Release: Theatre of the Mind

Hi all, thought I'd put this set of  Theatre of the Mind Assets on the marketplace since there was some interest in grabbing this swanky tech for themselves. Its a map that's not a map! Built for the people who like eye-candy, it comes with a daytime night time wheel that has four modes! The animation below only previews the "evil" day and night cycle but there's a blue-skies and sparkling moons cycle on the other side.  Also included with the map are a set of wooden-styled generic markers and alphabet soup. I strongly encourage the use of color tints and non-grid conforming scaling to make full use of these tokens. I tried to restrict myself to these eight tokens to make them easy to find and drop into the scene. Additional support for named NPCs and obstacles are done with the alphabet + number tokens also included.  I'm also attaching the instructions page included in the set to give everyone a better gander at whats involved with setting this thing up. It does use a lot of advanced knowledge of layering and positioning of assets so know what you are going into. Especially if you use the alternative faceplate asset. I personally swap between the two face plates by bouncing the Z-axis of them as necessary. 

This is such a cool idea! The artwork is beautiful and the concept is just so cool. I love this idea for dream sequences of storytelling "special moments" in my campaign. Must think of ways to use this set.

The main tabletop background and ability to move-the-sun-and-moon-cycle is eye-catching. But my favorite part of this set is the "generic" wooden letter tokens & numbers. Those are so flexible and useful, like the artist said, for NPC's (I use the first letter of the NPC's name, then put the full name in the Nameplate underneath, this way you can recognize their initial at-a-glance when zoomed out, or when it's on GM layer waiting).

Genius.

Very exceptional work and the artwork is superb!

Amazing idea and artwork.

thanks. purchased. My campaigns are almost always narrative driven, so having something aside from my crudely sketched happy faces to depict mobs will be nice (the tokens are awesome)

Purchased! It is very beautiful. I will run a game using it this Thursday. I set it up per instructions... very easy. I created a Rollable Table token out of the two faceplates so I can switch back-and-forth with ease. I even have plans to create custom faceplate maps in Photoshop. Request... it would be nice to have a blank version of the token used for the alphabet. Great job! Cheers!

Hi  Richard T. - awesome work on this post! Do you want me to add the link to your pack description?

Excellent work! I was hoping it would reach the marketplace. :D

Avacyn said: Hi  Richard T. - awesome work on this post! Do you want me to add the link to your pack description? Thanks Avacyn, that sounds a good idea :-) I'll see what I can do about some free support for this set as well.

Done! Great work :)

Beautiful, but what is this exactly and how is it used? 

Sceneficant Maps: Theatre of the Mind said: A gorgeous modular base map for in-between combat maps or completely narrative games. Includes stylized tokens for quick combats, used for showing relative distances and number of foes. For more insight, you might wish to check out the "brainstorm" thread .

Richard, are you going to make more battlemats?  I really enjoyed the first batch you made.

Very nice. Some campaigns are better suited to what I think of as a "narratively open" tabletop setup, where in-game actions are abstracted instead of concretely demarcated by minis positioned with xy-plane accuracy on a grid.

Silvyre said: Sceneficant Maps: Theatre of the Mind said: A gorgeous modular base map for in-between combat maps or completely narrative games. Includes stylized tokens for quick combats, used for showing relative distances and number of foes. For more insight, you might wish to check out the "brainstorm" thread . I appreciate the help, but I had already read that thread. It told me nothing about how the product works. I was looking for more details on its use, like how Kickstarter projects do.  All I gleaned from the thread was that it was a rotating wheel of sun and moon in a gorgeous design and that it was used for between combats or strictly storytelling narrative games. The marketplace listing doesn't help me either. I'm definitely intrigued so far.

Thanks for the comments and love everyone!  Sterling Cutter said: Request... it would be nice to have a blank version of the token used for the alphabet. Great job! Cheers! Sure, the tokens are the least of the endeavors so I don't think it'll hurt me too much releasing the base.  ------------------------------------------------ Jake M. said: Richard, are you going to make more battlemats?  I really enjoyed the first batch you made. Thanks for the praise, Jake, my  Ranger's Folio has been doing well but I've been struggling to find a niche as a content creator. I'm weighing between maps that have multiple stages (IE. castle siege map with different levels of destruction) or more 'particular' maps; maybe a series exploring a multitude of planes. Feedback of what was effective about my other map set would be nice.  ------------------------------------------------- Patrick Von Raven said: Beautiful, but what is this exactly and how is it used?  Thanks for the interest, Patrick. The bare bones of it is that the main board is simply eye-candy. In the way that D&D doesn't require photo-textures or rendered buildings yet sometimes you just wanna have something that helps immerse the players beyond a 5-point black box labeled as "tree". There are a lot of encounter maps and tokens on the marketplace and I thought I wanted something out there to support people who don't use maps but still want a level of finish to their game.  The tokens are designed to be more evocative rather than representational, flexible so that from encounter to encounter you don't need a dozen tokens. They might even be used mixed in with your current token collection as a kind of stop-gap, maybe you are feeling saucy and want to throw in a monster that "isn't exactly a dragon" but don't have another token. 

