New edition of Manse on Murder Hill now available

If you have never picked up The Manse on Murder Hill, a low-level adventure for Labyrinth Lord RPG, then now is a fantastic time to do so.

Featuring additional art by David Guyll, new cartography by Tim Hardin and a stunning layout from Matt Hildebrand, this edition of Manse is available as a PDF download and softcover print version.

From the inside:

«One night fifteen years ago during the harvest night festival, wild screams and sardonic laughter were heard coming from the lone mansion perched atop Farview Knoll, ten miles north of the village center. Unaccountable lights and high winds worried the knoll. The lightning was fierce and odd-colored.

In the morning, the last sod who had my job found the remains of the occupants, a well-respected cleric and his staff, slaughtered by an unknown adversary. The mansion has remained empty since then.

Most people in the village now avoid talking about what happened that night, except for calling Farview Knoll 'Murder Hill.'»

One reviewer has said of the new edition:

I am serious. It's amazing. The layout, artwork and the writing are top notch. From now on this is one of the modules I am going to go to when I'm designing my own.

Pick up a copy today!

Visualizing distance in your fantasy wilderness

[This is post a cross-post from G+, since I hope it will be of use to others in the future.]

Figuring out wilderness map scales is tricky -- particularly so for hexcrawls. In fiction, characters move at the speed of plot, but in RPGs and wargaming, better precision is needed.

So, use the real world to help you visualize distances that you are already familiar with. That may help you understand how your wilderness map should look.

PROTIP: Google maps is a great tool for this exercise.

Recall that wilderness hexes in B/X "default" to 24 miles. That's because it aligns with PC movement rates well. An unencumbered PC travels one hex per day.

But a map scaled out to 24 mile hexes loses a lot of detail.

A more useful hex size, at least for hex crawling, is 6 mile hexes.

Above is a map of my beloved Bay State. The google map scale here is 5 miles per inch (there is no 6 mile zoom option). Each square is an inch (I could not get any hex grip plugins to work on gimp tonight).

That gives us roughly a 4 square per day movement rate.

As the crow flies, I live about 5 squares away from Boston. Were I a PC, it would take me some part of two days to get to Beantown, if I met with no encounters. A traveler from Boston would need a full two days to get to Worcester (not shown, but east of the map). Hyannis (a town roughly in the middle of Cape Cod) is about 3 days travel. New York City (43 squares)? About 11 days travel (actually 12, since the rules say that PCs travel for 6 days, but must rest on the 7th).

Try this exercise with a location familiar to you. I hope this makes sense and helps make your wilderness maps even awesomer, although I already see a lot of sweet, sweet maps in the OSR community.



Producing games at taskboy

To be clear, this post is about how I get my content in the form of a product, rather than how I write manuscripts, which is a process that should be emulated by no one.

Producing quality content in an attractive format is not easy at all. Some of you might have already noticed this. I cannot do it alone (although a few OSR folks seem to be able to). Luckily, there are scads of talented people lurking about on Google+ (that much maligned social network) who have helped me bring my little diversions to market. Although these people are credited in each publication, I would like to spotlight a few here so that you may hire them to en-awesome-ize your stuff too.

This list is in no particular order.

Illustration: Stuart Robertson

Stuart provided the initial graphics and cover art for Manse on Murder Hill. Not only that, he gave me a ton of early encouragement that I will always be grateful. His work still knocks my socks off and he was a joy to work with.

Illustration: David Guyll

David's high contrast/low detail style unabashedly recalls the mind-blowing work of comic artist Mike Mignola. David's work grabbed me when I first saw it and I was thrilled that I got to work with him. He was very patient with me as we worked through several iterations of the Tranzar's Redoubtcover. I expect even better things from him in the future.

Cartography: Dyson Logos

Dyson is well-known in the OSR community and it took me several tries to finally catch him with availability for a project. His work has become a style others imitate, but he is sui generis.

Cartography: Tim Hardin

I was blown about by Tim's maps even before I knew about Dyson's work. Tim's work shows a reverence for the past while still being innovative and fresh. So glad I could use him to replace my schlocky interior maps in Manse.

Layout: Matt Hildebrand

A lot of DIY publishers layout their own work. Some of them do a great job. I am not one of them. Matt actually approached me, but I foolishly thought at the time, I would go it alone. Eventually, I realized the depths of my mistake. Matt is responsible for breathing new life and professionalism into Taskboy Games. His design aesthetic of clean minimalism matches my own leanings.

Editing: Aaron Beck

Like layout, a lot of DIY folks think they can edit their own work. I know that I cannot. Luckily, Aaron Beck does. He has been my goto editor for Manse and Tranzar. I plan to continue working with him as long as he continues to be available. He goes the extra mile beyond copy editing to ensuring a consistent style and even tone to the manuscript -- almost like a fabled content editor of yesteryear.

That is the Taskboy Games, ad-hoc production team. Assembled on the Internet to do great justice.

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There is another future post I will make about the extraordinary generosity of those that have volunteered to read and critique my work. You might download the publication for the pretty pictures, but the content has been sand-blasted clean by reviewers. Whatever faults are left in the final work are mine alone.