Share your settings for TFT - Page 4

larsdangly · 08-02-2018, 05:54 PM

I'm spending a lot of my 'hobby' time the last couple of weeks pulling together and fleshing out my old notes on my main Cidri setting, the city of Bok Sehir. While I was traveling yesterday I wrote up the narrative blurbs for a prominent crime syndicate family and a couple of NPCs from the University district, which has functionally absorbed the city's branch of the wizard's guild, but is much more besides.

I intend to post this stuff after the game launches, because I want to update the stat blocks to be consistent with the new rules but obviously can't do that till next spring. One problem I'll have to wrestle with is the fact that I use a lot of maps from Dyson Logos' material and other sources (e.g., there is a rabbit warren of small cave complexes dug into the cliffs of a river that bisects the city, and they are almost all just maps taken from Dyson's Delves, re-stocked to fit my purposes). I can't exactly redistribute those. I guess I'll just focus on posting the city maps and sewers and such that I drew, plus the text and stat blocks I've written, and just leave the co-opted maps as space to be filled in, with some suggested guidelines.

JLV · 08-02-2018, 08:09 PM

Actually, quite a few of Dyson's maps are released for public use with the only requirement being to give him credit for the mapping.

Maybe write him a note and ask him if you can send him the maps you used and see if he'll give you permission to use them for your public release. He seems to be a good sort of guy, and would probably be pretty flexible as long as you credit him for his (excellent) work.

CardDiceian · 08-03-2018, 12:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by larsdangly

Another fun one I did today...

Florian the Soggy Smith: A gifted sword maker (and fine swordsman), on a years-long alcoholic bender and living in a gutter
ST 12 DX 15 (16) IQ 15 MA 10
Talents: Sword, Recognize Value, Fencing, Armorer, Mechanician, Assess Value, Master Armorer, Master Mechanician
Gear: ‘Muriel’, a simple looking but exceptionally fine (+2 dam./+1 DX) Broadsward (2d+2)
Job: Drunk Residence: Street outside the Cracked Cup (a bar) Haunts: The Mews (a city district)

Wow - This guy is a very similar concept to one I created on holiday last week.
**ALL of these characters and settings will be of low value, as I haven't played it properly for the past couple of decades, and my son and nephew are only just starting to show an interest, so everything needs to be fairly basic at the moment|**

DRUNK *no name yet*
ST - 10 / DX - 16 (14) / IQ - 12 / MA - 12

Skills - Sword, Shield, Running, Fencing, Armourer / Master Armourer.

GEAR - Cutlass 2-2 (4-4 with fencing) - Cloth + Lg Shield / Dagger

When first met, character is drunk (-3DX) so cannot use fencing, although players should want to help him - as his story is that his daughter has been taken hostage by a caravan of travelling orcs.

CardDiceian · 08-03-2018, 12:57 AM

I am writing up 3 scenarios at the moment.

1 - a group of players enter a town - There are a few criminals to deal with - A group of thieving dwarves / some devious elves that run a protection racket and are also magically cheating at a popular tavern dice game / A group of travelling orcs have taken a couple of people hostage and moved on.

There are also a few other side stories within the town including a priest caring for his wife in secret because she is a vampire, a small settlement of halflings that grow mushrooms for the town alchemist - that have found a sunken boat complete with body and treasure chest - protected by a giant snapping turtle (I was going to ask about front side and rear facings for that - a full megahex creature) - and of course a few intertwined stories for the players to work out.

None is complete yet -as I only started working on it last week.

CardDiceian · 08-03-2018, 01:00 AM

2 - a very simple mansion run by a wizard - with about 6-8 rooms - pretty basic stuff to give the boys a feel for the game.

3 - An orc village with lots of characters both good and bad for the players to meet, and a major story to resolve - (This one may find its way to being incorporated a few days travel from the town I mentioned first)

larsdangly · 08-03-2018, 09:15 AM

There must be something about the zeitgeist that is making us all write up alcoholic master swordsmen! Mine is named Skippy Pete, and he is 'stranded' at an inn at a crossroads deep in the forest, mostly because he is afraid to get more than a couple hours from his nearest source of grog.

