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DungeonDraft – An affordable map-maker

If you’re looking for an affordable map-making tool for RPGs suitable for use with a VTT a good contender is DungeonDraft which comes for an affordable $19.99 which weighs in around €20.

While it doesn’t offer the same rich variety in terms of assets out of the box as say for example Inkarnate. There are many free assets available for it on CartographyAssets which closes the asset gap quite quickly.

The fact that it’s a once off payment rather than an ongoing subscription means it quickly pays for itself. Can recommend enough if you’re looking to create quick maps for VTT sessions. Added to which there is nice integration with Foundry VTT if that’s your thing.

Here’s two examples of maps I’ve recently used in RPG game made only using the default installed assets.

The Blacksmiths Shop

The Blacksmiths Shop

A section of a village the party recently visited showing the local Blacksmiths store and accommodation. The store having a open stall window at the front with the smithy to side and family quarters behind.

The Old Watchtower

The Old Watchtower

A point of interest the adventures had to explore was a recently abandoned watchtower and the mysterious cavern linked to it below. Where the recent disappearances of villagers connected in some way to its sudden abandonment? Probably not.

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Mozilla sells out their users again

Mozilla with Firefox positions itself as a user privacy focused company but it looks like this is changing, having recently acquired an advertising tech company itself.

And following that acquisition it has sneaked in an opt-out piece of tracking into the latest Firefox version.

Under “Privacy & Security” in settings you will find a “Web Site Advertising Preferences” section with the option enabled by default.

Clearly the next step you need to be doing if you are a user of Firefox is to disable this option.

Further details and analysis of this can be found at the privacyguides.org site.

https://blog.privacyguides.org/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/

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Planetside II – There’s a heartbeat there still, I think

I thought looking at an older game might be instructive with respect to the decline of games over time.

Planetside II can be seen very much as a spiritual successor to the Tribes franchise, released by SOE back in Nov 2012. It’s a game which never really got much exposure but maintained a loyal core following over the intervening years.

The PC version of the game is available either stand-alone or though steam, so the numbers reported by steam charts is not representative of its actual player counts showing Steam only, but the movement in player count probably tracks well.

The following graph shows the player count over the intervening years, with the dramatic drop-off at the start and a largely stable if waning player count in the following years.

This slow decline in player count can be seen in the numbers for the more recent months, showing a game clearly still pulling some new players to replace those who leave. But unfortunately not quite in numbers to reverse the overall slow decline.

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Helldivers II – Player count slide

Helldivers II is a bit of a one-trick pony, but it’s a pretty good trick in fairness.

But like anything without much variety it runs the risk of becoming stale and losing people’s attention. Which is what we can see now by looking at the player numbers over the last few months.

Steam Charts: Helldivers II

Moving from a massive peak of 458,208 players, there has been a consistent slide in the player count of about 34% month on month.

Though for a newly released game in the first 5 months, such a drop-off as the novelty factor wanes is not unexpected.

The expectation is that the player-base will stabilise to a core audience that can be maintained going forward; with an expectation of a more gradual decline going forward.

This looks like that is happening with the player count now.

Having settled from the 22th May onwards around the 50k mark with a much less pronounced attrition in numbers.

The new patch released on 13th June saw a slight spike in numbers , with a peak of 91,692 players following its release. But did not result in a notable increase of the player count.

To truly revitalise the player-base something bigger is going to be needed. Possibly the release of a third faction (The Illuminate from the original?) is the one to watch for and maybe that could reinvigorate the player-base and count.

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Death of a MMO

I had seen some talk about the state of New World, an MMO released approximately 2 years and 5 months ago by Amazon Games. So I decide to take a closer look at it myself.

Released to great fanfare and with the deep deep pockets of Amazon to back it up, you would think to yourself that it couldn’t fail.

Though those of us with memory of Crucible, also by Amazon might have had some foreshadowing of a possible lack of success.

Starting off with an average of 410,000 players, it quickly settled down to an average mid-to-late teens with respect to players count. But its really fallen off a cliff as of this year.

New World Historic Player Counts

Even taking November 2021 as a starting point, the player-base has shrunk to just 3.75% of that number. That’s a pretty spectacular drop in just about two and a half years.

Personally I found it an interesting game, but always found the movement in it strange and slightly off-putting. Something I’ve noticed in other games based on the CryEngine from which Lumberyard was derived.

Link: Steam Charts: New World

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AI Art Wallpapers

One of the things I like about AI Art is the surreal images it can generate which make for great wallpapers and general backgrounds.

Here’s a selection of fantasy themed images I’ve used for wallpapers or visual aids for use in roleplaying games.

The party pass through a gateway into a forest

Returning to the forest gateway

A well stocked herbalist shop

A wanderer in a desolate land

A gateway to a chaotic realm
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Vaesen Solo Play Aid

I’ve been dabbling with Vaesen by Free League Publishing for a bit now.
It’s nice investigative driven RPG set in an alternative Nordic 19th century, along with an expansion which covers Ireland and Britain during the same time period.

So as a forever DM, I was pleased to see a set of rules for solo play has been released.
It utilities a series of random tables to drive the story and encounters, making use of both dice and standard playing cards.

It was the later, the playing cards which I found rather cumbersome in use, so to that end I knocked up a simple web-page to simplify that part of the process.

You’ll still need the solo-rules, but image below (showing a sample card) takes you to web-page.

Pressing “Deal Card” will deal a new card from the deck of 52, creating and shuffling a new card deck as required.

Pressing “NPC State” will deal two cards, which are used to determine an NPC state to the players.