Some Thoughts on GMing Great Story

Maighdean-Mhara (the Sea-Maiden)

All went well for three years until one day the young couple were walking by the loch shore again.  This time the monster rose out and it was Finnseang who was dragged under the waters before Murdo Og had a chance to defend her.  Murdo Og was wailing and lamenting his lost bride when an old man walking by asked what was wrong.

Murdo Og told him and the old man said: “I will tell you how you can rescue your wife and destroy the monster forever.  In the center of the loch is an island.  On the Island is a white-footed hind, slender and swift.  If you catch the hind, a black crow will spring out of her mouth and if the black crow were caught, a trout would fall out of her beak, and in the mouth of the trout would be an egg.  Now in the egg is the soul of the monster.  If you crush the egg, the monster will die.”  

When I read this passage I was struck by the simplicity and natural forthrightness of the flow of the story. Here is magic at its most enigmatic, and it is at the same time handled without flourish or frills. We are told that the magic is of a certain nature and we are expected to accept that this is magic of an enchanted realm and that the magic works as such. I liked the matter of fact-ness of the way the scene is described and my feeling is that it is the attributes of simplicity and forthrightness regarding an enigma that makes the story not only work, but moreover, great literature, as is evidenced by its vast longevity.

Then I was thinking about how a Gamesmaster could make such stories.  Is it legitimate, for example, for the Gamesmaster who might be playing out this above described Adventure to show up as the old wise man Non-Player Character with the magical knowledge, and even the exact solution to the problem?  Well, almost it does, but it becomes something of Deus Ex Machina, one feels, and I think we can legitimately question if that would be truly satisfying in a game-play sense.  After all, it is the seeming spontaneity of the events in the story that make them charming.   So how does the Gamesmaster go about creating truly literary quality stories, where the Characters (both Player and Non-Player) act in ways that convey the same kinds of qualities as we find in the fairytales and ancient legends of old?   The author of the ancient stories was able to imbue his tales with a depth of meaning and his characters with a significance that makes them accessible to everyone who reads them, even now after many centuries, though the world has changed so incredibly.  The stories still carry the power to speak to us out of the depths of time.  They still have meaning for us, even if we don't quite understand consciously exactly what they are whispering to our hearts.   This is the nature of Literary Quality stories.  They flow with the currents of an inner and often hidden universal significance.

But in a Role Playing Game it’s hard to achieve this.   Naturally, the author has a great advantage over the Gamesmaster and Players in this regard – for the author every Character is far more likely to do what he wants and expects and directs them to than in an RPG where the Gamesmaster does not control the principal Protagonists (Player-Characters).  It is not far fetched to argue that this fundamental difference makes it much more difficult to achieve truly Great RPG Stories.  However, it can be done, and it’s our job to see that it is done.  The question I keep asking us to consider is, How?

Well there’s so much RPG Theory out there, and yet my feeling about the vast majority of it, in summary, is “hogwash and fiddlesticks”.   Honestly, I do not think we can find the answer to that question via RPG Theory.   What the Theorists seem to wish to do is to establish rules by which RPGs can be made into a Science of Story Creation, but that is more than I think is possible for the Art.   They seem to believe that through rigorous analysis of RPG Players and Gamesmasters behavior (and feelings) can be factually and accurately defined, process flowed, and manipulated, just as a biologist might describe the interactions of a microbe, or a psychiatrist describe a patient’s spiritual epiphany.

