Baron reviews, Music Reviews and mapping!

BLUE BARON
I recently received some reviews from Age Of Dusk on the blue baron series.   As well I received a review on one of the last ever recordings that I made (in my professional life).  I'd like to thank Prince of Nothing for reviewing both of the baron releases!

An invitation from the blue baron review: 
https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2019/03/03/review-an-invitation-from-the-blue-baron-blueholme-too-many-cooks/

Excerpt:  The style, theme, format and content of each room is an incoherent mess that could have been averted by giving everyone clearer guidelines by which to hand in their submissions.

Shane's thoughts: Absolutely! I suppose I could have done a bit more editing on the whole thing.  Everyone of the writers in both adventures were able to see what each other were writing.  (not quite sure if that's a point per se....)

Return of the blue baron review: 
https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2019/03/10/review-the-return-of-the-blue-baron-blueholme-second-times-the-charm/

Excerpt:  There are two irritants. The room numbering is, begging Mr. Ward’s pardon, utter dogshit, with players entering in room number 3. and rooms with only one number apart being found on opposite sides of the dungeon. The decision to simply start at the left side of the map and then number rooms in rows from left to right makes it harder to get a feel for what rooms belong in what area. Numbering should go by proximity.

Shanes Thoughts:  I normally number this way.  I agree that it's a good point about putting rooms together that are "connected" as far as story is concerned.  At least as far as the text goes.  When we started this, I basically put the 2 maps in google drive and people started picking rooms and went to town.  Technically speaking I could have sat and edited rooms and moved them to different places (re numbered) as far as thematically similar rooms, or ones that were connected story wise.  Whatever the case that's good information to know.

All in all I've very happy with both reviews, they point out all the good points, bad points (things to work on) and that IMHO is gold.  

You can grab "the invitation from the blue baron" here. and "The return of the blue baron" here. and the POD here.

Check out Goblin Henchmen's throwback post about G+ and writing for the baron series here.

Speaking of reviews and throwbacks, here is the Swords & Stichery reviews of the baron series:
http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/2017/03/commentary-on-free-osr-adveture.html

http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/2018/08/osr-commentary-review-on-free-adventure.html

MUSIC
Review of D.B. & The Deadbeats album "Don't tell nobody": 
http://ohjusteatit.ca/album-review-d-b-the-deadbeats-dont-tell-nobody/?fbclid=IwAR3YH8uEdFtgeBV8mebNLYqE-GAyywoCTSt0MNBiMd9AbznuhmMQQjA6NjA
I have a few thoughts on this, but I'm holding my tongue.  Simply put, this is one of if not the last recording I'll ever do, no sense getting upset about a review right?

You can check out the album here: https://dbthedeadbeats.bandcamp.com/releases

MAPPING 
I've been working on a few forest maps and colouring them in.  I currently have 2 and have to draw 2 more.  I've been playing around a little bit with shading etc, lots of fun.  Here's map 1, and then a screen shot of me putting map 1 and 2 together.  I have no idea if this will see the light of day at all.

The Gavanov Barony

While working on "the return of the blue baron" we started writing a bit of the back story.  The original was never actually set anywhere.  When Jeff ran it he placed the Baron's castle in the city of Blueholme.  In reality these adventures can be popped into whatever world you have created for yourself. 

As it stands right now we have basically finished writing and are now on to what I like to call "Edit City", afterwards it's layout city. 

I think I will make this adventure 8x11 for the sake that most people will print it if they run it. 

I am also going to start gathering together some nice clip art and images from various sources.  I like to have a pool of graphics to pick from one I start working. 

Anyways, yesterday while recording some vocals with a nice Russian lady, I doodled this map and then did some editing on it at lunch.  All of the towns are in German, I used google translate with some basic names. 

grenzenstadt: border city
blaue stadt: blue city 
flusse rand: rivers edge
altes holz: old wood
Schneeglockhe: Snow cap

The barony is part of a large kingdom ruled by a Queen, in my mind the Blue Baron's territory is sort of Germanic/Bavarian (hence the silly translating). 

There isn't really an intention to have this within the module, as I say I just did a little map doodle for fun. 

This is the kick in the ass I needed

If you haven't noticed the maps I've been working on latetly, they are all here in this collection.  I had this idea for a dungeon rolling around in my head, and it's getting there.  It is starting to take shape.  The inspiration for it is coming directly from guys like +Zak Sabbath and +Mike Evans and the things I was reading while Gen Con was going on.  Specifically about the DIY D&D Community.  And the conversation about making games & adventures that YOU the author want to play.  The biggest problem I find, is the moment when I start worrying about what someone else is going to think.  In some cases, people might think "well that's commercial suicide, to pander to the masses".  And in a sense I suppose that could be correct.  However, that's not really what I'm talking about here, I'm talking about this little 5 level dungeon I'm mapping and working on.  And how I'll probably put it out there for people at some point, but way before that I'm going to run my players thru it, probably TPK them.  And way before it comes out, I'm going to start creating terrible "shane" art for it, because it makes me happy.

So here's the maps.  And eventually this may exist in some medium that you can download and run.

Or it may just be the place where my players characters go to die for the next few months.

In the mean time I'm going to sit on my couch with a glass of tea, an old black cat sitting beside me, and "friends" on in the background and doodle to my hearts content.  Who knows, it may end up being a bit bigger than 5 levels.

FREE Maps Download - Ward's Warrens - Volume 1

A Collection Of 13 hand drawn map. These maps by Shane Ward (3 Toadstools Publishing) are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. Inquiries about permissions beyond the scope of this license should be made by contacting Shane Ward. Here is the download

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-hlnlR7qn5XSjl1ZU9LSFcxTzA

Please feel free to use these maps in your adventures, blog posts, zines or really any interesting media.