This Whole Cheesy Place

Here for the first time is the whole map of Broceliande, the knights-and-faeries part of Cube World:

Click to enlarge

As I may have mentioned before, it's based on a cheese map of France.

If you zoom in you can see the encounter tables:

The monster lit is bottom left, the landscapes for encounters are top right, and the town generator is at the bottom of this post.

If you like the look of it, the new Cube World (#18) is set entirely there:

Prison-Pyramid of the Vast Maggot and other sources of unnecessary conflict includes...

-The ​Pyramide du Poitou​ gives its name to both this module and the elven barony it occupies. A terrifying twenty-room dungeon-prison for some of the most deadly foes of the Church of Vorn--grim gray god of iron, rust, and rain. The Pyramide is mapped out and the area around it is sketched. Bonus: the Vornic rune alphabet.

-The ​Time Thieves ​are an awful, level-draining pain-in-the-ass mutant NPC party who’ve set up shop in an abandoned fairground within Gérome, a chaotic barony beset by invaders from all sides.

-Like the Pyramide, ​St Paulin Priory​ also lends it name to the area around it. Among the dangers lurking in the ruins of the once proud barony is a mad monk who’s attempted to transform his fellow anchorites into “angels”. It didn’t work of course and now they’re horrible. Even for this place, which has Violet Leopard Orchids.

-Hrothgar Grasp​ and his sorcerous pack-apes roam the wastes of southern Broceliande in search of knowledge. A legendary wizard, not to be trifled with casually and a challenge for very clever players only. Even his monkeys can disintegrate you.

-The Duc de la Rouchefoucauld ​will, at least, only fight you if you ask him to. The bad news is he’s good at it--among the most renowned duellists in Broceliande. The other bad news is he’ll turn you into a fish if he wins. It does mean this module includes duelling rules, though. And fish that once were warriors.

-Vast Shrike Crossing ​is (finally) an adventure suitable for low-level parties. Smart ones anyway. Stupid ones will find themselves blundering into four 6hd monsters all at once and probably, let’s face it, crying. After fighting goblins. And bandits. Ok maybe it’s a mid-level adventure? They’ll be fine, I’m sure.

17 page pdf plus maps and treasure tables

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Email me: zakzsmith AT hawtmayle if you don't already know how to order.

2020 isn't all bad

Why are these notebooks so elaborate?

I get that question a lot now that the Cube World pdfs are coming out and people can see what my notes look like.

Part of the answer is that while I'm trying to think up an adventure I sit and draw. So while, yeah, I maybe didn't need to have every single hair on the giant baboon's body picked out like that just to remember there was a giant baboon when I use that page to run a game, I did have to spend some time figuring out who the baboon was, why he was there, etc and all that came up while drawing him.

The other part of the answer is basically because of what happened the first time I did a published RPG book, Vornheim:

In 2011 or whatever, I got it in the mail and then I felt so relaxed any time I was running a game and the party wandered into Vornheim, because, hey, it was all there. Y'know, organized. Map, monsters, notes, sorted: cool.

I mean I don't remember half of this stuff any more than anyone else does, having it in my face and having each spread look different genuinely saved me time in the long run. So I thought: Ok, why not do all these notes like that? Make everything like that or like the One Page Dungeon Contest.

And it worked, this week's game I had to level someone up (so I pulled out the player's handbook) and the players bought some books (so I pulled out the treasure table) but otherwise I ran the whole game off information in about 4 square inches of notebook.

So, yeah, now that the notebooks are being published: I wasted time so you don't have to.

Two new Cube Worlds are out, 5 bucks each, they're both batches of semi-self-contained scenarios set all over the world, and again most of them were going to be in Lamentations of the Flame Princess' cancelled Violence in the Nympharium. 

Cube World 16 is The Sorcerer, The Disintegrator, and The Giant Baboon (thus the baboon) and Cube World 17 is A Legion, A Dimension, A Cave, A Tower (the hydra is guarding the tower, which only exists at night).

You can check them out here.

As Violent As A Static Object Can Be

The new Cube World, Some Semblance of Civilization, is up in the store, lots of buildings and scenery and other sandbox stuff in this one. A lot of the pieces and parts are stolen because what I like to do when I draw is watch Jonathan Meades' videos on architecture.

