A Sarterra I See Before Me

I know many of you are wondering how the creation of our fantasy world, Sarterra is coming along. Well, I like to think that anyway! I f I were to run into you however, say, at Fall-In! or something and you were to ask, my answer would be a resounding, "Swimmingly!"

Over a year ago I first posted on this endeavor. The four of us sat down with a copy of the incredibly cool game, Dawn of Worlds at hand and began to give birth to a planet. We have tinkered on this thing, both full-time in earnest, and part-time off and on since September of '09, and recently we've picked up steam and are fleshing it out further.

In the large map above you've got a glimpse of the whole Mars-sized planet. We've got continents labeled and major cities listed. The next step is to take one small part of the overall map, "zoom in", and complete just a single area. This will include all of the lesser cities and towns, and smaller landforms that wouldn't necessarily be seen "from orbit" per se.

Before I go any further I should point out that all cartography is done by our resident artist Chris "Biscuit" Miller and he continues to amaze us all. He takes sketches and notes from us sitting around the table, hemming and hawing over mountains and rivers and cranks out full color maps I wouldn't even expect to get in a professional product. As a free plug for him, he does do commissions and I'm sure he'd love to hear from you. cmgillustrations "at" gmail.com


In the 'zooming' process we've tackled two separate regions for two separate campaigns. The one on the top is a portion of the much larger overall continent of Talamh. In this case the western area of Talamh is the country of Bresia. The lower focus area is the continent of Arhun. We're still working on Arhun and it's yet to have its borders broken down further into political boundaries. Three races prominently call this continent home, so I will suggest to the guys at the next session that three countries in this case ought to do the trick.

The country of Bresia, the continent of Arhun, and everything in between can all be found on a wiki-type page we've been compiling since the beginning. We've got a couple of dozen races, just as many organizations and orders, deities, avatars, major heroes, and more. Here's the link to the Sarterra wiki. Also, loosely linked to all of this are the many battles of Song of Blades and Heroes (another awesome ruleset) we've fought over the last year or so. These SBH battles technically take place in the world of Sarterra as well.


Bresia; inhabited, governed, and settled by the Romanesque human empire known as the Averni. Bresia is their foothold into colonizing beyond their home continent of Avernia. Its capital city of Port Valens is the hub of commerce and trade.


The continent of Arhun features a wide variety of flora, fauna (ahem, Dinosaurs!), and landforms. Three prominent races call Arhun home with many other minor races also present. The good and noble Dragonborn have built their capital city of Itova on a gigantic chunk of floating rock and earth raised a thousand feet in the air held in place by giant chains to the land below. The Dwarves have carved out a kingdom from the river's edge and the deep forests. Their technology is without equal not only in Arhun, but in all of Sarterra and they have subsumed the mighty Minotaurs of the land under their sphere of influence. Last of the prominent races in Arhun are the primitive Teotzin. These humans live in cyclopean pyramids where they practice the arts of embalming and exhibit an astounding knowledge of astronomy.

I hope you've enjoyed being a spectator to this world creation process. It's still a long ways off from being completed, but it's maps and info like we have so far that get me energized to see it through. Check out those links, and especially the wiki, there's a lot of creative juices in there and it's the culmination of four experienced gamers to boot, it's pretty much world creation "done right" if I may be so bold to state.

Mind you, it's not just us, the game Dawn of Worlds is what puts you in charge and gives you such an easy-to-use system that covers so much ground, both literally and figuratively. Not only is it efficient but it's an absolute blast to do with your friends, and it can be played as a standalone game without attaching such a ambitious project to it as well.

I also mentioned Song of Blades, which regrettably we haven't played in ages. By taking such a solid fantasy skirmish ruleset such as these, then follow up on a Dawn of Worlds game and you've got a one-two knockout punch combo on your hands that will knock you and your group's socks off.

Laboring Away on Sarterra

The third age of Sarterra comes to a close

One thing that's been for sure here at Mik's Minis as of late is my number of posts has been way down, so what have I been doing? Well, I haven't been painting, I can tell you that. I had mentioned on the last update the fun we've been having with Dawn of Worlds, and that's where all of my creative energies have been put to work on lately.


More than just a map...

The standard RPG campaign, especially DnD in nature will use either a stock world, like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, or a DM-created world which, nine times out of ten, ends up being some kind of whimsical goofy-verse. With the former, unless you've personally invested time in the setting by reading the novels and source books, you're just along for the ride and rolling initiative when told to do so. With the latter, well, just hang on as best you can, because there's no way of knowing what's around the next corner.

With the Dawn of Worlds rules, which are free, you can now get everyone in on the creation of a world, flesh it out fully, and have a setting that's ready for adventures, with your players 100% vested, and interested in the world at the same time.

As I've mentioned, you create it all; the geographies and climates, the races and sub-races that inhabit the world, alliances and organizations, and events and catastrophes that befall the world. What's more is that the sky's the limit. If you want a world of nothing but Elves and their sub-types, do it. For us, we included a wide range of races, and for me personally, I put my favorite races of all time in there. These stretch all the way back to the 1st edition Fiend Folio, Rokugan, and a couple more recent sources.


