Time again to wrap up another year and trying to peer forward into what’s coming in the next. A year ago, I looked forward to attending more conventions and had fears that I would only be able to attend two due to budget restrictions. Thankfully I was wrong, thanks to the support of Patreon members and generous invitations I made it to PAGE, Gary Con, Bergin Man and Gamehole Con. It is such a treat to spend time with gamers, run games and attend and run seminars, and this year I’ve ran games at all the conventions I attended in addition to a lot of online sessions. Online conventions like Virtual Greyhawk Con are also a treat 2026 looks even more promising with a possible five conventions
My Patreon had its second overhaul in 2024. I’ve ben on Patreon since 2017 and only overhauled it once and that was back in 2019 when changed from being a generic cartography Patreon, to one focused way more on Greyhawk and letting the technique behind my cartography playing more of a supporting role. The growth has been slow but steady, which I’m very grateful for, you keep supporting me by making my type of long projects possible.
The now venerable Greyhawk maps will see one last hurrah in 2026, a series of maps for printing. My plan is a series of 24 x 36 inch maps covering the Flanaess and Hepmonaland. The 1:200,000 series of maps I did this year was geared towards digital use, this new series will have larger symbols and text labels to be legible when printed at the correct size, and 24 x36 inch is a good compromise I think, it can be printed at almost any print shop at reasonable rates. Larger prints become both way more expensive and it is harder to find printers that can handle them properly.
After this it is time to retire these old maps and concentrate work on creating a new generation. Never could I have guessed how much use would come out of my old Bryce based maps back in the 1990’s when I started work on them. I’ve improved them almost every year with additions and corrections, added Hepmonaland and took half a year to go over the terrain in Photoshop to improve the garish 90’s colors. I didn’t have color corrected screens back then, and not much knowledge in how to use Photoshop either for that matter. But it gave the old map a new lease of life and its still being used by thousands of players, DM’s, appearing in fanzines and in products on DM’s guild.
Last year I wrote about software troubles and frustrations, and they are still here and World Machine 3 have been my go-to tool for most of this year. Now at the end of 2025 there is finally a new era emerging with new versions of both World Machine and Gaea planned to be released in 2026. Gaea 3 is looking especially promising with lots of goodies I’ve been wanting for a long time, god-mode, meandering rivers and massive parallel computing as well as vector displacement, which the new world Machine has as well. God-Mode is Gaea’s name for massive, tiled worlds which seems to be an improvement to how WM has handled large builds so far. Together with reivers and the ability to process vastly more data effectively means doing things faster with batter results. New code base has finally let the CPU and GPU work on that they do best at the same time while using better memory management.
Game engines like Unreal shows similar progress with much improved handling of really large landscapes full of vegetation and other object, even many billions of them. 30 years ago, I gambled that Moore’s Law would save me, making it possible to create my first generation Greyhawk maps. Now I’m making a similar gamble to do it all over again but in much more detail. Back then it was raw processing power improvements that carried the day, this time I’m foreseeing more of a combination of increased processing power paired with more memory, but crucially better software is where a lot of improved will come from this time.
I will finish the Shield Lands and its surroundings using World Machine, both in a commission version for the new Melf’s Guide and in public version for you guys. In the meantime I will test the new versions, which I will have early access to, and hopefully they offer enough improvement that a new approach going forward is warranted. That doesn’t mean what I’ve done so far is in vain, it will be imported back into Gaea (or what the new version of WM will be called, if that is what I will be using) and improved upon. For the first time in a decade, I’m really hopeful that a new generation of tolls is coming!
This is a long overdue project that I started in 2025, and then it got sidelined a bit when I got commissioned to both work on the maps for the Melf’s Guide and Gamehole Publishing map for their organized play campaign. I had to drop something and Sources what got to be temporarily shelved. I want to emphasize temporarily; it is a very useful exercise for me to go over every label on the current map and find out how it got there. A big part in my goal to improve what I do!
Just like the world at large, which is in a lot of change, our beloved hobby is too. From a new regime at WotC to the fact that TTRPG’s have now firmly expanded into the mainstream to another aspect that is shaping it, and I’m thinking of the fact that the hobby is now half a century old and we have gamers of every age group. Roleplaying was once a thing that young nerds did, now it is a thing anyone can do, and that shows in diversity in what games are being played, how they are being played and by who. I see this as a huge strength that proves how great a thing collective cooperative story telling is.
A new regime at WotC happens every decade or so, last time it happened we go a pivot to digital, One D&D the death of the settings and investor fever dreams. What will happen this time is too early to tell but a few hints are emerging. WotC’s interest in community seems to be coming back, and after a decade of crunch with rules being the focus of their business, my guess is that fluff, the stories and the IP behind it might have a renaissance. Another force behind this transformation that I have talked about before is that when you digitize rules, changing them brings out cost rather than income, and reprogram D&D Beyond with new feats doesn’t bring in a lot of new revenue, it costs money.
A long term prediction I have around this is that WotC is going to pivot towards becoming a platform operator, like becoming the Steam of the TTRPG world, where you want to go to publish your games and content, regardless of game system. We are nowhere near that happening yet, but if you want to grow big and bring in a large amount of steady revenue, be the platform and let others do the work and siphon money off that. DM’s guilds success shows a bit of this, and WotC doesn’t own it, at least not yet. For this to happen another shift in mindset need to happen, for WotC to see themselves as a main custodian of the TTRPG world and realizing they can earn more by growing the overall size of it. I’m not sure this is a good thing, it is probably mixed. It is something I keep a look out for.
When it comes to Greyhawk, we are now back in the limelight again after more than two decades on the sidelines. How long that will be and what will come of it is too early to tell, Greyhawk’s role in the new DMG was to use it as a base for homebrewing. I liked that and its guest appearance along with the opening up of DM’s guild might have been the whole plan. It seems that Greyhawk was more popular than first expected, so the plan shifted to milk some more out it and Adventure’s Leage moved to Greyhawk at least for a while.
