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    2. With Map in hand : Finding maps for your VTT RPG

      ~games.tabletop Text 1692 words
      I've been GMing games for years and over the last few transitioned to Online VTT, first Cypher System, then PF2e. My first online campaign was a little off the wall, magic versus technology,...

      I've been GMing games for years and over the last few transitioned to Online VTT, first Cypher System, then PF2e. My first online campaign was a little off the wall, magic versus technology, barbarian party learning that guns and space battles were a thing, aliens and robotic overloads.

      What's more my party tended to blow up stuff and wreck most maps in one session, so in the end I got into making maps or desperately looking for maps everywhere I could.

      So, I thought maybe people could use some of what I've found in their own searches (disclaimer, I don't sell any of my maps, free to all, and I have no connection with any of the pay-for ones, but I've subscribed to most of them at one time or another!)

      Map Tools

      The idea in VTT RPG is to make a map image and import that into your game tool (Such as Roll20 or Foundry) then overlay tiles, tokens, walls etc onto it. The single map image is most, if not all of what you need.

      This is just a short list of what I have tried, lots more than this out there.
      • Dungeondraft One of the best mapping programs and the one I use the most. Offline and stand alone, also encompasses a good default art style of the base assets
      • Inkarnate Online tool that requires a subscription, pretty good, I started out with it and sill occasionally use to make world maps rather than battle maps but can do both.
      • Wonderdraft Dungeondraft but for world maps. I do not make enough of these to have warranted buying it so never tried it
      • Dungeon Alchemist A "AI" driven map creator in Early Access. Can knock out stuff in seconds but I don't like the art style. Good if you need a dungeon in 5 minutes

      Map styles

      There are a couple of popular styles if you are picky about that sort of thing, though mostly important if you want to make your own maps and are looking for asset packs.

      The asset styles you find seem to fall in roughly two forms:

      • Dungeondraft default style. Flat. Line art, less detail
      • Forgotten Adventures (short form FA) Still hand drawn (not rendered) but more detailed computer art style

      Some people prefer the first style due to simplicity, others like the second but some may find it more gamey.

      There is also the "rendered" style that Dungeon Alchemist uses, but that's REALLY gamey to my eyes. I believe there are third party libraries for it but never really looked.

      Lastly, there is the unique art style of hard drawn art that lots of artist draw their battle maps in.

      When I chose a style I went Forgotten Adventures. You can't really mix the two main ones when making your own map, looks horrible. I also found that of the various styles, FA could be matched with many hand drawn styles.

      Maps

      Ok the meat, and what I meant to post before I got side tracked!

      Note most of the sites I am posting above can be used offline on a table top game by just printing the maps out, though I've never tried this.

      My own maps tend heavily towards space and the magic/tech mix due to the campaign. They are in the Forgotten Adventures style. Free to use, including the ones on my Patreon (DON'T SUBSCRIBE TO IT! I started working on making more maps but then got too involved in GMing the game and ran out of time)

      • My main free library ~35 maps, space, ground, some bunkers and others. All in WEBP for faster loading
      • My Patreon, no subscribe! Only take! Only a few maps and then the campaign finished, space ships mostly and then it gets weird if you go back further and find it was a MMORPG Kit tutorial Patreon :/

      Other peoples maps amazing I've found!

      Science Fiction or Modern

      These maps cover mostly futuristic themes such as cyberpunk, world war 2, space ships and so on
      • Hyperdrive Fleet An AMAZING selection of space ships, engine rooms, and space shipy related stuff.
      • Moonlight Maps Scifi A paired Patreon channel to the Moonlight below but for scifi maps. Building interiors, some assets (Vehicles for example), space forests, malls. Flatish style with few shadows?
      • de-Zigner Um, steam punk art? Really cool hand drawn art style, I guess has a mix between modern punk and undead fantasy things.
      • Cracked|Compass This is not the entire library for this mapper, but they do some AMAZING World War 2 maps and several are available on their Inkarnate page. More are available on Reddit in various posts

