JBG's Tabletop Operations

Trog Caverns VTT & Print Maps

If you are an old school RPG gamer, this map will be instantly recognizable to you. It’s based on a map from a late 70’s sandbox adventure module set in the depths of the earth. It’s… BIG, clocking in at 140 x 92 square grid (using 5′ squares) and so I’ve set the resolution to 36ppi instead of 72ppi (this should keep file load down so it runs smoothly on potato computers… like mine).

Each color theme has 4 versions.

1) DM’s Map keyed for encounter locations with 10′ square grid (JPEG)
2) DM’s Map keyed for encounter locations with 10′ square grid print file (PDF)
3) Player’s VTT Map with 5′ square grid (JPEG)
4) Player’s VTT Map with no grid (JPEG)

Trog Caverns-Alpha Edition Darkmode VTT Grid Variants

The print versions look good (I’ve tested it) so, the low-ish resolution is not a problem there… meant to be printed in poster mode, but you can squeeze it down to one page in your print settings “pop-up” when you go to fire it up easy enough. Because of how dark this is, it’ll probably guzzle all your ink, maybe think about sending it to a printer if you’re going to do that.

Where to Download

I’ve uploaded various color themed versions in addition to the basic “Darkmode” theme to different sites that I have shops at, but they are all Pay-What-You-Want and/or Free. I don’t expect anything for these and I just want you to get them and share them with anyone you think would want them. The following are some of the shops/links you can download at (I’m OCD, I know there are way too many)…

Alpha Editions on Google Drive include Darkmode and Greymode themes:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SQ_4p8Wyl81qcPAg1fHCbtomivBfq7i-/view?usp=drive_liTnk

Geek Editions on Big Geek Emporium include Darkmode and Greymode (slightly darker than Alpha Greymode) themes:
https://biggeekemporium.com/product/trog-caverns-vtt-print-map-pack/

Itch Editions on itch.io include Darkmode and Deathmode themes:
https://jbgarrison72.itch.io/trog-caverns

Kofi Editions on Ko-fi include Darkmode and Barkmode themes:
https://ko-fi.com/s/5278c480b3

Artstation Dijonized Edition on Artstation:
https://jbgarrison72.artstation.com/store/vwDAO/trog-caverns-140-x-92-vtt-battlemap-dijonized-version

Thank You…

so much for taking the time to visit and have a look-see!

I hope these maps work out for you. I’m all about constructive criticism so let me know if you’d like to see changes, improvements, or even just to tell me what to keep doing because it works. Your comments are most welcome and appreciated.

Cheers!

Marmot Armored Car VTT Token

**Marmots on Roadside Rise Map**
Vehicle tokens by Jeffrey Boyd Garrison, Roadside Rise map by Ross at 2-Minute Tabletop modified by Jeffrey Boyd Garrison.

Introducing…

My newest virtual tabletop (VTT) asset creation, the Marmot armored car for sci-fi and near/far futuristic settings.

How big is it? Well, it’s just about as long as a Hyundai Santa Fe SUV and about one-and-a-half times as wide.

This could be a soccer mom’s (or disgruntled postal worker’s) wrecking ball, or it could be used by a motorized infantry battalion as organic squad transport. It will hold (without modified configurations) 9 equipped soldiers snugly (including driver). Armored doors on both sides allow for rapid embarkation/debarkation and deployment to the covered side of the vehicle if taking fire from the opposite side. Rear hatch also opens (upward) for small cargo area access though this cannot be conveniently used for dismounting. Normally heavy weapons like AT rockets and extra ammo would be kept in the back.

The armor plating can withstand heavy machine gun fire with some reliability although rocket propelled grenades may cause problems. Angled surfaces mitigate somewhat against direct fire.

It’s up to you whether this is a chemical combustion engine or electric powered vehicle… as much as I personally like using gas, I sort of envision this to be an electric vehicle (since petroleum (or other chemcial) logistics may not be readily available everywhere this might be deployed).

