How are we not dead yet, part 2

Date: 17 March 2017 Karameikan Calendar Date:19 Kaldmont - 23 Kaldmont
Characters:
Henry, lvl 1 fighter
Ozbrave, lvl 3 M-U
Matt, lvl 3 M-U
Edge, lvl 3 Mystic
Raveling, lvl 5 thief
Dilbert, lvl 1 Lizardman
Bladus, lvl 1 Fighter
Bilbo, lvl 1 Thief
Willem, lvl 2 Elf
Ranulf, lvl 2 Fighter
Dr Happy, lvl 2 Cleric
Daila, Lvl 1 elf

We started the game by leveling up characters who gained enough xp from last session: Raveling, Edge, Ozbrave, and Matt, and Willem.

19 Kaldmont - weather = 10-18 degrees Fahrenheit, low humidity, no winds.
     The party continues on their journey north. In the morning they encounter some villagers running south along the road in panic. One of them has his hair on fire. They scream warnings about a red dragon and continue fleeing south. Party drives wagon off road into forest in attempt to hide, other individuals in party attempt to hide behind trees. They see an adult red dragon come flying over trees and bite head off of peasant who was slower than the rest, he circles around and come back to the dead body, sniffs it, and flies away.
     The party continues on the road north. after about a mile they find small farming village on side of road burnt down. they search the remains and find a small chest with 100 crona. They continue traveling until dark and make camp.

20 Kaldmont - weather = 10-25 degrees Fahrenheit, low humidity, no winds.
     The party continues north. the day passes uneventfully. Towards dusk they approach Kelvin and stay at an inn.

21 Kaldmont - weather = 10-18 degrees Fahrenheit, moderate humidity, no winds.
     The party goes shopping, buys winter clothes and fresh food and a few weapons. They continue on the Duke's Road north. About midday they find a hole that has been recently dug in the middle of the road. It is 5' diameter, and 8' deep. They investigate it for a few minutes and move on, camping when darkness falls.
     At about midnight, Henry is keeping watch. he hears the shriek of an eagle. He wakes up Willem and Dilbert. They look towards the source of  the sound and see a giant bird above them. Henry wakes everyone else up. The bird lands next to the wagon and starts rummaging through it. Willem and Dilbert both throw missiles at it, but miss. The rest of the party is now awake and attack the Roc with missile weapons. It becomes frightened and begins to fly away, but Ozbrave hits it with his necklace of Fireballs. It dies and falls to the ground. The party cuts it up and eats some of it and stores the rest of it in the wagon.

22 Kaldmont - weather = 15-26 degrees Fahrenheit, high humidity, no winds.
     As the party continues north on the road, a heavy mist moves in from the swamp and envelopes them. A horrible rotting stench comes with the mist. After a few hours of traveling they hear noises of combat, and a horse comes galloping out of the mist dragging a dead rider behind it. The rider is an orc armed in rusted mail.
     They go towards the noise and find four overturned wagons, several dead orc bodies, dead horses, deadslave bodies, and deep furrows in the ground. The good from the wagons are all spoiled or broken, they included provisions, and crude black swords. Henry goes scouting into the swamp, and hears deep breathes. he goes further and sees the head of a black dragon looking at him. He turns around and runs away yelling. The dragon chases him, and runs towards the rest of the party. Ozbrave hits it with his wand of fireballs. The dragon runs forward and breathes a line of acid, injuring Ozbrave, Willem, Daila, Bladus, Raveling and Edge. Matt casts a globe of continual darkness around the dragon, the rest of the party shoots blindly into the globe. The dragon comes limping out and melees Ranulf, while the rest of the party attacks the dragon. The dragon takesto thewing and starts to fly away, Matt takes the necklace of fireballs from Ozbrave and hits the dragon, killing it.