Richard, this is straight up beautiful work.

Richard, thank you so much for releasing this.  It is so gorgeous; I had wanted it when you first previewed it so was pleased to be able to purchase it.

Jake M. said: Richard, are you going to make more battlemats?  I really enjoyed the first batch you made. Thanks for the praise, Jake, my  Ranger's Folio has been doing well but I've been struggling to find a niche as a content creator. I'm weighing between maps that have multiple stages (IE. castle siege map with different levels of destruction) or more 'particular' maps; maybe a series exploring a multitude of planes. Feedback of what was effective about my other map set would be nice. What I really like about the Ranger's Folio was that it had DIFFERENT areas.  Swamp, forest, desert, lava lake, coast.  All of gorgeous quality. This allows me to use them once in a while in different areas.  I think I have used each one almost twice now if not more.   A lot of my other map puchases are of Gabriel P., while his are great too, they are usually sets for a themed set.  So if my players walk away from that area, I can't use the remaining pieces til they return.  The rangers folio lets me to pull out one if they go to that area, or something. If I had 100% control of your life, I would probably make you make continuations of the ones in the Folio (for free of course! muhahaha) also, maybe better tagging! But seriously for: enc_forest - Before or after, doesn't really matter. enc_swamp - same as forest. enc_coast - I would maybe think about another part further up the beach.  So that way when the players exit the cave, they can continue on.  OR if heading towards the cave there could be a beach before. enc_grotto - MY FAVORITE, this one is seriously amazing.  Has perils with the deep and shallow water, the small cliffs and ramps.  Really splendid job.  This one also works really well as lead ins/outs for enc_coast and enc_forest.  Maybe another section in the cave system? enc_caravan - This one is also great, for future ones similar to this, maybe make a version WITH the bloody temple and WITHOUT the bloody temple/camp.  Or maybe make those items separate .pngs to add later?  (dont know how much work that would inflict upon you).  This allows more flexibility. enc_arctic - Really gorgeous, only complaint is similar to the caravan except with the altar thingy up on the high ground.  I covered it with snow and a tree.  Maybe making the altar a separate image to give flexibility.  (In a one shot I used the altar as a portal, in the other one, it was simply a pass in the mountains with a dead tree) enc_magmaforest - Not much to say about this one, worked great in a demonic realm.  Was a great little map for a boss fight. enc_desert - maybe another one with either in the desert before they come to the cliffs (this might be a bit boring since its just sandy and stuff) or maybe an entrance where the cave leads to on the cliff and sunlight pouring down where the cave-in/floor entrance in the sand.  Also similar to the arctic/caravan, maybe the ground entrance to be a separate .png so if I dont want a floor entrance, I don't have to drop sand images on it (did in one mini-campaign, not in the other) I hope that makes sense, sorry for the rant.  Loved the pack, would buy Ranger's Folio 2 if its as good as 1.  I dont expect .pngs for the previous maps without those features I mentioned, i just mean maybe keep it in mind for future ones.  Maybe do two versions for each map (with features like that and without), this might also help with the premium price for the set without causing too much work for you (I actually dont know if thats true, it might take a lot...)   Just my two cents!

Sorry for the late response but wanted some time before I come back to this release. First, I wanted to thank Jake for the feedback. Admittedly, my initial thoughts was to sort of force those little features on the maps to inspire DMs to incorporate them into their games. My thought was that Gabriel's sets are the king of encounter-maps in those terrain types and I wanted to start exploring maps that served as destinations or one-off featurettes a party might find. I'm glad to hear that you've been finding use of them and I might consider incorporating the idea of pairs of maps, one directly leading to another, to give a bit of ease of use if the buyer doesn't happen to be a Gabrielphile.  As for the current release, now that people have had a chance to use it a few times, I was hoping to get some people's opinions of how it fits into their game. Or having now gotten a pretty doodad, if there's ideas for what I might consider for an expansion.  Here's a little bonus screenshot of how I've been using my own board, in a game of Ars Magica, which deals with events and timelines that is more "macro" minded than the minutes/rounds of other games. I have a couple props floating around for players to fiddle with inbetween interactions with the GM and I've labeled the side cubbies with player's initials to put things into. I've reserved the top right for the scattering of various icons that I can quickly copy and paste for any kind of encounter or if I need another event. 

Very cool Package - I hope this inspires more Authors to do "unusual" Stuff.