Despite my general aversion to this sort of thing, but because it's so utterly me, and because I was encouraged to, let us play a little game. Suppose, for a moment, that you have a phone booth. With this phone booth, you will travel through time, collecting 8 historical figures to help you deliver your oral report on their time periods, and to help review the world of San Dimas, 2008. (And yes, I'm talking about what is now a 20 year old movie. Oi.)

In the original film, these 8 were:

1. Napoleon
2. Billy the Kid
3. Socrates
4. Sigmund Freud
5. Beethoven
6. Joan of Arc
7. Genghis Khan
8. Abraham Lincoln

Now as for my list, well...I'll play things interesting and stick to rough time periods and/or roles, just for kicks.

1. Tokugawa Ieyasu

I should probably have this be Magua for the sheer in-joke potential, but I'll go with Tokugawa, because he's pretty Nappy-like in his way - fantastic general, one of the most amazing politicians of all time, and...oh, hey, he WON.

2. William Tecumseh Sherman

Who isn't an outlaw, but IS of the appropriate era, and happens to be a thoroughly tough but well-spoken sort of a guy. Having read his book, I imagine he'd be excellent to talk to.

3. Lucius Cornelius Sulla

Not A Philosopher, but he'd be a hoot, if he and Tokugawa didn't kill each other.

4. Mark Twain

Philosophers, meh. But Twain, now. He's the kind of writer a guy can really get behind. Also I have the ulterior motive of wanting to read his book on how my raft of historical figures plays together.

5. Elvis Presley

Because musically I am not my father. And because the reaction by everyone else in the audience would be priceless.

6. Akhenaten

Because let's go for some interesting religious fervor here. Sun worship! Egyptians! Deformed heads! You can't go wrong!

7. Tiglath-Pilesar I

Because if you want some seriously hard, chariot-riding dudes in the vein of Khan, you gotta get yourself an Assyrian.

8. George Washington

Because seriously, honestly, I REALLY want to hear his review of the world of San Dimas 2008. Because I think it would be incredibly interesting to see one of our forefathers pass judgement on us. That's probably not the word most people would use, but I am me, so.

Honorable Mention: Thomas Jefferson, Heraclius, Marcus Aurelius, Gaius Marius, Frederick Douglass, Vo Nguyen Giap, Hatshepsut, Queen Elizabeth I, V.I. Lenin, Julius Caesar.

Do feel free to share via comments.

A little bit of worldbuilding work, here.

Firstly, the map:

Click for a larger version.

This is the third version of this particular map. The first, which got referenced a couple of times previously in this series, was in the default CC3 bitmap style, which is one that I quite like, actually, but one that just wasn't cutting it for this particular project for some reason.

Went through a lot of ideas after that, including trying to make up a style based on the 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms map (which is probably the best the Realms have ever looked, but trying to match that style...holy crap), before settling on ideas out of the Cartographer's Annual 2007, one of which was the Sarah Wroot style, which looked utterly fantastic, but was also utterly unreadable, which turns out to be a problem.

The new map is in the Mercator style, and turns out to be readable AND looks completely awesome, although I will likely change it in a few particulars, including:

- Filling in the bloody Unknown Lands once I come up with something to go there.
- Decreasing the font size for both the Western Sea and the Unknown Lands. It's a tad large.
- Naming the various adjuncts to the Sea of Vargra.
- Possibly adding ice to the Sea of Moving Ice.
- Adding in the forests that exist in Tithorea and Titheheim.
- Moving some labels about a bit.
- Moving the whole landmass over a little. When printed at 1 inch = 100 miles on a 2x2 layout, the exact middle is somewhere in the Plains of Black Ash in a sort of annoying spot. Then again, it's not bad where it is.

Other than that, I'm pretty happy with it. None of the rivers are named, mind you, but I'll save that for the inevitable series of 1 inch = 25 or 50 miles maps I'll end up needing to do.

Now, what I'm going to do for city and dungeon mapping to complement this style, I have no idea. Dungeon Designer 3 has thus far proved itself to be heavily unuseful, and while there are ways I believe it could be useful (mostly involving Symbol Set 2, which has nice stuff), some of it's going to take some work to get right. For cities? I have more options here, and will likely have even more if City Designer 3 looks as awesome as the previews show it to be. In particular, the Cartographer's Annual has this style, which I quite like though it may be too 19th century for the matter at hand. There is also this style, which complements the Mercator map well, but all you get is peaked roofs and such, which is somewhat annoying. So we'll see. Likely be ages before I do a city in any case.

On another note, I've hit upon a tool that I'm using to organize my notes, and that is a personal wiki, of which I am using this flavor, which lends itself heavily to being useful, and I find I quite like it. I've already transcribed all of my written scribblings on classes, races, and religion, and it probably won't be too much more work (at least by comparison - clerics were a bitch) to finish off the rules portion of things, at which time I'll move on to actual geography fluff. It's pretty likely I'll wind up doing a Tharavel style setting book at some point (though hopefully with better art, and I have some ideas on that). Hopefully in August I can do some work on that.

Also need to work on historical stuff, but I'll do a seperate post on that later.

Because I've had this song stuck in my head for like 5 years now, but always as music. And then last night I remembered part of the lyrics, and thanks to the Power of Google, I am victorious.

On that note, would somebody care to explain to me why my default memory for about 2002-2005 is driving in cars in Corvallis? Because I didn't think I did all THAT much of it, and I definitely didn't do a whole lot of driving on Highway 99 out by Bi-Mart (always cut over on Harrison/Van Buren), but sure enough there I am. Wonder why.