Happy Halloween: The Occult House

Yo ho ho and Happy Halloween. Let me just get this right out of the way now. I have the worst stomach ache from eating Paydays and Dots and Pumpkin Cupcakes with cream cheese icing.
Doubled-over from the sugar pains and I decided to squeak this map in between bouts of nausea and the start of The Walking Dead on AMC.

The three biggest requests I see weekly are for maps of Hell,  horror gaming maps, and free downloadable maps. Two of those three requests come often from ProfessorShenanigans over at HCRealms. However, I'm not sure if he plays Horrorclix.

With Halloween in the air and the weight of the Horrorclix community coming down on me, I feel it's time to give them a properly scary map. The type of map that makes you want to start going to church on the weekend. And with that I give you... The Occult House.

Is it a haunted house? Is it a gateway to Hell? You can decide that for yourselves.

Now I haven't played that horror game since the game came out. I kept buying figures, just never got the time to play. So Horror fans, chime in and tell me where to put the victim blood stains and I will do so over the next week.

Personally, I'm a big fan of special terrain. There is no way the vast tapestry of every location imaginable can be pigeonholed into either blocking or hindering terrain. So I am going to use the orange line at any given chance. I'm not going to come up with the rulings. That's for you to decide. In the end, you can just rule the orange line is hindering or you can come up with your own scenario rules.

Yup, and this map... it's free to download. Let me know if the google document feature doesn't work. This is the first time I'm using it.
You can get the map here at:
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8a_xUHzVDadOGZiYmY3YTYtMTAwMC00OTBmLTg2ZTktZTYzMWU4Mjc3Yjcy&hl=en&authkey=CIqEt80P
Heck, if you print and play this, and don't mind taking a picture, send it to me and I'll post it here!
Also, next post, I'll be showing you the finalized Clix for the Cure Map. And later this week we'll talk about my first map pack which will be available for sale in November.
Happy Hauntings!

Maryland Clix for the Cure Map

Yo ho ho!

I'm very happy and honored to be able to donate a few custom maps for the Savage, Maryland Clix for the Cure event.

I wanted to do something special for the event and so in chatting with tom730 from HCRealms we were able to work out my doing an exclusive map just for Clix for the Cure.

Well in typical lurker madness what started out as one map quickly spiraled into three maps. I'm not sure if tom730 plans to use these as prize support or auction. I still have some touch-ups to make and I need to add the terrain lines in.





Also if anyone wants to chime in custom rules for the open sky area, feel free to comment!

So I hope you enjoy seeing these maps and I hope to see you at The Family Game Store on November 7th.

Status Check...

Just wanted to mention a few sundry items.

Just got the sample posters from the printer yesterday. I'm comparing paper weight and folding methods. But I'm damn near close to having the first run of maps printed.

The next map in the 26 Map project will be delayed a few weeks. I've been working on a super-secret project for the past two weeks that is consuming my time. Hopefully I'll be able to post full images of the sheer madness of the task I'm working on in the next few days. I'm just waiting for someone to give me the go ahead to release the images.

However, while I wait... a tiny teaser wouldn't hurt if we keep it between friends! Keep your eye peeled folks over the next few days.

Thanks for reading!

Printing Time!!!

Yo ho ho!

First off! I want to thank everyone who has posted about my customs maps either here, at HCRealms, or sent me a private email. I'm overwhelmed by the support.

My customs map project started as a personal endeavor but is quickly growing beyond that. Since May of 2010 my blog was has received thousands of hits. Blogger allows me to see a wealth of statistics or who is viewing my site and how they are viewing it. I chuckle when I see people have accessed my site from half way round the world or used their Wii to browse my maps. It's all surreal.

Now that I'm receiving daily emails from folks wanting to buy my maps, I'm researching doing a limited double sided print of two of maps. However this a pricey venture I'm considering so I'd like to know who's interested in getting these maps and which maps most interest the community. I have a printer nearly locked (the first two I tried lacked the quality control I was looking for) and I'm hoping to have the first run printed around Thanksgiving.

So add your opinion below or vote at HCRealms if you're a member!
http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=291135

So tell your friends, please vote and, as always, thanks for reading!