CardDiceian · 08-03-2018, 09:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by larsdangly

There must be something about the zeitgeist that is making us all write up alcoholic master swordsmen! Mine is named Skippy Pete, and he is 'stranded' at an inn at a crossroads deep in the forest, mostly because he is afraid to get more than a couple hours from his nearest source of grog.

I think one of the things about meeting a character that is drunk, and incapable of fighting properly, is that you don't quite know what to expect when you encounter them sober the next time.

Skarg · 08-03-2018, 10:39 AM

My original TFT campaign started in Bendwyn on the Duchy of Dran map from ITL. Over the course of the next seven years, I steadily added maps in the same style to include the world around that map in all directions, growing to about 50 maps at the same scale.

I never showed any of the "real" maps to the players. If they wanted to know what was in the world, they needed to go see during play, or talk to NPCs who knew (or said they knew), or find or purchase a map, which would get them a "special effect" map I would make, usually not on hex paper and only showing what the map-maker knew about and was interested in showing (i.e. like real maps). The scale and details were suspect, so getting more maps showing the same regions, and/or talking to people and going to see for yourself was still interesting to do. Also, different maps would tend to show different interesting details such as ruins, little-known roads or paths or ways through hard terrain, maybe military or trade details, or possibly notes & other clues.

I also enjoyed applying effects of misadventure to maps, such as exposure to the elements (fire, earth, water, wind...) and possibly cuts, tears, crumpling (so, Brendar kept that map in his backpack with his clothes and hiked around for 4 months before you looted it from his corpse... and he was killed by a spear that went through his pack and (GM rolls dice...) the corner of the map (GM applies damage and blood as players gape in distress!).

Of course, playing out overland travel and taking into account terrain and what's going on in each place, and making the different places different and have different things available, created an entire word of interesting places to go and choices about how to get there without getting lost and/or killed, etc.

Another GM developed a similar-sized mapped TFT world and ran some long campaigns in it. He used the same approach to mapping, which really adds a whole other dimension to play of finding out what is in the world and where it is. If you tried to list what the players had as goals for the game, getting good maps of the world and understanding its shape and what was going on in it, would be up at the top of the list.

Figuring out what was going on in the world at a national & power-political level was a larger meta game unto itself, for the GM (and the players, if/when they were interested - mainly they tried to stay away from wars, or to swoop in after the armies had left to see what could be looted). I detailed nations' armies and leaders and who had how many of what sorts of troops where. I adapted Avalon Hill's Caesar: The Battle of Alesia to a land combat system that corresponded to certain numbers and qualities of TFT soldiers and made counters appropriate for the nations' armies and played out the battles when they fought and then spread knowledge about what had happened by rumors and/or written reports the PCs might be able to get. I also detailed the ships and navies by combing Metagaming's Ramspeed (with the excellent designer's notes that list the actual full rules, as published in Interplay) for galley combat and Avalon Hill's Wooden Ships & Iron Men for sailing ships, and had a lot of fun playing out some naval battles (though again the TFT PCs almost entirely avoided being involved in any of that).

However the military and political affairs were not the focus of the game. The players could and almost always did choose to mainly avoid getting involved in wars are high-powered politics, though it still framed what was going on, influenced their decisions, and sometimes presented interesting situations.

My world and my friend's world each had a main campaign run and a lesser side campaign. The main campaigns lasted for about 5-6 years with TFT before we switched to GURPS, and we may at some point go back to playing in them, though mine in particular suffers a bit from having been started by an 11-year-old (the maps nearer to Dran are not as well done as the ones further out, for some reason... ;-) ).

That game world is huge. I think the players only ever got to visit about 50-60% of it. A smaller TFT campaign I ran was in the same world but a distant part of it and the players (well, and the NPCs in the world) never knew how it connected.

DrewAstolfi67 · 08-03-2018, 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

The message read, "here is another idiot for the mines"

I can imagine the Players faces when they figured this out! That'll teach em the value of book learnin...

