5:10 he’s giving him a belly rub

"The city of sent 'em anus" - Players, probably

Very Nice Tips

I made my first map, that was so much fun. I have made tall objects in the distance that the players can see, and I hope they will discover the hexes in between.

these would be great videos for video game devs too

What thats a dope drawing

Quick fix to your factions: just have your friends run them during downtime between sessions

I enjoy all of Map Crow videos

I enjoy all of Map Crow videos

Do you have a designated art channel. Would love to learn more about this process. Awesome work!

very cool to see the entire process

I have been studying traditional art with ink, charcoal, and watercolor, but have always been a gamer and a fantasy nerd. This has really inspired me to finally start making my own fantasy art!

Wow. Your pencil needs to go on a diet. (Great vid! I subscribed!)

ooh man! now I have to think about a scene that I can draw out like this! This looks really great once again :-) Good and easy to follow tips as well :D

What a piece of art!! Awesome work!

Excellent script, senpai. 👍🏼

Didn't get to watch live but the vod was a blast!

thanks for the art class, much much appreciated, really helps me start off

you say that sci-fi gives you interest, but how about steam punk? scrap rusty metal? I would love to see some steam punk isomentric drawing, it's so hard to find. But despite that, thank you, you are inspiring and i love your work

3:00 (and 3:30) I love the idea of making them unique; an anomaly of elemental forces or otherwise infused with the world’s magic (like your ghost boi), made by by sorcery or the child of a god, with also unique magical properties and quirks. However, this philosophy can be applied to really any mythological creature that D&D simply threw a statblock on it with some ecology as a species or reproducible creation of magic. I think there is a time and place for codifying different species of monsters with common traits among each, it depends on your campaign and how you see dragons, and either is valid. It’s like Web DM has mentioned before, your game can have a race of medusas or it can have the Medusa. Your campaign setting could be one with individually distinct dragons or one with races full of history, hierarchies like councils and clans. There is rich lore on each type that still make them mystical, and a good DM would make each green dragon encountered unique in their own way (unless there were dozens). You can also make each species have additional properties beyond the statblock as well. This fire dragon’s breath can only be quenched with holy water, while that fire dragon’s blood confers fire resistance when drunk, and this other fire dragon breathes hellfire that overcomes that resistance.

Why not start the town in the center of the map so players can move in all directions?

Clicked for the art, stayed for the unhinged sketchbook mangling😂

Hmm, so for me these more "scientific" maps still seem more appealing to be honest. I dont nessesarily want to have players having set expectations about a place I want to create. I want to give them more of an opportunity to wonder about a place and after visiting it maybe drawing some visualizaion of what they encountered themselfes.

Im a scientist and i work with a guy that works with butterflies. He told me a fun story about how his boss had him poke caterpillars eyes out to demonstrate that the species have some other form of colour perception and dont need to *see* to be able to camouflage. Anyway, great video, very much inspired to go practise now!

Kyle, I think you used the wrong symbol for Shax

This was a fun watch! I'm currently developing a TCG called Parklander inspired by Japan's national parks. I've never played a TCG or been trained in game dev, so I've learned everything from scratch. It's a very convoluted process 😂 but not having that proximity bias has meant I can see opportunities to do things differently.

Summary: What makes a map "gameable"? They are *evocative* (materiality, sensoriality: GM should be able to pull information and feeling from the map itself) and *advenient* ("coming from without": the map should call the players towards adventure). Looking at the map, **verbs** should come to mind: many things you can *do* on this map (besides walk left/right forward/backward).

I know about a game jam going on for card games right now.

There is an Idea...

This reminds me of the old obscure card game Heresy: Kingdom Come. Where connecting the human conciesness to the internet opened the gates of heaven and hell and put came angels and demons into a cyberpunk dystopia. You had to build a network in meatspace to hold up your cyberspace and store victory points while defending yourself and foiling your opponent.

I can’t draw like that. You are very talented! Some good ideas shared here. Thanks!

Nice

Really enjoyed the stream! Give us a part two or be turned into a goat token.

LOL a marsupial sketchbook 😂

I think this critique misses an important point. If the artist's intent is to create a map that can inspire an adventure, than it's 100% on point. If, however, the point is to create a game space that could be used by someone who already has an idea for an adventure, it's off the mark. Overly evocative theming can actually take a map with an excellent game space and render it unusable, if the DM already has their own theme in idea in mind. I think there is definitely a market for spatially interesting maps, with minimalist theming (cavern, dungeon, tomb, abandoned house, etc).

i think the way the dm should play monsters that are intelligent is i the DM is not out to kill you but the monsters in the world are

i think you are wrong about the bottle neck in moonrise tower its like that to encourage you too go to a different entrance therefore the bottleneck is a matter of player agency do you wanna brute force through or do you wanna be more tactical

This has been awesome to watch after the stream- So many little jewels of knowledge scattered throughout it!

I would recommend Mark Kistler's books on learning to draw, he teaches the basics of drawing. His books will get you over not thinking you can draw, everyone can draw if they really want to, with just 30 minutes of practice a day, that's all it takes.

I like the idea of the Baba Yaga Hut just leaving footprints on the map, but when I was half-listening and not looking for a minute I started thinking about 'not mapping Baba Yaga's Hut' as: the interior of the Hut is inconsistent: bigger on the inside, and the halls shift and change constantly like a Scooby Doo chase scene. Maybe there are some dedicated rooms, but the rest of the place is magically amorphous (great for boss lairs, terrible for breakfast cereals.)

Well done! Good food for thought.

omg new upload! weve been starving man!

that social media page had 'get to know you' questions for a season. One of them was 'What's scarier clowns or spiders?' to which I replied that it was the dreaded clown-spider!

These are my favorite videos to work alongside to, too bad I didn't catch it live !

Absolutely love the concept for the witchfinder mummies - 10/10.

I had to bounce early, but the fog turned out fantastic! Thanks for alovely chilled out stream while I packed my bags.

I’ve always wanted to play dnd.

So I really liked the third poem as a fun role play prompt, it reminds me of a healer I made for what turned out to be a one-shot DnD adventure, I didn't do a single point of damage in the three or four encounters we had, instead I relighted on the sanctuary spell to protect myself and wind gust to keep my companions safe by using forced movement to remove them from danger, and then healing spells if that failed. I think it was a fun play experience and I could imagine your life goddess as encouraging pacifism towards anything with intellect and maybe demanding it from her priesthood or maybe that being one of a few vows that her player character clerics would need to choose between.

As someone who just came from JP Covert's videos, I feel attacked by that intro.

Great short video 😊 Liked it