But RPG Stories are not subject to this analysis any more than is art or spirituality.   In fact, it really comes down to the fact that you cannot codify the Spirit of Beautiful Art.  As such, I do not believe in a 'Science of the Spirit of Beautiful Art'.  Science is based on facts and measurements, and art is based on intuition and spirit.   You cannot measure intuition and spirit, so there can not be a science of it.  There is a great deal of scientific (or analytic) commentary on Literature, its styles, modes, periods, forms and the myriad of other things that Academics and Scholars like to study.  And all of it is well and good and interesting stuff.  But I think the Ancients went to school to learn the craft of authoring the immortal myths learned that craft in a very different way than what we think of as School today.  The myth-maker was, in the most ancient of times, a Shaman, and his education was obtained by two means.  The first was technical.  He learned the tools of his craft, which were complicated and difficult to learn and use well, with many technical details to be mastered.  But there was another side to their education that I do not think is generally understood today.   And that has to do with the Mythic-Journey.  The entering, spiritually, into the Other World to glean wisdom, and winning such pearls of wisdom, bringing them back to our ordinary world as the gems we have handed down to us in the ancient myths.

The ancient Shaman-Poet-Myth-Maker wrote from the genius of his heart, mind and spirit, and he took the world around him in all of its glory and pain and translated it into words for the sake of creating beautiful art.   I do not believe it was a science of art that made him great.  In fact, were he to have tried to do this via a scientific method (or in our case Gamesmastered according to RPG Theory) I seriously doubt he would have produced the wonders he did.  So that’s my criticism, anti-Intellectual as some people may find it.   Nor do I think we will find that RPG Theory alone can produce Great RPG Story, try as it might.   What I do not find when I read RPG Theory is what I'm seeking - how to create RPG stories that have the qualities of great literature or ancient myth.  There is something deep and profound hidden within and behind the mythos of the ancient stories.  I would like to know how I can bring this quality into my RPG World, and allow my players to experience something similar to what we experience when reading the ancient works of literature.  I do not feel that I will find the answer in RPG Theory as I find it has been discussed thus far.

What I think is required, instead of Analytics, is actual Life Experience.   Gamesmasters who wish to create Great RPG Stories should read great literature in abundance, and learn to distill out from it what makes those works Great Story, or Great Art.   But moreover they should seek to live a life full of experiences that can help them to shape their Inner Vision of the World, and make their inner light gleam with the pearls of wisdom so necessary to creating Meaning in Story. Then they can begin to add elements to their RPG Worlds that may begin to cultivate a landscape in which Great Story has a chance of growing.   It is not an all or nothing thing, but I see it as an evolutionary process.  You simply start with something that has literary qualities, and you keep watering it, cultivating it, and letting it grow with your players until you begin to see that your World bears the fruits of Great Story over time.

Sea-Maiden

Another aspect that I think may be helpful is for the Gamesmaster to learn to develop a vision of the world based on their own life experiences.   To do this requires living a life in which experiences lead to insight.   I recommend this in the same sense that Shamans would head off into the other world via their dreams and obtain wisdom from the spirit world, and bring that back to their community in the form of healing stories.   I read a great book on this named “Coyote Wisdom”, and highly recommend it for Gamesmasters to read and consider.  Spend some time reading the classics and contemplating the stories of the ancient world.  In them you may find hints of Shamanistic experiences from the long forgotten swell springs of inspiration.

Now back to my questions:  How can Gamesmasters and Players create truly literary quality stories via their games?  And really, is it legitimate for the Gamesmaster to show up with the Deus Ex Machina, and for the Players to follow certain pathways pro-forma?  Well yes, sure, of course – it all depends on the timing, the mood, the Players, the phase of the moon, and how many butterfly wings flapped along the beach on the coast of Hawaii in the year 1200 BC.

But I also think that Gamesmasters who have insight, who have through their life experiences obtained a certain wisdom, can, and indeed do, foster Worlds from which Great RPG Stories can emanate.   I am seeking that path, and encourage my friends to do the same, as I believe in that direction Great Story is to be found.   Many say "it is impossible", and "Games can never be art" and other such nonsense.   I don't believe them.   And so I will continue my search, alone, perhaps, but happy in the delusion of my Great Story Dream.

If you care to read the outcome of my latest effort in this direction you may find links to my 2009-2010 Elthos Game Story here.   Enjoy.

Elthos PearlTree

Just a little something I've been toying around with... :)



Maybe it will work? What the heck, I'll try it.