      Fantasy

      Basic fantasy maps, ruins, temples and the like. Useful for most games
      • Forgotten Adventures A medium size collection of Fantasy maps with some great maps, and has some integration with Foundry complete with walls and actions to switch out parts of some maps on the fly (if you are into that sort of thing)
      • Limithron Lots of pirate ships, islands, water and sea based maps, boats, whales.
      • Cze and Peku Fantasy stuff, hand drawn so may not fit with your campaign style but a LOT of art, A little closer to the Dungeondraft style than FA, LOTS of fantasy stuff, temples, ruins, some ships.
      • Moonlight Maps Again generic (good) fantasy stuff, temples, ruins, villages. Lot of art available, style is of the school of flat line art more than anything.
      • Tom Cartos Has a large asset library which pairs well with FA assets but the maps are what we are here for. Has been expanding recently into 3D scene pictures to accompany the maps recently. Lots of temples, dungeons, inns, villages etc.
      • Bearworks FA style? Lots of fantasy items, had a lot of desert maps which is what I was attracted to. Otherwise standard dungeons and ruins. They do come in very high PPI if required
      • Seafoot games Lots of maps here in a flat DD style. Got some audio mixs. I used their shipwreck maps for a while.
      • Stained Karbon Very stylistic cartoon hand drawn maps of the most bizarre stuff. I've grabbed a few of the free ones but never had the chance to use them. If you need a sword driven through 4 maps of various styles of terrain, then this is the map maker for you
      • Ataraxian Bear VERY clean lined cartoon maps, lots of water and islands. Slightly different style from most but still very nice art so unless you are fussy there are some nice maps here!
      • Borough Bound Some large scale project maps here, as in entire cities with all the moving parts, campaign information, stories, multiple parts of the city etc. You can grab a selection and have a entire city for your players to explore.

      Speciality environments

      These are specific mappers that may concentrate on one unique game theme
      • Gamers Cortex Lots of battle maps of flying wooden sailing ships, all with wings, above and below decks images. They are also beginning to include Foundry VTT files with walls and lights.

      Phased Battle Maps

      Ok this is a niche thing, most of these mappers make various map types, scifi, modern or fantasy, but what sets them aside is the maps come in variants, phases, so you can change the map over time, say every combat round, as the environment changes. Water flowing in and flooding a village, a fire burning down a town hall, bridges breaking etc.
      • Domille's Wondrous Works The main reason Phased battle maps exist! DWW has a lot of these but also has an addon for Foundry to help you use them. I've used a lot of their maps over the years and found the addon stable and works well. Drawn in their own hand drawn art style.
      • Balatro A good alternative to DWW above, lots of maps, Nice style similar to FA in the later maps, more like Dungeondraft in earlier. Boat battles, buildings struck my lightening. List goes on

      Asset Libraries

      Collections of assets to be used when MAKING maps
      • Forgotten Adventures the main alternative for most map makers to the default assets. This is an amazing selection of art,
      • White Fox Works basically just an asset library all matching the FA assets nicely. They started I believe to fill the gaps of FA assets and have done some REALLY well... ALong with FA this is the single most important asset library in my toolkit.
      • Tom Cartos Mentioned in maps but he has a asset library that pairs well with the FA style. Mostly Fantasy but a small section is scifi which I abused a lot in my maps.
      • Hellscape Assets Mostly scifi assets, does not fit the FA style all that well but has a lot of art so may be worth trying. May work with DD style? Some maps, some modern stuff
      • Captain Tom Asset Emporium Amazing Sci-Fi asset packs, many options but a little flatter than FA assets. Can be made to work with FA but more like the DD style

      Tokens

      Ok forgot about these, tokens for player and NPCS!
      • Forgotten Adventures Again FA! Lots of tokens, monsters etc. Lots are free and variants cost money
      • The League of Raconteur Explorers (LORE) A mixture of assets, scifi, maybe steampunk-ish. All really nice and varied. The assets are available FREE from their discord but the Patreon allows you to support the artist and download the assets in a better format and nicely catalogued
      • de-Zigner Some amazing tokens, very stylistic so may not match other token you are using unless you use these for the entire campaign, and honestly you could. Plague zombies, cyber warriors and cyborgs. Lots to unpack here.

      Animations

      Animated movies/gifs etc that can be overlaid on your maps to provide some bling. Fire, explosions etc
      • JB2A Animations If you want to animate spells etc in your game I've only tried JB2A. Free ones and endless updated every month! There may be others but I never needed to look!

      There is more than this of course, but I just wanted to put down what I'd found. Hope it helps someone!

      18 votes

    4. I need casual, easy going games to help me relax. So, Tildes, what you got?

      Ask (recommendations)
      I like to play games. So I guess I'm a "gamer"? But: I'm not into arena shooters, MMORPMRPORG grinders, anything with endless cutscenes of exposition and absolutely nothing that needs a "pass" to...

      I like to play games. So I guess I'm a "gamer"? But: I'm not into arena shooters, MMORPMRPORG grinders, anything with endless cutscenes of exposition and absolutely nothing that needs a "pass" to play... so where's my games? I feel like there's nothing for casual-but-not-candy-crush-or-clash-of-clans players like me out there.

