In my big re-work of ‘Veins of the Earth’, I have begun looking at the systems used for generating the geography of the Veins, the large main routes, smaller areas, etc.
My plan isn’t to fundamentally change the methods from the first VotE, but to re-make them, to make the new versions more of a comprehensive generator, with a sequence of tools to systematically generate a large area, routes, cities, villages, trade routes etc.
Something else I would like to do in this version is gesture to or recommend alternate methods or other ways different people have tried to deal with this non-trivial problem of generating and mapping complex, large three-dimensional spaces underground.
From the first VotE. We won’t be using this layout as it belongs to Raggi but the general concept will likely be similar.
My aim here isn’t to copy but to, in the spirit of a bibliography, directly point people towards alternative possibilities. (I am also planning on doing this with monsters so people can put together their own encounter charts).
So far the only other book I’m intimately familiar with which deals with this specific problem, is Douglas Niles Dungeoneers Survival Guide, which has a neat but somewhat challenging method for isometric mapping.
What other books or works, or even posts, are people familiar with that deal with, specifically; generating and mapping large pseudo-natural underground spaces?
(I know there are a million methods of dungeon and mega-dungeon design, that’s not what I am talking about here.)
In a late and desperate attempt to shore up my
‘relevance’ I have been scouring the internet for evidence that I exist, and
have stumbled into the tragic gap left by the lost ‘Great Crystal Debate’ DOES
ANYONE EVEN HAVE A COPY? If you would like to find out more, scan down the
following chronological list of text, video and audio discussions, down to
2018…
2015 – Podecast
Back in 2015 Scrap and I played around with a ‘Podecast’
(i.e. each was at the antipode to the other), and ended up recording a brief
run of unedited ‘conversations’ about a rather wild range of subjects which
ranged from 2015 into 2016
Contents include;Rhiannas new video.
Ghosts and why they hold candles. Skeletons and skeletor - egyptian theories of
the dead. He-Man. Gas-Spores. Nazi Aurochs. “I’ve been around some pretty
smelly subcultures.” Eating living things. Godzilla. Forbidden Planet.
Imperialism and microbiology. Scrap fades in and out around this point for
mysterious reasons. Possible collaborations. Natasha Allegri. Stephen Pyne. The
state of modern poetry. The Art of Not Being Governed.(He wasn’t a poet.)
Contents;http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/72404517/judges-take-a-shine-to-wow-winner.
Zak hates nature. Snails. “The child of love and war is sex”. A thick silky
coffee with cardamon. Crepuscular Rays. kelvin helmholtz.
http://www.pncc.govt.nz/media/32138/citizensadvicebureaulogo.jpg
http://www.firstlighttravel.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Maori-Rock-Art.jpg
Contents;1.20 Scrap starts rambling about
chromosomes. - (seriously, think about skipping this part). 4.26 Gives up on
that and starts again. Begins a very dark story about Bees. 8.00 King Arthur
and Bees. 9.55 The Demiplane of British History. 13.25 Brief ramble here. 13.40
Other Planes, verticality. 14.50 Hook Birds. 15.25 Dinosauroids -
http://povorot.deviantart.com/gallery/9348116/The-Dinosauroids. 15.35 The first
few issues of Prophet. (I think these are in fact the same guy.) 16.35 “Bees,
have to get this back to bees..” 17.20 Evolution of pollen, and therefore bees.
17.45 Exploiting colony organisms. Pretending to be ants. 20.10 We are colony
organisms. 21.20 The nihilism of not cleaning your room. 21.45 Emergency coping
mechanisms. 23.09 Sudden change in conversation due to girlfriend interruption.
The Death of Avril Lavigne. 24.24 Schizophrenia. The voices are probably real.
Believing you are in the matrix. 26.13 “That’s kind-of like a hive..” 26.45 In
stories no-one can ever be competent. 28.15 Destroying a city with super-speed.
30.15 The delay between conception and creation. 31.00 Cut-Up
https://archive.org/details/Podecast5 Contents; 1.30 - Dark gods. 5.00 - FotVH Images.
8.30 - Please buy my fucking books. 9.30 - Making relate-able and insightful
points about a variety of role playing related conversation things. 10.30 -
Alchemy. 15.15 - First impressions of the OSR. 19.30 - Motivations are monsters
from inside you. 21.30 - Choices in char gen. 31.30 - Cognitive silence. 33.30
- Traditional originality, fire, hirelings and dogs. 37.30 - Ten minutes on
dark AI’s & nightmare futurism. 46.45 - Language, objects & baby
psychology. 51.30 - Lard, the currency of agency. 55.00 - Stories, memory and
experience, the grand conflict. 58.30 - Fail states.
The Wonderful Kererū appears only once in this Podecast
but exemplifies the spirit of both participants, a fat, pompous, ridiculous
animal snatching a whole twig from the tree of thought, eating a single flower
and then throwing the rest away. Contents; 0.07 - VotE. 2.38 - Weightlifters with
no penises. 3.37 - Do you want to talk about pre-history? (We do not do this.)
