Well, we're still at it - Rift City has now been running for 4 months... which means 4 open tables and so far nine (I think) different players... apart from me only one player has been to all the sessions.
The party (a strangely flexible beast it is, a bit like Grandfather's Axe) is still exploring the upper caverns, but I feel there is a certain lure of some of the deeper, darker passageways, where things are likely to get much stranger...
I feel I need to re-read stuff about running open tables and sandboxes. I've never quite done things like this before and I need to check I'm doing it right. I've been reading 'The Alexandrian' for hints and tips - particularly the stuff on open tables.
The last session was again packed with incident - including the irrevocable death off "Fisheye" Len. Poor Len, he suffered in his short life. He was eventually killed by a falling ceiling-block. I have a houserule called 'Elementary Staunching' that says if your companions can do some battlefield first aid you have a chance of surviving even at 0hp. But, Len was unlucky and missed his CON roll. Farewell Len, we hardly knew ye.
Other notable items of incident - fighting Kobolds! Quite a lot of them, two rooms of the pesky little blighters. The first room was mostly taken out with the judicious use of a 'Sleep' spell from Polly the Magic-User, and many Kobold throats were slit. The second room I don't remember, though as the party had 2 Elves as well as the MU it may be that they hit that with 'Sleep' too.
They explored a few more rooms: they collected as much treasure as they could including a set of Kobold swords that I allowed them to sell back at Rift City, probably for more than they were really worth. We'll have to see what happens next session (only a few days now) when a new constellation of adventurers decides to brave the Rift...
Saturday, 2 December 2017
Saturday, 21 October 2017
Rift City session 3
Bandits!
Cave Locusts!
A Killer Bee (that the party decided not to kill)!
Some Ghouls (that really wanted to eat the party)!
A flashing light trap!
And even, shock horror, some actual treasure - about 60GPs stashed under a pile of rocks in the cave.
A much depleted party was joined by 'Fisheye' Len the Thief for some cave-raiding action: along with Len went Sven the Dwarf, Frost the Fighter and Gwynthor the Cleric. They managed to avoid losing anyone but the fight with the Ghouls (2 of them) was the hardest part - things looked bleak as Len was paralysed and the second Ghoul attacked Sven, but Plate Mail saved the day and the tide turned.
I think everyone enjoyed themselves ... my impression of the distant noise of a Killer Bee certainly caused some amusement. No, it wasn't beatboxing or even playing a didgeridoo, thanks peeps, just bumbling about looking for pollen. What was it doing in a cave? Perhaps this post might have some of the answers...
Cave Locusts!
A Killer Bee (that the party decided not to kill)!
Some Ghouls (that really wanted to eat the party)!
A flashing light trap!
And even, shock horror, some actual treasure - about 60GPs stashed under a pile of rocks in the cave.
A much depleted party was joined by 'Fisheye' Len the Thief for some cave-raiding action: along with Len went Sven the Dwarf, Frost the Fighter and Gwynthor the Cleric. They managed to avoid losing anyone but the fight with the Ghouls (2 of them) was the hardest part - things looked bleak as Len was paralysed and the second Ghoul attacked Sven, but Plate Mail saved the day and the tide turned.
I think everyone enjoyed themselves ... my impression of the distant noise of a Killer Bee certainly caused some amusement. No, it wasn't beatboxing or even playing a didgeridoo, thanks peeps, just bumbling about looking for pollen. What was it doing in a cave? Perhaps this post might have some of the answers...
Sunday, 24 September 2017
Rift City session 2
Second session of the Rift City open table was a couple of weeks ago (I've been really busy so haven't done a write-up until now).
The party managed to expand itself for this session, Gibbet the Thief, Gwynthor the Cleric, and Polly Pepperoni the Magic User being joined at this session by two Dwarves (Sven and Redvers), an Elf (Shazam), a Halfling (Ays), and a Fighter (Frost).
They actually managed to find some Dungeons (or at least caves)! They explored a bit (with torches, lanterns and infravsion, and Gibbet checked for some traps)! They killed some Wolves (with Sven trying to catch and subdue them, and Redvers trying to murder them all)! They killed, drove off and Slept some Goblins! Then they decided to bugger off out of the dungeon and go back to Rift City*
And some of them are even planning on coming back next time!**
*If I run an open table I need a way of easily integrating new party members. My way of doing this is to tell the players straight, 'it's better if you get back to town at the end of the session'. This way the next party can start out with whoever is available. So far they have done this - it's been easy, they only explored about 6 caves and some tunnels in this session, so they were still close to an exit. It will get harder as it goes on and they're further into the dungeon I guess.
**Not reported on here: not having prepped this part of the dungeon properly, resulting in me hurriedly flipping through pages of rules and printouts for some goblins I could use and getting the number appearing wrong; mistaking rooms 61 and 81 on my tiny map, resulting in reading a far less interesting room description; fudging the timekeeping resulting in a suspicious lack of wandering monsters; mistaking the room where the wolves were for the previous room the PCs had been to, resulting in a less interesting combat (because the place wasn't as interesting)... generally not having my shit together is what I'm getting at here. I need to be more on the ball. I promise I'll be better next time...
The party managed to expand itself for this session, Gibbet the Thief, Gwynthor the Cleric, and Polly Pepperoni the Magic User being joined at this session by two Dwarves (Sven and Redvers), an Elf (Shazam), a Halfling (Ays), and a Fighter (Frost).
They actually managed to find some Dungeons (or at least caves)! They explored a bit (with torches, lanterns and infravsion, and Gibbet checked for some traps)! They killed some Wolves (with Sven trying to catch and subdue them, and Redvers trying to murder them all)! They killed, drove off and Slept some Goblins! Then they decided to bugger off out of the dungeon and go back to Rift City*
And some of them are even planning on coming back next time!**
*If I run an open table I need a way of easily integrating new party members. My way of doing this is to tell the players straight, 'it's better if you get back to town at the end of the session'. This way the next party can start out with whoever is available. So far they have done this - it's been easy, they only explored about 6 caves and some tunnels in this session, so they were still close to an exit. It will get harder as it goes on and they're further into the dungeon I guess.