Below you'll find a list of potential printing candidates!:

Map 1: The Lost Jungle
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/02/map-1-of-26-lost-jungle.html

Map 2: WWII Invasion
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/02/map-2-of-26-wwii-invasion.html

Map3: Blue Atoll
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/03/map-3-of-26-blue-atoll.html

Map 5: Warrior Island
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/04/map-4-of-26-warrior-island.html

Map 6: Mission Abort
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/04/map-6-of-26-mission-abort.html

Map 7: The Mystic Tower
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/06/map-7-of-26-mystic-tower.html

Map 8: Mighty Pants
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/07/map-8-of-26-mighty-pants.html

Map 9: Deadly Cargo
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/07/map-9-of-26-deadly-cargo.html

Map 10: The Dark Alley
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/07/map-10-of-26-dark-alley.html

Map 11: Asgard!
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/08/map-11-of-26-asgard.html

Map 12: The Resurrection Pool
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/08/map-12-of-26-resurrection-pool.html

Map 13: The Nightclub
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/08/map-13-of-26-nightclub.html

Map 14: The Chemical Plant
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/08/map-14-of-26-chemical-plant.html

Map 15: Doomtown
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/09/map-15-of-26-doomtown.html

Map 16: Paradise City
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/09/map-16-of-26-paradise-city.html

Map 17: Pizza Loving, Martial Artist Sewer
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/09/map-17-of-26-cl017-pizza-loving-martial.html

Map 18: The Ray Ship
http://curiouslurkings.blogspot.com/2010/10/map-18-of-26-ray-ship.html

Map 18 of 26: The Ray Ship

Phew... Still on schedule!

Sure, every hero gets a map. Everybody is rushing to do an Arctic fortress, gadgety cave or chartreuse planetary defense post. Heck, even the villainous clown gets a factory map here and there. But can the coolest underwater mutha, get a map? For eight years the answer has been no.

Until today.



That's right the legions of evil get a cool new submersible ride. This aint no seahorse.

This map had me up for days. Most miniature game mechanics lack a fluid way to show the transition from underwater openness to inside an underwater layer. I bounced around a lot of ideas with my fellow gaming friends and in the end I decided to ignore the minutia and went with the broad stroke method of just simplifying the map down to Water and Indoor terrain.



The starting areas I felt also needed to be tweaked. The standard left side meets right side method of mapping I felt didn't work in the visual space I had to work with. The nice thing about not being fettered with corporate ties means that I don't need to worry about the metagame. I liked the idea of the heroes being able to pick and choose from what side they could mount the offensive against the defensive position of the ship's crew.



Anyway, I'm off to finish that mancave I showed you last week.

Thanks for reading!

Work in Progress: Plain Manor with Mancave (Part 2)

Here is a quick draft of how the terrain markers would look if we went with the first 12 columns being elevated.



For the sake of disclosure, this is a quick, sloppy, inexact marking. The true grid would be much thinner and more precise. I just wanted to slosh some color on the reduced blog image for a reference.

Work in Progress: Plain Manor with Mancave

I mentioned in a previous post that there are a few iconic locales every map maker needs to take a swing at and this is one of them.

Most of the custom maps I see attempt to only map the cave. This, I feel, is disrespectful to the thousands of faithful butlers out there that defend their employer with great zeal. I also am a fan of showing transition in a map so I wanted to show outside the manor, the manor, and into the cave.

Traditionally the cave is lower than the house, this is an interesting dilemma as that would force the manor and outside the manor into being elevated terrain. Technically the first 12 columns (all of the grass and manor interior) should be surrounded by a red line. Then the 6 manor columns and the 12 cave columns should have a yellow line.


I could end the dilemma by removing the two sets of stairs into the cave on the top and bottom of the map, but I feel the stairs are visually necessary. We all have that image of a certain butler carrying down a tray of vittles to his master.

Anyway this map is easily 10 man hours away from completion. The bathroom needs to be fleshed out and I need to paint in wall shadows, clean up some viscous transitions and add terrain lines. So I wanted to let everyone see the work -in-progress and give me a shout out as to whether I should bag the steps and lose the elevated terrain dilemma or keep them and roll with the big 12 columns of elevated terrain.

Post your thoughts here or on HCRealms at http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=290394

Thanks for reading.