#map-making

[theresattrpgforthat]

Ello'. I'm looking for a game that can simulate city living v. well, with the focus on the city itself while still leaving room for like, adventure stories and such. Thank you, and I hope you have a good evening- thanks for all you do.

Theme: City Living.

Hello, I don't have much to add onto this one so let's just get to it!

A City of Shining Stars, by ehronlime.

This is a game about a City. It’s also a game about superheroes and villains and extraordinary people dealing with dangers no normal human could face on their own. At its heart though, it’s about a City. And the thing to remember about a City, is that more than its geography or its history, what really makes a City is its people.

If you want a game that builds a city for a superhero setting, then you might want to check out A City of Shining Stars. This game is a gm-less, card-based came that primarily resolves around a deck of cards to provide questions that your group will have to answer every turn, including questions about residents, locations, and social and cultural landscapes. I think that if you like games like The Quiet Year, this game is definitely in your wheelhouse.

Polis, by Black Armada Games.

Here is a settlement. It is unique and filled with potential. And from this settlement you are going to grow a city.

This is a game about the rise and evolution of a city. You will start with a simple map of a settlement, with its surrounding terrain and a some starting details. Over time you spark its growth, and watch it grow and change over time into a full-fledged city. You will populate it with vibrant cultures, build beautiful buildings and neighbourhoods. You will shape your city with festivals and monuments, wars and revolutions, bounties and catastrophes. With each change, the city will evolve and respond until you have something truly unique.

Polis has a number of elements that you’ll be filling out and keeping track of as you play. This includes the Cast (social groups of NPCs), the Timeline (the list of events that play out), the Almanac (a series of conditions that may affect the city), and the Map (the geography of the city, likely drawn as you play).

I don’t own this game so I’m not sure what the gameplay looks like, but Black Armada Games has a number of games that really hit it out of the park, so I expect Polis to be just as hard-hitting and satisfying to play.

City Planning Department, by Kaelan DM.

By opening this binder, scroll or digital thought-form you have taken the first crucial step to planning your next city. Working for the City Planning Department is at once a deeply rewarding and gruesomely punishing task. But with the help of this simple guide, in no time you'll know all the ins and outs to making a place whose inhabitants can thrive.

Now, a city is only a city because of the order imposed on it by whoever is in charge. You, the city council, are those people. Were you elected? Appointed? Summoned? Who cares? You're here now and you're ready to do some local government!

A game about city management and its problems, City Planning Department evolves around a map that each player takes turns adding to - or at least, attempting to add to. On your turn, you will have a chance to propose a new addition to the city. However, other players can dispute your addition, which, if there is enough agreement, can waste your entire turn. On the other hand, if the dispute is not seconded, then the person who brought up the dispute loses their right to dispute in any future turns. Each player also has a role on the council; either chaotic, neutral or orderly. These roles can inform your character goals, and change the trajectory of the city as a result. I think this game can really replicate the difficulty and frustration of attempting to get something done in a bureaucratic setting.

City Planning Department is also setting agnostic, so if you want to run a cyberpunk city or a faerie council, you can do both of these things!

They Call This The City, by HB.

There is no one way to see a city. In fact, the multidimensional and complex nature of cities has made the idea of the City an eternally fascinating subject of art, science and engineering alike. A city definitionally contains literal and metaphorical multitudes, a hyperobject that, as it happens, also makes for a hell of a game if approached playfully.

This is the aim of They Call This The City, a GMless, character-free game for one or more players about fooling around with graphs.

This is the first time I’ve seen a game that uses graphs and charts as a central game mechanic for play, and I think it could be very educational in teaching people both how to read data and how to chart it. As you play, you will create graphs to represent different aspects of the city, such as how many of a certain feature there are, who has access to certain resources, what average occupations look like, etc. There’s also optional info-graphics that you can use to illustrate inequalities in the city, and the ways the civic infrastructure disenfranchise some of your residents. Finally, there’s a stage at which the players will have to declare one of the graphs to be incorrect, and then describe how it doesn’t accurately portray information.

Overall I think this game is very unique and can work as both a city-building tool as well as an educational experience to talk about how we portray information.

Together in the Ancient City, by Takuma Okada

A tabletop roleplaying game about exploring the many districts of a vast and ancient city. Uses a standard 52 card deck and a six-sided die. For 2 players.

This game is a duet enhancement of the game Alone in the Ancient City.

Together in the Ancient City is a great way to play a city-building game as only two players. Each player will take up a specific role every time you visit a new district, but you can switch between the roles when you move on. You use a d6 and a pack of playing cards to generate new districts, but I think you still get to determine details about each district you visit.

