Gear Chapter Layout: Item collages

One of the things I've been pondering for a while is how best to present the gear chapter in Saga of the Goblin Horde, as I'd really like to include illustrations of the various different weapons and armor available to the characters.

Most Savage Worlds setting books don't use much art in their gear section, and the little they do have mostly seems to be filler art, designed to fill some white space. Savage Rifts has a few portrait illustrations for armor, and a few item images, but they're limited to one illustration per page. Rippers Resurrected is more along the lines of what I'd like to do, with one page containing as many as three different item illustrations, and that's what I initially used for inspiration:

However the pages felt cluttered, it was difficult to get the layout looking good while wrapping the text around the images, and many of the items had no art at all. So this weekend I tried something different, and created collages for the equipment, so that the pages now look like this:

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out, I think the presentation is cleaner and easier to read, I've now got an illustration for every item, and I no longer have to worry about trying to wrap the text around the images (which means I don't need to do anywhere near as much fiddling around with the layout).

Although I do have other pages where the text wraps around the illustrations, I don't think it works very well when there are multiple images on the page. But a collage is effectively a single illustration from a layout design perspective, and I think it makes a good compromise.

Saga of the Goblin Horde: Barghest Whelp

Another month, another archetype, and this time it's another one of the five goblin mutant subraces (the Amphiblin, Canitaur, and Psioblin archetypes are also goblin mutants).

So allow me to present the twelfth archetype: the barghest whelp!

This particular archetype is a nod to D&D, where the barghests are demonic goblin-lupine-like creatures capable of shapechanging into wolves and goblins. In Saga of the Goblin Horde, barghests are lycanthrope-like goblins capable of shifting into wolf and hybrid forms.

As usual you can get the archetypes from here, and the five One Sheet adventures here, here, here, here and here.

Drakonheim Savage Companion released

The Drakonheim Savage Companion has now been released to Kickstarter backers, and it's also available on DriveThruRPG. If you're a fan of undead and necromancy, you should definitely check it out!

You can buy it on its own: Drakonheim Savage Companion

Or bundled with the setting: Drakonheim Savage Bundle

If you're on the fence, you can also check out the free previews here, here and here. I've also talked about the setting and the companion here, and discussed the design behind the necromancy here.

For those who already have the setting, don't forget to check out my Drakonheim Character Builder, and my free One Sheets, Gray Matter and Broken Crown.

And if you haven't seen it already, my free Savage Undead fan supplement contains rules for playable undead. Although it's not specifically designed for Drakonheim, some of the Edges, Hindrances and powers are a good thematic fit.

Root of the Problem: One Sheet

One potato, two potato,

three potato, four!

Five potato, six potato,

seven potato, WAR!

A nobleman has become frustrated with all the goblins hunting his knights and eating their succulent steeds, so he has ordered his druid adviser to create a horse that tastes so bad not even a goblin will eat it.

This initially seemed an impossible task, but then the druid discovered the one thing goblins won’t eat...vegetables!

Here's another One Sheet for Saga of the Goblin Horde:

Root of the Problem

As always, you can download the goblin archetypes from here, and the older One Sheet adventures from here, here, here and here.

Custom Wild Dice

As mentioned last month, I recently ordered some custom laser-engraved Wild Dice for Saga of the Goblin Horde - 16mm green oblivion dice with my goblin logo in place of the 6 spot. I promised I'd post a picture when they arrived, so here it is:

There are various companies in the US that offer custom dice, but I was only able to find one in the UK (Dice & Games), although fortunately their prices are very reasonable, and the minimum order is just 25 dice. I'd originally been thinking of handing out custom Wild Dice at Con games as a promotional thing.

It was a bit of a toss-up between green oblivion dice with gold dots/logo (which fits the color scheme for Saga of the Goblin Horde) and white pearl dice with black dots/logo (which is the more traditional black-on-white color scheme used by Pinnacle), but in the end I went with the green and gold, and I think it looks really good, although I'm still curious what the black and white would look like.

Samhain Surprise: Halloween One Sheet

Trick or treat, trick or treat,

Give me someone good to eat!

Trick or treat, trick or treat,

Someone meaty, someone sweet!

Once a year, the young children in the human town of Yellowbrick dress themselves up as goblins, visiting homes to collect candy while playing a strange game they call “Trick or Treat”. The goblins think this is a grand idea, and have decided to use the opportunity to sneak into town, play some vicious pranks, and enjoy some delicious treats. And better still, they won't even need to wear any stupid disguises!

With two weeks to go until Halloween, I thought it was about time to release my next One Sheet for Saga of the Goblin Horde. You can get it from here:

Samhain Surprise

For this One Sheet I also teamed up with Frank Turfler of Middle Kingdoms Adventure & Trading Company, who has created a set of free maps designed to go with the adventure. You can download the maps from here:

• Map 1: Silent Street, Trick or Treat
• Map 2: Meet and Greet, Swift Retreat
• Map 3: Druid Meat, Foes to Beat

As always, you can download the goblin archetypes from here, and the older adventures from here, here and here.

Saga of the Goblin Horde: Goblin Psychonaut

I had originally planned to release the Barghest Whelp archetype for October, but last month Rick Hershey started a new Fantasy Character Subscription, and as he was accepting suggestions I proposed a goblin - which he promptly added. So I decided to use it for the October archetype.

So here is the eleventh archetype: the goblin psychonaut!

This particular archetype is a tribute to my friend David Teeder, who played a character called Squiggle on my MUD many years ago (the hair is inspired by his real haircut!).

As usual you can get the archetypes from here, and the three One Sheet adventures here, here and here.

The fourth One Sheet, Samhain Surprise, will be released on Monday. Frank Turfler of Middle Kingdoms Adventure & Trading Company is creating a set of free maps to go with the adventure, and has already released the first two here and here. The third and final map will be released on the same day as the One Sheet.