Author: Troy E. Taylor

Of late I have extolled the virtues of earlier editions of Dungeons and Dragons. This has delighted our gnome-in-chief, especially, who like many other gamers, is rediscovering what Old School gaming is about. And it served as a touchstone for those like me, who have more gray hairs than experience points (my current photo on this site indicating the contrary). But it also vindicated those folks who never stopped using the Chainmail, Basic, Expert or AD&D rules sets and find now that the creators and…

What sort of monster goes best with pastries, jam and a bowl of steaming oatmeal? Well, as it turns out, there’s room for … Lizardfolk lurking under a bridge over a dry gully. Brain-eating zombies on the wrong side of a stuck portcullis. An evil cleric masterminding something nefarious in a defiled underground chapel. … right beside the short glasses of chilled orange juice. With Momma Bear out of town and the three gnomes-in-training under my care, I served up a dungeon alongside a Continental…

The journey to transform a useful, but uninspiring hex map into a fantasy map worthy of sharing with the other players at the table is nearing an end. At last, the map is beginning to take shape. Step 8: Pesky trees and swamps A starting point for color, greens and blues. At this point, my creation process becomes less rigid. In fact, I’m bouncing back and forth from ink to colored pencil as the details in the map emerge. As you can see from this…

In this third installment on my series of creating a fantasy-style map for the lands north of my homebrew campaign city of Steffenhold, I find myself on the verge of putting ink on paper — which is a sort of no turning back now moment. Part 6: Aren’t you forgetting something? Before adding ink, I better make sure everything is in pencil. Oh, yeah, I forgot to add the forests, and to dress up other areas of the map. The thing about fantasy maps is…

In the first part of this series I explained  the various sources that served to inspire me to create a map of the lands north of Steffenhold — the fantasy setting for my homebrew campaign. After grabbing my base hex map and selecting the paper I would use for the map, I was ready to begin tracing in pencil. Step 3: Rivers, lakes and roads, oh my The first lines of pencil on paper. With pencil, I began to lightly trace those elements I believe…

I have a hex map detailing the lands north of Steffenhold — the barony town that serves as the central point of my home campaign. The map is perfectly serviceable. The main geographic feature of each 10-mile hex is shown by a mapping symbol. There are lakes, rivers, roads and dots for towns.   Hex map of the lands north of Steffenhold. Should the players wish their characters to go exploring, I could tell you that hex 0314 contains the imposing stone-gray castle of the…

It’s not my job to keep Martin, our gnome-in-chief, happy. We gnomes be too mischievous for that! But I seemed to have rekindled his interest in older editions of D&D, and gotten him in touch with the Old School Renaissance gaming community by sharing my gaming adventures using the old Basic game rules with my kids. And for that, I was more than glad to play a role. That in mind, I thought I’d offer up another experience in that vein — if only to…