Welcome to Middle World

Found some files I scanned awhile ago. My attempt to map a role playing world from the top down. Done at the time when I first moved to Cleveland and most of my stuff was in storage,because She-who-must-be-obeyed and I were in an apartment waiting for our house deal to close. Didn't have the TV but we did have a yellow quarille pad , some fine point markers and a roll of "flimsy" (similar to tracing paper, the old school equvalent of layers in your draw program). These maps track one large continent with various layers from biomes to population.

Right Side Detail Map with Mountains and Rivers

Left Side Detail Map (unfinished)

Biome Map

Close-up Biome Map (Using Slightly diffent system)

Map of City Locations

Cultural Diffusion from Origin Centers

Population Density

 Although I had great fun generating this map, ultimately I did not actually use it to run a campaign.   I was not really taken with effect produced by the yellow background; I felt I had once again drawn too many mountains, and although the yellow-out helped with rivers it was not going to work on all the mountains. It also seemed that given the ancients preference for water travel that a realistic campaign would require detailing the nearby southern continent as well. However, we also found a new RPG group in Cleveland who already had a DM so I spend next couple of years playing rather than DMing. When next time my chance to DM rolled around I started on the micro-scale and worked my way up. You can read about that in my Great River posts.

Blog of many things

Afraid lately I have been distracted by many shiny objects:

Playing Diablo 3. I really love the loot drop and having so many magic items I have to decide which ones to keep. Reminded me of the fine 3rd edition Diablo Diabere supplement magic item roll-up chart. Someone should make a 5e version of this. Already had some second edition rules for socketed items, but these need to be updated as well.

Playing Darkest Dungeon. Some interesting thoughts for random map generation (although I would use some geomorphic battle maps as well). Love all those character classes and their quirky moves. Working on an Old School Hack version for each of these.

Working on an Old School Hack/Skill based power system of my own.

Trying to talk the new Bard in our Tuesday 5e game to take at least some combat skills, instead of another skill baby my Cleric has to tank to protect.

Cataloging all the monster from All the Worlds Monsters and seeing how they stack up against the modern version in Pathfinder and 5e. There's a monster vs fighter combat spreadsheet on Deltas D&D hotspot I could use to check them all...

Grabbing random images for my pinerest page

Trying to skim through the 1000+ posts on my RPG feed

If I manage finish to any of these I'll be sure to post them here.