...hmmm... seems to work nicely in Chrome, but in IE7 not so great. Not sure why. Oh well. Nice try. Anyway, I like the base website for PearlTrees. Definitely cool. Embedding, so so. But main site? I like it.

The Sisyphus of Game Designers

- Sisyphus -

One profound lesson that I've learned during the course of this project is that it is really impossible for me to tell how long something is going to take.  A very good example is my current efforts at play-testing my Elthos RPG skills system, taking the feedback I got from my play testers, analyzing it, and then integrating the recommendations.   Wow!   Recommendations finished rolling in last Thanksgiving!   I'm still working on it!  Almost finished, but still!   WOW!   That's a very, very long time!

What took the most time?  The analysis, of course.  Actually, once I determined what needed to be programmed, it was difficult and tedious and time consuming (and not quite finished yet), but in all it did not take that long really.  Only maybe 10 hour stretched over 3 weeks.   That's not too terrible.  If I were not working a day job, and taking Wudan classes (which requires a lot of practice time), a some fascintating but time consuming personal matters, and family & friends, well, of course that 10 hours would have taken maybe 2 days instead of three weeks.  But as it is my calendar is packed solid every day, and so real life has a way of interfering with my fantasy life (of finishing this project in time for my fellow human beings to actually get a chance to try it out, hopefully before the world ends).

But really, it was the Analysis that took most of the time, and I did not expect that.  I should have expected that, but when I got my first set of emails on the skills system the ideas seemed reasonably simple enough to parse through and organize, so I expected the process to take maybe one month.   Hah!   Took a lot longer than that!

One take away from this was that communicating with the Player Testers by email has distinct pros and cons.   The positive side it is easy and the play testers can just jot down their thoughts and send them along very simply.  On the negative side it created a huge mass of emails that had interwoven comments about different facets of the problems (of which there were more than a few interlinked with each other) that had to then be tweezed out into individual (yet related) statements that could be analyzed.  That document in the end turned out to be 11 single spaced pages in MS Word!  Holy Macrel!   Unexpected!   That's what I'd call A LOT of information to analyze.  In case you're interested you can find the analysis on the Elthos RPG Forum here.  All of it, by the way, was really excellent information and feedback, so I'm very happy I have play testers willing to dig in and help me think through the issues!   It's absolutely great!   But it is also time consuming.  Not complaining, just explaining, so don't get me wrong.  I am writing this just as a hint and reminder to those who may also want to program their own game system in the future that these are the kinds of things that you can expect to happen along the way.   I didn't expect them, and so I was surprised.  Maybe you won't be quite as surprised as I've been.   Doubtful, but maybe.

Anyway, of course the analysis in the end distilled down to only a few statements.   And finally, it distilled down to two very simple formulas.  Hah!  The joke is on me that later people will scratch their heads and wonder, Gee - these two formulas are so incredible simple, so basic, so fundamentally no-brainers - what in the world took you so long!?   Next lesson learned:  sometimes to road to simplicity is very circuitous, winding, and torturous.  It was in this case fo'shizzle!

Don't get me wrong, though.  All of this effort was necessary in order for me to derive a simple system that actually balances and hangs together nicely.  It's just that this process of analysis and resolution took me a long time.  Especially when I have to balance the working on the project with my real life.   Were I to live in a cave with no day job, no family, no girlfriend or any friends at all, and a meager supply of food and water, then it would take much less time.   But that, friends, just ain't how my reality is configured.  Nor would I want it to be.  So the result is that ... it's slow.  Maybe if I had a team of top-flight programmer analysts to help me it would also go much faster.  You know, there may just be something to that!   But how to get from here to there?   Clue-free.

Of course, the risk I run is that because I am working on this project pretty much solo end-to-end, with few resources other than my own tiny fingers and a few pretty messed up computers (another reason for the delay was two severe computer crashes that cost me a lot of time), that I will get this project out into the public domain just in time for the sun to go into it's Red Giant phase, and our poor little world will be engulfed in a magnificent sea of scintillating fire.  Well, I hope I can get it finished before then.   That would be nice.