For sheer D&Dability think the first chapter of this one on brutalism is pretty good. Meades doesn't just tell you what brutalism is or why you should like it, he always comes to his films with a thesis--in this case the idea that brutalism is less a mid-20th century outcome of modern design plus concrete than an expression of a tendency that has always been there and expressed itself in a variety of architectural styles.

A big, heavy, oppressive hormone that runs through the bloodstream of many eras ad in many places. His filmic essay begins, oddly, with Blenheim Palace, one of the many baroques pile of rocks you might have seen in Barry Lyndon.

Regardless of whether Meades is right or wrong about this, his thesis about what constitutes the transtemporal brutalist style matches exactly what you'd want from a dungeon: inhuman scale, repetition, artificiality, moodiness, bulk, solidity, primitivism, irrational juxtapositions, causing you to shiver with "delighted horror or unqualified horror, horror full stop".

I think it might be hard for us now to look at that building and see it as a horror or primitive or charmless or "as violent as a static object can be", but you have to compare it to the homey humanitarian-scaled humanistically windowed and humanely carpeted hobbit-holes architects were otherwise producing. Meades proposes charm is the opposite of grandeur, measured on a scale where Hobbiton is on one side and Minas Morgul is on the other. And you have to think of how it felt to live there, and how it must've seemed as you walk up on it--especially in the dark.

Which brings me to...

....the mansion from the Clue movie.

Maybe its only in the gothic-brutalist lineage in the dark? Maybe the point of this kind of building is to always look the way buildings look in the dark? But whatever, like all the best murder mansions, we only ever see it at night.

I wanted to know who designed it, turns out the answer is exciting: Paul Revere Williams. Maybe the most important and least famous Los Angeles architect. A true chameleon, Williams specialized in mansions for weird rich people--in whatever style they wanted. He did the Beverly Hills Hotel...

And that weird, now-purposeless building in the middle of LAX:

Aaaaand he did Murphy Ranch, which the owner let the Nazis use as a compound here in SoCal until it got raided by the police at the beginning of WW2 (they had their antifa moments I guess, once)...

Its nice that Demon City and Cube World can share an architect, but my hands-down favorite fact about Paul R Williams is he learned to draw upside down because he was black and he knew there were white clients who would feel more comfortable sitting across the table from him while he sketched out their plans.

The Cops Shot A Demon City Contributor In The Face & I Just Got Out Of County

So first, journalist Linda Tirado, who wrote on the upcoming Demon City, lost an eye in Minneapolis:

So starting now all proceeds from the next Cube World (Odd Jobs in Small Baronies) that just came out...

...will go to her because, really, when you can only see out of one eye every little bit helps--and I feel fine leaving it to her discretion whether to in turn pass the money on to someone else.

A lot of people have asked about me since they know I'm in downtown LA--and thank you for that--this map pretty much says it all:

But I got it all on tape so might as well use it.

Peaceful protest (this was friday before there was a curfew order):

Aaaand here come the cops:

Cops:

This guy was popping off at everyone.

Rubber bullet picked up on my street

I gave the video to the LA County public defender in case anyone gets charged with more than a "citation" or tries to get their mountain bike back and they say it was "seized as evidence".

Anyway blah see you soon.
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The Cops Shot A Demon City Contributor In The Eye & I Just Got Out Of County

So first, journalist Linda Tirado, who wrote on the upcoming Demon City, got shot in the face in Minneapolis:

So starting now all proceeds from the next Cube World (Odd Jobs in Small Baronies) that just came out...

...will go to her because, really, when you can only see out of one eye every little bit helps...will go to her because, really, when you can only see out of one eye every little bit helps--and I feel fine leaving it to her discretion whether to in turn pass the money on to someone else.

A lot of people have asked about me since they know I'm in downtown LA--and thank you for that--this map pretty much says it all:

But I got it all on tape so might as well use it.

Peaceful protest (this was friday before there was a curfew order):

Aaaand here come the cops:

Cops:

This guy was popping off at everyone.

Rubber bullet picked up on my street

I gave the video to the LA County public defender in case anyone gets charged with more than a "citation" or tries to get their mountain bike back and they say it was "seized as evidence".

Anyway blah see you soon.
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Some Cube World Videos

The books

Playing with KK and Michelle
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