Skarg's Tavern Playmat - Coming to Kickstarter

[philreed]

As a part of the Hexagram #5 and Ardonirane Kickstarter campaign, we will also have a new playmat for The Fantasy Trip: Skarg's Tavern! This is the largest playmat we have made for the game so far, coming in at 36" x 36".

Hexagram #5 also includes an article about the tavern, written by Steve Jackson, for those of you who want to know more about this location.

Click the green "notify me" button on this page to receive email notification when the project launches:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...and-ardonirane

[Zimzerveran]

That wll be mighty tempting! I love the artwork.

[philreed]

Originally Posted by Zimzerveran

That wll be mighty tempting! I love the artwork.

Dyson Logos illustrated the playmat. Ben Williams handled the coloring.

[Zimzerveran]

Well, they both nailed it. I particularly like the way the mega hexes are defined. You know they're there, but they're not heavily outlined, which helps preserve the aesthetic of the map.

I'm looking forward to this Kickstarter.

[Shadekeep]

Very nice! And this has a high reusability potential as a generic tavern setting as well, since a lot of campaigns use the tavern as the main place to find quests and pick up rumors.

[larsdangly]

So cool; this looks really nicely done and like a play aid that will see a lot of use. If you'd like a trip in the way-back machine, it reminds me a bit of the play aids that came with 1st edition Dragonquest (SPI's attempt at a D&D style fantasy roleplaying game). This came out in 1980 (probably within months of In The Labyrinth) and was a major influence on my gaming group through the 80's; I still dip into it for inspiration when I'm writing up house-ruled spells and critters for other games. Anyway, it was arguably the only other hex-and-chit style combat game in rpg market until GURPS arrived.

[Skarg]

Nicely done, and always interesting to see how different people interpret Skarg's, as it was an oft-used location in my original campaign.

I wish more people who make outdoor maps would use a format as used here, where trees show the trunk and ground around the tree with just a faint indicator for where the tree's foliage. So many people make outdoor maps where the trees' foliage is shown from the perspective of a hawk high overhead, meaning you can't see the terrain underneath it, which is where the fighting usually happens.

[hcobb]

Your building is 8 hexes by 8 hexes while the map at ITL 168 shows a building with sides that are two and half "10 yard" hexes, which comes to around 19 hexes by 19 hexes.

Was the old tavern burnt down and Skarg was only able to rebuild a quarter of it?

[larsdangly]

I was wondering the same thing, which is why I was initially imagining a version of Scarg's that was a big, complicated interior space like the Prancing Pony. But I can imagine you would head off in a different direction if wanted the end result to be useful for other things. This map might be a 'slant rhyme' on the original Skargs, but might be better for a wider range of uses involving outdoor spaces or movement around several detached structures. Actually, what we see of the map they made looks a bit like a Squad Leader board. Which would be awesome - I've always wanted to have TFT play spaces that allow for Squad-Leader-like tactical uses of lines of sight and movement

[Shadekeep]

Seeing how tight the space is in Skarg's, I was clearly overly generous in the layout of the Grey Gander from Last Call in Pandwick:

https://shadekeep.com/files/dotm/DOT...0-Pandwick.png

In hindsight I could easily use just a quarter of that space and still have a reasonable tavern. On the upside, my tavern map does facilitate social distancing. ^_^