     During the whole combat it was apparent that the dragon was suffering from some sort of disease and that he couldn't summon the strength to use his breath weapon after the first attack. When he died the dragon exploded and a bitter acid landed on everyone.
     The party now sees two crude wooden bridges leading into the swamp, they hear voices of orcs on one bridge so decide to take the other. The bridge leads to a smallislandin the swamp with a dead tree and an old statue of some forgotten king. They search the island and find a large silver neck circlet 5' in diameter, with a riddle inscribed on the inside, "Prince and Pauper, King and Knave, equals in his wake."  The statue has a carving of the head of a five eyeddemon hanging from its belt. Ozbrave casts detect magic on the statueand is able to determine that the statue is a construct ofsome sort, so they avoid it.
    The returns to the other bridge and Ozbrave goes forward andparleys with the orcs. After learning that the dragon is deadby their hand, the orcs want to celebrate with the party. They drink and eat, and cut off Willem's hair. The party learns that the orcs are part of the cult of the dragon. THeir cult is trying to ressurect and ancient evil reddragon. A kobpld sect of the cultwas tasked with ressurecting the dragon's human companion, a human wizard named Tsathzar Rho, who had helped the dragon conquer many lands. The orcs had just traded asignificant amount of the cultswealth for a shipment of swords of blight. Swords of blight are made at the forge in the swamp, ruled by Kyleth, an vil sorceress, knownas the witch queen. They give the party a crude map of the swamp, and agreeto take them to the forge. The party campswith the orcsfor the night.

23 Kaldmont - weather = 11-20 degrees Fahrenheit, moderate humidity, 15 mph minds from north.

     The party is led by the orcs across another bridge to a larger island. in one corner of this island is a hut, which the orcs identify as the hut of a hermit that they avoid. the party goes in, the hermit is an ancient elf who babbles about curing a sickness and joining his army to destroy the witch queen. he then commands 10 skeletons to attack the party. They quickly dispatch the skeletons and tie up the old man. They find someof his diaries, most of wich is illegible. what they can read is cryptic ravings of a madman.

XP earned: 313 per character

How are we not dead yet, part 1

So I plan on keeping notes for my current D&D campaign, starting with last week's events

Characters present:
Raveling lvl 4 thief
Edge lvl 1 mystic
Dr. Happy lvl 1 cleric
Willem lvl 1 elf
Ronalf lvl1 fighter
Matt lvl 1 m-u
ozbrave lvl 1 m-u
Chelsea lvl 2 druid

Previously: The party had just finished an adventure in a dungeon beneath Koriszegy Keep where they defeated a kobold cult trying to resurrect Tsathzar Rho, an ancient sorcerer. After returning to town (Luln) they were contacted by an agent of the Duke who had received word about the rise of this cult in his domain. the agent had recently discovered the plans of the cult to perform a dark ritual at the standing stones in the forest nearby. While discussing a plan to sabotage the ritual the agent was assassinated and the assassin escaped. The party continued with their plans to stop the ritual  and were successful, either killing or chasing off the cultists. They captured one cultist and were able to withdraw information from him. he revealed that the cult receives weapon shipments at the village of Stallanford. At this point the party returned to Luln and sold some of their loot from the dungeon. they then took a wagon with more loot, mostly a library that they plundered, to Specularum to find a buyer for the collection.

Date 10 March 2017, calendar date:18 sviftmont - 18 kaldmont

At this point the party reached Specularum  in the late evening after the gates to city were shut. they were able to bribe the guards to let them in. They stayed the night at the Rattlebone inn. The next day they went to various merchants and were able to sell their gems and other miscellaneous items. they were able to sell their collection of books to senator Eipoistlo in the Hill district. They initialyy couldn't find anyone to buy  the Black Candles from them, but were able to convince Ceesar the sage to buy them. At this point those with enough experience found the local chapter of the Adventurers Guild and spent time training to level up. they then left the city and began the journey north along the dukes road. we ended with them about 15 miles north of Krakatos.

Things of Note:
Black Candles - the party learned that these candles were magically created specifically for dark rituals. They are made from the blood of 5 different species, men, elves, dwarves, dragons, and rakasta combined with fat of orcs.

Adventurers Guild: this guild was created in the city of dragons located north of the lost valley. The guild has chapters in most major cities throughout the known world. Each chapter provides training for adventurers, a place to sell loot, buy equipment, and recruit new members.