**Not reported on here: not having prepped this part of the dungeon properly, resulting in me hurriedly flipping through pages of rules and printouts for some goblins I could use and getting the number appearing wrong; mistaking rooms 61 and 81 on my tiny map, resulting in reading a far less interesting room description; fudging the timekeeping resulting in a suspicious lack of wandering monsters; mistaking the room where the wolves were for the previous room the PCs had been to, resulting in a less interesting combat (because the place wasn't as interesting)... generally not having my shit together is what I'm getting at here. I need to be more on the ball. I promise I'll be better next time...
Saturday, 19 August 2017
Character creation and player agency
I'm trying to find ways of making character creation faster in B/X-BECMI (I list both because as a kid I used a hybrid, Moldvay Basic with Mentzer Expert, having come to D&D just before the change of edition).
What I don't want to do is take away any player agency from the process. But choices take time. Do I want to be fighty or sneaky or spell-castery, and anyway why can't I be an Elf and a Paladin as well? What do you mean Elves can't have classes? What, there's no Paladins anyway? OK, an Elf then. Shall I buy leather armour, or can I afford chainmail? Does that mean I can't afford a lantern? Shall I get a 10' pole? What are my spells? What languages should I speak? And so on.
Players in some ways get agency in the 'wrong' places. We don't as real humans in meat-space chose how we are born and brought up. Character creation from stats up is not like 'growing up'. Something closer to 'reality' would be if players were given character sheets with Race (and sex and handedness if anyone cares) already filled in, 2d6 for all stats marked in the boxes (2d6 actually rolled, in order, rather than just saying '7' for each or whatever) and starting gold already calculated.
The stats could represent (in a somewhat schematic way) the interaction between genetic determinism (OK for the first round of rolls you were STR 2 INT 2 WIS 4 DEX 3 CON 2 CHA 6, that's your basic 'this is what I got from the genes' result when you're born), and the environmental determinism of your background (STR +1 INT +3 WIS +5 DEX +2 CON +1 and CHA+3 means that your upbringing emphasised empathy and perception over brute force; you also had a bit of cleverness and persuasion in there).
The player could then roll 6d6, and chose which roll goes with which stat. Currently they're on STR 3 (max 9) INT 5 (max 11) WIS 9 (max 15) DEX 5 (max 11) CON 3 (max 9) and CHA 9 (max 15). They're never going to make a Fighter and they're going to be a mediocre Magic User or Thief this way, but they might make a decent Cleric.
So you roll 1, 4, 2, 2, 4, 3 (16 in total)
This last round of rolls would represent the choices you made when you were growing up - what you prioritised which might be the same or different to the way your parents pushed you (maybe you don't want to be a Priest after all and you put a 4 on INT because you really want to be a mediocre Mage).
These are genuine rolls. They're also terrible. Average of 18d6 is 63 - this is the number that is the centre of the bell-shaped curve for the total of all stats. This character actually has a stat total of 50. They've had a really unfortunate life to this point I would say. Their genetics gave them 19 (average at each stage is 21), their environment gave them 16 and their choices gave them 15, so at each stage they're below average.
The 'best' stat-ed character I can get from that is a STR 4 (-2 hit/dam) INT 7 (has trouble reading/writing) WIS 13 (+1 magic-based saving throws) DEX 9 (-) CON 6 (-1 HP) CHA 11 (-/5/7) Cleric with 110GP and 3 (4 rolled, -1 CON) Hit Points. Or maybe you could get the players to roll 6d6 and total those points, then get them to assign them how they wanted - either saying 'max 6 points assigned to any stat', or maybe saying 'assign points up to 18 in any field' with perhaps 'at least 1 point per stat' or maybe 'at least 3 stats must receive points' or something. This could represent the idea of rejecting the priesthood and wanting to be a mage and putting almost everything into it - in which case you could get something like
STR 4 INT 15 WIS 10 DEX 6 CON 4 CHA 10 (on the basis that each stat must have 1 point assigned and the any remaining points can be assigned to a single stat, up to 18)
- which could indeed represent someone from an (underprivileged) background who's being pushed to the priesthood rejecting it and dedicating all of their (not earth-shattering) talents to becoming a Magic User. Incidentally swap INT and DEX (both were 5 after stage 2) and change the narrative to 'joined a criminal gang' and you have a thief. Not a very tough one but adequately sneaky.
Anyway; this doesn't really help speed things up, because any kind of point-buy is going to be longer than just determining numbers with dice. Choices take time as I said earlier. But if you want a longer creation-system that gives some idea of the interplay of inheritance in terms of genetic background, environmental influences on development, and agency related to 'teenage choices (insert equivalents for Elves, Dwarves and Halflings)', then splitting the rolls and recording them separately might be a good way to go.
In the mean time, with the system as is, players get to assign agency to aspects of character creation that they don't have in reality, but then again, this is just a game and forcing players to play characters if they don't have some control over the creation process can result in players playing characters that they really don't want. That, I would think, would somewhat impact on the fun.
So is there a way to make all this quicker? Perhaps pre-gens would be useful: not necessarily 'here's your character with name, eye colour, sex, armour, weapons and favourite pudding filled in' but more like 'you want to play a Cleric? Here's a sheet for a Cleric with stats, HP and the 1st-level Clerical abilities already filled in'. More work for the DM but who counts prep-time anyway? It's playing time that's important. Anyway, DMs have little else to do but mess around rolling dice (or writing blog-posts about rolling dice).
So in short for the stats side of things I'm not sure there's a way of shortening the process without cutting down player agency, which even if it's not particularly realistic is probably best avoided.
Is it any easier for equipment, spells and languages though? Let's say we somehow have a Magic User with an Intelligence of 18 (perhaps she assigned everything she could to INT and put two other stats up by 1 each); she speaks 3 extra languages, has one Lvl 1 spell slot, and needs to buy equipment (she has 110GP). That's a lot of choices to be made.
The language table in B/X can be randomised. Roll a d20 and look at the table (then do it twice more for your 3 languages). Is that quicker than just picking one (or three)? Not sure. Does it take away agency? Yeah, maybe. What about saying 'if a MU knows one extra language, it's always Elvish, if they know a second, it's always Dragon'? Does that make things faster? Sure, but it looks like it's taking away agency.
