Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreatLemur" data-source="post: 3934822" data-attributes="member: 28553">Aw, man, the idea of a D&D party serving as explorers and cartographers for a map-making consortium is completely awesome.  I like how it makes a Craft skill central to the campaign, and how exploration becomes the party's main source of payout, rather than loot-gathering.  And, of course, there are lots of chances for all kinds of adventures and obstacles along the way, and probably a big emphasis on all those easily-forgotten movement skills.As for how to handle the map-making checks mechanically, I'm not really sure.  What if you had two skills, Craft (cartography) and Craft (illumination).  The former is used to make the maps more useful, and the second simply makes them more attractive.  Both serve to make the resulting map more valuable, but only the former actually contributes to a bonus for Survival and Knowledge (geography) checks or whatever.  Maybe Craft (cartography) checks would be made daily, while Craft (illumination) is only attempted once they've got a completed map of a region?  Or you could make it a little bit more complicated, and have a skill like Craft (terrain notes) or something be the check-every-day skill (the one which all the characters would contribute to, perhaps), while Craft (cartography) is used at the end to pull all those notes together and produce a usable map.  A larger pool of total Craft (terrain notes) check results would, naturally, provide bonuses to the Craft (cartography) check.I'm just thinking out loud, here.  I'm not really sure what the best method would be.  I think something worth asking, though, is just what you want this subsystem to offer the players, and how you want them to respond to it.  Should it be something that just encourages them to put more points into Craft (cartography), or should there be some kind of strategy in how they use it?  Should they be able to choose to stay longer in an area in order to make more checks and get a larger total (ignoring the whole divide-by-the-number-of-days idea for the moment)?  Should they do their best to move slowly and avoid combat or other distractions in order to get the best situational modifiers on their daily checks?  Maybe the paraphenalia involved becomes important: A telescope or a good set of color inks might offer bonuses on checks, while the resulting stacks of paper one or all party members end up carrying become liabilities they have to worry about defending from fire, water, and theft.Hm.  Maybe the organization they're working for would like some kind of bestiary or naturalist's guide as well as a map, giving them reason to want to encounter--although not necessarily fight--the local creatures.  Maybe some kind of Knowledge (nature) check would be required to take notes for that, and then Craft (writing) and Craft (illumination) to actually produce the book?You could definitely get really complicated with this, if you're so inclined.</blockquote>

Verification