Terquem · 08-04-2018, 10:56 AM

My setting is a coastal city - the city sits in a sheltered harbor on the west coast of a large continent. The northern half of the city is a great sea port, and though the city has its own government, it is actually controlled by a mysterious woman known as the "Green Hag"

the southern part of the city rises from a stretch of pleasant beaches to sea cliff walls.

Under this city is a great mysterious place known as "The Labyrinth"

No one knows exactly where the Labyrinth came from, who built it or why, but entrances to it are scattered all over the city, are hard to find, and usually are only one way - in. Finding your way out takes skill, bravery, planning, and luck.

Great treasures, mysterious artifacts, and strange monsters can be found

In The Labyrinth

08-02-2018, 05:54 PM	#31
larsdangly Join Date: Dec 2017	Re: Share your settings for TFT I'm spending a lot of my 'hobby' time the last couple of weeks pulling together and fleshing out my old notes on my main Cidri setting, the city of Bok Sehir. While I was traveling yesterday I wrote up the narrative blurbs for a prominent crime syndicate family and a couple of NPCs from the University district, which has functionally absorbed the city's branch of the wizard's guild, but is much more besides. I intend to post this stuff after the game launches, because I want to update the stat blocks to be consistent with the new rules but obviously can't do that till next spring. One problem I'll have to wrestle with is the fact that I use a lot of maps from Dyson Logos' material and other sources (e.g., there is a rabbit warren of small cave complexes dug into the cliffs of a river that bisects the city, and they are almost all just maps taken from Dyson's Delves, re-stocked to fit my purposes). I can't exactly redistribute those. I guess I'll just focus on posting the city maps and sewers and such that I drew, plus the text and stat blocks I've written, and just leave the co-opted maps as space to be filled in, with some suggested guidelines.

08-02-2018, 08:09 PM	#32
JLV Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Arizona	Re: Share your settings for TFT Actually, quite a few of Dyson's maps are released for public use with the only requirement being to give him credit for the mapping. Maybe write him a note and ask him if you can send him the maps you used and see if he'll give you permission to use them for your public release. He seems to be a good sort of guy, and would probably be pretty flexible as long as you credit him for his (excellent) work.

08-03-2018, 12:57 AM	#34
CardDiceian Join Date: Mar 2018 Location: Berkshire - UK	Re: Share your settings for TFT I am writing up 3 scenarios at the moment. 1 - a group of players enter a town - There are a few criminals to deal with - A group of thieving dwarves / some devious elves that run a protection racket and are also magically cheating at a popular tavern dice game / A group of travelling orcs have taken a couple of people hostage and moved on. There are also a few other side stories within the town including a priest caring for his wife in secret because she is a vampire, a small settlement of halflings that grow mushrooms for the town alchemist - that have found a sunken boat complete with body and treasure chest - protected by a giant snapping turtle (I was going to ask about front side and rear facings for that - a full megahex creature) - and of course a few intertwined stories for the players to work out. None is complete yet -as I only started working on it last week.

08-03-2018, 01:00 AM	#35
CardDiceian Join Date: Mar 2018 Location: Berkshire - UK	Re: Share your settings for TFT 2 - a very simple mansion run by a wizard - with about 6-8 rooms - pretty basic stuff to give the boys a feel for the game. 3 - An orc village with lots of characters both good and bad for the players to meet, and a major story to resolve - (This one may find its way to being incorporated a few days travel from the town I mentioned first)

08-03-2018, 09:15 AM	#36
larsdangly Join Date: Dec 2017	Re: Share your settings for TFT There must be something about the zeitgeist that is making us all write up alcoholic master swordsmen! Mine is named Skippy Pete, and he is 'stranded' at an inn at a crossroads deep in the forest, mostly because he is afraid to get more than a couple hours from his nearest source of grog.