The Map

I swiped one of Ross at 2-Minute Tabletop’s free maps (Roadside Rise) and plopped a few example vehicle paint jobs (along with adding a bit more shadowing to secure them to the ground) so you could see how these might look on a VTT map. Primer grey in the lead, desert yellow center, and trailed by brown and olive drab camo… which is the one I decided to put up for sale to test my new “DropBox Shop” web store.

New DropBox Shop

DropBox (the file hosting service) has a new beta for an online digital product shop service for users. It’s free and works with Paypal and Stripe so far. There are also hints that they may attempt to incorporate Web3 and NFT functionality/integration at some point. So I am testing this out and have created my first listing on there for the brown and OD green camo version:
JBG’s VTT Token Shop – JBG1001

**Marmot Armored Car Brown & OD Green Camo**
JBG001 Jeffrey Boyd Garrison VTT Tokens Marmot Armored Car Shop Product Cover Image

What Next?

I’m always getting distracted by new ideas but I have some plans for this one. They include putting an actual weapons turret on top, and maybe playing around with paintjobs and iconography… racing stripes, stenciled unit numbers, kawaii ponies, scary clowns, trendy punisher skulls, belter free navy anarchy logos, IRS tax enforcement livery?

I don’t know, you tell me, what would look good one one of these?

Unleash the 3D Things!

After all this time, I just now discovered Windows 10 apparently came with a 3D Paint program. After 20 minutes of not knowing what I was doing, this happened.

Pandora’s Box

I think it has just been opened…

Discord Role Titles List

What on Earth is this?

Making… The Thing

I think it was some time in 2019 that I had decided to create a Discord server so…

I could get experience and understand what running Discord communities was about and…
To form a network for my various interests and pursuits (tabletop games, crypto & blockchain, etc.).
4. 5. etc…. because reasons.

One of the big tasks I wanted to get right was to implement a member hierarchy using the Discord roles. So, I “doodlestormed” (brainstorming + doodling = doodlestorming) a list of prestige oriented role titles that I might use. I narrowed it down to three final server roles. Users would be “upgraded” as they were perceived to be active on the server or just because they happened to be influencers of some kind in the various online interest spheres and communities.

Why a blog post about this? Well, because I just found the old doodle/scribble/note piece of paper I used for this, complete with coffee stains (apparently I was using it as a coaster on my desk for a while). I intended to throw it away but, then I suddenly got sentimental and decided to snap a photo and spam it out to the world. Also, I wanted a way to remember it because the internet is there, so why not store my brain backup publicly right?

The doodlestorm (why can’t I just say brainstorm?) list was (in vaguely ascending order) as follows:

Insignificant
Base Origins
Obscure
Noteworthy – Notable
Reputable
Well-known
Significant
Famous
Glorious
Fabled
Legendary

The final three user roles I ended up going with on my Discord server were:

Verified
Notable
Dignitary

I know, again, it’s ridiculous to make a blog post about this but, this something I may end up using for some future project. While it seems simple to remember or re-invoke something like this, I’m famous for failing to recall highly useful items at critical moments. If I must suffer, you dear blog reader, must also suffer [insert I’m just kidding LOL emoji here].

Discord Executes Order 66

There’s one final highlight to this story. As it turns out, back in April of this year (2022), Discord implemented their new Terms of Service. Part of the warning they gave was that anyone who violated Discord’s ToS (for what I refer to as #wrongthink) PRIOR TO its implementation would be cancelled. In other words, they weren’t going to let anyone adjust their behavior to play it safe by the new ToS going forward because they were looking for a way to flag retroactive violations of the new criteria from the past. People were banned for things they did prior to the new ToS. See how that works? Anyhow, I got perma-banned from Discord because of it, and really, while it’s inconvenient, I’m on to better things. Trying out Guilded now and the functionality is pretty much reliably very similar to Discord. User population is still very low by comparison but, maybe as time progresses Discord will do some more red purges on their user base and I’ll end up with some more friends.