In fact, I hope to have it finished in time for people to try it out sometime soon.  Right now Elthos RPG is actually on the web.   It is in beta test mode.  It works, and does a pretty nice job, but I would also say that it's still got a lot of rough edges that need polishing.   I should probably mention that I started Elthos way back with my original rules system (still inherently intact) in 1978.  I began programming the system in QBasic in 1994.   I then converted over to Visual Basic in 1995 and finished the VB Application in 2000, and then extended and enhanced the application through 2005.   I should also mention that I did manage to play some pretty spectacular games with it over that period of time.  But anyway, I then began working on the simplified rules and Internet application for the "One Die System" which I created for use by the Literary Role Playing Game Society of Westchester in March of 2006.   So now it is an astonishing 2011, and I'm still not finished!  Yowza-Crikey-OMG!!  Good thing this is a really tremendously fun hobby!

Anyway... last lesson:  Keep At It!  It may seem like you'll never achieve your goal sometimes... but if you stick with it, eventually, one day, hopefully before the end of the world, you'll make it.  And then you'll be proud to look back and say, well, no matter how long it took, how difficult the challenges, and how discouraged I may have felt at times, I achieved my goal!  So...

Don't Rush Me!!  I'm working on it!  
hehe... :)

Sincerely,
Sisyphus of Elthos

Pearls For Your Sandbox

This morning I was browsing RPGBloggers and I found Andreas Davour's post on THE OMNIPOTENT EYE blog: My thoughts on sandboxing

I think Andreas is certainly on the right track. These are my comments which I decided to cross-link to the (LRPGSW) from his comments box, since my comment started getting a bit involved. I decided to Cross-Post this to the ElthosRPG Blog as well, because, obviously, different communities of readers may find it in either location.

To Andreas:

I've run sandbox games all along so I'm pretty much sure that with what you have here would provide a good gaming experience for, as you say, pro-active players with some imagination. That said, I would add what I think is an essential concept to sandbox...

Create Pearls. Pearls are loosely coupled objects within your World that can be moved around and connected at will. Pearls can be people, places, things, or events. The pearls can be rolled out during the game when the NPCs or PCs trigger something that calls for one or more. What you probably want to avoid in your pearls are things that define them too rigidly within the world, although you can create strings of pearls that have defined links, for example an object-pearl that triggers another event-pearl that triggers a place-pearl. An example of a few loosely coupled pearls might be:

1) Lady Elaina, Princess of the Moon-Wolves Tribe.

2) Rathan Mountain, a jagged ice capped granite mountain on which is an ancient oak forest in which wolves and dryads live in uneasy co-existance.

3) Chaknorak, Wolf-Bane Sword, +2 vs Lycanthropes, and will return lycanthrops to human form on critical hits.

4) The Rising of Elehan: An ancient coffin in which is the skeleton of Elehan is opened, and the corpse of that terrible Wolf-King reanimated. His first goal is to find Chaknorak, and destroy it, for that is the weapon that killed him long ago.

Now you can see the obvious link between these is the moon-wolf theme. However, notice that there are no dates listed. No specific location relationships, or direct connections. Only implied ones. Those three would make a nice string of pearls, but they need not be strung together. Stringing them would simply be a matter of adding a notation that links them more directly. For example adding a trigger to Chaknorak as follows:

3) Chaknorak, Wolf-Bane Sword ... The relic is hidden in a large cavern guarded by the phantom of King Elehan. Whomever touches the sword will awaken the King's spirit and be lead by hook or crook to his tomb, one way or another, over the course of several days at most. The sword will hum in the presence of the tomb, and this will trigger the awakening of Elehan, who will try to remove the lid of the coffin, but be unable to do so on his own since the sacred seal must be broken from the outside. Once open the ancient King will speak in a long lost dialect, and attempt to take and destroy Chaknorak. If he succeeds he will return to Rathan Mountain and seek to find his old throne, resume his Lycanthropic form, and revive his kingdom.

