Drawing a Map

[ewancummins]

Micheal, in designing Kaidan did you draw heavily from any particular period of Japanese history?

The maps look great, BTW!

Kaidan, while not truly Japanese, borrows heavily from before the Sengoku Period, more like the Kamakura Bakufu to the Ashikaga shogunate (1185 - 1500). There are few anachronistic elements taken from the Edo period, like the Yakuza (1600 - 1868), but most of Kaidan relates to the early feudal period of Japan. I also include a Teppou Bushi class (gunslinger of Japan), which is Oda Nobunaga time period, roughly 1570, though guns aren't a major aspect of the setting, I did not want to exclude arquebus wielding gunslingers as having a role in the setting, if people want to play them.

Bushi with a matchlock= coolness.

[MichaelTumey]

I'm also interested to know more about this "curse of the Golden spear" adventure that has so many maps and cities. It seems so far more a campaign setting than an adventure.

When I first created Kaidan, my intentions were to create both a setting and an adventure series. Steven Russell of Rite Publishing suggested I create an introductory campaign arc, first, to sell the idea of Kaidan. If the adventures proved successful and a fan base desired more, we'd create more.

So The Curse of the Golden Spear was the first products released for Kaidan, but as adventures set in a land without a defined campaign setting. All 3 adventures of the mini-campaign are both adventures and setting material. The first adventure has in the appendices the Kaidan rules for Death and Reincarnation - which though not the same as "Dark Powers check", it's Kaidan's darkest quality (you cannot be raised, reincarnated, or resurrected as per spells, they do not work in Kaidan - when you die, you will be reincarnated using Kaidan's unique ruleset).

Adventure 2 features a new class archetype (Ranger yojimbo). All 3 adventures feature new monsters and monster templates, and new magic items. The appendices serve as setting material mostly.

The Kaidan setting handbook to be created and released this year will include much of my 3 racial guides (Kappa, Henge, Tengu), much of my 4 faction guides (only 2 created so far - Yakuza, Samurai, coming will be Shinobi/ninja and one for the dark classes that support the shogunate). The book will include traits, feats, spells, magic items, artifacts, monsters, monster templates in the player portion of the guide. The GM's portion will contain articles on the imperial government, the office of the shogunate, taxes and economics, the social caste system, religion in Kaidan, as well as a gazetteer of the 3 major islands and several other locations (including Ryukyo - sea dragon city). Of course the reincarnation rules and cosmology fit in the GM section too.

I originally proposed creating the above first, however, Steven has more game material marketing than I, so I created and released upon his concerned schedule.

After the setting book is released, if successful, my hope is to create a full 1st - 20th (maybe) adventure campaign featuring PCs as locals (samurai, yakuza, etc.)

Several of the reviewers commented the same that The Curse of the Golden Spear was as much setting material as adventure.

[ewancummins]

It sounds pretty nifty. I bet it would work just fine with AD&D OA, as well as PF.

[HuManBing]

HMB: Nope, they weren't rhetorical. I liked that stuff and those answers. I was just trying to say "thank you, let's get more in topic" in a sarcastic way. Sorry if it came off different.

Oh, okay! I was afraid we were boring you with all this castle talk

I use Xara Xtreme Pro 4 [...] Xara also has quick and easy image/object feathering, slicing, and very powerful transparency tools. What I can do in 10 minutes with Xara would take 30 minutes or more to replicate in Photoshop.

My design process involves [computer work at start and finish, and hand drawing in the middle phases].

Thanks for all the details, I think I may incorporate some of them in my own mapping, now that I have a decent laser printer and scanner. I'm still stuck with Paintshop Pro, but I think for round-the-table sort of work or Netbook works, it should suffice.

I have even had 3 of my maps featured in a New York City Art Gallery Show - Soho Gallery of Digital art. I know few other artists that have had a NYC art gallery showing of their work - June - August 2011

I can well imagine that. The work does look like the output of a professional artist/cartographer!

[MichaelTumey]

It sounds pretty nifty. I bet it would work just fine with AD&D OA, as well as PF.

Oh, I am sure it would. One of the reviewers for my free adventure, Frozen Wind, bought it to convert to Legend of the 5 Rings, so he could use it in his own campaign group. I'm sure with a little fiddling, Kaidan could fit most rule systems. The guys at Iron Crown Enterprises have asked me multiple times to let them license Kaidan to be developed for use for HARP and their older system. I told them I really want to get it fully developed for PF before I look to another system, but consider their wish at the top of the list.