As a Greyhawk fan and creator, I’m both pleased and worried about this. For so long I’ve been working away in the shadows using the old material creating a library of resources for Greyhawk fans to use with that material. With a range of new stuff coming out there are both opportunities, my maps and heraldry are in a lot of stuff being published on DM’s guild, and more is in the making some with my direct involvement. On one side, this is super cool and a dream come true; I’m a full time Greyhawk creator. The other side of the coin is that commission work is working with others cutting corners to meet deadlines and designing by committee, less time to immerse myself deep into in my projects for as long as needed to make the best I can make. Working with others on projects is a good thing which I need to get better at, and have a lot to learn from, but I need to balance it to not burnout and maintaining inspiration.
5th Edition D&D have had a fantastically successful decade, but I think its days as the hegemon of the hobby are numbered for two reasons. It is no longer the new cool thing and a lot of players who played it because it was new and cool will move on, a lot of them to something completely different not roleplaying related. Others who have fallen in love with the hobby will try other games, new and old to see what they like the most, this will fuel both the OSR movement for a while longer as well as support a lot of new games. 5E will survive and become a permanent part of our hobby and D&D, but it will not be the undisputed leader for much longer is my prediction.
I made the decision to change the Creative Commons license from CC -BY -NC -SA to CC -BY meaning you can use my Greyhawk stuff for anything including commercial publishing, the only thing required are to refer to me as the source. My reasons for this are that D&D SRD are now published under this license, and even more importantly I wanted my stuff to be usable on DM’s Guild with no hassle. This goes hand in hand with how I see my role as a creator, a resource provider, providing resources to be used as they are or altered to improve in other people’s games, streams or published content.
This approach is important as an alternative to the commercialization being found everywhere, subscriptions and paywalls are everywhere. As a liberal I’m a believer in capitalism, but there are different ways to go about things. Relying on donations is also a great way to keep overhead low, no sales costs, advertising takes care of itself, piracy is not a thing I need to worry that much about. When I have sent messages to seller on Esty and Amazon who sells prints of my maps and heraldry to please include the part where my name and url are mentioned, the stop selling my maps.
This ties into physical stuff, prints and merch, something I have done my best to stay out due to the costs and time involved. I had a collaboration with Noble Dwarf to prints maps and heraldry, which was hopeful but never took off. Mainly my fault since it was a bit premature, my maps where not well suited for prints and I should have insisted on them to hold off until I had the right maps to be printed. What we got was prints reduced in size and even edited to substandard quality to fit a certain print size. This has been a consistent struggle between me and printers, and I know a fair bit about how printing is done. It was my first job back when I started gaming, and I even jumped in and helped a friend of mine here in SoCal who owns and runs a printing company.
Enough complaining, let’s look forward and try to improve things! My current map is not a good fit for printing, and that is something I’m going to try and fix in 2026 with a new series of maps for print. The question then becomes how to organize prints, one way is to just provide the pdf’s and let folks take care of the rest, or should I try and find a printing partner that can handle prints and the logistics around it. This is not a money thing for me; I don’t expect to earn anything but on the other hand I don’t have the time or money to handle it myself. I’m very open to ideas on how to best do this.
I’ve printed a few T-shirts with my logo that I wear at conventions, and I often get the question of where they can get one. My answer used to be Noble Dwarf who printed a some, but now they seem to have gone defunct so now I need to have another solution. Something more stable and which gives me a bit more control since it is my logo on stuff. This is also a task for 2026.
Getting my stuff to you guys effectively is an ongoing struggle, big files are not what the Internet was built to handle. Download managers make it possible, but it is an annoyance that they are needed. Notion is in many ways a better content delivery platform, for now at least. It was not really bult to distribute big files, but it works well, things are searchable and it handles downloading rather well. My skeptical nature tells me Notion work so well because they are still in the phase of building a userbase, which means offer a premium experience to attract more users. Sooner or later, they will have hit their limits and then their mission will be to squeeze a profit out of each user and then bandwidth will be at a premium, but for a while longer I think it can be a useful service to manage my content.
The next GIS project after my print version of my old maps will be to set up a test Geoserver. The first step will be to convert an old desktop of mine into a Linux server and run a Geoserver on it to test out the tech. The end goal is to provide a kind of Greyhawk version of OpenStreetMap, the ability to use my Greyhawk related maps in a browser and directly in QGIS without having to download massive files. Again a base service intended to be built upon, for DM’s to make their own maps on top of. I want to use it inside my Obsidian.md campaign vault as a map that I can place pins and markers on while adventuring.
As an alternative to streaming the data, I want to set up a cloud service for those of you who want access to all the raw data, heightmaps, mask textures and so on. This is terabytes of data so it can’t be openly distributed on the internet. It will be a select set of my Patreons who are on my top tier who will get access to this service, the kitchen sink! I’m looking into what service to use for this, a strong candidate is Syncthing but there are others, paid or open source.
My little side hobby turned out to be very popular, and so far, I have done 471 shields and symbols. Recreated all the exiting Greyhawk heraldry I have found and then added a bunch of my own design to the collection. There are still more to do, Iuzian henchmen, various actors and factions from Ivid the Undying. My take on Furyondy is in the making with all its baronies, in my Furyondy the provinces have been reconstituted into proper earldoms, counties and arch-baronies, each of them consisting of several baronies.
Heraldry is fun and can be done in hours, for the most part. At times I found myself going down a rabbit hole, only to realize I spent pouring over old Greyhawk notes for hours trying to find out more about Gorsend or something.
Another side hobby that have taken on a life way bigger than I initially imagined. It grew out of my habit house ruling 3rd Edition and Pathfinder 1st Edition for nearly 20 years, and when D&D Next, Level Up A5E and PF2 was coming out started to realize that it was time for me to take the plunge and start creating a version of fantasy role playing rules that would work well at my table. The rise of 5E and it becoming Creative Commons made me decide to use 5E and A5E as the base to work from, to keep compatibility.
Now years later and after nearly 100 sessions of play online and at conventions, a system standing on its own has emerged. Nuanced, slightly tactical, multilayered, player managed and surprisingly fast paced even at high level. This are the positives I take from the first Alpha version played over the last two years. Pain points are high numbers that should be brought down for even faster play, and more streamlined way to handle armor and its hardness. Reducing the effort needed to handles the things opens up for more damage and drain types, and plans for an tier of epic play. I want rules that handles everything from humble beginnings as villagers struggling to handle everyday life, to arch mages and champions of righteousness able to take on the powers of the world and beyond.