As you can see the adding of the trigger to pearl 3 certainly ties it much more closely to a timeline, place and events that follow.

Pearls are a good conceptual model for Sandbox games. You want to create a bunch of people, places, things and events that are loosely coupled (by theme perhaps), but not tied together too rigidly. This gives the GM a lot of fun things to throw into the game, and yet not get tied up by criss-crossing complications due to rigidly defined timelines or relationships.

The Cataclysms of Elthos

As a World Weaver I've spent a good deal of time considering and planning for the Great Cataclysms of Elthos. They lay latent in the World's Back Story, waiting patiently for the right time and conditions for them to be set in motion.  Elthos has 12 Major Cataclysms, one for each of the Major Celestial Powers.  None of them have thus far played out in the game, primarily because I am playing my world in a very down-to-the-ground local adventure mode.  That means I tend to play low level campaigns, as opposed to Epic, often starting Characters out as 1st Level village kids ranging in age from 10 to 14, with chores and ordinary village lives, who then get caught up in the inner-world adventures of the Fey somehow or other.   Thus my adventurers rarely catch wind of anything even remotely related to the 12 Major Cataclysms.  They simply do not come up, and nothing is so much as rumored about them.  It is, from my Player's point of view, as if they do not exist. 

But the Cataclysms, in the hands of each of the Celestial Powers of Elthos, do exist, albeit slumbering uneasily in the depths of the Back Story... only awaiting the Player Characters to fall upon the right Relic at the right time, for Gates of Destiny to open, for the releasing one of the Major Cataclysms, or even potentially opening the Terrible Gate of Doom to the Ultimate Cataclysm... the End of Ages, or the End-War of the Elkron, my World's version of the Apocalypse.

Just to explain a bit about the Ultimate Cataclysm... The End-War of the Elkron is the final battle of supremacy for the the Rule of the Elthos Universe.  The Elkron are the unseen but widely worshipped Celestial Powers who have interacted little with the World of Elthos since the Dawn Age, but have observed much of the affairs of the races they created.  The End-War occurs when the entire Universe of Elthos must endure the final battle of the Elkron, as all their Seeds of Destiny bear fruit and the Cosmic Stratagems of the Elkron are finally revealed and all Fates and Destinies are played out.   As it must be, the World of Elthos will someday be torn asunder by the Elkron as it must always and eventually be returned into it's primordial state of existence.   The Victors of the End-War become the Ruling Elkron in the next Universe, as the Elkron are reborn for the next Cycle of Existence, as will ever be so long as the Universe of Elthos is breathing.

There are, of course, much lesser Cataclysms of the Elkron that are not nearly as dire as the End-War, and much closer to be played in-game than the End of Ages Campaign.  I really do not expect any of the Cataclysms to be played out any time, soon, however, but that said, the 12 Major Cataclysms, and scores of Minor Cataclysms that are tied to the various Seeds of Destiny of the Elkron stand a much higher chance of being played than the End-War. 

These Minor Cataclysms could be triggered relatively easily by Player Characters who might choose to follow the paths of the Elkron in order to achieve one of the Greater Quests (aka Seeds of Destiny) strewn around the World.  But then again, I honestly don't really expect the Players to stumble into any of the Minor Cataclysms either.  I really created them in order to fill out the Grand Picture of the Elthos World, at the macro-Cosmic level, just so that my World has that aspect in place, even if it remains entirely latent to the actual in-Game Campaigns.  But of course, since they are there, you really never know... some Player Character might actually trigger any of them, if they happen to stumble upon them and do just the wrong things at just the wrong times.  The Elkron who created the particular Seed of Destiny won't object, believe me.   They are looking forward to it with a relentless and voracious intent.

