Back in the saddle

We’ll I’m back after a six week self-imposed sabbatical. I have been rethinking Ebonyr from top to bottom, hand drawing maps and creating new races.

I also thought about doing a better job branding Knightvision Studios and the campaign setting of Ebonyr. I have redesigned the KVS logo to better represent me and my fledgling company.

I also wanted to create a “map brand” if you want to call it that. I want all my maps to have the same colors for forest, roads, building tones, etc just like Google maps.

I have really delved into Fractal Mapper 8, which I’ve had for over two years and really haven’t used it much. I plan on using this program to create my villages, towns and cities and use Paint Shop Pro to put the finishing touches on it.

As If have talked about branding, I also decided on specific fonts for supplements, adventure modules, map headers and body fonts. I think this will give a clean and refreshing look to my work.

Podcast show notes concept

I was thinking of putting my podcast show notes in a magazine format. To make it “snazzy” I decided to try a concept cover and came up with this. What I think I’ll do is put a nice cover on the show notes and make a PDF out of it with my in depth notes and links to the website and this blog. This will give the listener to the podcast more insight into the setting, monster, etc.

Update 9.14.08

Today I’ve been thinking about the new adventure I’m working on and what I learned from the first one, Visionventure Module A-1 Dark Shore. I came up with a list of things to improve or innovate:
1. Make the cover more appealing
2. Come up with a font family that consumers/games can identify Knightvision Studios.
3. Develop a more interesting way to describe rooms/caves/encounters.

I’ve found that I’m terrible at describing encounters which I personally find mundane. Example: two beds against the wall, blah, blah and more blah.
I was thinking about putting all the items needed to be described on the LL map and letting the LL describe it to the PCs. Maybe I could have small map of each encounter instead of a huge map. I would describe the monsters, BBEG or NPCs that are in the encounter to help the LL with the flow of combat and the reasons the encounter is there.

Here’s what I came up with a “brand” cover for future modules.

Font Finalists

I have the finalist in my font search

Here is the PDF (embedded fonts) so you can see them.