Open question to the Fediverse/Universe/Mastodon:'nHas anyone used Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator in a TTRPG campaign?
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@critfail_press
I find it fascinating, especially the attention to detail in generating mountains and political borders.I can't imagine using it. Once you zoom in to a region, and ask 'what can the characters do here?', the map just provides links to other generators. So the action relies on those image generators, mostly made by watabou. They're all great, but they don't have events or plot.
@malin yeah the watabou generators are great. You would really have to use it for some emergent gameplay as far as I can tell. Maybe use some of the plot/adventure generators from Donjon to develop some initial story beats/hooks but then I feel like you'd need to lean hard on player motivation to find what the campaign is "about".
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@malin yeah the watabou generators are great. You would really have to use it for some emergent gameplay as far as I can tell. Maybe use some of the plot/adventure generators from Donjon to develop some initial story beats/hooks but then I feel like you'd need to lean hard on player motivation to find what the campaign is "about".
@critfail_press @malin I've considered it but find it doesn't give me, the GM, any buy-in/ownership of the world.
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K Christopher shared this topic on
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Open question to the Fediverse/Universe/Mastodon:
Has anyone used Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator in a TTRPG campaign? I'm super curious about people's experience with it. The amount of crunchy world details it provides are substantial, and theoretically I understand how one could use it as the setting for a campaign.
But I'm interested in if anyone HAS, and if so details like, for what system, and what was the experience like? Was it useful? A hindrance? Etc.?
Not wholesale, no, but I’ve definitely used it for inspiration. Actually, I think I’ve used screenshots from it as masks for Wonderdraft.
The Watabou city generator, though… It’s provided the layout to my hero cities right off the shelf.
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Open question to the Fediverse/Universe/Mastodon:
Has anyone used Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator in a TTRPG campaign? I'm super curious about people's experience with it. The amount of crunchy world details it provides are substantial, and theoretically I understand how one could use it as the setting for a campaign.
But I'm interested in if anyone HAS, and if so details like, for what system, and what was the experience like? Was it useful? A hindrance? Etc.?
@critfail_press I’ve used it for every campaign I’ve run since I learned about it. It’s great for the broad strokes of worldbuilding, and allows me enough control to still flex my own creativity. I appreciate that it calculates all the details that I want in worldbuilding that would be annoying to do myself. It does leave a lot for you to add to make it gameable though.
I’ve used it for fantasy and sci fi campaigns with 5e, WWN/SWN, and my own game The Years of Adventure
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@critfail_press I’ve used it for every campaign I’ve run since I learned about it. It’s great for the broad strokes of worldbuilding, and allows me enough control to still flex my own creativity. I appreciate that it calculates all the details that I want in worldbuilding that would be annoying to do myself. It does leave a lot for you to add to make it gameable though.
I’ve used it for fantasy and sci fi campaigns with 5e, WWN/SWN, and my own game The Years of Adventure
@bwebster that's awesome! And thanks for sharing your experience.
In terms of the narrative then, if Azgaar's has given you the back drop i.e. setting, how then do you create your narrative? Do you go in with some preplanned plot and connect it to that world, or do you let the players kind of find it as they go? Or something else entirely?
Also, do you think it's easy enough to change the tone or theme of the setting so it's not always "generic fantasy"? Does Azgaar's do this already?
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@bwebster that's awesome! And thanks for sharing your experience.
In terms of the narrative then, if Azgaar's has given you the back drop i.e. setting, how then do you create your narrative? Do you go in with some preplanned plot and connect it to that world, or do you let the players kind of find it as they go? Or something else entirely?
Also, do you think it's easy enough to change the tone or theme of the setting so it's not always "generic fantasy"? Does Azgaar's do this already?
@critfail_press yeah I think depending on how extensively you plan to use the built in tools, I’d say Azgaar is very flexible for different genres. As I mentioned I’ve used it for sci-fi, but I think it could also be used for more modern settings, or anything else where a realistic(ish) world generator is useful.
I run mostly sandbox campaigns, so I don’t prep plot, but rather use the world as inspiration to generate potential conflict, and plop the players down in the middle of it
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@critfail_press yeah I think depending on how extensively you plan to use the built in tools, I’d say Azgaar is very flexible for different genres. As I mentioned I’ve used it for sci-fi, but I think it could also be used for more modern settings, or anything else where a realistic(ish) world generator is useful.