The Project

First off, let’s talk a little bit about my background. I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons for as long as I can remember (about 20 years). One of my earliest memories is waiting for my Dad to come home from work so I could play my first game of D&D. That first character was an elf named Zeniff. We had later forgotten I played that character, and my family insisted I hadn’t played D&D before we moved to our new house; they insisted my first character was my cleric, Paul. When I was in high school we found Zeniff’s old character sheet, so I could finally prove I played D&D at the old house. Anyway, we played using the old BECMI boxed sets in the Known World, and were pretty isolated from anyone else who played D&D until middle school and high school.

When I was in middle school I played a few games of Alternity, Rifts, and World of Darkness with my older sisters’ friends who were in high school. It was about the same time that I became aware of the 3^rd Edition of D&D and other RPG groups. I DMed my first game when I was a sophomore in high school. It was also during high school that I began to read RPG forums (like ENworld) and blogs. By the end of high school, I had made so many houserules and adaptations from other games in order to ‘fix’ D&D that I decided to create my own game system. The first complete version was finished by the end of 2010; currently I’m in the middle of editing, reorganizing and rewriting large parts of my system. I’ll post more details about it at some point in the future.

On to the matter at hand, I am currently studying Geography at the University of California Northridge. I will be graduating at the end of this semester and am working on my capstone project.  My project will consist of building a web map and analyzing the benefits and drawbacks of such an application, specifically in regards to fantasy and rpg maps. 

Computer based mapping in the form of GIS software has been around for several years. Digital map making is nothing new, but for a long time only those with the right skills and training could make use of GIS software in order to create digital maps. The end result was often a static map, in paper form, or as a part of a digital presentation. The basic cartographic design has remained relatively stable in this transformation of medium. However, the introduction and widespread use of web maps is having a dramatic effect on the profession. The ability of a web map to be interactive affects many of the basic assumptions about creating a good map. Things as simple as zooming in and out and panning around on a web page influence how a map is perceived and used. With the web map, the main concern is how the map will be used by the public more than strictly adhering to any single dogma of how to make a good map.

In the midst of all this change in the field of cartography, publications dealing with the fantastic are left behind. The common paperback novel still has the same style of generic fantasy map that persisted thirty years ago. Maps of fantasy worlds have been published in RPG books for decades with little change. These maps are also often released as pdfs, but they were designed to be printed either as poster or on a page in a book. The cartographers of the RPG industry rarely use or make hand drawn maps, but they are not using GIS software either.  Campaign Cartographer, Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Publisher are common software programs used among fantasy cartographers. The maps produced are often aesthetically pleasing, but of little use if trying to describe a location.

The goal of this project is to show how fantasy cartography can make use of modern technology and how that will benefit those who play RPGs. The webmap I construct will showcase the world of Mystara.

The world of Mystara is a fantasy setting that was developed for the Dungeons and Dragons game in the early 80s. It was specifically made to introduce new gamers into a setting that contained all the elements of Dungeons and Dragons and showcased how a new Dungeon Master might create a fantasy world. Most of the countries in the setting were modeled after a real world historical cultural in order to show new gamers how to use different aspects from history as inspiration for a fun game. The actual world map was derived from a paleogeographic map of the earth during the Jurassic period. Ultimately many different versions of this setting were published over the course of about 15 years in many different game books. These publications often contradicted each other or redrew the map in some places. A lot of work has already been done by fans in solving contradictions and filling in gaps. However, a lot of this work has been undertaken under some faulty assumptions and are not geographically accurate as a result.

This project will focus on the Grand Duchy of Karameikos in the fantasy world of Mystara. The culture of the area can be described as resembling medieval England shortly after the Norman conquest in 1066. The country covers an area of approximately 22,260 square miles, an area slightly larger than modern Croatia. The reason for focusing on this area is to limit the scope of the project, in addition to the fact that this area has the greatest amount of detail published about it within the world of Mystara.