Now You

I’d be interested in knowing your rationales and/or decision processes for creating Discord and/or Guilded (or any other similar platform’s) roles and user designations. What does your ideal role hierarchy look like?

Knights of the Hart of Highfolk Tactical Ponderings

Again, looking at the 1983 World of Greyhawk Glossography’s encounters and specifically at the “Elves, Knights” description, I have long been presented with the idle problem of framing their presentation on a (tabletop) battlefield and/or in a D&D-esque tactical situation. My motive is in regard specifically to miniatures wargaming in the setting, but it would be useful knowledge regardless.

After some contemplation and a bit of brainstorming, I think I’ve got a perspective that might be worth sharing.

Encounter Strength

Let’s start with what the encounter description gives us in brief (referencing the contemporary AD&D stats of the source, skip this if AD&D is unfamiliar), a contingent totaling from 37-174 members as follows:

7-10 Knights
1 Commander: Elven* F/C 7/7 – AC 3; shield, lance, long sword and mace and mounted on barded medium warhorse.
1 Lieutenant: Elven* F/C 6/6 – AC 3; shield, lance, long sword and mace and mounted on barded medium warhorse.
5-8 (1d4+4) Knights: Elven* F/C, 5/5 – AC 3; shield, lance, long sword and mace and mounted on barded medium warhorse.

2-4 Magic-Users
1 Master: Elven* F/MU, 4-6/8-11 – AC 5; long sword, bow (8-11 magic +1 Arrows) and I assume to be mounted on unbarded medium warhorse (source doesn’t specify).
1-3 Assistants: Elven* F/MU, 3-5/4-7 – AC 5; long sword, bow (4-7 magic +1 Arrows) and I assume to be mounted on unbarded medium warhorse (source doesn’t specify).

Each Knight’s Entourage
1-4 Esquires: Elven* F/C, 3-4/3-4 – AC 4; shield, lance, long sword, mace and mounted on medium warhorses
3-12 (3d4) Serjeants: Elven* F2 – AC 5; bow (2 magic +1 Arrows), long sword, mace and mounted on light warhorses.

*According to the source the knights include both elves and half-elves though I am left to speculate on the ratio. I would further extrapolate that these are generally of high elven stock.

Battlefield Roles

This encounter consists of two basic roles, shock and skirmish. The first group consists of the lance armed knights and esquires while the second group are the bow armed (and shieldless) serjeants. The overall theme of the combined group emphasizes mobility since there are no heavy mounts and armor is somewhat lighter overall than contemporary human knight contingents. The team of magic-using elves can generally be categorized with the skirmish element.

Formations

The first formation I would consider would be the entire contingent assembled in line of battle per the following diagram.

Front Rank
The front rank here consists of knights and esquires starting with a knight on the extreme right and esquires under his charge immediately filling in to his left, then the next knight and his subordinate esquires, repeating on down the line.
Additional Ranks
The second, third and any following ranks are the serjeants which, falling in behind knights and squires, never extend farther to the left than the front rank.
Leaders
The Lieutenant and Commander will each be positioned either in front or behind the battle line per the Commander’s discretion. If the formation is to maneuver in line, one of the two will be out front of the first rank in the center guiding it’s movement while the other will be to the rear and normally flanked by the master magic-user. Any assistant magic-users will be positioned either rear center as a reserve or to the flank corners of the rearmost rank (serjeants will adjust left to give a space for the assistant magic-user on rear right corner).

Here’s the skinny on this. A battle line is primarily a charging attack formation. The armored and lance thick front rank is meant to move toward the enemy and when within proximity, charge at a cantor or full gallop with lowered lances. Prior to closing and while still moving at a walk or trot, the rear ranks of bow-armed serjeants can fire overhead (if the range is long enough or if the target is on a different elevation and thus the front rank can be safely fired over) to disorder/disrupt the opposing line before closing distance.