30 levels of progression and the Divine Tiers for those with even higher ambitions. The Divine tiers are mostly intended as a way to handle how powerful beings are created and how they interact with the world, but nothing stopping a GM to allow that for players to use as well. In my campaign I intend to use that to handle the powers of religious factions, sect and their patron powers, both collectively and individually. This is where Domain and Pact magic comes from, so as player characters grow in power and rely on this power they are part of the system, I want the GM to have tools to use when playing that out.
My plan for next year is to start running playtest session using Alpha 2 version of the rules, first out will be PAGE in two weeks. Later this spring I want to make a first public version of the playtest rules available in markdown and simple pdf. Not the full rules, but low and mid-level play hopefully up to 10th level. The main thing to limit this are spells, it takes a lot of time to re-edit spells and currently I have 345 spells to go over. Key bits are things like healing and resurrection which I have tweaked quite a bit from the first playtests when I wrote the current versions. Monsters are another important bit that takes a lot of time, currently I have about 40 monsters and generic NPC’s that I have used so far whose statblocks need to be updated. Making monsters is fun but time consuming but seeing them in action in the next play session makes it all worth it.
Never thought I would be into game design, but after playing for over 40 years I now know what I need for my games and have the experience to try and create that tool set. I don’t think Hawk Tales FRP will be a widespread success, I’m designing it to be a good ruleset for the type of games I want to run, gritty sandboxes with long term play and lots of world interactions. Rules that know their place, in the background making things keep happening and guides the action, provide options and inspiration. Not by being fancy and cool, but by just making it happen.
Working on my own rule set has forced me to analyze my own play, and what I want out of it, very rewarding. Thank you all who have participated in playtesting and giving me feedback and advice!
My mapping streams on Fridays, co-hosting on the Lord Gosumba channel are a great way to reach out and interact with you guys, it takes a few hours every week, and it is well worth it, it is both community building and advertising at the same time. I’m going to have more private streams and workshops in 2026, so keep a lookout for those.
Thank You!
Thank you so much for your continuing support, it means everything to me. I wish you all a Happy New Year!
I added Hepmonaland to my now old map of the World of Greyhawk in 2018 which was all done using Photoshop. The last bits of terrain using Bryce 3D was added in 2013, even though I have updated it every year since, the map is now old and in need of a replacement, not more cosmetic updates. It has been my main mission to do this for over a decade, trying to figure out what is possible and how to best go about it. It needs to be fully 3D, highly detailed, and have all the data needed for GIS, game engines and so on. A decade ago World Machine had been recently released; I saw its potential and started my quest to learn to use it. A decade of experimenting, trial and error and a long slog to try and get it to create the vast expanses of realistic landscapes I craved. I was ready to give up many times, both due to the complexity trying to overcome all the issues I encountered, and the render times involved. In the beginning it took me over 24 hours to render a 16K area on the computer I had back then, today, thanks to both better software and hardware it takes a bit over an hour.
During this decade I’ve mapped Midgard for Kobold Press which forced me to get stuff done within a certain time, and I where determined to move from Bryce with the Midgard project. For a year I lived with Southlands learning World Machine, and after a restart 8 months in I scrambled and got a decent continent done at the end of the year. Look closer at it though and there are no small rivers, just the major ones that are not much more than lack of land creating more sea level. For the main parts of Midgard, I refined my technique a bit, but it was still very basic getting stuff done in time. I knew I wanted more for my next set of Greyhawk maps, proper lakes and rivers, and real 3D terrain.
The greatest hurdle to overcome was lakes and rivers, to make them flow naturally and forming drainage basins like real rivers. It has taken me thousands of hours to get it to work, but eventually I figured out workarounds that produced a more than good enough result. The key was to break down the effort into stages and then set up a workflow to manage data sets, masks and templates to make sure quality and efficiency could be maintained throughout a multi-year project to map the World of Greyhawk. The last five years I’ve used Shield Lands in my campaign as a testbed to see what works and how to get it done effectively. The results have been great, but with lots of work, over time I have figured out how to do things in a smarter way which gives me the results with a bit less work. I’ve also, thanks to your support, been able to upgrade my hardware. So now I’m using two powerful desktop computers, both capable of rendering effectively, which means I can work on my main machine, and let my side machine render in the background. I have a third older desktop that I’m using for streaming, email and such, which will be replaced by a new laptop. I’ve ordered a Framework 16 which will come in December. It will be powerful enough to load and preview even the largest of files, so I can show more than screenshots at conventions.
I start with loading my current Flanaess map into World Machine, as a guide. Still prefer WM3 for this stage it is reliable and able to provide stable previews but will use both WM4 and Gaea for special terrain creation that can then be imported back into WM3 and placed in the terrain. World Machine is still the best when it comes to large area terrain creation, but Gaea is closing in there might be a reason to shift to it for this step too in the future.
Key bit here is to set up multiple parallel chains of fractals, various filters and erosion nodes, blend them together, make tweaks when needed and add extra erosion here and there to increate variation and realism. I’m including lakes and rivers in the previews at this stage to make sure that the terrain is leveled in the right way to match existing maps, but no rivers will be included in the resulting Stage 1 heightmap. For this stage I realized (after a lot of trying) that tiled renders didn’t work so I was limited to 16K (16,384 x 16,384 pixels) in size and making it cover a bit over 100 miles gives me roughly 100 feet per pixel. Not perfect but good enough detail for a base heightmap that can then be further refined later. When I have rendered an area, I’m importing it back in World Machine when doing the neighboring areas to try and make them fit together. This means I might have to go back and forth and re-render, import back, adjust and re-render again until they fit together. It is a process with some pitfalls but I’m getting better at it and have now covered a sizable part of the Flanaess from Furyondy to the Griff Mountains
When the base heightmap is done it is time to use the power of World Machine 4 and import several base height maps covering an area over 500 x 500 miles. This makes it possible to do a tiled render that is 64K in total which is a great base for local area and settlement maps with a much higher level of detail. Keeping records of exact location of these areas, file and directory naming schemes are vital, often half a dozen renders or more are needed to get a good enough result, so version marked files and routines for where to put things are needed, as well as purging the leftovers to fee-up hard drive space. Each 16K area render is around 6GB, and now I have 26 of these areas either done or well under way, with all the renders done a bit over 300 GB for Stage 1.
