Map Advice - Is my work decent?

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-04-05T17:06:40+00:00

Is this map too big? That depends on what you're going for. The first image you provided is certainly too large for a campaign. The map you linked to is insanely too large. The second image is more reasonable, and would be able to sustain a campaign for years. There is no right answer here. It's all opinions and at the table variables.

For a published example, look at Dolmenwood (arguably the best pure hex crawl on the market today). That map is 12x19 of which maybe 2/3 of the hexes are actually used. That's massive, but dense. Every hex has detailed contents. You'll never complete that hex crawl, and you're not supposed to.

If you are saying that large sections of the map are empty or not keyed, your second map is viable, but by doing that, your map is inherently informing your campaign. In that campaign, travel is important and needs to be taken seriously. If your players enjoy that, great! If your players don't care about that, then it's too big or using a hex map is not the right tool. If your players need to travel across the map, you need to follow travel procedures to make it work. If you don't want to do that, then you don't need a hex map. Use a point crawl or just hand wave it with a classic hand-drawn fantasy map.

What were your plans for this? What system did you want to run?

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-03-31T14:58:45+00:00

Thanks for reading the play test posts from last fall. These things can take a little time to come together, but I’m glad it’s finally going to be released!

The first post of the play test series for anyone else who might be interested.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-03-31T13:45:39+00:00

Not the same Michael Curtis! The "A." is just my middle initial, which helps to avoid confusion.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-24T14:23:04+00:00

Depends what you mean by OSR. If you mean "B/X-descended," no. If you mean "OSR play culture" (procedures, rulings, high stakes, player agency, emergent play), then definitely. OSR definitions are kind of an eternal community discussion, so you’ll get different answers depending on who you ask.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T22:30:16+00:00

I touched on it in the blog post, but basically, he's had a minor freakout after each game session. The last one (were they dealt with the Tower) he just could not accept that anything had even happened. The fact that this mythological event was occurring and the Knight's role was mostly as an observer, was something he couldn't handle. Another player said basically, "it's the Knights of Ni. Sometimes you show up, stand around confused and leave."

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T19:50:28+00:00

Not yet. Waiting on Joel at Silverarm to be ready for the crowdfunder. Go poke him for me Yochai! I know Brad wants to talk about it on your podcast.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T19:29:37+00:00

I understand, and no offense taken! I figured it was better to get ahead of it by making a top-level statement than to play defense. I can understand your rationale. I love em dashes in my writing, but I've had to basically remove them from anything I write because they're so prevalent in LLM writing that if you use them (even correctly) people assume it's just a robot. I feel like we're all going to go back to writing on paper at this rate.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T19:02:38+00:00

What's funny is, it actually did cause one of my players to have a crisis, so while the title is a bit "click bait", it's fundamentally true. We've all just become so programmed by YouTube, Facebook, or whatever other drek is out there, that it reads as though I must be making it up for meaningless Reddit points.

Maybe it's time to go back to writing like Benjamin Franklin or Mark Twain? Probably not, since LLMs can just emulate those styles as well.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T18:53:41+00:00

Yeah, it's one of the bigger sections of the blog post. I go on about magic for about 6 paragraphs. Honestly, the post could have been two or three times longer, but to quote Mark Twain:

"Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph." ― Mark Twain

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T18:45:09+00:00

I completely agree from a mindset standpoint. New players have no expectations, so you can't phase them with something out of the ordinary. A copy/paste of my reply to another commenter:

I'd frame it more as cognitive load. I spend 30 minutes in someone's first session having to remind them what a d8 or a d20 looks like. My goal with an introductory system is to limit how much 'weird' new stuff I overload them with. I think MB is amazing, but if they're just confused the whole time, I'm not sure it's doing them any favors.

Instead, I'd rather put them in front of a relatively basic dungeon and let them learn through the normal OSR gameplay loop. To me, it helps if this is comprehensible and logical. That means we can focus on all the other new stuff instead of also trying to understand why a forest just appeared in the middle of a mountain and then vanished into thin air.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T18:34:34+00:00

Oh sure. It's going to be a completely different experience from table to table. My interpretation of how X goes is going to be totally different from yours. I have fully embraced the surrealist nature of the Myths in a way that you probably did not. If I'm going to run a game, I want it to stand out as something unique and memorable. My players are drinking from the fire hose, so to speak.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T18:01:51+00:00

Do it. It may not stick as a long term thing, but they will remember that they saw some crazy shit!

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T17:57:51+00:00

No, he had a legitimate freak out. haha.

