Hex Crawl Map

I have been reading about Hex Crawls. The only one I can remember doing that was specifically a hex crawl was The Isle of Dread. I played it with my friend Bob.

I would like to do this again, so I have started to work on maps for the Hex Crawl - I think I will use the following as the main map - going deeper into each hex as the need arises.

Maybe, this is what I will use if I play the DCC RPG.

Anyway, feel free to use this in your personal games.

Alianora the Swan-may and the Law/Chaos alignment war

So, I am reading Three Hearts and Three Lions from Appendix N.

Last night I was introduced to Alianora the Swan-may. In my mind, I always assumed the swan-may was a creation of D&D, seeing one in an Appendix N novel got me excited as it would be neat to make a clear connection from the book to D&D. Not so, here is some information about them, seems it is a popular theme across many cultures.

That is not a bad thing, anything that has a common theme across cultures should be easy to incorporate into the mythology of ones own campaign with relative ease.


‘And a chancy place ‘tis for mortals,’ said Alianora gravely. She leaned forward. ‘Which side be ye on?
Law or Chaos?’

Wow, that is a breach of etiquette - she basically asked what his alignment is. Holger answers ‘Law, I suppose,’ which at this moment says to me that alignment should be a tool and guideline, not a straight-jacket.

Also at this point in the story, he's not sure what to make of everything - I am hoping that through the rest of the book the author expands on this and 'Law' is what Holger would have done naturally, without thought, instead of it being a conscience choice. We'll see.

Karameikos Map - Jon Roberts Style

This map, well all my maps, are made with Campaign Cartographer 3. I also have a subscription to their Cartographer Annual which is basically paying for content that mappers better than me make.

I love maps and wish I could make my own 'style', but until that happens I will need to rely on the hard work of others.

Recently the annual was symbols in the style of professional map-maker Jon Roberts and being that I am looking through my old D&D books, I decided to use it for this map of The Grand Duchy of Karameikos. I did a mash-up of names from both versions of the Expert rules, the original had a few of the dungeons named on the map and the 'Blue Box' took these away and added a few more towns, Threshold being one of them.

Anyway, I hope you can get some use from this in your personal games.

Test Run

The other day I was looking at gaming things and came across DCC RPG, I read some about it, and it sounds like a neat idea, I am looking forward to giving it a test run when the Beta is released. Joe mentioned the primary resources he used being Appendix N.

I took out my 1st Edition DMG, and took a look at it - out of all the authors and books, I had only read Tolkien.

That, in my mind, is a shame - I often feel like I am 'Old School' - I have been playing D&D since '83 or '84 - my first experience was when the Player's Book from the Red Box was lent to me from a kid in 6th grade. I was immediately hooked, and at that point I had read NO fantasy. My first real fantasy novel was The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks that was in 7th grade, later that year I would read the Hobbit, I then read some more Brooks, had a great time reading Eddings, and then Dragonlance hit the shelves - at that point most of my fantasy reading would be from people writing specifically for D&D.

I mean to amend this, not that the fantasy I read wasn't good, I have fond memories of these worlds, but I somehow feel that I have missed something.

So, I am going to take the Appendix N challenge - I am going to try to read everything on the list using them as inspiration for gaming and use this blog as a place to post my excited findings.

The other night I started on Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions", from what I have seen so far the Paladin's warhorse might owe it's existence to this novel.

I also like to make maps - so from time to time I will post what I am working on.