As an example, which I won't describe in too much detail just now for obvious reasons, I can offer a certain something hidden deep within the Temple of the Sun in the Kingdom of Palamir.  In that temple there is a dreadful chest, hidden an bolted to the ground at the center of a secret hall deep beneath the temple, that is made of solid gold and inscribed with great glyphs, and inscribed with dire warnings.  The Priests of that Temple are taught to preserve it, and never to open it until the time that the Elkron of the Sun himself shall ordain it.  If anyone, such as a Player Character, should ever manage to battle his way through violence to the chest, or worm his way through deception, and then happens to open the unlocked chest of gold, they will learn a great deal about what the Elkron are like.  It will signal the opening of one of the Gates of Destiny, and undoubtedly, a Minor Cataclysm will be set into motion, and one of the Seeds of Destiny may be fulfilled.  Such are the ways of the Elkron.  It should be considered that the Elkron did not create the races of the world so that they could dote on them and pamper them and build civilizations for the fun of it - but rather as tools to be expended for the purposes of Universal Domination and Ultimate Victory.

Perhaps one day when the time is right I will begin a Campaign at the Epic Level of Elthos known as 'The End of Ages'... and in that Campaign the Player Characters may very well find out just how Great, and Mighty and Terrible the Elkron really are, and just how little humanity and it's petty conflicts really matter in the great scheme of things.   Great, Mighty and Terrible indeed.

RPG Carnival: Cartography

Cartography

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I suggest a map is worth ten thousand words because maps put things into context. I do a lot of maps for my world. In fact I do a lot of Types of maps for my world. What do I mean? Well I not only map geography, but I also map plotlines, and story elements. So I have three kinds of maps, Geographic, Story Plot, and Elements maps.

As a general rule I try to keep things simple, and so I try to use reasonably simple tools. Over the years I’ve evolved a few strategies for creating my maps. That said, there are cartography tools out there that do a spectacular job creating maps of different kinds with different styles. I simply don’t use them. I prefer my own homebrew style, for no particularly good reason, other than I like the way my maps turn out.

For each of the three types of maps the first thing to understand is – what is the purpose of the map? I will go through each of the three and offer my thoughts, and methodologies for creating them.

My Tool Kit

I’ve tried a number of mapping tools over the years. Some online mapping tools are very good for certain kinds of maps. However, in the end, I found that using a simple set of tools is my preference.

Outdoor Maps: Pen and Paper – I prefer magic markers, and in particular sharpie pens with the thick tip. After I finish coloring and polishing in the software tools an outdoor map looks like this:

Indoor Maps: I have experimented with using Excel for making Dungeon Levels. I reduce the size of each cell to a square. I set the color of all cells to dark gray. Then I set the grid lines to show using the border tool. Then I “paint” corridors using the cell color format of white by selecting an area (can be one line of cells, or a block of cells) and using the format background color White.  I number the rooms and use letter codes to indicate various things about the room, such as “s” for secret door, “d” for door, etc. I also figured out a way to add icons for stairs and such. The result is a dungeon map that looks like this:

Digital Camera – I photograph my pen and paper map, and put the file onto my computer where I can enhance it with the following tools:

Microsoft Paint – a very simple program that does certain simple things very nicely, such as drawing straight lines, boxes and circles that you can color, and provides several fill options that can be useful.

Google Picasa (optional) – for finishing touches this is a great piece of software. I usually like to do simple things like colorize the image, put a blur on the edges, or a soft glow, depending on the effect I want for the map image. I also like Picasa for adding Text to an image as it provides an easy to use resize and orientation tool. I don’t usually use this tool very much, but when I want an image to have a polished look, it’s free to install, and simple to use. For 99% of what I do in terms of polishing, it’s great.

Microsoft Image Composer (optional) – ok you can be forgiven if you never heard of this tool. It came with the 1997 installation of Visual Interdev (an early development tool for web applications). That said, it is much like Photoshop (which is very expensive for my tastes). However, there is also GIMP, which also has the same kinds of functionality as Photoshop and happens to be open source and free. Anyway, what I use this tool for is either Airbrush painting to put shadows or hightlights into my images, or freehand color them. I also may use (lightly) the Art Filters which allow me to transform an image into a more impressionistic version of the original, using one of a variety of filters such as Watercolor, Sumie, Dark Strokes, Charcoal, etc. Again, I use this tool very sparingly just to provide finishing touches.