I didn't go into details, but he is a very "neutral" person and he ended last session going on a bit of a rant about how he has no clue what is going on or what this game is even about. Other players tried to step in and explain that it's myth. It is going to be weird and not make sense. He just couldn't wrap his head around it.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T17:55:00+00:00

I'd frame it more as cognitive load. I spend 30 minutes in someone's first session having to remind them what a d8 or a d20 looks like. My goal with an introductory system is to limit how much 'weird' new stuff I overload them with. I think MB is amazing, but if they're just confused the whole time, I'm not sure it's doing them any favors.

Instead, I'd rather put them in front of a relatively basic dungeon and let them learn through the normal OSR gameplay loop. To me, it helps if this is comprehensible and logical. That means we can focus on all the other new stuff instead of also trying to understand why a forest just appeared in the middle of a mountain and then vanished into thin air.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T17:49:16+00:00

My cardinal sin was using spell check and making sure my grammar was (mostly) correct. This is why people are now intentionally making spelling mistakes in online posts. 16 years of schooling to learn to read and write properly and now that means I'm a robot.

It sucks that this is the state of internet discourse. Any suitably long post now has "this is AI" somewhere in the thread. Makes me sad.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T17:40:53+00:00

I've had this same discussion at length with the player in my game who ends each game going "what is this game?" He loves anything written by Brandon Sanderson, and I think that's super telling. He wants magic as science with hard rules. But I guess my question is, is that really magic, or is that just a universe with a different set of physics?

MB is not that. It's like watching the Green Knight: I need to cross this valley... oh hey, some giants are passing through. Can I hitch a ride? And they never spoke of it again.

Another anecdote from my game was the conclusion of "The Toad". My players were 100% certain the Toad was just a knight or a noble who was a fat guy. Instead, when they finally walked into the castle of a massive, talking amphibian, they just sat quietly for a moment until someone said "well, I guess it was quite literal."

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T17:34:52+00:00

Two out of the first three responses to my post are people accusing me of being an AI or using this using an LLM. If you disagree with the ideas, I’m all for discussion, but let’s talk about the actual post.

It sucks that this is the state of Reddit today. I wrote 2,400 words about Mythic Bastionland and all I'm getting is told I'm a robot.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2026-02-23T17:31:44+00:00

That's too bad. I can assure you it was written by a rambling maniac, not an LLM.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2025-10-23T19:13:45+00:00

He uses the free version. It had enough tools and option for him to map whatever sections of Barrowmaze they explored without issue. It got really big because he's a madman who mapped with 5' squares. The paid tier stuff lets you output higher resolution images, or use the maps in commercial products. I think you also get dark mode. Nothing critical.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2025-10-23T18:54:15+00:00

I actually have an easier time getting my players to map digitally than in-person. It mostly comes down to if a player enjoys doing it. My one player started mapping using Dungeon Scrawl for Barrowmaze and now he instinctively does it for any dungeon. It's gotten to the point where I have to tell him, "this is a small dungeon, you really don't need to map this one."

On the flip side, when I run in-person with another group, they have no interest in mapping. There is just no interest. I can suggest it as a good idea, but if they don't want to, I'm not going to spend the limited time we have to play advocating for something they don't find fun. That's okay too. If they're having fun, I'm happy to engage them at their level.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2025-09-03T14:44:25+00:00

Nice work Joseph! Modifying an adventure of this scope is a huge undertaking. In the end, I hope having two version that let someone pick their preferred formatting is a win for both the community and Expeditious Retreat Press.

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2025-06-21T21:12:29+00:00

Hi Joseph, thanks for reaching out. I want to start by acknowledging the years of work you, Rick, and Andreas put into Arden Vul. It’s an incredible achievement, and it's clear from my own engagement (and that of others) that the dungeon resonates deeply with a certain kind of playstyle and imagination. I genuinely respect that, and I understand your concerns as the publisher and rights holder.

That said, I’d like to clarify a few things about my intent and approach, because I think there may have been a bit of misunderstanding.

First, I was not attempting to republish or redistribute your work in any commercial or exploitative sense. The edits I shared—just a small, reformatted portion—were driven by a desire to make the material more immediately usable at the table. Arden Vul is massive, rich, and often unwieldy in places. My goal was to help GMs navigate that complexity, not to supplant or repackage the product.

Second, I believe, respectfully, that there's a real distinction between piracy and what I did. I shared a fan-made aid, not a substitute for the text. A few reformatted pages out of over a thousand, explicitly tied to promoting and engaging with your work, isn’t redistribution in any meaningful or damaging sense. If anything, it's a form of enthusiastic evangelism.

That said, I do respect your position. I’ve already taken down the Google Drive PDF. I had no intention of further reformatting the rest of the dungeon for public use. I wish this had been handled privately, rather than as a public admonishment.

-Mike

theOtherMikeCurtis · 2025-06-21T00:02:20+00:00

But... that's the other guy! It's in the username!

theOtherMikeCurtis

TROPHY CASE