Overall, I think this game feels a bit like you are a pair of tourists exploring a city together, so if you want something lighthearted and exploratory, you might like Together in the Ancient City.

the city begins to exist, by kay w.

the city begins to exist is a two person city building conversation. In this game, two players build a city together by asking and answering questions, switching roles from the person asking questions to the person answering them as you go. Each person will, in each of these roles, help build and expand the idea of a city based around a single theme.

This game can take a variable amount of time, as it ends when the players feel ready to end it. It could take as little as an hour. It could take several hours, or be extended across several play sessions. It is suited for in person or digital play, as players either pass a notebook back and forth or work together in a collaborative document like Google Docs.

Using a tarot deck and a d4, the city begins to exist allows two players to switch between two roles through every turn, with themes and questions prompted using different tarot cards. The game also comes with a Google Docs template, so I have a feeling that as long as you have a way to share a tarot deck, you should also be able to play this game online!

Foretold: The Mayor of Elphame, by Groundhoggoth.

Every big city has districts with their own character, where the immigrant population settled and made a place like home. Whether it’s Chinatown, Little Italy, the French Quarter or somewhere else, it’s a little piece of here that feels like there.

Elphame is something like that, a place where fairytale beings and their descendants have settled, making a home for themselves in the world of mortals. Their magic is weak or atrophied, but they still carry themselves with pride and wear their differences like medals. Times are changing though, as the city grows and prospers on all sides, providing new and unfamiliar opportunities to the younger generation. The community looks for guidance in these troubled times; will you be the one to take the wheel and steer Elphame safely into the future?

This game zoomed in on one neighbourhood of a city, a neighbourhood full of fantastical characters. The Mayor of Elphame revolves around prompts drawn randomly and answered, with each answer meant to represent a story about something that happened in the neighbourhood. Players can choose to leave threads hanging or answer only part of the question if they want to give other players a thread to pick up later in the game.

If you want you might even be able to play this game multiple times, building a different neighbourhood each time!

Also For Your Consideration...

A City Upon A Hill, by Hunter J Allen.

I’m sorry did you say street magic, by Caro Ascercion.

A Traveller in the City, by Palleon Press.

Aurora, by World Champ Game Co.

Station: A Game of City Building, by Tin Star Games.

Explorers of the Forever City, by Sam Robson.

My Town-Builders Recommendation Post.

My Map-Making Recommendation Post

[plotbunnygames]

We just released our newest TTRPG: Dolly, We Bought a Dream House!

You are a group of Dollys in a pinktastic plastic world who bought a Dolly Dream House to move in there together... 🎀

GM-less map-drawing story game for 2-6 players

Zero prep necessary, just start playing

Flexible play time from 1-4 hours

Suitable for both adults and kids

Dolly, We Bought a Dream House is available in both English and German on Itch.io, and you can also get a printed version over at plotbunnygames.com! 🎀

The game consists of a 16-page PDF in A5 format. Inside you'll find:

23 random roll tables to create your fabulous Dollys and find out what they'll encounter in their brand-new dream house

Instructions for play

An example of a finished dream house map as inspiration

10 illustrations for the proper Dolly Dream House Vibe!

Screenreader-ready with image descriptions, PDF tags, internal references, and external links

In addition to that, you need a bunch of six-sided dice, something to draw your map on, and optional pink accessories for everyone. 

Any similarities with the pinkest movie of the year and a certain fashion doll are of course entirely coincidental! 🎀

Game Design and Writing: Jasmin Neitzel and Andrea Rick (@this-curiouscat) Illustrations and Layout: Andrea Rick Translation: Andrea Rick Editing: Serina Steinmann (German)

[crowandmoonwriting]

I hate to do this but my paycheck this month will be delayed TWO WEEKS. I am in desperate need, so if you can buy a commission, get some editing, or just want to make a donation it would mean the world to me.

I take payments for coat of arms commissions here, as well as fees for editing, beta-reading, and fantasy map-making.

Feel free to hit me up with commission ideas, or editing help.

[the-ellia-west]

Map-Making For Dummies

In this post, I will explain How I make maps, the first of two methods. I will be making a full world of my book ma

Currently, this Map is the close-up of my map of locations which the story takes place on. This Post is on how to make a map like that one if you're interested.

Step 1: Make a few random shapes, and for islands, draw any in spaces that look a little too empty. (I suggest using bigger paper for fully zoomed-out maps like this one)

Step 2: Edit them however you wish so that they fit the plot if that's what you need. If you're like me you'll need to shrink the shapes to get a good distance between them.