That’s it for the tools. Again, most of my work is done with pen and paper to start. I find this gives me a nice way to make organic feeling maps.

Geographic Maps

These maps are intended to show a geographic area, obviously. I usually like to include natural terrain as well as roads, towns, and hot spots (where important things are happening, or may happen). But the main question to be answered for the geography map is – what in this area of the World is important for the Gamesmaster to remember? So I try to make my maps expose Avenues of travel (with consideration of creatures that may travel by various means), Barriers to travel, Focal Points of activity (towns, cities, temples, etc), and Strategic Points (lookouts, passes, choke points, etc). But mostly, the map is usually used by me simply as a reminder as to what the area looks like:

One thing I don’t do is try to make the map too detailed, or too accurate (ie – I like to bake in flexibility so that when Gamesmastering I can shift things around a bit according to need). Remember, we’re usually dealing with Fantasy worlds here, so geographies do not necessarily need to be set in stone. Hehe. Punnish. It’s good to keep in mind that Geography maps in the game are not going to be used the way Geography maps in the real world are used. The players will not be physically travelling using the map (although their Characters may very well be), so there is no need to make them absolutely accurate. Fudging in RPGs is a tried and true methodology for Gamesmasters because you always want to maintain a certain amount of flexibility so your story does not run aground against The Facts. That has been known to happen (ahem). So I keep my maps a little bit vague. Rough sketch is fine.

Story Plot Maps

The purpose of these is to create a story focused memory map that shows an overview of the various characters, places, and things that have occurred, along with any symbolic references I might want to add to remind me of important aspects of the story. It can represent either the story that already happened, or may happen in the future. Again, the purpose is to prove me with a simple, easy to use visual that reminds me what is going on in the Campaign, or inspires me with creative sparks to help with the improvisational aspects of Gamesmastering.  Here is an example of one of my Story Plot Maps:

Elements Maps

Last but not least, this type of map is useful for tracking characters and places in terms of who is together with whom and where. I use a wonderful little online tool at https://bubbl.us/.  This wonderful tool makes it handy for me to create what are known as Mind Maps, but I use it specifically for my Game Elements. Again, a picture being worth a thousand words, here is what one looks like:

It’s a fabulous little tool! Love it.

And so those are the different kinds of maps I usually create for my world, and how I create them. I hope it helps to inspire other Gamesmasters with ideas and helpful methodologies!   Happy trails!

Update (May 2, 2011):
The April 2011 RPG Carnival was kindly hosted by 'A Character for Every Game' Blog here:  RPG Carnival - Cartography - April 2011. Elthos RPG is honored to be mentioned therein! Thank you for the kind words! In case you don't know, RPG Carnival works very simply. The author of a topic posts it to the group of interested RPG Bloggers and we all write blogs on the topic. When we post the blog we then go to the host's monthly topic post and comment that we added a post to our blog on the topic. At the end of the month they are tallied up in a summary post. It's awesome! Thanks very much to the hosts!!

Ethos ODS Tarot Deck !

It is very gratifying as a game designer to finally have a tangible and beautiful manifestation of their work. I am very grateful to my artist, Jason Moser, who took my written descriptions for each card and turned them into an exquisite deck of Elthosian Tarot Cards. It's fabulous. At the moment we have only printed the major arcana, which are 24 cards, and the only ones actually needed for the Elthos Cosmological system. Nevertheless the minor arcana are already finished, but no printed into cards at this point. This was a test batch to see how the Major Arcana cards look when printed. I just received 10 decks in the mail. I am absolutely delighted with the results!

Here is a sample of the six of the cards starting with the back face... 

I could not be happier!  Thank you so much Jason!   Two decks are heading your way pronto!