But what is agency anyway in this instance? Agency depends on informed choice. Picking options if you don't have an idea of consequence isn't actually agency. How do the players know what languages will be important? If the DM knows half of all scrolls are written in Elvish, a quarter are written in Draconic and the rest are split between all the other languages randomly, then maybe it makes sense for a Magic User to learn Elvish, Dragon and another tongue, in that order. On the other hand, maybe they pick Goblin and Orc (handy to talk to the foes after all) and Gargoyle (on a whim/long shot) but find out that the first dungeon they go to is overrun with Kobolds enslaved by Gnolls led by a Doppelganger.
It's the same thing with equipment. Will our Magic User need Wolfsbane, Garlic and a Silver Dagger? Depends on how many Undead and Lycanthropes they're going to meet. But they don't know that when they start, so where is the agency? They haven't scouted out the terrain and found out if there are werewolves and vampires in the area, they're just picking blind. Does she need a mirror? The player doesn't know if Medusae and Basilisks are going to feature. A 10' Pole? How can the player tell?
Is it of any benefit it the player to second-guess the DM like this? It seems to me that this is merely the illusion of agency. "Haha!" thinks the player, "I have bought Wolfsbane, Garlic, a Silver Dagger and a Mirror, I'm been very crafty here and I am going to be fine whatever the DM does!" but spends the next 10 sessions plundering Gryphons and Minotaurs and Harpies but unable to carry all the loot home because they didn't buy enough Large Sacks.
I don't know what the answer is. I'm going to experiment with a variety of 'adventuring packs' that contain some useful tools. But I might just be reproducing the complexity at a different level of granularity. "Good news! You don't have to make 10 random choices from 50 possibilities, now you just have to pick one random possibility out of five! What's that? The detail? Let's unpack those five possibilities... gosh, it would have just been easier to get you to make your own pack wouldn't it?"
Last weekend in my new Rift City campaign, the players talked a lot about rope. "But the DM knows rope comes in 50' lengths, I bet he's put a 60' drop in somewhere, we should get 100'." One of them actually said this right in front of me. All I'm going to say here is that a 60' descent would probably take them to level 4. I don't need the fall to kill them in that case, just being on Level 4 would be enough. They're 1st Level for Monkey's sake, most inhabitants of Level 4 would have them as a midmorning snack then go looking for some real food.
To be honest, I can't really see why they need more than 15' of rope at the moment, probably the worst that might happen is one of them falls 10' into a pit (if they're not probing with the 10' Pole they might not have).
Maybe the way to do it is to split equipment into 'recommended' and 'optional' lists. So food, light and carrying capacity feature heavily, Wolfsbane and Mirrors and whatnot are nice to have but not as important as say a lantern and oil, some rations and a backpack. But how to do this without blowing the surprise? If I tell them that they don't need Wolfsbane, that pretty clearly says there's no werewolves. If there are werewolves, I'm a big fat liar, because they do need wolfsbane (or at least, it's bloody useful). So there'd better not be any werewolves. But why would I want to tell them there's no werewolves? Anyway, I want there to be werewolves, so I should recommend wolfsbane, Now I've pretty much told them there are werewolves, because if I get them to spend money on wolfsbane but there aren't werewolves, I'm just being an asshat.
I don't know, I'm doing a lot of thinking out loud here but not getting very far with the notion of making character creation easier while still maintaining agency (or increasing it! Meaningless choices are not agency!).
Rumours. Maybe they're the way to go. Give the players their rumours before they buy their equipment or make choices about optional abilities. They've heard there are werewolves in the northern forests. If they wanna go to the northern forests, it makes sense to get wolfsbane. If they're planning on going to the southern plains, they might not want to bother. They know there are lots of undead in the Dungeon of Doom, so maybe 'Sleep' isn't the best choice of spell after all if they're planning on heading there. They know that the Wizard Krufelfnuffer was a prolific maker of scrolls and fond of writing in Draconic, so they chose that language, rather than Gargoyle or Bugbear.
Maybe I just need to combine all of this. If I can come up with a 'Dungeoneer's Pack' (lantern, flasks of oil, rope, iron spikes, hammer, 10' pole) for those on spelunking missions and a 'Monster-hunter's Pack' (Wolfsbane, Garlic, Mirror, Silver Dagger - Clerics get a Holy Symbol and a 5GP donation to the Temple instead - and Holy Water) and a few others based on what sort of missions they think they might go for, that might help I suppose. Knowing in advance what common monsters might be will also help ("Orcs? I heard of 'em, over Thrarp way, but we ain't never not seen none round 'ere, no we never bain't have done, it all be Skellingtons and Zombees round here... yup, you heard, giant undead bees."). Some legends about history will also be useful (such as stories of the Monks of Gargoyle Mountain or the Lizard-Wizard of Wonky Swamp or Kronge the Infernal Trapmaster) to help give an idea of the hazards and opportunities they could meet... and this is before they even pick spells or languages. I'm reminded of a post from 3 years ago now (have I really been doing this that long?) where I try to make sense of how to pattern information in campaigns: it's obviously important to me how players know things but again it doesn't help speed things up.
I dunno, maybe I'm overcomplicating things. Perhaps I should just put up with it all. Character creation is long because that's the best way to give players a sense of ownership and that's about it. So what if they speak Gargoyle and never meet any Gargoyles? That means they have an unusual skill - that's a feature, not a bug, in role-playing terms. Not everything should be optimised or even immediately 'useful' to a character.
I'll stop this here, I'm not sure it's helping me at all to make things simpler...
What I don't want to do is take away any player agency from the process. But choices take time. Do I want to be fighty or sneaky or spell-castery, and anyway why can't I be an Elf and a Paladin as well? What do you mean Elves can't have classes? What, there's no Paladins anyway? OK, an Elf then. Shall I buy leather armour, or can I afford chainmail? Does that mean I can't afford a lantern? Shall I get a 10' pole? What are my spells? What languages should I speak? And so on.
Players in some ways get agency in the 'wrong' places. We don't as real humans in meat-space chose how we are born and brought up. Character creation from stats up is not like 'growing up'. Something closer to 'reality' would be if players were given character sheets with Race (and sex and handedness if anyone cares) already filled in, 2d6 for all stats marked in the boxes (2d6 actually rolled, in order, rather than just saying '7' for each or whatever) and starting gold already calculated.
