The Castellan Borderlands (Updated 08/27/08)

[jdrakeh]

This project has slowly taken on a life of its own. After some actual play and feedback, I've switched it over to Risus, though I'm compiling a website that lays out everything in a system neutral format (HTML only), along with links to the documents for BD&D (RTF, PDF) and Risus (PDF), so readers can ostensibly use it with any system of their choice. See my most recent post for more details.

 

[jdrakeh]

And here is a bit about races. . .

Races

All of the default character races as they are presented in the Holmes Basic Edition manual are present in the setting, though as that reference work does little to provide any kind of a setting context for those races, I do so here.

First, it is important to note that the world is predominantly about humanity. This is a conscious decision based upon the numerous statements made by Gary Gygax that the great game itself is (and was always intended to be) a game about humanity. The other races exist primarily to define humanity by way of external reference.

Dwarves:

Dwarves, as suggested in the Holmes Basic Edition manual, are familiar with stone working and subterranean construction. It should, then, come as no surprise that the reason behind this expertise is that dwarves, as a race of people, live their lives predominantly underground. Or, more correctly, lived their lives predominantly underground. Some time ago, things changed.

It is known today that countless millions of dwarves once populated the continent, dwelling in their subterranean empire of UnderEarth. In stories told around dwarven campfires today, it is said that those countless millions of dwarves were driven mad as a punishment for some great betrayal that history has forgotten, turning upon one another with violence in their eyes, and rending each other like monsters.

Today, only scattered outposts of the once great dwarven empire remain, small cliffside cities and mountain top villages manned by the last of the decendents of the Dwarves of UnderEarth. Today, the great underground empire is lost to time, though the few remaining dwarves stand guard over any place deemed a possible entrance to that realm so that the evil sealed away within its walls is never again unleashed upon the world.

Today, dwarves live their lives above ground for the most part, though their racial memory has preserved the many talents of their ancestors with regard to subterranean living and stone work. With regard to magic, it is rumored that the dwarves once mastered a fierce and powerful magic but that this hastened the fall of their empire and, thus, such knowledge was declared heretical following the sealing of UnderEarth.

The dwarves of Angernoth (and other New World outposts) are unlike their greedy, magic-fearing, brethren of the Old World. These dwarves of the New World are the solemn guardians of a terrible secret and the protectors of all civilizations, carrying out a thankless charge in pennance for the misdeeds of their ancestors. It is this charge that forms the core of their being and they will do whatever they must to ensure that it is fulfilled.

[Edit: I know that there are spelling errors here. This is raw, as yet unedited, text from the working document.]

 

[jdrakeh]

Oooo. . . I think I know what the aforementioned Great Betrayal was. Seems that some gods of the New World favored the dwarves and elves over the goblinoid races and secretly moved to obliterate the goblinoid races from the world, while the creator of the goblinoids wraught his vengeance by cursing both the elves and the dwarves.

Totally, cliche -- though, admittedly, that's the point. And, of course, I'll leave it up to indivdiual DMs to decide whether or not this legend of Time Past has any truth to it. Like many creation myths and legends, it may simply be a story. . . or it may not be.

At any rate, I think that it will be the way the peoples of the new world explain certain elements of the world (e.g., the lost realm of UnderEarth, the lack of elven cities, seemingly genetic racial enemity, etc). I don't want to foist any metaplot on consumers, though, so whether or not there is any truth to the legend will be left up to individual DMs.

 

[jdrakeh]

Content moved to new discussion thread. Links removed to preserve bandwidth.

 

[jdrakeh]

Content moved to new discussion thread. Links removed to preserve bandwidth.

 

[Nellisir]

Cool stuff; good start. I like the "back to basics" approach.

 

[mwaite]

Out of curiosity, what map program are you using? I have Campaign Cartographer 3 and find it a bit difficult to work with.

 

[EATherrian]

I really like what I see so far especially those maps. I love those style maps, what did you use to make them?

 

[jdrakeh]

I'm using two programs to make the maps. The first is Hex Mapper, a freeware application. I, too, am a former CC user but its non-intuitive GUI and lack of a proper instruction manual made learning to use it a nightmare (and I have experience with commercial CAD applications). In actual use, Hex Mapper simply blows it away in terms of user friendliness and prctical functionality.

You can find version Hex Mapper 1.0b for free download here. I used this version of Hex Mapper (plus a custom tile set snagged from hong's old Ultima site) to create the two maps at the top of the thread. After this, I joined the Hex Mapper Haven Yahoo Group in search of more tile sets, which is where I found the monochrome 'old school' tiles that I used to create the last two maps above (as well as several other tile sets).

The one thing to watch out for is that customizing your tile pallette in Hex Mapper requires some simple (though possibly time consuming) text editing. There are some tutorials at the Yahoo Group that help with this, though (I learned the process in a little under five minutes last night and customized my pallete in a little under twenty minutes).

The second application that I'm using is Adobe Photoshop 7.0, which I used to apply the text, textures, and non-tiled rivers in the maps above. That said, the standard output of Hex Mapper is a 24-bit BMP, so you could easily use MS Paint for these features, as well. I chose to use Photoshop simply because I already own it and it lets me do some things that Paint won't (like fade image background behind text).

The four maps above are the first four maps that I have ever created using Hex Mapper and Photoshop, which gives a good idea of the learning curve (it's effectively non-existant). Butch Curry also has a (I'm told) an excellent series of articles on using Photoshop to create maps, which I plan to read in pursuit of my newly discovered mapping skills. His site is here.

 

[EATherrian]

Awesome work. I use Hex Mapper myself, mostly because it's easy and I do really love those simple hex maps. They remind me of the Expert Set maps which I loved. I never really thought to see what kind of editing I could do, but I'll have to look into it. Thanks for the info.