Even with my best efforts in step 1, the different Base Heightmap are not going to fit together perfectly, so before full resolution tiled render two steps of error correction and refinements are needed. Blurring, using fractals to add new terrain features to hide the ugly bits, erode again, and in some cases just lower the terrain to adjust coastlines are the tricks needed at this stage. If nothing else works, Photoshop editing of the heightmap is the last resort. After a day or two of work a dozen or so 16K areas have been successfully blended into a single heightmap, more than 500 x 500 miles ready for the next crucial step, water.
This is a very interesting part of map making when the landscape starts to come alive, with lakes, rivers and coastlines. It is also very frustrating, rivers have a tendency of flowing in direction you don’t want, and lakes rarely form where the source maps have them, so tweaking the terrain might be necessary. In extreme cases it might be needed to go back to Step 1 and redesign an area again from scratch, but most of the time all that is needed are slight tweaks here and there to get things right. When I’m happy with the preview I set up exports for all the masks, sea mask, lakes rivers, a separate height map for water depth and a simple colored weight map that can be used later to help with texturing.
At this stage it is time to extract and edit all the data, height masks created so far and then generate all the additional masks needed for texturing and detailed maps that I want to create using this base data, because it is only a collection of height data and masks at this stage. I set up additional erosion devices of various types like coastal, water and wind based, not to change the terrain but to use the data from them to generate flow, wear, soil and deposition masks. This will guide texturing by providing data for placement of vegetation, fallen boulders, bare rock and more.
Now it’s time to take a closer look at the edges and overlapping areas of each of the full resolution tiles, this time it is mainly lakes rivers that are of interest. The tiling makes lakes that cover more than a single tile often run into problems with shifting surfaces that need some TLC to establish the correct even surface height and extents. Importing all the data into a new WM4 file makes it possible to see the terrain in 3D to make sure it looks right. Rivers often have similar issues across tile borders which also need to be blended, either in WM or by painting on the masks using Photoshop. Very similar to the correction of Step 2 but less drastic since at this stage I’m working with already rendered heightmaps, not fiddly fractals.
A special case are rivers that flow down steep highlands and escarpments, which World Machine always makes flow down along the slope of the cutting into it evenly the whole way. Sometimes this is natural and the right thing, but in places water would erode it into the slop in a more step-like fashion forming a waterfall. This needs to be done manually using WM and at times Photoshop, which makes rivers look way more natural.
When all the errors have been fixed and the data extracted in the forms of height- and depth maps and masks, it is time to bring in the colors. This is my favorite part when tings truly come to “life”. It is difficult and often takes several attempts, but trial and error that are setbacks at first often leads to new discoveries that can be used later for different areas. The colors of a world are closely tied to its climate, geology and the creatures living there, so when you have a set up for one tile, it neighbors can use the same setup, just feed the different in-data and then do small tweaks to compensate for latitude, closeness to large bodies of water, rain shadows and other local conditions.
To be sure I render a lot of texture variants each, for rock, water, flatlands, highlands that each cover everything. Then I use the mask data in Photoshop together with the powerful blend modes, opacity and further tweaks of color, light, contrast and more. To work with textures in Photoshop makes it possible to work in real time at full resolution, which is powerful. When things don’t work out a bit of manual editing here and there is always needed, and even preferred, it makes things look more varied and artistic, which in my opinion improves beyond what fractals and procedural can achieve on their own.
This base map and its data will serve as my new base to work from. Whether it is coastlines and major rivers for a simple spread map, or all of it for a city map, it will be very useful to keep consistency and speed up the result. I’m striving to use standardized data formats as much as possible so what I’ve created now can be useful for a very long time and in many different ways, in Photoshop GIS, on the web, a VTT, to be printed and in game engines.
My goal is to keep Greyhawk the best mapped fantasy setting in the world, we are not there yet. Both Midgard, Middle Earth and Forgotten Realms are competing for this title and in some ways ahead of Greyhawk, but there is hope that we can change that in 2026 and 2027. With your help it can happen, and this blog post goes over the process a bit. I’m working hard on a part of the Flanaess for the Melf’s Guide which will be a first use of this effort, whish is a dream commission to work, but still only a minor part of this project that I plan to work on for the next five year. Then I hope that the base map of Oerth is available for everyone who wants to download and use it.
There will be deep dives into each of the stages here in future posts, and if you want to see it in action. Well action is to push it, it’s more like watching paint dry, but if that doesn’t deter you please stop by my Twitch Channel https://www.twitch.tv/anna_b_meyer on Friday evening @6pm PST.
Thank you again for all your support!!
As an Elven fan I’ve always had a special affinity for bows, and keen on trying to make them interesting and powerful assets in the game without making them overly powerful. After a bit of a rocky start, I have now updated the rules governing missile weapons, making them fit into the game better. The missile weapons in rules so far are bows, composite bows, crossbows and blowgun. There might be others to add, but for now that’s what I have included. There are lots of ways that weapons differ, range, rate of fire, ammunition, how they are propelled, size, ballistics and more. I have grouped them into Bows, Crossbows and the Blowgun being the odd one out is in the special weapons group together with other odd weapons.