While there are many PF additions in the setting, especially for classes, traits, feats, spells, monsters, etc, but much of the rules are setting specific only, like the reincarnation rules, the cosmology, the caste system. And the setting rules are intrinsic to the setting only, and not to any specific game system or edition. Keep the setting rules as is, but build your PCs, monsters, spells, etc as per your preferred game system: 4e, 3x, AD&D 1e/2e, GURPS, HARP, diceless, whatever. I'm sure it would work fine.

[alhoon]

Maps and fluff work everywhere. Thank you so much for sharing your work.

Although personally I'm more interested in "traditional" medevial fantasy, your sea map could well work for Sahuagin outpost. I'll just have to add an evilish looking altar and some dragon bones.

Three masted ships I think were usually 40-60 meters long, right?

[MichaelTumey]

Well, know that I make plenty of non-Eastern fantasy map designs, it's just that right now, I am still developing Kaidan, and it of course requires an eastern style in their designs. And not that many of the elements of Kaidan could not be carried over to a typical European analog setting, some of it could, but not so for issues like Kaidan's reincarnation mechanic which is based on Buddhist thought so that would be too alien for a typical setting concept. In my opinion Japan has been poorly captured in RPG settings in the past. This is the main reason I am developing it this way, in addition to doing something of my heritage (I'm half Japanese.)

While I want to continually support Kaidan, I eventually want to work on a pre-Roman Celtic setting next. So I'm not all about Japan, that's just my current project.

[ewancummins]

Pre-Roman Celtic stuff, huh? Sounds cool! I'd love to see the druid class reworked to be more like the historical druids.

[MichaelTumey]

Pre-Roman Celtic stuff, huh? Sounds cool! I'd love to see the druid class reworked to be more like the historical druids.

I've already done some early research for my Celtic project down the road. For Druids... IMO, the D&D druid does not fit the concept of Celtic druid even moderately close, so I will probably not include Druid as the class. Celtic druids were not 'shapechangers' even mythically so the D&D druid just does not fit at all.

For Pathfinder rules, I'd consider druid a trait conferred to the educated and spellcasting classes of Celtic society: bards, cleric/oracle, tattooist wizard and rune wizard and possibly the witch class. The trait provides a proscription against the killing of druid faction members by other Celts and some bonus to Knowledge (any). Druids would also include experts in Brehon Law to serve as the 'magistrates' of Celtic society.

And to keep this post on topic, I've included a map of Hybreni, my Ireland analog. One thing though, I want to create a Europe analog map, since Celts weren't limited to the British Isles, but were in Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, northern Italy, and the Balkans. With different weapon availability and cultural flavor based on which part of the Celtic world they were from.

Of course I'd include many Fey aspects - I have many resources for fey knowledge already.

Link to full scale map of Hybreni



Here's an illustration I had commissioned for a Fey Portal:



Here's another possible mapped area of the Celtic World:



Link to larger version: Slave Trade map

Michael

[MichaelTumey]

Maps and fluff work everywhere. Thank you so much for sharing your work.

Although personally I'm more interested in "traditional" medevial fantasy, your sea map could well work for Sahuagin outpost. I'll just have to add an evilish looking altar and some dragon bones.

Three masted ships I think were usually 40-60 meters long, right?

This might work better as a Sahuagin outpost.



Link to larger file... Eerie Isle

Also for an undersea part of your Sahuagin community, I created this 'undersea village' map for scavengers. A powerful current carries detritus fallen into rivers and the sea, that is carried out to the depths, but passby this village area. A large net is tied into the current itself to catch large discarded materials. Especially since metal goods cannnot be manufactured beneath water, as well as wood products, this current provides many necessities discarded by surface dwellers.



Here's a crude deck plan for a Brigatine (next larger ship than a schooner), which is a 3 sailed vessel - from Dark Path, Curse of the Golden Spear, Part 3 - this is the Scarlet Harlot, the ship that brings the PCs to Kaidan, from whereever they come from. The adventure is a visit by typical European-analog adventurers visiting the exotic orient to deliver a 'gift' to a local lord for a merchant. (Note schooners and brigatines are smaller 3 masted ships, the mapped ship is about 100' long, schooners are smaller, thus larger sailing vessels meet your proposed dimensions of 40 - 60 meters.)

[Jester of the FoS]

[alhoon]

Awesome maps Jester!

[Zilfer]

You've been very busy it looks like Jester.

[Jester of the FoS]

[Zilfer]

Nice! More to add to the collection, maybe I'll have to print these out for the PC's should they ever pick up a map of a domain... xD