Link Man’s Further Adventures

I’m still hard at work on my next book, and liable to be pedal to the metal for a while. You see, ’round about the 2/3 to 3/4 mark of the rough draft I started to feel like the ground I was standing on wasn’t very firm, so I decided to go back and revise what I’d written. I discovered that the opening chapters weren’t very entertaining, so I threw them out, started from scratch, and am now nearly up to the good parts. Anyway, it’s time consuming but fun to be getting it right.

But I promised interesting links.

First, here’s a site an old school gamer like me should have known about before, Grubb Street. Throughout April famed game designer Jeff Grubb was writing about famous game worlds. I think the one that interested me the most was Stormfront, because darned if I didn’t think up nearly the very same idea many years ago and just never implemented it. I still believe it’s wicked cool. Turns out it was very, very close to being turned into a TSR campaign setting.

Second, a few days back I was talking about gaming stuff and mentioned Richard J. LeBlanc Jr.’s d30 Sandbox Companion. I decided to go ahead and snap it up and wow, was I pleased with the product. Now if I could only get him to join forces with Kevin Crawford. Between the two of them they could create the ultimate sandbox generation booklet (I know I’ve mentioned Red Tide and An Echo Resounding before). Anyone who has an interest in designing a fantasy world for play NEEDS these books/pdfs. I just can’t recommend them highly enough. I wish I’d had these on hand when I started trying to build my own fantasy gaming worlds 30 years ago. I think they’d be useful for writers as well as game masters.

Sandbox gaming means you put the pieces in place on your hex map and you simply let your players wander across them and discover their own story arcs. Using the information in the above products, you can create locations and landmarks with hooks and subplots and other interesting aspects just waiting for discovery by your players.

LeBlanc maintains a web site of his own where you can see samples of his fine sandbox work. You have only to look at last April to find a whole bunch of fascinating, creative tables that randomly generate useful things for the harried game master.

Lastly, want to know more about sandbox construction and how useful some of the preceding tools can be while doing it? Look no further than the site of Keith Davies.

Link Man, away!