Planemorph: Fire revisited

After comparing the last couple sets of Elemental tiles side by side it became apparent to me that the fire collection didn't match - mainly due to how the pathways were defined. So I decided to alter them to a deeper magma/smoke/brimstone feel, and in doing so they now fit the general feel I'm going for.

FireDemo:

Fire tile up close:

Cheers,

Planemorph: Smoke

Next we turn to The Paraelemental Plane of Smoke. From the Planescape Campaign Set we have the following snippet:

Little traveled and less known, the paraplane of Smoke lies between the planes of Air and Fire. It is groundless like Air and hot like Fire, though it doesn’t scorch. The air is filled with rolling clouds of choking smoke, foul with brimstone and gases, so it’s impossible to breath safely without aid. Toward the plane of Air the poisons clear a little (a successful saving throw vs. poison every round results in only 1d1O points of damage; failure indicates immediate suffocation).

So I decided to create a smoke base that had some slightly visible regions of cracked lava, and then dropped in some pathways that would be considered "cooler regions when compared to the brimstone". Naturally moving through (or even visiting) this plane is not advisable to the air breathing player, but sometimes you open the wrong door or a Smoke Mephit offers to take you on a guided tour of his home - in either case, bad tidings await!

First is the SmokeDemo 9 tile set:

 Followed by a closeup of one of the Smoke tiles:

Cheers,

Planemorph: Water

Next up is the Water Plane. I went with a swirling hodgepodge of ooze for the "walkway/swim-way", and added a slight alteration to the background swirling color. I think it presents a nice counterbalance to the other PlaneMorphs in this series.

From Planescape's campaign Boxed set comes the strongest support for this ooze:

There’s more than just water out here, too. There’s elemental pockets, though few hold their form long. Chunks of Earth hover in the stream, bubbles of Air drift aimlessly, Ooze worms through the endless ocean, Magma hardens to stone, and bitter brine marks a pocket of Salt. Only pockets of Fire are truly rare, most of them suffocating the instant they appear.

First up is a WaterDemo with the 9 tiles pulled together:

Then a closer look at one of the tiles:

Cheers,

Planemorph: Air - revisited

In a previous post, Planemorph: Air, a comment was left about my take on the Elemental Plane of Air. John said: "Why would you need geomorphs for the Plane of Air? Wouldn't it be all open?"

*****
This is a valid point, and I overlooked one source that gives examples of what each plane looks like - in much greater detail than The Manual of The Planes (no matter the edition). Planescape.

This Blog's focus is 1E gaming. While I could simply ignore Planescape justifying that 2E will not be mentioned here, I'd be doing you the reader a disservice. See, I use the 2E Monstrous Compendium and like everyone in our gaming group, The Foaming Flagons, the Compendium is universally adored and revered. This I know not to be the consensus amongst most people that are familiar with that collection.

So, considering this forgotten source, I need to re-examine the Air node.

I searched through my Planescape books and was hoping to find a source that would describe the Elemental Plane of Air clearly, and lo and behold in the Planescape Campaign set we have the following:

Imagine being tens of thousands of feet up in the air - so high up the ground’s out of sight. That’s what the plane of Air’s like: nothing but air. It’s a world of brilliant blue, like the sky viewed from the highest mountaintop. It’s not featureless, though. Creatures fly through the great vault of endless sky, and other things - chunks of matter from other planes mostly - drift aimlessly about. Winds rise from gentle breezes to raging gales in mere seconds, and then die down as quickly as they came. Most fearsome of all are the storms blown in from other planes - fearsome lightning, giant hail, scorching heat, choking dust, and whirling maelstroms that are ringlike tornados, eating their own tails. 

Beings on the plane of Air divide into two classes. There are the natives - djinn and air elementals of all types - who stay to the sky, seldom or never setting foot on the pockets of other stuff that drift by. Then, because the plane’s not hostile (and is even beautiful to some), there’s a fair number of extraplanar sods here, too, visiting or setting up outposts. Those who ain’t natural flyers or elementals from other planes tend to cling to stony, floating islands in the endless sky. Djinn sometimes build palaces and cities on these, too. The greatest of these is the Citadel of Ice and Steel. Not far from it is a vortex called the Waterspout, which leads to the plane of Water. Other places of note include Borealis and Taifun, the Palace of Tempests.

