New map - Aventurien

[Foom]

Aventurien is the world of a European pen and paper RPG called "Das Schwarze Auge", or DSA. It's similar to Dungeons and Dragons, except it doesn't suck

The copyright owners at Fanpro graciously gave permission to use their map for Dom2, so here it is. Well, a first Version anyway. I've done most of the work, but I'd like some feedback from you guys. Specifically, are there any province connection problems? Any game balance problems, bad starting locations? Province types that don't make sense?

There are also several things I'd like to work on in the future. They include

• A big Version with more provinces. I made a small one first because I prefer fast games, what do you think?
• Visibility. It's a colorful map, which makes it hard to see province borders and the in game province connection arrows. Not sure how to approach this issue.
• Scenarios! DSA has tons of lore, I'm sure I can come up with some interesting things.

For now, I'd appreciate it if you could download the map here (warning, 16 MB file) and let me know what you think. You're free to host and redistribute the file as long as it includes the readme; I want to respect Fanpro's license agreement.

Please note the oh so romantic signs of wear and tear, the traces of an entire youth wasted rolling dice and running from imaginary orcs.

And remember, Immer feste druff!

[Boron]

I am looking forward for the big Version , hopefully with about 200 provinces , my most liked map size .

Maybe you could also do a populated map like Edi's Faerun or even a small mod with some DSA creatures .

[Chazar]

Cool! I have not played on it yet, but I already like it because:

• 78 provinces makes for a playable map with 4-8 players. (First I thought that Karan is nicely sized, but now that I survived to endgame on Karan a few times, I do not think so anymore! Micromanagement kills far better than any AirQueen! There ought to be more maps size 70-120!)
• No random province names! This is cool, because you can better roleplay in diplomatic discussions! It is so awful that the game does not display names for not actually scouted provinces, so that all my diplomatic Messages sound weird like "(59) to (67)" despite my best roleplaying efforts!

Foom said:
And remember, Immer feste druff!

Ist das also das Motto der DSA Spieler?! (No offense meant, I played both DSA and D&D both ages ago and recently myself, and I do not regret either!
Admittingly, the two systems and default-world-backgorunds are worlds apart, but hey, what would the world be without some diversity? Just imagine what Dom2 would be without diversity!

[Arralen]

Foom said:
Aventurien is the world of a European pen and paper RPG called "Das Schwarze Auge", or DSA. It's similar to Dungeons and Dragons, except it doesn't suck

Oh, yeah, that's right - it sucks big time !!!
It's the most illogical and made-up conglomerate of nations, tech levels, map snippets from "real world" regions, topped off by it's unwieldy and unconsistent simulation rules.
I really appreciate (nearly) every effort to contribute something to this great game and it's community .. but why must it be a map of "Aventurien"?

Why can't you (and others) come up with something new and creative, instead of rehashing old crap?

To get a little bit more "back on topic" ..
.. as you already wrote, you map is way to colourful, it's really hard to distinguish borders and flags from the background. A little bit less contrast and colour shifting may rectify this.

.. a map without unpassable borders or "special taylored" bottleneck provinces isn't 'state of the art', and boring to play. It looks different than other maps, it plays the same.

.. despite all colours, it's hard to tell waste from plains. But that makes a big difference concerning pop and ress...

.. ocean tiles are way to big. Makes not only underwater movement too fast, but makes also shure that underwater nations will die from "dominion starving" very soon.

More to come when I have the time to check the map more thoroughly.

[Jurri]

Man, this looks great! I dig smaller maps. The visibility issue might be solved by lowering the brightness of the map. Although the province neighbor arrows aren't that important if the borders are clearly marked as is the case in this (I don't see the problem with borders).

How about some impassable borders?

[tinkthank]

Hey, GREAT!

I've never actually played DSA, I thought D&D was pretty good.
Anyhow, the map is GREAT.
I second Chazar's plea for more SMALLER MAPS. In fact, I was just about to post begging for some nice ones with water, and here comes yours. Thanks!!!

I have just spent about 10 minutes looking at it, nothing more out of Zeitmangel at the moment, but may I make these comments which are hopefully constructive?

- It is very hard to see neighbors (similar problem to Edi's Faerum the first time around), so I could hardly tell you right now, especially the water neighbors. Suggestion: Make little markers (similar to Edi) so that we can see where a prov may be to follow the arrows, and adjust perhaps the brightness?
- There are huge amounts of swamps and wastelands and almost no forests. Maybe the DSA-Welt is like that, I dont know. But had you considered making some of the provinces dual- or even tri-type (such as: Forest and Mountain)? It is also not particularly clear which symbol represents trees (or whatever).
- Neighbors: Just looking, I would have thought that the Desert of Khom would border to the north with 28 (cant see name), but it doesnt.
Well this looks like a very promising start, I would much rather have a smallerish map than anything else. Thanks tons!

[Arralen]

My advice:
Do not mix terrain features. The %-tages add up - or cancel each other out, mostly. But every unit with "survival x" or "y" or "z", with the province having the terrain XYZ, gets unrestricted movement. Furthermore it's not clear how random events and pop type randomization behave in such cases. Only mix that works ok (province-date wise) is mountain+wood.

But there are too few woods (if any at all?) on the map, for shure. Could be difficult to make them clearly visible by color, though.

[Foom]

Arralen said:Oh, yeah, that's right - it sucks big time !!!
It's the most illogical and made-up conglomerate of nations, tech levels, map snippets from "real world" regions, topped off by it's unwieldy and unconsistent simulation rules.
I really appreciate (nearly) every effort to contribute something to this great game and it's community .. but why must it be a map of "Aventurien"?

Why can't you (and others) come up with something new and creative, instead of rehashing old crap?

Uh, I can't tell whether this is an attempt at humor or you're just being an ***?

Thanks to everyone else for the suggestions. Mixing terrain types is not a good idea in my opinion, but I will see about adding more forests. The color saturation level could easily be lowered, but I wanted to avoid too much of a pastel effect where the colors are washed out.

Structure and chokepoints are one of the things I thought about right after posting this thread, and would indeed be nice. I have a dislike for impassable borders that aren't clearly marked (as in, a huge honking ocean), but I'll see about making some of the mountain ranges impassable.

[daesthai]

Haven't had the chance to play it yet, but I just downloaded it and the map LOOKS great! can't wait to give it a go. =) thanks!

~J

[Chazar]

[BEGIN OFF TOPIC]

Arralen said:
...topped off by it's unwieldy and unconsistent simulation rules.

Well, I guess your're right about this one, but I tend to leave rules to the GMs and sure enough I would not want to run a DSA game myself, but playing in one is just fine for me... Rules do not matter, acting does! (IMHO that is)

[END OFF TOPIC]

.. a map without unpassable borders or "special taylored" bottleneck provinces isn't 'state of the art', and boring to play. It looks different than other maps, it plays the same.

That might be a much more serious issue...