A final note on the battle line is that it can be easily entered into from and exited out of to a column of march four files wide. To change from line, the leaders may move to the extreme right (which becomes the head of the formation) with the Magic-users immediately behind to the right and/or behind them (1st and 2nd ranks of the file). Of course, the stationing of these leaders is always variable.

To Be Continued…

High Elven Mounted Serjeant of the Knights of the Hart of Highfolk c. 576 C.Y.

So, I’ve long looked at the encounter tables in the 1983 World of Greyhawk Glossography and wanted to do some reasonable illustrations (I’ve done plenty of derpy sketches over the years but nothing I’d probably want to blog about individually).

I decided to do an elven “serjeant” (2nd level Fighter) of the Knights of the Hart of Highfolk… and I chose to do it in GIMP …with a mouse (no tablet).

Please allow me to share with you some process photos.

First there were the rough sketches to get an idea of what I wanted, regular cheapo mechanical pencil (Bic) on regular low budget printer paper.

I took that scanned JPEG image (using Epson V39 portable-ish scanner) and imported it into GIMP v2.8.22 (freeware). I picked one of the sketches on there that looked painfully much like a cringeworthy My Little Pony tribute, cropped it and got to work inking it with some thick-ish teal lines. I failed to notice that I forgot to ink in the horse’s ears.

So then, when I was happy with the (still ear-less horse) line work, I added my color layer and began to splash around some paint. Still no ears!

Painting was done and ears were finally added. Line-work was then changed to black in preparation for the next stage (I was making up as I went)… which was shading.

So there’s the shading all done. Last was to do highlighting, groundshadow, and a shameless (and an unglamerously weak) signature/tag/initial.

At this point I’m wondering whether I should attempt to turn this guy into a printable paper miniature cutout, a virtual tabletop token, or some other kind of resource image asset. What do you think?

I hope you enjoyed sharing in the madness/methodology behind this particular project. Cheers until next time!

Caves of Chaos Doodles

Ye Olde Caves of Chaos snippets.

Chaos Cave ‘A’ Map (Sans Notation):

Chaos Cave ‘B’ Map (Sans Notation):

Everything You Need to Know About Rights

Rights are not entitlements. Their benefits are EARNED by their exercise.

Rights are actions saying, “I can and will do this, and will (PERSONALLY) defend against anyone who, through use of force, would seek to stop me.” A true RIGHT is a personal will to action, not a privilege granted by some external authority or afforded by some collective. We exercise a RIGHT because INDIVIDUALLY it IS right. It’s inarguable and self-evident, not a perk or a gift for good behavior.

Exercising a right doesn’t ask permission… it is an act which is the most sovereign and answers to no higher authority. Only sovereign entities …like Kings, have rights. All power comes from that sovereignty. If you have to ask permission, then you are not exercising your own authority. You either have sovereign authority over yourself, or you are a slave and at best retain “granted privileges” which are revocable. To prove your rights, you MUST demonstrate your authority by exercising them …and if need be, by defending them.

Social Labels

There seems to be an extreme polarization of social identity in the USA; on one end is the “liberal democrat” and on the other is “conservative republican.” This isn’t new news, but I want to humbly point out that I personally find it to be a hindrance overall to our progress as individuals and as a nation.

I think that the fault in identifying with these catchall labels is that it sublimates one’s own experience, judgement and wisdom to a common denominator which is necessarily amorphous and blunted. It’s unfortunate that this appears the only effective way to accommodate otherwise diverse groups because validity of issues becomes lost to perpetuation of identity. If one were previously in pursuit of truth, more often the larger group personality redirects that effort toward the less noble objective of “being right.” Unlike truth, being right REQUIRES that someone or something else be wrong and more often serves to exclude than synthesize.

All of this having been said, when it’s convenient there are sometimes advantages in donating one’s own will to a shared cause, so long as that cause is guided by enlightened benevolence. It is difficult to stand alone and none of us may do it for long but, it’s nice to step away from our chosen herd and gain perspective occasionally.