4.36 - I cut a huge amounts of blathering out here. 5.00 - Scraps game. 7.10 -
Complexity and depth. 9.30 - Scrap has a moment of clarity about the nature of
Complexity. 11.10 - Where it actually starts to get interesting. 11.50 - The
capacity of a post-apocalyptic world to create its own context. 13.10 - A new
place to put adventures. 13.45 - “What’s his face? The guy who does Udan-Adan?
We’ll probably never know his real name.” 14.15 - Our regular obligatory
mention of Zak. 15.50 - Who did invent ‘the dungeon as a living thing? 17.28 -
A Ghost in my house. 18.30 - The ‘blank slate’ game world & identity. 20.43
- Eve as the first D&D player, Adam as a Storygamer. 22.28 - Rachel
Pollack’s ‘Unquenchable Fire’ I got the name wrong in the podcast. 24.26 - Our
other regular segment on colonialism. 26.16 - Mention of Potatoes causes
internet to drop out. 28.10 - It’s ‘Henry Moreton Stanely’ and I may well be
wrong about Cortez. Have fun with Wikipedia. 31.45 - “You’re treating those
children like subhumans.” 33.41 - Scrap is confused by the moral exchange
inherent to Government. Sarah Horrocks would probably agree. 38.15 - “If only
one culture has reliable deep-water navigation, that culture is effectively
playing D&D with the world.” 39.45 - Cowboys on Mars. 41.53 - We expand our
mentions of Zak to include his sister? Anyway, X-Men school-style Character
Gen. 47.39 - Communicating on a Meta-Level. Maybe our players are friends.
49.15 - MY SPECIAL SETTING!! 51.00 - We cycle back to, or around, different
contexts in which to place adventures.. 52.00 - The ancient civilization of
Dan. 55.09 - The Halfmen of O by Maurice Gee. 56.55 - The Changeover by
Margaret Mahy. 58.45 - Does the Conspiracy Theorist have a D&Dish world?
No, not really. 60.01 - Pre-apocalyptic D&D. 60.03 - Stealing & faking
art throughout history. 60.05 - Dirtbag Greys. The Burke & Hare of space.
60.07 - Changes in scale. Insect wars. 60.08 - The Author was ‘William Tenn’
and the book is Of Men and Monsters. 70.45 - Giants would be very vulnerable,
and likely peaceful. 72.55 - The wonderful Kererū or New Zeland Wood Pidgeon.
(A bird that flies through the glass in your window is also playing D&D).
76.00 - “Birds would be good D&D characters.” 81.00 - Evil Dolphins.
2017 - VotE!
The Secret DM — Veins of the Earth Interview with Patrick Stuart and
Scrap Princess
Back in 2018 I was making my (negative) views on CRYSTALS
widely known, when who should step forth to challenge me but the fool and
creator of the BREAK! RPG, Reynaldo Mandarinian. To settle the matter for All
Time, we got into a SAVAGE hour long verbal dual which, since there seem to be
no copies surviving online, I will assume I won.
If anyone out there has any records or copies of the Great
Crystal Debate, please let me know in the comments. The world deserves to hear
my (assumed) victory, and how crystals were defeated for All Time.
2019 - The Worm!
Ignite Liverpool — Talk on the Wapentake
I am slightly embarrassed to see myself physically
incarnated in maybe my only physical in-person talk.
https://youtu.be/nr4KKZMpf6Q Those of you familiar with ‘Silent Titans’ will know
about the ‘Wapentake of Wirral’ from that book, based on a real historical
incident in which a corrupt lawyer got his hands on the medieval documents
giving ownership of a dark age court and used them to form a criminal gang and
extort the people of the Wirral.
The Worm Orouboros with Tom Fitzgerald
In this interview the beloved creator of ‘Middenmurk’, sits down to talk with
me about the excellent and under-discovered ‘Worm Ouroboros’ by E.R. Eddison.
(One day I will read the Zimiamvia trilogy).
Part One show notes (full version at the link); Deep Carbon Observatory (Remastered!), Patrick's talk on the Wapentake at Ignite Liverpool, Silent Titans, The world is a spell, Fear of a Black Dragon (DCO episode), Arnold's "Goblin Punch" blog and time traveling dinosaurs, Veins of the Earth, Fire on the Velvet Horizon, A Night at the Golden Duck, The audio starts to overlap in the second half of the episode, Time travel in RPGs, Continuum RPG.
Or at least, no interviews or appearances from 2022 to
2025 where I popped up in the ‘Weird Hope
Engines’ zine fair. Looking back on it, some of these bursts of extroversion
were to help with Kickstarters, but it looks like the relative failure of
‘Demon-Bone Sarcophagus’ and the hangover from Covid really fucked me up more
than I realised. I may have brought books out but I really didn’t leave the
house for years. Damn. Now, once again, I fitfully stumble into action, to prove
to myself and the world that I exist. (Seriously if anyone has a copy of the Great
Crystal Debate let me know.)
2025 - Fantasy Art History
A sock resembling me did appear on the Abelard and Joe Fantasy Art History show;
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