The stats could represent (in a somewhat schematic way) the interaction between genetic determinism (OK for the first round of rolls you were STR 2 INT 2 WIS 4 DEX 3 CON 2 CHA 6, that's your basic 'this is what I got from the genes' result when you're born), and the environmental determinism of your background (STR +1 INT +3 WIS +5 DEX +2 CON +1 and CHA+3 means that your upbringing emphasised empathy and perception over brute force; you also had a bit of cleverness and persuasion in there).
The player could then roll 6d6, and chose which roll goes with which stat. Currently they're on STR 3 (max 9) INT 5 (max 11) WIS 9 (max 15) DEX 5 (max 11) CON 3 (max 9) and CHA 9 (max 15). They're never going to make a Fighter and they're going to be a mediocre Magic User or Thief this way, but they might make a decent Cleric.
So you roll 1, 4, 2, 2, 4, 3 (16 in total)
This last round of rolls would represent the choices you made when you were growing up - what you prioritised which might be the same or different to the way your parents pushed you (maybe you don't want to be a Priest after all and you put a 4 on INT because you really want to be a mediocre Mage).
These are genuine rolls. They're also terrible. Average of 18d6 is 63 - this is the number that is the centre of the bell-shaped curve for the total of all stats. This character actually has a stat total of 50. They've had a really unfortunate life to this point I would say. Their genetics gave them 19 (average at each stage is 21), their environment gave them 16 and their choices gave them 15, so at each stage they're below average.
STR 4 INT 15 WIS 10 DEX 6 CON 4 CHA 10 (on the basis that each stat must have 1 point assigned and the any remaining points can be assigned to a single stat, up to 18)
- which could indeed represent someone from an (underprivileged) background who's being pushed to the priesthood rejecting it and dedicating all of their (not earth-shattering) talents to becoming a Magic User. Incidentally swap INT and DEX (both were 5 after stage 2) and change the narrative to 'joined a criminal gang' and you have a thief. Not a very tough one but adequately sneaky.
Anyway; this doesn't really help speed things up, because any kind of point-buy is going to be longer than just determining numbers with dice. Choices take time as I said earlier. But if you want a longer creation-system that gives some idea of the interplay of inheritance in terms of genetic background, environmental influences on development, and agency related to 'teenage choices (insert equivalents for Elves, Dwarves and Halflings)', then splitting the rolls and recording them separately might be a good way to go.
In the mean time, with the system as is, players get to assign agency to aspects of character creation that they don't have in reality, but then again, this is just a game and forcing players to play characters if they don't have some control over the creation process can result in players playing characters that they really don't want. That, I would think, would somewhat impact on the fun.
So is there a way to make all this quicker? Perhaps pre-gens would be useful: not necessarily 'here's your character with name, eye colour, sex, armour, weapons and favourite pudding filled in' but more like 'you want to play a Cleric? Here's a sheet for a Cleric with stats, HP and the 1st-level Clerical abilities already filled in'. More work for the DM but who counts prep-time anyway? It's playing time that's important. Anyway, DMs have little else to do but mess around rolling dice (or writing blog-posts about rolling dice).
So in short for the stats side of things I'm not sure there's a way of shortening the process without cutting down player agency, which even if it's not particularly realistic is probably best avoided.
Is it any easier for equipment, spells and languages though? Let's say we somehow have a Magic User with an Intelligence of 18 (perhaps she assigned everything she could to INT and put two other stats up by 1 each); she speaks 3 extra languages, has one Lvl 1 spell slot, and needs to buy equipment (she has 110GP). That's a lot of choices to be made.
The language table in B/X can be randomised. Roll a d20 and look at the table (then do it twice more for your 3 languages). Is that quicker than just picking one (or three)? Not sure. Does it take away agency? Yeah, maybe. What about saying 'if a MU knows one extra language, it's always Elvish, if they know a second, it's always Dragon'? Does that make things faster? Sure, but it looks like it's taking away agency.
But what is agency anyway in this instance? Agency depends on informed choice. Picking options if you don't have an idea of consequence isn't actually agency. How do the players know what languages will be important? If the DM knows half of all scrolls are written in Elvish, a quarter are written in Draconic and the rest are split between all the other languages randomly, then maybe it makes sense for a Magic User to learn Elvish, Dragon and another tongue, in that order. On the other hand, maybe they pick Goblin and Orc (handy to talk to the foes after all) and Gargoyle (on a whim/long shot) but find out that the first dungeon they go to is overrun with Kobolds enslaved by Gnolls led by a Doppelganger.
It's the same thing with equipment. Will our Magic User need Wolfsbane, Garlic and a Silver Dagger? Depends on how many Undead and Lycanthropes they're going to meet. But they don't know that when they start, so where is the agency? They haven't scouted out the terrain and found out if there are werewolves and vampires in the area, they're just picking blind. Does she need a mirror? The player doesn't know if Medusae and Basilisks are going to feature. A 10' Pole? How can the player tell?
Is it of any benefit it the player to second-guess the DM like this? It seems to me that this is merely the illusion of agency. "Haha!" thinks the player, "I have bought Wolfsbane, Garlic, a Silver Dagger and a Mirror, I'm been very crafty here and I am going to be fine whatever the DM does!" but spends the next 10 sessions plundering Gryphons and Minotaurs and Harpies but unable to carry all the loot home because they didn't buy enough Large Sacks.
I don't know what the answer is. I'm going to experiment with a variety of 'adventuring packs' that contain some useful tools. But I might just be reproducing the complexity at a different level of granularity. "Good news! You don't have to make 10 random choices from 50 possibilities, now you just have to pick one random possibility out of five! What's that? The detail? Let's unpack those five possibilities... gosh, it would have just been easier to get you to make your own pack wouldn't it?"
Last weekend in my new Rift City campaign, the players talked a lot about rope. "But the DM knows rope comes in 50' lengths, I bet he's put a 60' drop in somewhere, we should get 100'." One of them actually said this right in front of me. All I'm going to say here is that a 60' descent would probably take them to level 4. I don't need the fall to kill them in that case, just being on Level 4 would be enough. They're 1st Level for Monkey's sake, most inhabitants of Level 4 would have them as a midmorning snack then go looking for some real food.
To be honest, I can't really see why they need more than 15' of rope at the moment, probably the worst that might happen is one of them falls 10' into a pit (if they're not probing with the 10' Pole they might not have).