08-03-2018, 10:39 AM	#38
Skarg Join Date: May 2015	Re: Share your settings for TFT My original TFT campaign started in Bendwyn on the Duchy of Dran map from ITL. Over the course of the next seven years, I steadily added maps in the same style to include the world around that map in all directions, growing to about 50 maps at the same scale. I never showed any of the "real" maps to the players. If they wanted to know what was in the world, they needed to go see during play, or talk to NPCs who knew (or said they knew), or find or purchase a map, which would get them a "special effect" map I would make, usually not on hex paper and only showing what the map-maker knew about and was interested in showing (i.e. like real maps). The scale and details were suspect, so getting more maps showing the same regions, and/or talking to people and going to see for yourself was still interesting to do. Also, different maps would tend to show different interesting details such as ruins, little-known roads or paths or ways through hard terrain, maybe military or trade details, or possibly notes & other clues. I also enjoyed applying effects of misadventure to maps, such as exposure to the elements (fire, earth, water, wind...) and possibly cuts, tears, crumpling (so, Brendar kept that map in his backpack with his clothes and hiked around for 4 months before you looted it from his corpse... and he was killed by a spear that went through his pack and (GM rolls dice...) the corner of the map (GM applies damage and blood as players gape in distress!). Of course, playing out overland travel and taking into account terrain and what's going on in each place, and making the different places different and have different things available, created an entire word of interesting places to go and choices about how to get there without getting lost and/or killed, etc. Another GM developed a similar-sized mapped TFT world and ran some long campaigns in it. He used the same approach to mapping, which really adds a whole other dimension to play of finding out what is in the world and where it is. If you tried to list what the players had as goals for the game, getting good maps of the world and understanding its shape and what was going on in it, would be up at the top of the list. Figuring out what was going on in the world at a national & power-political level was a larger meta game unto itself, for the GM (and the players, if/when they were interested - mainly they tried to stay away from wars, or to swoop in after the armies had left to see what could be looted). I detailed nations' armies and leaders and who had how many of what sorts of troops where. I adapted Avalon Hill's Caesar: The Battle of Alesia to a land combat system that corresponded to certain numbers and qualities of TFT soldiers and made counters appropriate for the nations' armies and played out the battles when they fought and then spread knowledge about what had happened by rumors and/or written reports the PCs might be able to get. I also detailed the ships and navies by combing Metagaming's Ramspeed (with the excellent designer's notes that list the actual full rules, as published in Interplay) for galley combat and Avalon Hill's Wooden Ships & Iron Men for sailing ships, and had a lot of fun playing out some naval battles (though again the TFT PCs almost entirely avoided being involved in any of that). However the military and political affairs were not the focus of the game. The players could and almost always did choose to mainly avoid getting involved in wars are high-powered politics, though it still framed what was going on, influenced their decisions, and sometimes presented interesting situations. My world and my friend's world each had a main campaign run and a lesser side campaign. The main campaigns lasted for about 5-6 years with TFT before we switched to GURPS, and we may at some point go back to playing in them, though mine in particular suffers a bit from having been started by an 11-year-old (the maps nearer to Dran are not as well done as the ones further out, for some reason... ;-) ). That game world is huge. I think the players only ever got to visit about 50-60% of it. A smaller TFT campaign I ran was in the same world but a distant part of it and the players (well, and the NPCs in the world) never knew how it connected.

08-04-2018, 10:56 AM	#40
Terquem Join Date: Apr 2018 Location: Idaho Falls	Re: Share your settings for TFT My setting is a coastal city - the city sits in a sheltered harbor on the west coast of a large continent. The northern half of the city is a great sea port, and though the city has its own government, it is actually controlled by a mysterious woman known as the "Green Hag" the southern part of the city rises from a stretch of pleasant beaches to sea cliff walls. Under this city is a great mysterious place known as "The Labyrinth" No one knows exactly where the Labyrinth came from, who built it or why, but entrances to it are scattered all over the city, are hard to find, and usually are only one way - in. Finding your way out takes skill, bravery, planning, and luck. Great treasures, mysterious artifacts, and strange monsters can be found In The Labyrinth