Monday, April 6, 2020

Completed Outdoor Survival Map (For Real This Time)

5 versions I've released
1. Clean (No Grid, no political borders, no battle sites just the terrain, cities, water basin, and the deer locations I decided should be villages and hamlets)
2. Clean with Grid.
2a. Clean with Thick Grid (I think this will be the standard from here on out, thank you Hispalensis on Reddit for the suggestion)
3. My Completed Version. It has everything. Borders, battle sites, grid. This is what will be used for my campaign.
3a. Completed with Thick Grid
4. Clean without cities, keeps, etc... This is so you can place whatever you want, wherever you want (Thank you to Carl Heyl from Saveordie.info for the suggestion, also, totally checkout the Save or Die podcast for an excellent Classic D&D podcast)
5. #4 with Grid

My work is finally complete. I did end up changing some of the deer locations on the map to villages and hamlets where it didn't make much sense to be a battle sight. I made the middle desert elevated. That way it makes a bit more sense why no one has gotten deep into it. I'm also intended for it to run in my campaign using Wayne Rossi's Implied OD&D Setting as seen here http://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2013/05/od-setting-posts-in-pdf.html

So for me, I've decided the middle desert will be a barsoomian land. With all the creatures from the Underworld & Wilderness Adventures book. The 4 kingdoms are fighting to take control of this, and hopefully capture some of its technology and maybe people? for themselves. The City in the middle, I suppose will be something the Barsoomians have built. The swamp in the south west will have some of the prehistoric monsters also listed in U&WA, hence why neither the south or west kingdom have actually captured the swamps. The wizard towers in the middle and swamp will hopefully help explain why these creatures are here. Maybe they're actually from mars, or maybe they're some weird summoned creature from past/future or aether.

I decided on 4 kingdoms based on how cities were laid out on the map. there are 5 in the middle, making a + formation, then 4 on the outskirts (1 on each edge). My intention is to run this using the OD&D lbbs (no supplements) and to experiment with using combat from chainmail. My hope is that the players will eventually get into domain play, and help a kingdom, or create their own? and seek out the area themselves.

Any changes I may make in the future, will likely be naming the kingdoms, rivers, towns, etc... But that will be for my own campaign use. If someone wants it (and I have actually done it) I'll share it, but I figure people will want to make it their own.

Once again, if you like the map, want it in a bigger or smaller size (or even the original), would like some feature turned on or off (assuming it isn't something that is going to take me hours to do it), I'll happily do it and share it. 

The images posted here are much smaller than the originals. It seems to mess with my blog when I share it in the original size. Thanks for taking a look!

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2a

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3a

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5


6 (just preparing room for the future in case there are more requests)

Friday, April 3, 2020

Completed Modernized Outdoor Survival Map

So I finally completed the map. I'm sure I'll have to go through again with a finer tooth comb and fix things here or there, but this looks about as good as I could hope for so far. I honestly thought this project would take quite a bit more time than it ended up taking. I decided to go with an idea of 4 kingdoms matching the 4 cities on the outside edges, and 4 of the 5 cities in the middle of the map, all vying for control over the city in the middle, and the desert in the middle. I'm using Wayne Rossi's implied OD&D setting using the outdoor survival map for my own setting ideas. so the desert in the middle will be filled with barsoomian creatures, that maybe the 3 wizards towers on the entrances have something to do with? Maybe these creatures have something to do with the city in the middle? The swamp that no one has in the southwest will also fit the prehistoric age. Neither of the kingdoms surrounding it have done much to try to take it over. I rolled using the OD&D book 3 Underworld and Wilderness Adventures table for the ponds on the map. This gave us some castles/keeps, wizards towers, and monasteries. The deer on the map I had to put more work into. I divided the kingdoms with the borders, trying to use the natural features, especially rivers and mountains to determine where the borders were. Once I had the borders, I tried to have the deer near the borders be areas currently being contested. Others ended up being watchtowers, or old ruins, either of the current kingdom, or some ancient civilizations. Anyway, I saved the map with and without the political borders for those that would prefer it that way. I am more than happy to save the map with other features removed for those that would like that. Just ask and if it isn't completely unreasonable for me to make the change, I'll do it. I'm obviously not going to spend hours and hours doing something, but most changes I can think of wouldn't really be too much work.

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Updated Outdoor Survival Map

So I have been considering running and OD&D LBB & Chainmail game recently. My thought was to experiment with the chainmail combat systems, alongside the alternative combat system, while using Outdoor Survival map and Wayne Rossi's document on the implied setting of D&D. With this in mind I've been working on modernizing the Outdoor Survival map using Campaign Cartographer. I've been releasing updates on the odd74 boards here:  https://odd74.proboards.com/thread/14039/outdoor-survival-more-modern-looking?page=1&scrollTo=226964

Eventually my image files became too large for imgur to host, so I thought I'd pull out the old blog in hopes it could host them. Right now, I'd estimate I'm halfway done, but I'm sure some things will come up and surprise me and I'll only really be like 10%. So here is my current progress: