
Seems like something fun to do over a weekend or something. If that's your idea of fun.
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Airellian
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Sunny Greenhaven
Posts: 1,284
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Post by Airellian on Jan 21, 2007 8:13:13 GMT -8
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Post by Daos on Jan 21, 2007 11:12:56 GMT -8
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Airellian
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Sunny Greenhaven
Posts: 1,284
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Post by Airellian on Dec 21, 2007 15:00:05 GMT -8
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