As stated previously, the work of others, though amazing and not to be belittled, has almost entirely been based on some false geographic assumptions. The first and probably most important detail ignored is the origin of the world map. The world of Mystara is clearly stated to take place on earth long ago in one of the rulebooks (even though it is also stated that the Dungeon Master can change this fact).

The home world of human player characters as portrayed in the D&D Basic, Expert, Companion, and Master sets is . . . simply our real one, but at a point in the far past. The land masses diagrammed in the Companion set are a rough depiction of the ancient world of Pangea. The continents have only begun to drift from their early unified position, following the modern theories of the shifting tectonic plates. . . We have the elements of fantasy to this likely early configuration, and the result is the campaign world described in the boxed sets and adventures. This period of Earth’s history is therefore known as the Age of Magic. (DM’s guide to Immortals, p. 5)

In addition to this several times in recent years the creator of the world, Frank Mentzer has stated that the basis of the world map was a historical map of Pangea.

“Some of the Suits wanted to create their own in-house campaign world for D&D (i.e. no royalties for a change) and thus Mystara was born. It started with a worldmap of Pangaea from Francois Froideval, twiddled by yours truly, and introduced in brief in the DM's Companion and extended to the entire world in the Master DM's Book." (Frank Mentzer, 4 Aug 05, http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=106&t=10717&p=216320&hilit=Francois#p216320 )

during BECMI the topic of a Base World did come up, and Tom Moldvay had included certain details in his set (and Zeb's X-1 module likewise). I remember discussing the topic with various folks (mostly Gary), and Francois Marcella Froideval contributed a map of earth dating geologically somewhere between single-land-mass preprepreprehistory and the current state of continential drift. (Frank Mentzer, 2 Sep 10, http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=106&t=35588&p=947988&hilit=Francois#p947988 )

Though Francois and I had frequent contact, as we were both creative friends of Gary, I wasn't familiar with the things he did while he visited TSR. I don't even know if he was an employee. Early in the period that I was developing BECMI I had openly invited everyone to contribute or participate, and Francois retooled the historical map of Pangaea (Earth before continental drift) as a suggestion for my new world, and I accepted it and took it from there. (Frank Mentzer, 31 Aug 06, http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=10717&start=1500 )

“We played with plate tectonics as early as '82 (when Francois pushed it)” (Frank Mentzer, 23 Oct 13, http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=85&t=11264&p=134142&hilit=francois#p134142 )

This idea of setting D&D as Earth’s Age of Magic was ignored in later publications, so numerous contradictions grew up between the early publications and later expansion material.

“One interesting side effect: since I was doing the entire boxed set line alone, and since TSR was using committees for most of its designs of that magnitude -- a procedure with which I simply refuse to comply; I almost always work alone -- I was not only uninvolved with the Mystara world line but was also never consulted about anything in it” (Frank Mentzer, 4 Aug 05, http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=106&t=10717&p=216320&hilit=Francois#p216320 )

Figure 1

The modified map of Pangea was presented in the Masters set as seen in figure 1 without any geographical reference (latitude or longitude, projection, scale), and any work that subsequently expanded on it has been guesswork. Taking the statement that Mystara is earth in the past as a basis, then it follows that earth’s geography and everything we know about mapping the earth’s surface should be applied to Mystara as well. If modern paleogeographic maps are examined, it can be seen that the map of Mystara closely matches that of the late Jurassic period (http://www.scotese.com/late1.htm ), yet the match is not exact. A map of the same geologic time period must be found that would have been available to the publishers of Dungeons and Dragons before the release of the continental and world maps of Mystara. From the quotes above it can be surmised that work on the world map had begun as early 1982 or 83. This was well in advance of the publication of the Companion set which was released in 84. A map matching our criteria can be found in a publication about rainfall patterns in the Mesozoic (Parrish, J. T., Ziegler, A. M. and Scotese, C. R.,. (1982). "Rainfall patterns and the distribution of coals and evaporites in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic."). This map almost perfectly matches that of the world map of Mystara(compare Figure 2 with Figure 1). Based on the original paleomap I will be using the Mollweide projection to map Mystara.

Figure 2

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