Sunday, May 1, 2011

Future plans for the blog and three small dungeons

   Well the A to Z challenge has finished and I made it all the way through so now what? I don't think I can manage posting everyday or even just every weekday constantly. The option to just post when I feel like it is there and I plan to do that but I need schedule so I do post.
   I think that a Monday, Wensday, Friday schedule would be best for now. Also I won't be counting my updates on the campaign I am in as part of that schedule so no cheating and calling it my Monday post for me. I will of course keep posting as the mood strikes me which will probably be a good amount because what I am currently trying to do will probably give me a good number of things to talk about.
   I am try to go and read from first post to current every blog I have in my Blog list thing. Of them I only have three left which are ChicagoWiz's RPG Blog which has around 675 posts, Jeff's Gameblog weighing in at 2608 posts, and The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope which has 590 post but I have already read 221. I also plan to reread Grognardia and Delta's D&D Hotspot because while I have read them already it was a while ago. Otherwise if I have it in my blog list of things I like I have read it all.

   And now for the second part of the title. Just telling you what I plan to do is a little boring so I decided to include some small dungeons I had recently made. I don't really have much a plan for them because I made them while testing a method of random dungeon generation. The two smaller ones are 20x20 and the big one is 30x30 and they are all at 5' to a square.
The above is the first that I made. I like how it looks and I think if I was to use it I would remove a good number of the doors and roughen the walls so it looked like a cave because it would make a good monster lair.
 This is the second and while I like how the one part had rooms 8 and 9 off separate I find that the square rooms detract from it. I had forgotten on this one to vary room width and height and so it looks to meh.
This one I like and may use at some point because it looks nice. Also the center part that contains rooms 18 through 22 was drawn in and not random at all. I figure 18 is the guards room, 19 is the kitchen with 20 being a mess hall. 21 is probably the sleeping quarters for the regular types and 22 is the leaders room and where they keep their treasure. Who lives there though I don't know except they are intelligent and somewhat organized.

   The way I made the maps is hand drawing them then scanning them in and using Inkscape. The doors and room numbers where done on the computer so my originals don't actually have doors or anything.
   As for how I generated the maps themselves I rolled a d20/d30 to decide where the entrance went. On the 20x20 maps I wanted diagonals so used a d8 to decide which way to go. If I rolled a directions that would not work then I rolled up a room using 2d3 for the width and again for the height of the room to be made. I then tried with the d8 again, if an invalid direction came up again I would roll till I got two valid results. A new hallway off of a room would be placed on a wall by using whatever size dice was closest to the walls size and rolling it. I then rolled a d3 to decide which side the second square of the hallway was or if it was only a 5' wide hallway. I then basically repeated this till the area was full. On the bigger map I only used the four cardinal directions so used a d4 instead of d8 and when I had gotten to the end the center was still empty so at that point I filled it in by hand.
   Its a simple system though I probably did not explain it right. Overall I don't think I would continue to use it for other maps though I do like using 2d3 to decide the width and another 2d3 for height. It allows a random sized room between  2x2 and 6x6. I will probably later on redo my method so it works better and because of my interest in roguelike programing probably make some sort of program to more easily test my method. No promises on any of stuff after the maps though.

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