Coordinating Investigation

Out-of-Session, I had Simon and Clark make rolls to try to learn what they could about the TerraSec HQ building they were planning to raid in Sunday's session. Clark was rather unimpressive and failed all but one check, which he made exactly. Simon looked cleared to do the same until the last role, when he threw a natural twelve. Then he threw another six on his exploding die. Then another six. Then a five, for a total of 29 -- one less than a "Miraculous Feat" (A Time of War, p. 42) Anthony asked to blow a point of edge to get the elusive bonus, but I ruled that miracles had to be natural, largely because it didn't matter at that point whether he got the last point or not -- he succeeded by enough to get all the information I had to give him.

This result actually pushed up my deadline for putting the map and information together -- I had to get it to him so he could share it with the party to plan the operation. As a result, the in-game document creation has been delayed. Again, I tried developing this map with Campaign Cartographer 3. I bought the Cosmographer and Modern expansion packs, because I found the graphics included with the base product to be somewhat lacking. I have to say, I am somewhat less impressed with the product turned out by the tactical-scale maps than the beautiful overland map that I was able to make for Clark's Ranch. To compare:

This is the map of the Headquarters building I was able to slap together. The clip art is handy and the sheets let me easily highlight the objectives that the party needs to go after, but somehow the map just doesn't feel like it pops the way I feel it should. This is likely more a shortcoming of the user than the product, but given the effects I was able to get in a fraction of the time with the ranch, it like the latter is a better application. For comparison:

Clark's Ranch is fairly straight-forward, and I expect to convert it to a MegaMek map potentially in the late campaign, as a defending-our-base mission is a staple of this kind of campaign. More to the point I was making, though, the map I produced simply looks better. Not professional by any stretch of the imagination, but better than the Ink/Scanner/Photoshop method I used before, and certainly in a fraction of the time.

Anyways, I'm sure the mapmaking is less interesting than the actual nitty-gritty of rules and adventure planning, so I'll get back to plot and character development tomorrow.