Shortbow - Properties: Missile, Heavy, Indirect, Ranged (60/400), Two-Handed, Snipe - Damage: d8 piercing – Slots: 1
Composite Shortbow – Properties: Missile, Compounding, Heavy, Indirect, Ranged (50/300), Two-Handed, Snipe - Damage: d8 piercing – Slots: 1
Longbow – Properties: Missile, Heavy, Indirect, Ranged (120/800), Two-Handed, Snipe - Damage: d8 piercing – Slots: 2
Composite Longbow – Properties: Missile, Compounding, Heavy, Indirect, Ranged (100/600), Two-Handed, Snipe - Damage: d8 piercing – Slots: 2
Greatbow – Properties: Missile, Heavy, Indirect, Ranged (160/1000), Two-Handed, Snipe - Damage: d8 piercing – Slots: 3
Hand Crossbow – Properties: Missile, Compounded Loading (1 Attack), Ranged (30/100), Snipe – Damage: d4 piercing – Slots: 1
Light Crossbow – Properties: Missile, Compounded Loading (2 Attacks), Ranged (60/200), Two-Handed, Snipe – Damage: d6 piercing – Slots: 1
Medium Crossbow – Properties: Missile, Compounded Loading (Action), Ranged (100/300), Two-Handed, Snipe – Damage: d8 piercing – Slots: 2
Heavy Crossbow – Properties: Missile, Heavy, Compounded Loading (Round), Ranged (200/600), Two-Handed, Snipe – Damage: d8 piercing – Slots: 3
Blowgun – Properties: Missile, Loading (1 Attack), Ranged (30/100), Weak – Damage: d4 piercing – Slots: 1
One of the oldest weapons known to man, but despite its simplicity it is a very capable weapon. There are two types of bows “standard” or composite which refers to both their construction and how they handle. Composite bows are made from laminating multiple types of wood (or other materials) to make a bow stiffer and capable of propelling arrows faster than a standard bow of similar size. They can be made to suit certain strengths (Str modifier) that can then be added to the damage, giving them a bigger punch, but the drawback is a bit lesser control, reducing effective range a bit. Bows also need two hands for use, which might be obvious but still worth keeping in mind.
Another advantage of bows is their range, able to shoot at longer (Long) ranges than crossbows, but again at a cost, and for bows that is a more indirect fire trajectory lobbying in arrows using a high trajectory at Long Range. Useful for hail of arrows mass firing at an area but can be very limiting for shooting indoors, in forests and other restricted areas. Rule of thumb is that a you need a clear line of fire at least half as high as the range. Bows differ in size, and for simplicity (and D&D tradition) normal bows are offered in three sizes, short, long and great. Composite bows are too stiff to be made great, but exceptions for exceptionally high Strength could be made. Size matters both for encumbrance and limits how you can use it, for instance Greatbows are too big to be used effectively on horseback.
The arrows used by bows are roughly all the same size and inflict the same base damage, so they all use the same ammunition. Lethality of bows comes either from their rate of fire, or from highly skilled archers who can use the sniping ability and hit precisely at short range. Despite sniping, which can be done using crossbows as well, rate of fire are bows strongest aspect when using it on the battlefield. Bows in Hawk Tales inflict one Damage Die per arrow fired, and rate of fire is determined by Prowess, the same way melee attacks are, so creatures skilled in the art of combat can do lots of damage with bows but at the cost of using up lots of ammo.
Where traditionally easier to learn and handle effectively compared to bows and can inflict damage even better than bows in some instances. They can also be made smaller than bows and still be effective in combat. Just like composite bows, crossbows come with a Strength Rating, which is the required Strength to be able to load it, which I call Compounded Loading. Crossbows also use comparatively heavier ammunition of the form of bolts and combined with a sturdier bow often made of metal can propel the bolt to higher speeds. This makes crossbows a superior sniper weapon with a better Short Range, with a lessened Long Range as a trade-off.
The amount of force needed to load most crossbows makes them clunky and time consuming to re-load. The time is listed in parentheses in the properties above, ranging from 1 Attack to 1 Round. When you have made the effort to load it, the reward is that is can inflict the number if Damage Dice equal to its Strength Rating per bolt on a hit. Damage per attack is the main strength of crossbows, compared to rate of fire for bows.
The size of the crossbow determines the base Damage Die used, from d4 for hand crossbows to a d10 for heavy crossbows. A crossbow also requires properly sized bolts to be used with it. The compactness of hand and light crossbows and its ammunition can be a huge asset in clandestine missions where the ability for concealment is a key factor. The relatively small amount of damage can be boosted by sniping and poison for a very high combat effectiveness at shorter ranges.
A weapon that is not that common and not closely related to any of the others, so I placed it in the group of special weapons requiring a special feat to be proficient in. It also has the Weak property which means that its Damage Die doesn’t increase with specialization like other weapons do. Blowguns usually rely on poison to be effective, which makes their use more limited.
Archery Specialization 1
You are able to use Str instead of Dex as To Hit modifier when using bows, if you so prefer.
Archery Specialization 2
Spend 2 Exertion points and you can use your Bow to make extra attacks equal to your Proficiency Bonus. You use one Arrow per attack as normal.
These extra attacks can be used to attack more targets or to inflict more Damage Dice on a target.
Archery Specialization 3
Your experience with archery have made it possible for you to double your short range using bows you are proficient with.
Archery Specialization 4
Your mastery of archery makes you a force to be feared across the whole battlefield. You can extend your Threat Range to your Short Range, and use a reaction to attack those who enter or leave it like melee attackers can do.
Crossbow Specialization 1
You are able to use Str instead of Dex as To Hit modifier when using crossbows, if you so prefer.
Crossbow Specialization 2
Your Short Range is doubled when you use a crossbow.
Crossbow Specialization 3
Triple you Short Range when you use a crossbow and are Prone.
Crossbow Specialization 4
You can reload crossbows faster. Below is a table on reload times.
Hand Crossbow: From 1 Attack to None
Light Crossbow: 2 Attacks to 1 Attack
Medium Crossbow: Action to 2 Attacks
Heavy Crossbow: Round to Action
Download this is PDF version: https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/rules/Missile%20Weapons.pdf
October was a hectic month with the Virtual Greyhawk Con 6 and then Gamehole Con, and after I got home Con Crud got me really bad. Recovering from the worst flu I’ve had in decades, but after over a week of feeling terrible I’m back at my desk again able to concentrate and get things done.