      I want something that takes me back to the days of Roller Coaster Tycoon, Sim City 2000 or more recently, Stardew that's not going to make my blood boil or nickel-and-dime me to progress. That doesn't mean it needs to be cute or easy, but more... meditative? Or goofy?

      Given the crowd here I figured you lot would probably have some good recommendations. So: fire away!

      79 votes

    5. Norway Chess 2023 | GothamChess YouTube recaps

      ~games.tabletop Text 446 words
      Background The 2023 Norway Chess is an elite over-the-board tournament in Stavanger, Norway. The event starts on May 29 at 10 a.m. PT/19:00 CEST with a blitz tournament, followed by a classical...

      Background

      The 2023 Norway Chess is an elite over-the-board tournament in Stavanger, Norway. The event starts on May 29 at 10 a.m. PT/19:00 CEST with a blitz tournament, followed by a classical event beginning May 30 at 8 a.m. PT/17:00 CEST.

      This edition of Norway Chess features a kr$2,500,000 prize fund, roughly equivalent to $234,000 at the time of writing.

      Format

      The 2023 Norway Chess features a blitz tournament that precedes the classical event. The final standings of the blitz event determine players' seeds for the classical event.

      Blitz Event
      • 10-player single round-robin.
      • Players earn 1 point for a win, 0.5 for a draw, and 0 for a loss.
      • The time control is 3+2.
      • In case there's a tie, the following tiebreakers apply:
      1. Direct Encounter
      2. Sonneborn-Berger
      3. Koya System
      4. The Koya System Extended
      5. Drawing of lots

      The winner of the blitz event picks their pairing number. The remaining players pick their pairing number, one by one, according to their final standings in the blitz tournament.

      Classical
      • 10-player single round-robin.
      • Players earn 3 points for a win, 1.5 for a draw and armageddon win, 1 for a draw and armageddon loss, and 0 for a loss.
      • Players can't draw by agreement before Black's 30th move, unless it's an armageddon game.
      • The time control is 120 minutes for the entire game, with a 10-second increment per move starting on move 41.
      • In case there's a tie, players contest an armageddon game where White has 10 minutes on their clock and Black has seven, with a one-second increment starting on move 41. Black has draw odds. The player who played White in the classical game plays White in the armageddon.
      Classical Tiebreaks

      If two players tie for first place, the following tiebreakers apply:

      • A two-game blitz Playoff match with a 3+2 time control.
      • If the tie persists, players contest another two-game blitz match.
      • If still drawn, players contest an armageddon game. White gets 10 minutes, and Black gets 7 minutes with draw odds. The armageddon game has a one-second increment per move, starting on move 41.

      If more than two players tie for first place, the following tiebreakers apply:

      • Drawn players contest a double round-robin with the same tiebreakers as the blitz tournament.

      Players

      Below is a list of the players confirmed to play in the 2023 Norway Chess tournament:

      • GM Magnus Carlsen
      • GM Alireza Firouzja
      • GM Anish Giri
      • GM Wesley So
      • GM Hikaru Nakamura
      • GM Fabiano Caruana
      • GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
      • GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov
      • GM Gukesh D
      • GM Aryan Tari

      Source: Chess.com

      16 votes

    7. Discussion Megathread | BLAST Premier Spring Final 2023

      Ask
      Welcome to the discussion thread for the BLAST Premier Spring Final 2023, the last Big Event before the summer break. The event will feature eight of the world’s best CS:GO teams competing for a...

      Welcome to the discussion thread for the BLAST Premier Spring Final 2023, the last Big Event before the summer break. The event will feature eight of the world’s best CS:GO teams competing for a $425,000 prize pool and a spot at the BLAST Premier World Final 2023. The event will take place at the Entertainment & Sports Arena in Washington, D.C., from June 7-11.

      The teams attending the event are:

      • Heroic (From Spring Groups)
      • G2 Esports (From Spring Groups)
      • FaZe Clan (From Spring Groups)
      • Natus Vincere (From Spring Groups)
      • Vitality (From Spring Groups)
      • Astralis (From Spring Groups)
      • Cloud9 (From Spring Showdown – EU)
      • Imperial (From Spring Showdown – NA)

      The event will start with two double-elimination GSL groups, followed by a single-elimination playoff bracket. All matches will be best-of-three.

      The event will also mark the return of Vitality to LAN for the first time since their Major triumph in Paris, where they won without dropping a single map. They will face Imperial in their opening match, who might be playing their last event with Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo as rumors of his move to FURIA are rampant.

      Other interesting matchups include G2 vs Cloud9, who both had disappointing runs at IEM Dallas and the Major cycle, and Heroic vs Astralis, who will clash for the Danish supremacy.