It seems we have official Canon that helps support my concept, and helps to define it more than I realized with the lines:

chunks of matter from other planes mostly - drift aimlessly about.. and... cling to stony, floating islands in the endless sky covers my design vision.

I will need to go through and alter the material that defines the pathways for sure.

*****
My thanks to John for reminding me about this Campaign Setting, I can breathe a little deeper knowing my vision of the Elemental Plane of Air isn't completely filled with hot air. 8)

Cheers,

Planemorph: Earth

Next up is the Elemental Plane of Earth. I decided to go with a broken tile motif for the ground layer, while using a liquid lava/dirt combo for the background. I really like the way the tiling came out in this set, while the edge deterioration is an added touch. Included herein is a demo of the first nine tiles:

 Here is a full-size view of one to show the edge deterioration I spoke of and a tricky section for PC's fortunate (or unfortunate depending on your perspective ) enough to wind up here.

Cheers,

Planemorph: Air

This is the altered Air Base version. I added in more clouds and changed the walkway to have a wispy appearance. This is a 9 tile demo of Air, which includes areas that have more holes, open air regions and some small areas that might include leaps of faith etc.

Cheers,

Planemorph: One idiot's take on the Dungeon Geomorph craze...

It's a festering thing.

You get an idea gnawing in the back of your cerebral cortex and that gnawing slowly but surely becomes a fully manifested psychotic episode. I've got this dwarf sitting inside my brain you see, smoking a fine stogie, drinking whiskey and looking at a Penthouse Magazine while keeping one eye on the controls. He's very apt at keeping me on the lookout for redheads in thongs, Kate Beckinsale sightings (thank the heavens for her), and the occasional fine cigar (on the off-chance you enjoy a fine smoke - look no further than the Acid Line by Drew Estates).

You see, for years I've oft-looked at the Manual of the Planes with some amount of awe and as much exasperation because let's face it, no single volume dealing with as massive a subject as the various planes of existence can possibly cover everything. The book had some neat ideas, but invariably it, and others that followed for the newer editions of AD&D always falls short in trying to explain what exactly the planes each look like. They instead choose a couple popular planes, then go into detail talking about who lives there, their ecology, their enemies, and even what their cities/fortress's of solitude look like.

In this and only this regard, I believe the Manual of the Planes is a rousing success.

I understand that it is impossible to describe the Plane of Dust, Shadow, Fire etc. fully, or even vaguely, but its even more difficult to map it - both as a DM and as the unfortunate player in the game.

With all that said, over the last few years I've seen a craze take over the RPG tabletop realm, all based on the simple concept of the Old-School Dungeon Geomorphs produced by the fine folks at TSR. You all know what I'm talking about, and Dyson Logos is to be credited for making these goodies more popular than they have ever been by creating a fantastic take on them. His blog: A Character for Every Game covers his designs in full detail.


Other artists have taken Dyson's idea and ran with it and in doing so many are now part of Online Generators that will randomly produce a map based on all the various tile sets. Heck, we even have a set of Dice, Cards and Font designed around the concept of Dungeon Geomorphs - you can view the goodness here.


In any case, back to the dwarf and that gnawing sensation...


I was sitting staring at the Manual of The Planes, when it suddenly hit me (well actually I admit it was the dwarf throwing his empty whiskey bottle against the back of my left eye) why not create a set of Dungeon Geomorphs based on the various Planes? So I rolled on a random table to determine which plane I would try and create as a set. It's only a base set of 9 tiles and right now consider this a demo because lets face it I'd go blind and crazy doing a hundred of these before seeing if anyone even likes them.  

The winner, The Elemental Plane of Fire, is shown below:

Overall, I'm extremely pleased with how they initially turned out. I realize as well they may be a bit bland, but I think that is the point. A DM can take these, throw them together randomly, and produce a section of the Elemental Plane of Fire that can be used for a special encounter that his players can explore, while also dropping in various points of interest - be they encounters, structures etc.

Each tile is 10 squares on a side (10X10), and each has two exits per side.

I'm planning to do other planes as well. Earth, Air and Water seem like a good place to focus, but I do have some ideas for those "other" planes. 

Is this the next logical step in the evolution of the simple Dungeon Geomorph?, I'm really not sure, but do me one favor whatever you decide. Don't let the dwarf hear about it, cause I'll never live it down.

Cheers,

B.B.