DriveThruRPG Wishlist Sale results

Well, the DriveThruRPG Wishlist sale was, by any measure, a fair success.  I have had fairly good sales on the Quick Decks products (not so much on the Technical Manuals - oh, well, so it goes).  Since I've had the weekend mostly to myself (yay!), I started working up what's next for DSL Ironworks - Quick Decks 4: Frontier Starports.  Originally, I thought perhaps that this would be another tile set, but I've spent the day playing with the way Acrobat X can rescale and tile a source PDF, and I think I've got it figured out how to much larger installations (and ships, too!) from one source page.  First, though, here's a sample of some of the tiles from QD4, arranged to show a simple (Class D?) port, with a couple of security checkpoints, a fuel pumping station, some dorms for visiting crews, and a couple of warehouses.  Oh, and a smallish landing pad sized more for small craft.  Just a quickie design, but still fun.  Apologies for the dark lighting.

The other thing I'm playing with today is the Kankur-class Frontier Courier, a 200 ton ship I had the deckplan already worked up for.  So, I printed out both the 25/28 mm (24 pages worth!) and the 15 mm (8 pages) maps for comparison, using some Cardboard Heroes I had laying around.

First, the 25/28 mm version.

And then the 15 mm version.

These were both created from the same pdf source file, which was scaled 1/4" = 1.5 meters (and gives one roughly 51 meters x 66 meters per 8.5x11 inch page).  The 25 mm version is printed at 400% and tiled; the 15 mm is printed at 240% and tiled.  It does a pretty decent job at both scales since the original is vector format.  You can also print it at 100% so it fits on a single page.  Gotta love vector graphics.  Here's a jpg version of the original as well.

So, I think this is the future for the Quick Decks line.  Sure, I'll probably still put out some additonal tiles from time to time, but I'm now leaning towards PDFs aimed at a particular target (starports, for example), which, in addition to the tiles to build your own ports, would probably contain complete designs on a few pages, which could then be printed out at whatever scale tickles your fancy, as well as supporting text descriptions, game stats, and whatever else seems to fit.  In all honesty, doing battle maps this way is a heck of a lot easier for me to do, and ship design has always been my first love.  So, ships, starports, highports, restaurants, clubs, bars, shops, virtually anywhere can be easily mapped at whatever scale the GM might need or want.

If you've got any thoughts or opinions on the matter, I'd love to hear them.  On that note, I'm going to go trim up the printouts that I have and see how well they make a poster when taped up.  More pics on that later.  Thanks and TTFN.

Donavan Lambertus
DSL Ironworks@gmail.com

Quck Decks 3: Bay Weapons released.

Quick Decks 3: Bay Weapons

DSL Ironworks is proud to present the second expansion pack for the popular Quick Decks line of starship deck tiles. Available exclusively from DriveThruRPG.

Starships aren't built in a studio; they're forged in the Ironworks.

In a hurry for a 25 mm deckplan? Don't have time to sit down and draw one up? Then Quick Decks are for you. In this second expansion pack you will find 24 pages of pre-drawn map tiles scaled to 25 mm. Simply print, cut them out, and arrange them to build a starship properly scaled for miniatures. Each tile has it's own grid, the type of tile, and approximate displacement in Traveller tonnage listed on it, making it easy to build ships on the fly. This Expansion features weapon bays to expand the tiles already found in Quick Decks 1: Starter Pack and Quick Decks 2: Expansion Pack, allowing you to build well armed military vessels with meson gun bays, torpedo bays, and more.

• Greyscale images to speed up printing and save on printing costs.
• Completely scalable vector graphics - tiles can be printed at virtually any size, with minimal loss of detail (requires Adobe Acrobat X).
• This expansion pack utilizes layers, allowing you greater control over the tiles you print. If, for instance, you don't want to see a particular feature, simply open the Layers panel and make it invisible.
• Tiles can be used to lay out all kinds of ships, from small craft to multi-kiloton vessels.

Future expansions to the line will add more options, and expand your ship-building capability to new dimensions. Current plans include tiles for hangars, launch tubes, expanded bridges, engineering spaces, and more. Also in the works are tiles for buildings, terrain, starports, and space stations.

Quick Decks Trio Bundle

If you've been thinking about getting started with Quick Decks, now is the time! Also at , get the first three Quick Decks sets for 30% off with the Quick Decks Trio Bundle.

"Traveller" and the Traveller logo are Trademarks owned by Far Future Enterprises, Inc. and are used with permission. The Traveller Main Rulebook is available from Mongoose Publishing.

The long silence, and new beginnings...

Greetings, all, and welcome back to the Ironworks.  First off, let me apologize for the extended silence.  Technical issues, real life, and several other factors have conspired to reduce my work pace to a crawl for the last couple of months.  At long last, these issues have been largely resolved, and I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things.  Though I have been absent, I haven't been completely lazy; I've been working on getting the Quick Decks 2: Expansion Pack finished up and ready to go; that should become available over the weekend.  Work is also slowly resuming on the Technical Manual 2 as well, so expect to see some progress shots over the weekend as well.

If you're a regular reader of the blog (such as it has been lately), I appreciate your tolerance of my comings and goings.  If you're a reader who happens to use Quick Decks, I would love to hear from you and love to see some pictures of them in action.    Email them to DSLIronworks@gmail.com.  The first 3 people to do so will receive a copy of Quick Decks 2: Expansion Pack free of charge as a gift for your support.  If you have any suggestions for improving Quick Decks, I would love to hear them as well.