Working freehand map

If doing Dawn of Worlds, I recommend doing it 'lived' above all else. This might be an obvious suggestion, but we ended up doing a lot of the world building via email just to save time. For the first age, we sketched up a good sized map on grid paper and set to 'building' the world with lakes, valleys, rivers, mountains, plateaus, and more. The majority of the second age was via email, and was good to an extent, but being a collaborative effort, you kind of miss out on bouncing ideas off one another and really making it all mesh.

It's a points based system, so creating races and the like are very expensive in the first age. In the second age, your lands get populated, and this is where you start establishing what types of beings live in your world, with their cities. Again, if you're sick of seeing the same, old races and really want "terrasaur-turtle men" or what-not, just make them, stick them somewhere on the map, and worry about their game stats only if you plan on using the world in an RPG campaign. The nifty thing about Dawn of Worlds is that it can be played entirely as a self contained game if you want, but it's best for RPG world building.


A taste of the finished product

I can whip out a decent picture or two when called upon, or the mood strikes me. I'm no Wayne Reynolds, but for having zero formal training, I don't think I'm too terrible. Well, with the addition of the third Chris (Chri3) to the fold, we now have a bona fide artist amongst our ranks. The above map section, and the larger color one higher up are all his doing thanks to some Photoshop skills, an eye for color and design, and lots of patience.

Since all of my creative juices have been put to work fleshing out and writing the fluff for all the races, avatars, and cities I've made for our world, Sarterra, I'm going to start doing installments here highlighting them. Some of them are just my own takes and tweaks on standard races you'll find out therein. Half-orcs are no longer "half" anything, they're their own race filling their own niche in the world. Warforged got a slight name change to Runeforged, and a different background, the rat-like Nezumi make an appearance but now fill the functional and mechanical role that previously belonged to the tired, old Halflings, etc. The 'goodly' Drow among an inherently evil race always bugged me a little (as far as PC's go, they're fine for novels), so I reinvented the Drow as well. The two races, appropriately enough, that I lavished the most time on were the same as the characters I had rolled up.

The basics are recognizable, but there's enough of a Mik 'twist' to make them fresh and have a little more created feel. Well, not "created", more like re-imagined. Remember, this is just my stuff, there's three more players' worth of material, making for a truly diverse and exciting world. So, welcome to Sarterra, there's a lot more to come!

Monday Update

No, this isn't another Space Hulk post, haha...

Things have been a tad quiet around Mik's Minis, but that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything (but I'm not exactly busy either). I had mentioned a while back that the RPG's have really heating up around here, and that's been the bulk of it.


Part of our new world...Sarterra

We've had a couple of 4e games under our belts now, and so far it's been fun. Originally we were going to use Goodman Games Aerth setting with the PC races out of the PHB and PHB2. Then the idea of using the free PDF, Dawn of Worlds came up. Dawn of Worlds is a loose rules system that helps a group collaboratively build their own world, literally, from the ground up. It plays as an independent game and consists of three distinct phases; geography, races, and relations. Die rolls determine how many points each player gets per turn and then you buy options from there creating everything from Avatars, races, mountains, valleys, and the like. In each age, different items will cost more or less than they did in another age. We're about halfway through the second age and it's been a blast.

You can also create different orders, religions, and sects within the same race, or create sub-races as you like. You can corrupt your own race, (or someone else's), or consequently purify someone's race, city, land, etc. I loved Legend of the Five Rings back in the day, so I made some of the first races I created be the Naga and the Nezumi. Since I've rolled up a couple of Half-Orcs to play in the campaign, I made sure to give them a rich background as well. So far we have put together six avatars, sixteen races/sub-races, a dozen order/sects, and have also fleshed out another dozen cities as well. All of this took place after we took turns and created just the layout and geography of the world. I've been having so much fun writing fluff, backgrounds, and planning races, I almost forgot that we were actually building a world for a DnD campaign. The rules are free, and are definitely worth trying out. I'll start a series of posts about the new and tweaked races I've been putting forth.


We also kicked off a new Dark Heresy game. We have a large group of players for this game, seven in fact, so I thought I'd try to go for a non-combat type character. I chose Adept and will try to be as hands-off in combat situations as I can. Witha seven part group, sure, no problem. Of course when we played our first game the other day, ahem, a whopping four weren't able to make it. My knowledgeable Adpet had to learn how to shoot...quick! It was a good game, I love the Dark Heresy genre and setting, and I'm getting better acquainted with the rules and think I sold them a bit short before, it really is a great system.


I haven't mentioned 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars in a bit, but I'm happy to say the troops should, barring any interruptions, hit dirtside in just a couple of days. I'll try to get up a mission report once the dust has cleared. I've also got all those new Brickarms guns to break in too, so it should be an all around good time, I've got some nifty bad guy aliens on the first planet to harangue the troopers with.

So that's about all I've got for now. I've got a desk full of minis in the queue to paint up, but ugh, I've not been motivated at all to get to work. I also started reading False Gods, the second book of the Horus Heresy series, so I should wrap that up soon.