Maybe the way to do it is to split equipment into 'recommended' and 'optional' lists. So food, light and carrying capacity feature heavily, Wolfsbane and Mirrors and whatnot are nice to have but not as important as say a lantern and oil, some rations and a backpack. But how to do this without blowing the surprise? If I tell them that they don't need Wolfsbane, that pretty clearly says there's no werewolves. If there are werewolves, I'm a big fat liar, because they do need wolfsbane (or at least, it's bloody useful). So there'd better not be any werewolves. But why would I want to tell them there's no werewolves? Anyway, I want there to be werewolves, so I should recommend wolfsbane, Now I've pretty much told them there are werewolves, because if I get them to spend money on wolfsbane but there aren't werewolves, I'm just being an asshat.
I don't know, I'm doing a lot of thinking out loud here but not getting very far with the notion of making character creation easier while still maintaining agency (or increasing it! Meaningless choices are not agency!).
Rumours. Maybe they're the way to go. Give the players their rumours before they buy their equipment or make choices about optional abilities. They've heard there are werewolves in the northern forests. If they wanna go to the northern forests, it makes sense to get wolfsbane. If they're planning on going to the southern plains, they might not want to bother. They know there are lots of undead in the Dungeon of Doom, so maybe 'Sleep' isn't the best choice of spell after all if they're planning on heading there. They know that the Wizard Krufelfnuffer was a prolific maker of scrolls and fond of writing in Draconic, so they chose that language, rather than Gargoyle or Bugbear.
Maybe I just need to combine all of this. If I can come up with a 'Dungeoneer's Pack' (lantern, flasks of oil, rope, iron spikes, hammer, 10' pole) for those on spelunking missions and a 'Monster-hunter's Pack' (Wolfsbane, Garlic, Mirror, Silver Dagger - Clerics get a Holy Symbol and a 5GP donation to the Temple instead - and Holy Water) and a few others based on what sort of missions they think they might go for, that might help I suppose. Knowing in advance what common monsters might be will also help ("Orcs? I heard of 'em, over Thrarp way, but we ain't never not seen none round 'ere, no we never bain't have done, it all be Skellingtons and Zombees round here... yup, you heard, giant undead bees."). Some legends about history will also be useful (such as stories of the Monks of Gargoyle Mountain or the Lizard-Wizard of Wonky Swamp or Kronge the Infernal Trapmaster) to help give an idea of the hazards and opportunities they could meet... and this is before they even pick spells or languages. I'm reminded of a post from 3 years ago now (have I really been doing this that long?) where I try to make sense of how to pattern information in campaigns: it's obviously important to me how players know things but again it doesn't help speed things up.
I dunno, maybe I'm overcomplicating things. Perhaps I should just put up with it all. Character creation is long because that's the best way to give players a sense of ownership and that's about it. So what if they speak Gargoyle and never meet any Gargoyles? That means they have an unusual skill - that's a feature, not a bug, in role-playing terms. Not everything should be optimised or even immediately 'useful' to a character.
I'll stop this here, I'm not sure it's helping me at all to make things simpler...
Monday, 14 August 2017
A new campaign and a new (sort-of-)Megadungeon and a new group and...
Some friends and I have been discussing getting a group together and running it in public. Somewhere not-at-each-others'-houses. Somewhere where we can be seen and interacted-with. Somewhere where we can be joined, even by people we don't know.
So I proposed running an open table, once a month, running Moldvay basic (with just a couple of tweaks) to see how it goes. We're calling it 'The Wandering Monster Table'.
The first session, at a pub in my city called The Criterion (link to the Criterion's Facebook page here and the group's Facebook page here) was last night. Not much duneoneering went on (none actually) but the party (a Magic-User called Polly, a Thief called Gibbet and a Cleric called Gwynthor) tried to climb the front of a building, got involved in a street-fight resulting in the sudden, unexpected and temporary death of one of them (I'm looking at you Gwynthor), stole from each other (I'm looking at you Gibbet), befriended a Dwarf, an Elf and a Fighter and convinced them to come dungeoneering at the next session, found a pine-tree, considered buying some herbs from a wizardy-looking chap looking somewhat dazed, and wondered a bit about religion. Polly's and Gibbet's players also ate pizza, while Gwynthor's player and I drank beer. Hmm, 'beer iss goood' as Seggulf the Dwarf NPC has already said at least once in a Rainier Wolfcastle voice.
The idea of the dungeon was at least explored - a chasm or canyon of unknown depth and prodigious length called 'The Rift', looking a bit like this but bigger and badder and madder, and stuffed full of caves:
... and beside it, an adventurers' paradise called 'Rift City', full of booze, harlots, cut-throats, ruffians, preachers, undertakers and murder-hobos, that looks something like this:.
It was fun and not too taxing, and starting with a small group has helped me with lessons for later sessions - for instance, despite trying to slim down character creation, it's still too long. I need to cut the process as much as possible, because it's going to eat into gaming time.
Printing off the intro will help too. It exists as a document on the group's FB page, and now here for you:
The Rift
The Rift is a vast canyon high in the Mountains of Abomination.
Priests argue about whether it was caused by an angry God smiting the World from the Heavens, or by a vile Power of Darkness digging its way out from a Subterranean Prison.
Sages argue about whether it’s the consequence of an eon-old Mage War, or the perfectly natural result of the Planet tearing itself to pieces.
The Elves, with their uniquely-long take on life and existence and linguistic tenses, say that it is the Earth in the process of becoming That which it shall Always have Been.
The Dwarves say it’s a Big Hole full of Monsters.
The Halflings say What’s for Dinner?
Rift City
Standing hard by the Rift is Rift City, a wretched hive of scum and villainy that is a temporary home to that most disreputable sort of people – adventurers. And where there are adventurers (grave-robbers, treasure-hunters, cut-throats, monster-hunters, assassins and murder-hoboes – sorry, ‘heroes’) there are the people that cater to them – drink-peddlers, prostitutes, snake-oil salesmen and 1,001 charlatans and ne’er-do-wells ready to remove some excess gold from said adventurers’ purses.
Rift City is a booming shanty-town, a rickety and perilous edifice built on the gold-rush of monster-hunting, literally and morally teetering over the abyss. Business is good; theft and murder were never so profitable as there are a lot of monsters down there. And if a few adventurers fail to come back, all the more for the next party of expendable suckers… err, brave heroes to find.