In my seminars I showed a few sneak peaks of the new generations Greyhawk maps in the making. The first stage, terrain construction and render are the most time consuming I’m proud to report that I’ve now covered way more than I hoped. Shield Lands, Horned Society, Lands of Iuz and large parts of Furyondy and the Bandit Kingdoms are also moving into the second phase. Better computer and software updates have made it possible to work on several thousands of square miles at the time in this first phase, even using a tiled approach covering over 30,000 square miles. Thanks to your support I’ve now been able to do this for years, gaining experience and knowledge of how to tackle thorny issues like lakes and river systems spanning continents.
Creating a new “base terrain map” of the Flanaess, and potentially the whole planet at 100 feet per pixel is now a realistic project that I’m able to finish within a few thousand hours of work, like a year or so of work for stage one, heigh map and mask for things like water depth and other date needed for further refinement and texturing. I’ve taken large areas Shiel Lands that I’ve been using for my own campaign through all the stages of development to final map to confirm the base data is good enough to get the result I’m striving for. Tested both 100 and 5 feet per pixel, with great results. Especially the 5 feet per pixel is a versatile resolution usable for everything from battle maps and up.
I’m very tempted to go the “porta potty” route and enhance all the maps to this resolution. It is more work, but far from 20 times more work, and finding the right tool and workflow is key. This is where I think Gaea can fit in being superior in erosion detail and texturing, but it is a field rapidly developing with procedural tools able to do this very efficiently very soon. Vector displacement adds another dimension to this, literary, no longer limiting what I do to heightmaps only. Heightmaps work really well for large area maps, but when you move closer and you want to include things like overhangs, caves and even things like trees, this will make that possible with procedural power behind it.
The good part of this is that I can keep working on a solid heightmaps as a start of this process and use then for either (or both) approaches later. So, I will develop as much as I can of heightmaps and mask data covering the whole planet in the next couple of years, and in the meantime also figure out best approaches for the next phase of development. This might be different for different areas, higher resolution maps for the Flanaess, and lower for the rest of the planet, and maybe even higher resolution that 5 feet for areas of special interest. The next version of World Machine offers some tantalizing opportunities, as do Gaea, Blender, World Creator and Unreal, I’m keeping an eye on what is coming and it’s looking promising.
GIS
Now that the first GIS based maps are done, the 1:2,000,000 Digital Edition, it is time to start work on a Print Edition. I’m not sure what scale will work best for print, but I’m planning to shoot for a 24x36 inches format. It is a standard format available at almost every print shop in the country (and beyond), usable in size. There are a lot of things to work out, like overlap, icon and font sizes, and more. I will make a test area 8,5 x 11 that we can print on a normal printer to see what works best, then use the same settings for the print maps. A large overview setting map would be nice too, but there wee have size and cost issues and I must find a new printing partner that can reliably print large stuff at a reasonable price.
Now that I’m feeling better again it’s time to have a GIS seminar focusing on how to use a Geopackage to make your own versions of the map. I’m going to propose dates very soon; I just need to coordinate with a couple of people who expressed interest in this to make sure they can participate.
Hawk Tales
I ran a u number of sessions at VGHC6, Gamehole Con and before at all levels from low to really high and learned a lot, both good and bad. I was a bit worried by the high-level session with characters 15th – 18th level, most rule systems slow downplay to a crawl at this level. I’m very pleased to say that wasn’t the case in our game, which made me very happy. There are still issues, like Armor and how it’s using hardness to reduce damage, this leads to a lot of calculations. I’m reworking Hardness to make it simple with increments of 5.
Missile weapons are another area that will receive an overhaul to make bows, composite bows and crossbows, both more interesting, distinctive, useful and hopefully not too overpowered. More on that soon.
Filling in the gaps in the rules I haven’t covered yet, with things like Encumbrance. I intend to use a slot system and I’m working out the math on that now, setting up spreadsheets to see where I want its limits to be. Wealth and crafting are another area I haven’t developed yet. Crafting is a key aspect for long term play, so it is an important part as well, and often overlooked.
Here comes a first Iuzian heraldry compendium. I had planned to have it ready for VGHC6 but running three games was a bit more demanding than I thought, but here it is. It covers a selection of Iuz' top henchmen symbols and a few other shields.
Lets take a quick look at the individual shields and symbols.
Empire of Iuz
This is the banner of the Iuzian Empire, probably introduced by Iuz wen he returned to Dorakaa and launched his campaign on conquest and empire building.
Dorakaa - Land of Iuz
This is the shield of the original lands of Iuz, and in my campaign they still are and its the symbol of the imperial seat of power at Dorakaa.
Legion of Black Death
My take on the shield of the core military unit of Iuzian power, the Legion of Black Death. The empire shield but using a black background.
Boneheart
On the compendium I made this into a tattoo, which I think is probably a bit more common way to use it, but here is the shield.
Boneshadow
The design is mine, and it is just two mirrored Iuz skull symbols making up a demonic face, and variants of this makes up a lot of my Iuz related heraldry.
Sindol
A fancier version of the double skull design on a black background that I use for the cambion who commands Iuz armies, General Sindol.
Old Phalanx
I call Sindol's elite unit the "Old Phalanx" and gave them this heraldry, here it is in its dark non active variant. The shields are magical and can generate a lot nasty effects. below is how it can look when active in "intimidate mode".
and then "incinerate mode".
Iuz Holy Symbols
Comes in black and white versions.
Althea
My take on Althea's heraldry, the serpent and the eyes, using Iuz standard colors. I think Iuz doesn't allow for much creativity and deviation from what he is using, so his henchmen (for the most part) keep close to their master.
Halga
Halga is using a similar scheme but using a couple of the bones from the skulls instead of the eyes, the same colors but in a different order.
Hallorn
The centrally located settlement that I have Iuz turning into a regional center and maybe even a new capital. Simple back with the serpent is serving as an interim symbol.
Gensal Hordes
The Iuzian banner used by the Hobgoblins and other units operating from Gensal in the occupied Shield Lands.
Deepshuttle Delve
First the old shield from before the Iuzian take over.
and the new shield imposed by Dorakaa.
Gerregak
One of my additions to the Horned Lands, a city north east of Molag and the main settlement for the southern hobgoblin clans.
Urzun
This design comes from the cover of Adventure Begins, and I assigned it to the Urzun orcs from the Howling Hills.