Step 3: Now for the Fun part! Erase the lines and squiggle-ify them. I'll only do the far bottom left one to show you what I mean. Squiggles are very important

Before Image:

Erase lightly so you can still see the vague outline of the shape:

Squiggle-ify:

Now do this for all of your shapes

Step 4: smaller islands! Try and make it look like small pieces broke off of your continents and big islands. Add some smaller shapes all around, tiny dots work too. Just shove them randomly splattered around the oceans and outside of the continents. These make your map look a lot more polished.

(Optional) Step 5: Squiggle-ify the big islands MORE - Create bays, penninsulas, ect.

And you're done! Mostly. If you want me to show how to do rivers, lakes, and borders. I will.

I will also do some hacks on naming Kingdoms, continents, Islands, mountain ranges, landforms, cultures, ect.

If you're going to try it, please show me the finished result~ Thank you and Happy map-making!

[map-making-mcq]

[girard]

the extent that i would be at emo night at sneaky dees every single weekend is crazy. you would think i was canadian.

[spidergvven]

queerness under apartheid

[pachix]

https://www.geoguessr.com/vgp/3007

[druid-for-hire]

[images ID: three images of a comic titled "one must imagine sisyphus happy" by druid-for-hire. it is a visual narrative beginning with someone with wrist pain (depicted by bright orange nerves) working at a drafting table. the reader is shown the same wrist as the person uses it for many everyday tasks such as carrying a grocery basket, pushing elevator buttons, typing, and doing dishes, until the pain dissolves all the panels into chaos. the person then performs several physical therapy exercises until the pain subsides. they sit back down at a desk with their laptop, sigh, and begin typing. a small spark of pain reappears. end id]

a fun little piece i made during the semester and submitted into our school comic anthology! (which you can buy at the Static Fish table at MoCCAFest in NYC ;] ). it's about artists and injury

[lilybug-02]

Final Bug Fact:

The world NEEDS bugs. They keep the soil healthy, pollinate, control pests, and contribute to the worlds' ecosystem. By the end of the century, it is estimated 40% of insect species may go extinct due to habitat loss. Yes, that is very scary. But with even one beetle spared, one caterpillar rescued, and one Hollow Knight comic of all things, things will change. Because I know there's a lot more Dewi's out there than most people realize. Stay curious.

Thanks for going on this adventure with me. ♥︎

First || Prev // END

Masterpost

Comic Thoughts and Pictures Below!

I wanted to put here how amazing and sweet everyone has been with this comic. I finished a 75 page comic in 3 MONTHS. I am at a loss for words. That sounds crazy and it IS crazy. But man was it fun. Even on days were I wasn't able to draw due to fatigue or business, I loved working on it from start to finish. And guess what!? This is my first ever FINISHED comic :D I'm so proud of myself. I know there's some things I want to change and the art is wonky in most places...... but I'm content to let it be. What an amazing summer adventure!

I'm hoping to post the full comic on another Comic website. I may or may not edit some of the art ^w^ So I'll let y'all know when I release it.

Interested in learning what you could do to help your local insects? This is the basic stuff. Maybe make some Insect Hotels if you have the time!!! And never forget to spread the word about bugs. They need our help just as any animal on earth.

Still Here? Well you can look in the tags for little lore dumps if ur looking for stuff like that ;)

[samyazasheaven]

Speaking in the third person... AM -- which is I -- AM is satisfied with the sacrifice. He -- that is to say, I -- will spare the village his -- that is to say, my -- wrath for today. I have -- as I said before -- spoken.

(black and white version under the cut)

[theresattrpgforthat]

I'm looking for an RPG where you make a setting collaboratively as a group, ideally with a roleplaying element. I know of Dawn of Worlds, A Quiet Year and Microscope but I'm trying to cast a wider net?

Can you help me out?

THEME: Worldbuilding & Roleplaying

Hello friend! I’m first going to direct you to two other posts I’ve made in the past, one about Town Builders, and one about Map-Making! Not all of them focus as much on roleplay, but I love a number of those games dearly. That being said, there are plenty more world building games out there that I’d love to talk about, and these three certainly allow for a lot of roleplay!

Ech0, by Role Over Play Dead.

Peace. Kids playing in mech wreckage. A ghost. 

One last journey across an ancient battleground to find a pilot's final resting place.

Ech0 is a game about three children and the ghost of a dead mech pilot, travelling through ruins of old battles, looking for the place where the pilot died. The group of you will craft a world shaped by the wreckage of wars past, with mech bodies embedded into a landscape, transformed into memorials, and (possibly) repurposed into something else. You’ll use these landmarks to illustrate a map and craft a history: do the children know what the war was about? Or has it been lost to history? 