      You can follow the event on BLAST.tv, YouTube, or Twitch. The schedule and results can be found on HLTV or Liquipedia.

      This is a bit of a test thread. I will try to post a comment for each match, under which you can share your thoughts and comments about each individual game. As such, it may be preferable to sort the thread by new, in order to see the most recent match-ups. Also, in case I miss any match feel free to post the results yourself!

      7 votes

    18. Visual novel readers, what kinds of choices do you want to make in your games?

      Ask
      Do you prefer kinetic VNs (where there are no choices, just story), choices that slightly alter the dialogue but don't impact the story much, or choices that result in new scenes/routes/endings?...

      Do you prefer kinetic VNs (where there are no choices, just story), choices that slightly alter the dialogue but don't impact the story much, or choices that result in new scenes/routes/endings?

      Personally, I'm a fan of having choices in the game and having them impact the narrative -- either by unlocking a new route, a special scene with a character, or getting an alternative ending. Stein's;Gate was a lot of fun for me.

      I do enjoy a good kinetic novel when I just want to listen to music and read, though. Queen Beast is a great recent example -- go check it out!

      14 votes

    47. Tildes Pop-Up Game Event: Demo Disc Days

      Text 600 words
      Pop-Up Event: Demo Disc Days Today we are going to take a trip back to the 90s, when the best way to try out new games was to use a now-antiquated piece of magical circular plastic that you might...

      Pop-Up Event: Demo Disc Days

      Today we are going to take a trip back to the 90s, when the best way to try out new games was to use a now-antiquated piece of magical circular plastic that you might have gotten along with your subscription to something like PC Gamer, PlayStation Underground, or the Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine.

      The demo disc offered gamers a small taste of a variety of different games, letting you try out the beginning levels of lots of different titles in hopes that you'd find ones you like and buy the full games.

      One of the most iconic demo discs actually came with the PlayStation console itself, and featured its games laid out in a grid. This is the format we'll be exploring in this pop-up: it's our taste of the 90s, but with the games of today or yesterday or ten years ago.

      Community Task: Together, we will create our own modern demo disc by filling in cells in the grid below. To fill in a cell, you must "demo" a game, which consists of:

      • playing the beginning of a game,
      • that you have never played before,
      • for at least 30 minutes.

      Choose an unfilled category below, find a game to demo that fits it, and report back here with your thoughts once you've done so! Once you successfully demo a game, it gets put into that slot.

      At the end of the pop-up, we will have what may very well be the first demo disc of the 2020s featuring a spread of 42 games across multiple styles and genres!

      Arcade RPG Strategy Puzzle Racing Platformer Simulation
      Casual (casual arcade) (casual rpg) 112 Operator Tricky Towers Tanuki Sunset Lunistice shapez
      Colorful Chippy (colorful rpg) (colorful strategy) Can of Wormholes You Suck at Parking (colorful platformer) Stacklands
      Story Rich (story rich arcade) (story rich rpg) (story rich strategy) Strange Horticulture (story rich racing) (Reserved) Lakeburg Legacies
      Retro Gunlocked (retro rpg) (retro strategy) Zombie Night Terror Vecter (retro platformer) (retro simulation)
      Dark (dark arcade) (dark rpg) Ring of Pain The Room Three (dark racing) (dark platformer) (dark simulation)
      Great Soundtrack (great soundtrack arcade) (great soundtrack rpg) (great soundtrack strategy) (great soundtrack puzzle) (great soundtrack racing) (great soundtrack platformer) X4: Foundations

      Additional Info: The styles and genres have been taken from among the list of Steam's most popular tags (with a slight preference for things that give a more 90s feel). You can use Steam's search tool or Steam's library filtering to find games that fit two tags simultaneously.

      If you don't use Steam, that's fine too! A game doesn't have to be "officially" tagged to fit its category. If you feel the game fits, then go for it -- no matter what platform you're playing it on. PC games are fine; console games are fine; emulated games are fine; web games are fine; phone games are fine. Any and all games are welcome on our demo disc!

      Also, the game does not have to be a modern game -- just new to you. If the game is playable today and can be demoed, then it works for our demo disc!

      Finally, it is fine to demo more than one game for the event. In fact, please do! We’ve got a lot of slots to fill!

      Uh, what is this exactly?

      It's a temporary event aimed at getting members of the Tildes community to individually participate in something built around a common theme or goal.

      Check out the previous Pop-Ups for other examples:

      Ludonostalgia! for ~games
      Feelin' 22 for ~music
      Twenty-Twenty Vision for ~movies

      13 votes