Here are a shields of some of Iuz henchmen:
Kaquziel
"The Snake" has been given a double snake symbol on a bone white background.
Maskaleyene
The vampire Maskaleyene is a simple black shield with a ring symbol relating to his use of magic rings and a simple and recognizable design.
Null
Has the simples of symbols with just the jaw bone of the skull on a black background.
Ormuz
Uses a more flamboyant design, but still firmly in the Iuz tradition.
Kermin Mindbender
Again a simple design, but a little bit whimsical and not a standard Iuzian one.
You can get the fancy versions of the heraldry and the compendium here (154.4MB Zip):
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Heraldry/Heraldry%20-%20Iuz.zip
and simple png versions here (1.7MB Zip):
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Heraldry/Iuz%20-%20simple%20heraldry.zip
There will be a follow up release of more Iuz related shields, I have a lot more in the making. Next up will be a look at missile weapons in Hawk Tales, and a mapping stream tomorrow at 6pm PDT as usual on https://www.twitch.tv/anna_b_meyer
Thank you so much for all the support! 🙂
It is A LOT of work to prep for three games, a bit late but here are the character sheets for the main game Saturday. Two are the same as in the Scout Party game on Friday, Ottumin and Onzek so for them see: https://www.patreon.com/posts/vghc6-recon-game-139894426
The characters for the main battle are tough and will be facing some tough resistance, but they are also my first real battle test of high-level play in Hawk Tales. Designed a mission area that I think will be both fun, challenging and a bit varied to test the various capabilities of this powerful party. So here is a short introduction to the other four.
The character sheets can be download here: https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/rules/VGHC6%20-%20Pregens%20-%20Main%20Battle.zip
Arlen was born in Chendl, into a family of minor merchants who made their original money in Libernen, but when Chendl was constructed, they relocated to the new capital and have been modestly successful since. Young Arlen, who at least possessed a recognized family name, got a chance to get good tutelage but didn’t care much for proper schooling, he was way more adventurous. He spent his money on equipment and training and was a young promising adept of Heironeous when the war broke out, and he quickly got his chance to show what he was made of. Strong, fast and tough, 6 feet tall Arlen rose in the ranks and never backed down from an engagement, and after the fierce battles of Crockport and Redoubt even the king took notice.
When it came to liberate Furyondy Arlen was one of the first to volunteer, and he fought alongside Katarina and others during the very worst of circumstances. This made him a Knight of the Hart and then he was given Katarina’s old job of being special aid to the King, meaning keeping him alive. Arlen is still a newcomer to politics and nobility, but he is considered by most to be the most capable warrior in the whole kingdom.
Young Basdin grew up in Rookroost and begun to hone his career in the taverns and backstreets early in life, and his wit and charm took him to new places across the Bandit Kingdom in his teens. While being careful, handsome and smarts can only take you so far in the harsh Bandit Lands, so when he ended up in Radigast City still barely twenty years old he quickly realized the new opportunities that this city offered. He had just a few years of reasonable success among the city’s more notable establishments when war came and his old homelands succumbed to the Old One. This was the time when Basdin’s life changed from freewheeling youngster to a man with ambitions, he wanted to do something for the people le had left behind in what had now become dark lands indeed.
Basdin built on his theatrical skills, and few magic tricks he knew to become both an accomplished swordsman and studied hard whatever he could find to read. He signed up as a volunteer for the City Guard but barely got a chance to start before he one late evening intervened to save a member of the Gellor’s who had a late night out as well. It ended with Basdin serving at court as an aid protecting important people as they went on business around the city and in the region. This gave Basdin both access to great training, insight into courtly life and its intrigues.
As his skills and reputation grew his duties expanded and eventually sent hi as an assistant envoy to the court in Chendl. Basdin expanded his portfolio beyond his diplomatic mission and took part in the fighting and was honored by being asked to become a courtier to the new Marshal of Furyondy Katarina Walworth, which Basdin gladly accepted. He has served Katarina in various ways ever since.
She is the best archer in the Shield Lands, and when she was in an archery contest at a young age Katarina picked her up and made sure, she got the best training and equipment. Bia has served with Katarina in Furyondy and now in the Patrol as an archery specialist and she has grown into a fierce warrior able to do stunts with a bow that will make even some elves raise more than an eyebrow.
Janzipir is an exiled Johrase bandit, who earned his way with powerful fighters through his skill in planning ambushes, assassinations and the like. He hates Iuz with a palpable vengeance. Iuz's hobgoblins tortured him and left him for dead, and he will ally with anyone who opposes them. He had no real love for Furyondy, but he was given a safe place to plan, scheme, and watch and gloat at the prospect of thousands of hobgoblins being slaughtered. Since Furyondian soldiers did that, he was absolutely honest in the information he gives concerning the actions of goblinoids across the Veng.
During the decade since his settling in Furyondy his respect for his new homeland and its customs have grown and a mutual respect between the Se’eer and his new hosts have grown, and Janzipir is now an established authority in the fight against the Old One. He has also grown in capabilities from a promising meddler in the Arcane arts to a Divination experts who has broaden his skills and is not a very capable wizard and student of Boccob.
Here comes a pdf with all the spells the characters have access to, 30 all in all. You can get them here (339KB): https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/rules/VGHC6%20Skirmish%20Game%20Spells.pdf
A few notes, so lets look at a spell, and why not the most iconic one, Fireball:
Level: 3
School: Evocation
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: Long (120 feet)
Effect: 20 feet radius of fire
Components: V, S, M (bat guano and sulfur)
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Athletics (Evasion) Dex halves
A fiery mote streaks to a point within range and explodes in a burst of flame. The fire spreads around corners and ignites unaended flammable objects. Each creature in the area takes 23(6d6) fire damage.
Specialization (Evocation or Elemental)
+1: 7d6 Fire Damage 30 feet radius
+2: 8d6 Fire Damage
+3: 9d6 Fire Damage 40 feet radius
+4: 10d6 Fire Damage
Damage Expertise (Fire)
+1: Damage Die increase to d8.
+2: Damage Die increase to d10.
