New map added: The City of Rivers End

Finally got the city map done for the city of Rivers End. This will be a part of my upcoming adventure for the Red Ash World Engine and took me way to long to make. A large image can be seen here.


Each Hex is 10 meters in diameter or about 32 feet and 10 inches. The numbers on the buildings will be referenced in a small booklet that will give details about the building and its occupants. With a population of about 30,000 many of these structure will end up being 2 stories or more.


The purpose of the booklet will be to record a place like a city, town or dungeon at a specific period of time, its condition, inhabitants and so on. So when playing in the world you play in a specific time. I am thinking this will be separated into ages and kingdoms, but now I'm getting ahead of myself ;).


I will not make the population by hand but I will design a script (PHP) to do it and fill in the buildings details. I plan to model my data structures of off the information found at Medieval Demographics Made Easy. I will need to modify it to meet the needs of my system and society, but it is a great starting place.


My next map will be the small village to the south and maybe one farm that are also a part of the first adventure.


All the Best!
Chris J.

Mansen Lin has added a Added a new imaage for the Saurian Species!

Mansen was kind enough to offer another image and this time for the Saurian species. Saurian are big, Titan sized reptilians known for their fierce social morals and a strict belief eat or be eaten.

Stop in a take a look at the new image on the species listing here or at Mansen's Red Ash Gallery with the bigger image here.


All the Best,
Chris J.

New Image "Looking Down" by artist Mansen Lin

Mansen sent me a new image for the Red Ash system and I "finally" got to putting it up...my fault of course. But I needed to think on just where I was going to place it and I was thinking on showing it on the main page.

The reason I felt so strongly about the image is I feel it represents some of the main reasons people play RPGs, the story and the adventure.

Mansen's image simply invites you into one of many story possibilities. The silver haired adventure escapes the burning city below. He climbs the cliff escaping the chaos below. Pausing he takes one more glance back.

Was he the cause of the burning city? Was he escaping it? Is he being hunted? So many possibilities from one image, well done Mansen!

I ended up not placing on the main sites page. Once I scaled it down it lost some details on the climber. I finally decided to add image support in the skills. So head over to the page for the climb skill and have a look at a great image by Mansen Lin!


All the best!
Chris J

Happy 2013! ...a day late but there is a good reason...

I now feel safe in that the Mayans were wrong, or was it the people misinterpreting their calendar were wrong? At any rate I will be moving forward with the maps and I hope to get to the actual adventure (done/working) this spring/summer/fall. In the mean time I will keep chipping away at.


Mansen Lin sent me a new image....last week and I will post it as soon as I figure out the best spot for it. I will strive to get that up this week end.

RPG World map

Here is my first release for the coming rpg module for the Red Ash World Engine. This will be a free module you can download directly from Red Ash. I plan on following the first module with at least two more free modules to complete one story arc.

When I am closer to having it complete I will be looking for some help in the form of editing and illustration.

For now take a look at the lay of the land. On the map you will note many areas that are not labeled, this is on purpose as this is a wild and untamed land.  BTW the big map is BIG so be aware if you have a slow connection it will take some time.

All the best!
Chris J

A "new?" look at turn based action....

I had an odd idea on turn based action and wanted to see what others may think of it. In case you do not know what turn based action is, let me explain.

Turn based action is where all active members of the game have a set turn when they can an action like an attack. Anyone that has played a table top game will be familiar with this. From D&D to Monopoly all players have a “turn”, it's a simple game mechanic. The problem with it is, is that this is when a game can slow down for the other players. This is specially true when you have a player that is not paying attention.

So my odd idea is a simple change of the turn based action from being a “take your turn now” to “your action is due now”. So in something like the Red Ash World Engine (or any role playing game) instead of having a turn for the player to figure out what to do and to go on, they need to be ready to perform their action. If they are not ready then they get skipped until their next turn. While other players or NPCs are taking their turn a player can figure out what their next action will be and ideally speed up the combat. In play I think this would make for a more intense combat.

So has anyone tried this? If so what was your experience with it? And what do I call it...?

All the best,

Chris J

The Dog Days of Summer....

....became the dog days of early autumn. This is just a quick note to let everyone know I am still working on Red Ash. I just took a bit of time off to play some games and decompress from the same old; work, eat, sleep cycle.

Now I will need to get back to hammering my keyboard and try to finish this first Red Ash RPG Module.


Till then...All the Best!
Chris J.