There is one rule about the Rift that everyone knows – near the lip of the canyon, the caves and passages contain less-dangerous monsters, but the rewards are less because those caves are raided more often. Unless you’ve amassed some experience – don’t go beyond the first bend in the trail! There are plenty of adventures to be had and even small fortunes to be made exploring the upper caves. But if you want to separate yourselves from the thousands of would-be champions and achieve true heroic status, you must sooner or later venture into the deeper caverns to confront the horrors that lurk there – and make off with the marvellous treasures you discover.
So I proposed running an open table, once a month, running Moldvay basic (with just a couple of tweaks) to see how it goes. We're calling it 'The Wandering Monster Table'.
The first session, at a pub in my city called The Criterion (link to the Criterion's Facebook page here and the group's Facebook page here) was last night. Not much duneoneering went on (none actually) but the party (a Magic-User called Polly, a Thief called Gibbet and a Cleric called Gwynthor) tried to climb the front of a building, got involved in a street-fight resulting in the sudden, unexpected and temporary death of one of them (I'm looking at you Gwynthor), stole from each other (I'm looking at you Gibbet), befriended a Dwarf, an Elf and a Fighter and convinced them to come dungeoneering at the next session, found a pine-tree, considered buying some herbs from a wizardy-looking chap looking somewhat dazed, and wondered a bit about religion. Polly's and Gibbet's players also ate pizza, while Gwynthor's player and I drank beer. Hmm, 'beer iss goood' as Seggulf the Dwarf NPC has already said at least once in a Rainier Wolfcastle voice.
The idea of the dungeon was at least explored - a chasm or canyon of unknown depth and prodigious length called 'The Rift', looking a bit like this but bigger and badder and madder, and stuffed full of caves:
 |
| East African Rift Valley - photo snaffled from here - http://www.zoharafricansafaris.com/the-great-rift-valley/ |
 |
| Unfortunately I can't remember where I snaffled this from but it's a very fine picture, I hope whoever did it is very happy with their work. |
It was fun and not too taxing, and starting with a small group has helped me with lessons for later sessions - for instance, despite trying to slim down character creation, it's still too long. I need to cut the process as much as possible, because it's going to eat into gaming time.
Printing off the intro will help too. It exists as a document on the group's FB page, and now here for you:
The Rift
The Rift is a vast canyon high in the Mountains of Abomination.
Priests argue about whether it was caused by an angry God smiting the World from the Heavens, or by a vile Power of Darkness digging its way out from a Subterranean Prison.
Sages argue about whether it’s the consequence of an eon-old Mage War, or the perfectly natural result of the Planet tearing itself to pieces.
The Elves, with their uniquely-long take on life and existence and linguistic tenses, say that it is the Earth in the process of becoming That which it shall Always have Been.
The Dwarves say it’s a Big Hole full of Monsters.
The Halflings say What’s for Dinner?
Rift City
Standing hard by the Rift is Rift City, a wretched hive of scum and villainy that is a temporary home to that most disreputable sort of people – adventurers. And where there are adventurers (grave-robbers, treasure-hunters, cut-throats, monster-hunters, assassins and murder-hoboes – sorry, ‘heroes’) there are the people that cater to them – drink-peddlers, prostitutes, snake-oil salesmen and 1,001 charlatans and ne’er-do-wells ready to remove some excess gold from said adventurers’ purses.
Rift City is a booming shanty-town, a rickety and perilous edifice built on the gold-rush of monster-hunting, literally and morally teetering over the abyss. Business is good; theft and murder were never so profitable as there are a lot of monsters down there. And if a few adventurers fail to come back, all the more for the next party of expendable suckers… err, brave heroes to find.
There is one rule about the Rift that everyone knows – near the lip of the canyon, the caves and passages contain less-dangerous monsters, but the rewards are less because those caves are raided more often. Unless you’ve amassed some experience – don’t go beyond the first bend in the trail! There are plenty of adventures to be had and even small fortunes to be made exploring the upper caves. But if you want to separate yourselves from the thousands of would-be champions and achieve true heroic status, you must sooner or later venture into the deeper caverns to confront the horrors that lurk there – and make off with the marvellous treasures you discover.
Monday, 31 July 2017
In defence of Ritual
I don't usually post about archaeology, but I am an archaeologist and as such was somewhat taken with a post a couple of days ago over at Realm of Chaos - an Oldhammer blog of some repute - and it got me thinking about that much-maligned term that archaeologists seem to come out with whenever they don't have an explanation for something - 'ritual'
I'm going to defend the 'ritual' interpretation, but with a caveat. I'll start by saying that it sometimes seems that archaeologists use 'ritual' as an excuse for not thinking. It might seem that way - but I think it isn't so. Honestly, archaeologists think loads, and some of the thinking is amazing. What they (or maybe we) don't do some of the time is communicate that thinking very well.
The separation of spheres of activity into 'religious' 'political' 'agricultural' 'meteorological' 'psychological' and so forth is a product of a very modern mind. If you read the plays of Shakespeare even, you see that the wrong king on the throne makes (the) God(s) angry, the weather bad, crops fail, people and animals go mad etc. Shakespeare was only writing 400 years ago, the Egtved Girl that's the subject of the post at Realm of Chaos was buried more than 3,000 years ago, after what seems to have been a short life (she was between 16-18 when she died) that involved several journeys between South-west Germany and Denmark, covering perhaps 3,000km in the last year or so of her life and being buried it seems in the summer of 1370BC.
There is an intrinsic connection between our behaviour and the workings of the universe. I think this was accepted by people in the Bronze Age as much as by people that have actually left us written records - the Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Medieval Europeans and up to the Early Modern period, as well as people from further afield that Europeans only really found out about later - and of course, some people still believe that there is a connection between microcosmic and macrocosmic systems or no-one would ever say a) that God told them to run for President or alternatively b) that using the wrong lightbulbs will make the sea level rise. This is the context I think in which archaeologists, but probably not non-specialists, think of 'ritual'. When we say it, we mean something like 'part of life bound up with ideas of the relationship between community and the cosmos' or 'codified actions designed to facilitate the smooth running of the universe'. We mean the actions that people take that are regarded as 'right behaviour'. Archaeologists tend to believe that 'right behaviour' is culturally-specific: what is 'right' in 18th century East Africa would not be appropriate in China in 500BC or Milan in 1450. Though the details of the rituals change, human societies have rules about what is 'right behaviour' in terms of death, birth, coming-of-age, establishing family units and such like. We send each other cards for passing driving tests or getting new jobs. Archaeologists call that 'ritual'. If all you had was a pile of cards saying 'congratulations' and 'sorry you're leaving' archaeologists would still have to try and reconstruct what they meant. Probably they'd come up up with some explanation about rituals involving socially-defined stages of life in the community. And if they did, they'd be right, because that's what those things represent in our society.
