Skip to main content

Finding DR Games


I guess I should introduce myself, as this is my first post on this blog. My name is Toby and a couple of years back I started drawing maps. I gave what I did a name; Dark Realm Maps. Before I knew what was happening kind folk were sharing my designs and drawings across Twitter and I was blown away by the interest. This was something I loved doing. I am an artist with a long term interest in Board Games and RPGs as well as extensive video gaming experience. I have been to a thousand worlds, played a thousand characters, completed a thousand quests and live a thousand stories. And here I was able to create maps which tap into all of this. For me becoming Dark Realm Maps seemed like a natural move. With my maps I was creating fantasy worlds which I could draw a whole bunch of supportive people into. What a great place to be!

I began to realise that core to Dark Realm Maps is narrative. My drawing style is punctuated by detail. I add objects, furniture, atmosphere, clues, disorder or whatever is required to tell a story. I literally live the spaces as I draw them and imagine those who use or view the maps are doing the same thing. I want to bring them alive. Other creators realised this and commissions began to trickle in and my work was appearing in publications and modules. Then last year I was ENnie nominated for my work on the Lamp’s Light module by Mat Corley. This level of involvement naturally led to me writing some of my own modules, which I put on DMsguild, and it facilitated a change in mind set. It made me think about my future and how far I wanted to take the creative process.

I started playing around with hex tiles and drawing landscapes. I conceived some ideas about how a game might run (which I will talk about in later blogs) and the step from just Dark Realm Maps to Dark Realm Maps and DR Games came naturally from this.

So I needed somewhere to talk about this and I thought why not a blog? I also have a whole bunch of theories and ideas about game design that I want to share as well as my progress with current projects, including the big one (more on this to follow) so I hope you will be along for the ride. There will also be exclusive content that can only be found here, so enjoy!

Don't forget though you can also find me on Twitter and Instagram which I suspect is how you arrived here in the first place...so welcome to my new DR Games Blog.

Cheers guys!
Toby Lancaster
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Presenting Dark Force Incursion - A FREE Roll and Write One Player Game

It has been on my mind for a while now as the Corona-virus spreads across the world . What can I offer those who are at home and unable to partake in their usual gaming sessions because of isolation. How can a creative mind help alleviate the stress of boredom and worry? I have seen other roll and write games and thought that might be a great way of giving something to the community to these very ends.    Looking at what I have previously worked on under the DR Games and the hex tile has been a feature. I decide that I would try and use this format, combine it with a number mechanism and inject it with a narrative. This became a scenario that fuel the fire of the story...and Dark Force Incursion was born.   " Y o u r l a n d h a s b e e n i n v a d e d b y a p o w e r f u l D a r k F o r c e . T h e s p e e d o f t h e i n v a s i o n w a s f r i g h t e n i n g , a n d t h e y h a v e t a k e n a l l t h e d e f e n s i v e f o r t s i n
10 comments
Read more

Dark Force Incursion Expansions Launched to Quick Success

DFI came about through an unusual set of circumstances at a strange time, that I discuss in a previous post. But it was solid and reliable with a core set of rules and maps and could be download for free from my website. Yet, as if out of control, the game began to take on a life of its own in my mind. I imagined new land features, hex tiles, expansion rules and maps. I think that, for me, any creation is never truly complete, they just keep on growing, expanding, and ultimately opening new gaming choices.   Pretty quickly I set about writing the rules and drawing the land features for the new maps and expansions. It presented as a series of updates with new landscapes that would be interesting to experience in their own hex maps. This presented as four distinct expansions that would work nicely as pledge levels…yes, I began to think Kickstarter. I had established a presence on Board Game Geek and the free core rules were out there for people to play and they had. I was c
2 comments
Read more

More Time for Board Games?

How we manage our leisure time has definitely changed over the years. This I guess isn’t new news, so to speak. We are all aware of the Netflix phenomenon and boxsets and series binging. In fact, it feels like if you can’t have the whole series now, all at once, it causes a frustrated condition that I’m sure they’ll name at some point as a medical condition. I recently started watching Picard on Amazon and actually quite like only having one episode to look forward to a week. But at the same time it is nice to have all the episodes available especially for the Expanse! And even if we have only one episode to watch a week we can watch it when we want. But there is so much choice how can you run out! I hear people saying yet I think another effect of having everything at your fingertips is we become fussier. I have little patience for a series that doesn’t grip me straight away, which I’m not sure how I feel about. This is another reason why we run out of things to watch, creating
2 comments
Read more