I run mostly sandbox campaigns, so I don’t prep plot, but rather use the world as inspiration to generate potential conflict, and plop the players down in the middle of it
@critfail_press if you’re interested, I wrote this blog post a little while ago, which is a more detailed description of how I run my campaigns (and all the campaigns I used as inspiration for that post, started in Azgaar). One note, I usually won’t use Azgaar’s generated polities, I’ll create my own most of the time. But that’s just personal preference.
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@critfail_press if you’re interested, I wrote this blog post a little while ago, which is a more detailed description of how I run my campaigns (and all the campaigns I used as inspiration for that post, started in Azgaar). One note, I usually won’t use Azgaar’s generated polities, I’ll create my own most of the time. But that’s just personal preference.
@bwebster Thanks! I will definitely check this out!
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@bwebster that's awesome! And thanks for sharing your experience.
In terms of the narrative then, if Azgaar's has given you the back drop i.e. setting, how then do you create your narrative? Do you go in with some preplanned plot and connect it to that world, or do you let the players kind of find it as they go? Or something else entirely?
Also, do you think it's easy enough to change the tone or theme of the setting so it's not always "generic fantasy"? Does Azgaar's do this already?
I think a big part of using procedural elements in games is avoiding creating a narrative. Instead, you have to focus on creating antagonists: Villains, factions, or competitors who have goals that run orthogonal or counter to the players’, and then you use the world you’ve generated to direct the antagonist’s story.
The players generate their own story by interacting with the antagonists.
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K Kichae shared this topic on
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Not wholesale, no, but I’ve definitely used it for inspiration. Actually, I think I’ve used screenshots from it as masks for Wonderdraft.
The Watabou city generator, though… It’s provided the layout to my hero cities right off the shelf.
@kichae I know nothing about Wonderdraft, but am furiously researching it now! Would you mind going into a little more detail about how you're using those screenshots?
And yeah, the Watabou cities are top notch. One of may favorite generators made by @watawatabou. Up there with Perilous Shores.
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@kichae I know nothing about Wonderdraft, but am furiously researching it now! Would you mind going into a little more detail about how you're using those screenshots?
And yeah, the Watabou cities are top notch. One of may favorite generators made by @watawatabou. Up there with Perilous Shores.
Wonderdraft is functionally a cross between a map painter and a landscape former (like a SimCity terrain editor). It lets you shape a canvas using raise/lower terrain tools, and then paint. it using colours and icon “burhses” (for, e.g., mountain ranges).
I like it a lot, but then, I also liked terrain transforming in SimCity more than I actually liked SimCity.
One of the things Wonderdraft does is let you import images to use as a template for coastline generation. So, if you see a landmass layout that you like in the map generator, you can just save a screen clipping and Wonderdraft will – mostly, it does have some rough edges – recreate those landmasses for you.
It won’t place cities or region borders or anything, though. It just creates the dry land in a default tan colour.
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Wonderdraft is functionally a cross between a map painter and a landscape former (like a SimCity terrain editor). It lets you shape a canvas using raise/lower terrain tools, and then paint. it using colours and icon “burhses” (for, e.g., mountain ranges).
I like it a lot, but then, I also liked terrain transforming in SimCity more than I actually liked SimCity.
One of the things Wonderdraft does is let you import images to use as a template for coastline generation. So, if you see a landmass layout that you like in the map generator, you can just save a screen clipping and Wonderdraft will – mostly, it does have some rough edges – recreate those landmasses for you.
It won’t place cities or region borders or anything, though. It just creates the dry land in a default tan colour.
@kichae Ok wow, that's a really cool way to merge these tools and get some topography on your map.
I also enjoyed the map editing of SimCity. To this day I still don't know what 'Reticulating Splines' actually means!
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@kichae Ok wow, that's a really cool way to merge these tools and get some topography on your map.
I also enjoyed the map editing of SimCity. To this day I still don't know what 'Reticulating Splines' actually means!
Splines are piecewise vector curves, like what you get from the ‘pen’ tool in Photoshop or Gimp. To reticiulate means to put together so as to form a mesh or network.
The phrase doesn’t really mean anything in the context of the game.