When people outside of archaeology hear us taking about 'ritual' however, I think they often assume we mean 'some irrational mumbo-jumbo of which we are guessing at the details'. They then conclude that archaeology itself is a 'ritual' in this second sense, as it seems to be merely irrational mumbo-jumbo of which they can only guess at the details. It isn't, but if we don't communicate what we mean very well, it's hardly surprising that sometimes people think we're just making it up out of nothing.
I had the privilege to see the Egtved Girl's burial when I went to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen earlier this year. It was one of my main reasons to go to the museum (one of the others being to see the Trundholm Sun Chariot - I would have linked to the National Museum of Denmark's web-pages on these but when I do so it crashes my internet connection for some reason) and I'm really glad I did. It is an amazing museum (and city, and country from what I saw which admittedly wasn't much). The displays helped me towards some new insights about prehistoric societies, about anthropology in general I suppose, and I like to feed that stuff back into gaming. Thinking about how society worked, what people's beliefs might have been, in the European Bronze Age or Ancient Egypt or Late Antique Italy (or whatever/wherever) helps in thinking about how a community works in Carcosa or Thyatis or Gondor. In fact, my specific interest in the Egtved Girl came from finding out about her because I was interested from a gaming point of view to find out what people were actually wearing in the Bronze Age - research for some way of adding a bit of verisimilitude to a 'barbarian' settlement led me down a rabbit-hole of fascinating information about the 'Nordic Bronze Age' (by the way, apart from the Egtved Girl, Denmark has some other really well-preserved prehistoric clothing, some of the best examples in Europe, and a goldmine of information for anyone wanting to re-imagine what a low-tech 'barbaric' society might look like).
The research into isotopes trapped in her hair that has been carried out also has thrown up really interesting questions about society in Northern Europe 3,300 years ago. It seems the the Egtved Girl was probably born in South-West Germany, in the Black Forest region, and travelled to Denmark when she was approximately 14-16 years old. Then, after a short period, she went back to Germany. She stayed in Germany for a few months and then journeyed back to Denmark. A short time, maybe about a month, after she arrived back in Denmark, she died, aged around 16-18.
I've long been a supporter of the notion that there was a lot of moving about in prehistoric societies. Not so much the idea, prevalent in English-speaking academic circles up to the 1950s, that 'waves of X-people drove out the less-advanced Y-people with their new technological innovation of the Pointed Stick and introduced Pottery and Cricket', but not 'no-one before the invention of the horse ever went more than 4 miles from the place they were born' either. I'm pretty sure that people knew that 'those islands over there' were where the tin/gold/amber/wine/furs or whatever came from and that 'those people up the river' were really good at making rugs but beyond them 'the other people' sang strange songs but had mad skills with doing archery. I'm from Britain (so I think that this bit is important), and Britain is thought to have been the major source of tin in the Mediterranean Bronze Age. There's an awful lot of Bronze Age bronze, so people in the Mediterranean must have known about Britain even if only as a source of tin (though that doesn't seem likely to me). Likewise (as I mentioned it and we're talking about Denmark) almost all European amber comes from the shores of the Baltic, which is quite a hike from the Mediterranean, and yet amber turns up in a lot of places in southern Europe. Jet, obsidian, particular sorts of axes or other objects turn up a long way from their sources. Beakers, a set of forms of pottery vessels, are part of a cultural complex that stretches from Morocco to Denmark, Hungary to Ireland. 4000 years ago, people were engaging in long-distance travel around the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black seas, out into the Atlantic, up the rivers... it was an interconnected world. And I think that's really interesting.
So anyway I don't know whether I'm saying 'go to Denmark, they've got great museums' or 'read some anthropology/archaeology/history books, they might spark gaming ideas' or probably a bit of both. I'm pretty sure I'm saying 'don't be too hard on archaeologists, they have to get unfamiliar ideas over in 10 seconds on the news or some popular history programme, there's probably more to it than it seems'. And it can be both fun and intellectually rewarding to find out what does lie behind the headlines.
I'm going to defend the 'ritual' interpretation, but with a caveat. I'll start by saying that it sometimes seems that archaeologists use 'ritual' as an excuse for not thinking. It might seem that way - but I think it isn't so. Honestly, archaeologists think loads, and some of the thinking is amazing. What they (or maybe we) don't do some of the time is communicate that thinking very well.
The separation of spheres of activity into 'religious' 'political' 'agricultural' 'meteorological' 'psychological' and so forth is a product of a very modern mind. If you read the plays of Shakespeare even, you see that the wrong king on the throne makes (the) God(s) angry, the weather bad, crops fail, people and animals go mad etc. Shakespeare was only writing 400 years ago, the Egtved Girl that's the subject of the post at Realm of Chaos was buried more than 3,000 years ago, after what seems to have been a short life (she was between 16-18 when she died) that involved several journeys between South-west Germany and Denmark, covering perhaps 3,000km in the last year or so of her life and being buried it seems in the summer of 1370BC.
There is an intrinsic connection between our behaviour and the workings of the universe. I think this was accepted by people in the Bronze Age as much as by people that have actually left us written records - the Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Medieval Europeans and up to the Early Modern period, as well as people from further afield that Europeans only really found out about later - and of course, some people still believe that there is a connection between microcosmic and macrocosmic systems or no-one would ever say a) that God told them to run for President or alternatively b) that using the wrong lightbulbs will make the sea level rise. This is the context I think in which archaeologists, but probably not non-specialists, think of 'ritual'. When we say it, we mean something like 'part of life bound up with ideas of the relationship between community and the cosmos' or 'codified actions designed to facilitate the smooth running of the universe'. We mean the actions that people take that are regarded as 'right behaviour'. Archaeologists tend to believe that 'right behaviour' is culturally-specific: what is 'right' in 18th century East Africa would not be appropriate in China in 500BC or Milan in 1450. Though the details of the rituals change, human societies have rules about what is 'right behaviour' in terms of death, birth, coming-of-age, establishing family units and such like. We send each other cards for passing driving tests or getting new jobs. Archaeologists call that 'ritual'. If all you had was a pile of cards saying 'congratulations' and 'sorry you're leaving' archaeologists would still have to try and reconstruct what they meant. Probably they'd come up up with some explanation about rituals involving socially-defined stages of life in the community. And if they did, they'd be right, because that's what those things represent in our society.
