20JUL10 The RPG Tank...

Be very careful what you tell players, in fact, you might want to clarify depending on genre... After all, with a game system like GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System by Steve Jackson Games, www.sjgames.com) you certainly have to. After all, you never know what sourcebook a player might have picked up and what kind of character they slipped into your game world! Yes, I'm such a Munchkin...

Most references to various games are Copyright Steve Jackson Games. "Bolo" is reference to the giant cyber tanks which are the brain child of Keith Laumer (and an inspiration to S.J. and crew) along with "Gottlos" being the cyborg tank idea of Colin Kapp (Analog Collected works Number 8, picked up at a library book sale years ago!). Fans of "Ogre/GEV" will instantly recognize the references to the orignal ideas that inspired Ogre.

What can I say, I find the idea of giant self aware tanks that pack enough firepower to match an armored company pretty fun as a science fiction game concept. My roleplaying game experience is pretty limited, so when I first heard 'tank' in reference to Fantasy RPG's you can imagine the devious thoughts that went through my head. As I've been a GURPS book reader and Ogre player since the age of 12... The fact that I have some friends who might play a GURPS Fantasy module and I have GURPS Ogre on my shelf...

27FEB09 First Map

I did it! I finally combined Inkscape (to do the hex grid) with GIMP (to turn the .png exported from Inkscape into a multi-layer Photoshop Document .psd file) so I could use Painter X to paint the background! So, you have a small village with the well and a battle field with several choke points to fight over. So far, no numbers yet...

Nuts and Bolts (short version):

1. Using Inkscape, I made a .65 inch high hexagon with .03 inch width stroke for line weight. I also made sure my document preferences were for US Letter size paper... Important! Inkscape defaults to A4, most of its development is done in Europe! When I was happy with where my hex grid was, and its alignment, I exported the entire page to .png format which allows RASTR editors like Photoshop or the GIMP to read it as a picture instead of a scalable vector graphics (.svg) file.

2. Using the GIMP (or Photoshop if you are rich enough, I know you aren't a pirate, if you are you need to try the GIMP... I've used the CS Demo and I'm not impressed with Photoshop...) I loaded the .png file. It starts out as black lines on a transparent sheet! Thats fantastic! Thats what makes it handy! I added another layer that was opaque white and moved it behind the hex grid. If I wanted to, I could start making my maps now by working on layers underneath the hex grid! After getting the background in place, I saved the file as a Photoshop Document (.psd).

3. Finally, I loaded the .psd file into Painter X. Painter X put up a background layer called 'canvas' behind my white background, so I deleted the white background and proceeded to add layers and build my map. Finally, I saved a copy in the .RIFF format for further editing using Painter X and exported a copy as a .jpg which we see here!

There you go, baby steps! Turning terrible twos!

09DEC08 V 1.0 Legal Size 3/4" hex sheet

As promised, a legal paper size blank hex grid. Its a .png file, so its black on transparent, recommend edit in GIMP/Photoshop or similar (I've found that Painter X doesn't support .png files, no worry, I'll just use the GIMP and convert it to a .psd file!).

I've also found Scribbus, which is the CYMK workaround to get a GIMP drawing to print (GIMP only does RGB color which doesn't work well for print, while Scribbus is an open source publication tool which is made to convert RGB to CYMK!). I'll see if I can post more later, once I figure out how to do things with it myself!

Right now, my hex sheets are FAR from perfect. My alignments are off, I have no grid numbers (but with a couple variations on how to number, thats no surprise...), and I'm not sure they are within printing boundaries! I've also got to come up with standard convention for naming so that when I have variations, its easy to identify and figure out which ones you want. On top of that, I've got to find out where I can put the native .svg (scalable vector graphics, Inkscapes native format) so that everybody can download and edit as they see fit (i.e. make your own grid numbers to correspond to whatever board you want or are expanding!). Right now, Deviant Art is the only site I can think of, but I'm not sure yet.

Recommendations welcome!