+3: Damage Die increase to d12
+4: Damage Die increase to d12+2
Conduit: Arcane , Divine , Primal Strain: Elemental Taint: None
Most here would be normal for everyone who played any edition of D&D, but there are few changes. First one is Saving Throws, which in Hawk Tales uses Skills (and sometimes expertise) with a DC set by the caster.
Specialization is a way you can effectively upcast spells without the need to use up those higher level spell slots. So casters that are not specialized can still make use of this table and upcast, but it will cost them a higher slot. Specialization can be access in two ways, School Specialization (Evocation in this case) and Strain Specialization (Elemental in this case).
Damage Expertise is another way of getting a bigger bang, Arcane casters can specialize in various forms of energy, fire, cold, lightning, necrotic, force and and so on. There are 11 different Arcane Damage Expertise's in the game now, and that hopefully covers all.
School Specialists are the Abjurers, Evokers, Diviners, Elementalists and so on. Strain Specialists are your Shadowmancer's for example. Damage Experts could be a Pyromancer for example. This system gives players a chance to create casters that are everything from Universal Arcanists to hyper focused Demonlogists.
This isn't only for Arcane casters. All schools, except Clemency, are Arcane, but Strain and Damage Expertise are fair game for Divine and Primal casters as well. So a Cleric of Heironeous can get an Elemental Strain specialization and a Lightning or Radiant (or both) Damage Expertise and really scale up his spells.
The bottom row of the spell description lists:
Conduit: how the magic can be gained. Arcane (by knowledge or Intuition).
Divine: Gifted by a deity (or other powerful creature, or entity).
Primal: Magic power gained by attunement to nature.
Strain: the source of energy the spell uses which can be important since the spell needs access to that source. The type of casting determines the key factor of WHEN the source is tapped, which can be critical during adventuring.
Innate Casters access the strain only once, when they gain the ability to cast the innate magic. This is why innate magic is both costly and difficult to learn and limited to low level spells for mortals.
Ritual and Spontaneous Casters access the strain at the time of casting, which can be very limiting when you go to other planes for example.
Prepared Casters access the strain when preparing the spell, which can make them the most versatile of casters, since accessing certain strains can attract unwanted attention. So by being able to prep at home base and then move into a dangerous location you can bring in lots of power and set it off even in difficult places. The problem comes if you run out of spell slots..
This is only a second alpha version but I already feel like I'm starting get to my goal of having a magic system that on the surface for low level beginning players is almost as easy as regular D&D, but as you play, level up and face more dangers and new situations, the magic rules are able to deliver much more depth and flavor.
Some Strains are kind of pseudo systems in a way, like Cerebral (mind magic) that opens up a whole new field whish its own portions and rules, since the psyche is not the physical world, and even the Fey, Shadow and the other Metaphysical Strains have quirks as well. But I'm going to detail them in future posts.
I hope this sounds interesting, and thank you again for all your support that makes this possible!
Hawk Tales uses Hit Points just like we are used to from D&D and similar systems, but adds a bit more to it. A characters health can be categorized into four states, healthy, bloodied, injured or dead.
Healthy
As long as your character has half its Hit Points or more, it is healthy and no need to worry,
Bloodied
When you have lost more than half your Hit Points, you become Bloodied and the negative consequences are staring to show. You can no longer benefit from a Short Rest, and only get limited use out of a Long Rest. But you can still fully function and suffer no other effects, so being Bloodied is only really a problem for long term play when resting and recovery plays a role.
Injured
When your character gets into trouble, the inevitable will happen, you will run out of Hit Point, and then your Character is considered Injured. This can quickly become very dangerous; your level of Injuries increases by one every round until you are stabilized. You also loose Concentration on Spells the ability to spend Exertion, and your movement rate is halved. To stabilize and stop slipping closer to death, you need to make a Death Save and your Injury Level is the DC you need to meet. Death Saves have a number of modifiers to them, like your size, armor, Taint, magic, divine aid or someone is there to assist you, so they are easy to pass if you don’t have too many injuries but the odds can deteriorate fast. You make your Death Save, and you are stable, a failed save means you lose Presence and gain Taint. This will affect your character going forward, and if you run out of Presence your character is now on the journey to the afterlife.
This is how Death Saves works for creatures with a Soul, creatures with other forms of Essences this functions differently in various ways. All the pregens except two have the Essence of Soul, the other two are spirit-based creatures. The same rules apply for NPC’s and monsters so be a bit careful, for example those Dark Souls and Residuun based creatures can and will surprise and challenge you and your party.
Death
I’m not going to cover that here in depth, but Hawk Tales have rules for a character’s afterlife as well, and this is when the metaphysical stats really comes into play. If you have a high Com and Low Taint, and have a soul, you are a priced commodity indeed. Only dying in the right circumstances, or careful preparation, can save what is left of you from being devoured by those whose whole existence revolves around harvesting souls of the unlucky.
There are currently 22 different types of damage (and Drains) in the rules. Most of the inflict Hit Point Damage just like regular D&D, but others drain Abilites, Life (ages you), or affects your metaphysical abilities like Comeliness, Presence and Taint. Vorpal Damage is nasty and inflict Injuries right away, effectively brining your Hit Points to 0 in the process.
During the game I will warn you of potential or direct danger, depending on your Characters knowledge and how well you succeed on your Insight Checks.
Armor functions differently in Hawk Tales, normal armor doesn’t make you harder to hit, it will absorb damage instead, but not all damage. All armor comes with a Hardness, Minimum, Beastings and some also provide a Death Save Bonus. Some armor, like magical or certain forms of natural armor can provide an AC bonus as well, but that is not the norm.
For example, Studded Leather has Hardness 10, Minimum 2, Beatings 6 and Death Save Bonus of +2. This means that what something hits you your Studded Leather can deduct 10 from the damage, but you will still take 2 points of damage. Beatings provides a way to convert Crits to normal hits and let the armor take the hit instead by deducting a Beating. When you run out of beatings your armor needs to be repaired, or its Minimum will be double. Crits are far more common using Hawk Tale rules, so Beatings provides a very useful aid to stay alive longer.
Shields
Shield, unlike armor, makes you harder to hit by providing an AC bonus, and also more beatings so can be doubly useful.
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