I think this is an excellent game for the beginning of a campaign, mech or otherwise. If it’s a mech campaign, it might be set in the far future, after the war that you’ve already fought, or it might be the introduction of a planet that’s enjoyed a few decades of peace before getting launched into yet another conflict. Perhaps the mechs embedded in the soil will be unearthed to fight again and those children you created for Ech0 grow into ambitious and desperate pilots. It’s up to you!

Orichalcum, by Justin Quirit.

To find our way home, we must sift through the ruins and our memories of the Empire. But in our remembering, we must not forget what we have created for ourselves.

Orichalcum is a tabletop roleplaying map game for 1-5 players. Players will lay out a map of the Empire that oppressed their ancestors and drowned in a deluge of its own making. By remembering what was left behind, they will draw a connection from the past to the present. Their people, the Exiles, have evolved past the Empire's ways, and these differences will become features on each player's map of their island home. Orichalcum is a game about drowning empires and imagining utopias.

In this game, players will use printed “tiles” to help determine the kinds of peoples they represent, and the ways they differ from the Empire that has fallen. Each player will draw five tiles and place three; after each player places three tiles, your characters will go home. 

This is a beautiful game to describe a world after a ravenous Empire has finally met its end. I can see this acting as an epilogue after a campaign has watched the world end, or as an introduction to a world post-apocalypse, as different groups rise from the ruins. The pillars give the group inspiration and focus, and by the end of the game, you’ll have a number of different islands, each with unique cultures and peoples, to draw from for rich character backstories.

Lighthouse Keepers, by Chloe Sobel.

The sea was once a city. The sea is still a city: trenches stretch into the deep, dark and teeming with life, mirroring city-nights above.

In the world above the sea, there is a lighthouse. The lighthouse has always been there.

Lighthouse Keepers is a map-drawing game for 1-4 people about a lighthouse and the things that lurk outside it in the deep. You play a collective of lighthouse keepers living in an offshore lighthouse, a tower that stretches from its lantern high above the waves all the way down to the bottom of the sea in the hadal zone.

The game design is based on Avery Alder’s The Quiet Year and Carter Richmond’s Anomaly. Its themes are inspired primarily by Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under The Sea and, by happy coincidence, it bears several thematic similarities to Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse.

This game has two versions; one with art and one without, in case players feel uncomfortable with some of the sea creatures depicted. This is a horror game - there is something in the water; nobody knows what it is, but everybody fears it. If you want to create a world where a lurking horror grows ever closer, this is absolutely the game for you.

Other games I’ve recommended in the past

Voyage, by Brendan McLeod.

Oldhome: Trip to Turtle City, by Takuma Okada.

[squeezebox0]

After:

Before:

It's been a while since I posted anything but I couldn't let THAT DRAWING go by any longer and not do anything about it. Honestly, I'm surprised at how confident I was when I posted it, so I redrew it.

[mipexch]

i love animating these little freaks

[yourfatherjustinmcelroy]

Rewatching the first few episodes of fhjy because i guess i have nothing better to do and the way you can see how kibblespilly was supposed to be a counter to riz is so fucking funny. Its all there from the very beginning- the attitude, the tactics, the way she interacts with the party and everything- this is supposed to be riz's counterpart to run against him for student body president and have a terrible battle of wits and barbs

But in a twist that is perhaps THE most befitting to her ideal story of running against the boy she chose to be her antagonist, the intrepid heroes just straight up not taking the bait resulting in her instead having to go toe to toe against her idealized perfect rival's aggressive near-flunkie unsubtle chaotic friend is SO FUNNY.

Like I know some people are disappointed we dont get the riz vs kipperlily presidential whatever, I know it doesnt make tons of sense in that specific narrative way. But the fucking hilarious meta that even this didnt go her way is so funny. Because instead of rogue sneaking and behind the shadows plays and spy vs spy shit, we have just outward schoolyard taunts and shit like kristen exploding and jumping over the school and the exact kind of play that baits kipperlily into rage every single time and its so fucking funny. Kristen runs naked through the school and does party stunts and is STILL BEATING HER. She even clearly constructed her party to mirror the bad kids perfectly and craft each of them their own nemesis/counterpart and for the most part it like kind of worked EXCEPT FOR HER.

It must drive her fucking crazy that her cute little plot of rogue vs rogue didnt pan out at fucking all despite ALL the signs pointing to that making the most sense. This was something she just couldnt predict, couldnt mastermind. She got up onto that metaphorical stage for a debate and instead was met with a clowning act. Its so funny. I love fantasy high. Nothing you could have done would have changed this, fourdogs. You never had any power at all.

[lucabyte]

siffrin starts the game with oddly empty pockets for a rogue who has a habit of stashing away every little trinket that isn't nailed down

and a hardy pocketwatch is an indispensable tool for oceanic navigation