When people outside of archaeology hear us taking about 'ritual' however, I think they often assume we mean 'some irrational mumbo-jumbo of which we are guessing at the details'. They then conclude that archaeology itself is a 'ritual' in this second sense, as it seems to be merely irrational mumbo-jumbo of which they can only guess at the details. It isn't, but if we don't communicate what we mean very well, it's hardly surprising that sometimes people think we're just making it up out of nothing.
I had the privilege to see the Egtved Girl's burial when I went to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen earlier this year. It was one of my main reasons to go to the museum (one of the others being to see the Trundholm Sun Chariot - I would have linked to the National Museum of Denmark's web-pages on these but when I do so it crashes my internet connection for some reason) and I'm really glad I did. It is an amazing museum (and city, and country from what I saw which admittedly wasn't much). The displays helped me towards some new insights about prehistoric societies, about anthropology in general I suppose, and I like to feed that stuff back into gaming. Thinking about how society worked, what people's beliefs might have been, in the European Bronze Age or Ancient Egypt or Late Antique Italy (or whatever/wherever) helps in thinking about how a community works in Carcosa or Thyatis or Gondor. In fact, my specific interest in the Egtved Girl came from finding out about her because I was interested from a gaming point of view to find out what people were actually wearing in the Bronze Age - research for some way of adding a bit of verisimilitude to a 'barbarian' settlement led me down a rabbit-hole of fascinating information about the 'Nordic Bronze Age' (by the way, apart from the Egtved Girl, Denmark has some other really well-preserved prehistoric clothing, some of the best examples in Europe, and a goldmine of information for anyone wanting to re-imagine what a low-tech 'barbaric' society might look like).
The research into isotopes trapped in her hair that has been carried out also has thrown up really interesting questions about society in Northern Europe 3,300 years ago. It seems the the Egtved Girl was probably born in South-West Germany, in the Black Forest region, and travelled to Denmark when she was approximately 14-16 years old. Then, after a short period, she went back to Germany. She stayed in Germany for a few months and then journeyed back to Denmark. A short time, maybe about a month, after she arrived back in Denmark, she died, aged around 16-18.
I've long been a supporter of the notion that there was a lot of moving about in prehistoric societies. Not so much the idea, prevalent in English-speaking academic circles up to the 1950s, that 'waves of X-people drove out the less-advanced Y-people with their new technological innovation of the Pointed Stick and introduced Pottery and Cricket', but not 'no-one before the invention of the horse ever went more than 4 miles from the place they were born' either. I'm pretty sure that people knew that 'those islands over there' were where the tin/gold/amber/wine/furs or whatever came from and that 'those people up the river' were really good at making rugs but beyond them 'the other people' sang strange songs but had mad skills with doing archery. I'm from Britain (so I think that this bit is important), and Britain is thought to have been the major source of tin in the Mediterranean Bronze Age. There's an awful lot of Bronze Age bronze, so people in the Mediterranean must have known about Britain even if only as a source of tin (though that doesn't seem likely to me). Likewise (as I mentioned it and we're talking about Denmark) almost all European amber comes from the shores of the Baltic, which is quite a hike from the Mediterranean, and yet amber turns up in a lot of places in southern Europe. Jet, obsidian, particular sorts of axes or other objects turn up a long way from their sources. Beakers, a set of forms of pottery vessels, are part of a cultural complex that stretches from Morocco to Denmark, Hungary to Ireland. 4000 years ago, people were engaging in long-distance travel around the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black seas, out into the Atlantic, up the rivers... it was an interconnected world. And I think that's really interesting.
So anyway I don't know whether I'm saying 'go to Denmark, they've got great museums' or 'read some anthropology/archaeology/history books, they might spark gaming ideas' or probably a bit of both. I'm pretty sure I'm saying 'don't be too hard on archaeologists, they have to get unfamiliar ideas over in 10 seconds on the news or some popular history programme, there's probably more to it than it seems'. And it can be both fun and intellectually rewarding to find out what does lie behind the headlines.
Wednesday, 19 July 2017
Fourth part of mapping Carcosa
OK, so I've generated the map at 6-miles per hex, I've put all the encounter numbers on it, I've changed all the numbers to be much more sensibly-organised, re-numbering the 28 encounters I'd already generated in the process, generated around 80 more locations using the Save v Total Party Kill's Random Carcosa generator and sourced the remaining dozen or so from the Carcosa Preview pdf, the Carcosa Grimoire pdf, the odd source like Bernie the Flumph (Vaults of Man) and Joe the Dungeon Brawler (Carcosa Avdenture, sic) and even some things out of my own brain that will be posted on here at some point as no-one in my occasional meatspace gaming gives a toss about this blog. Villages (whether generated as settlements according to the patterns I already established, or turning up as a 'Weird' result due to some particular eccentricity of their ruler) have been given a cultural quirk from Papers & Pencils - d100 Small Town Quirks. In itself this has caused the necessity for a little re-thinking to sidestep the implicit feudal/pseudo-medieval background of some of the quirks.
There are a few other things that need to be sorted out: there is occasional reference in the descriptions to things that don't exist in the same format (eg, in one hex there is the description "An abandoned space alien outpost is now home to a group of 23 Dolm bandits. Amongst their possessions is a map of the first level of a space alien research base in hex 1505" - I don't have a hex 1505, but I do have a hex AO 05 which is pretty much the same thing) or at all (eg the map is 20 hexes wide and 10 deep so there isn't anything higher than AT 10, which equals 2010). I need to integrate the Carcosan Rituals in a systematic way too; divorcing them from the 'official' map means that link between components and Rituals is broken, for example. How does a Sorcerer bind the Foul Putrescence with the essence of the fungi of 1302, if a) 1302 is AM 02 and b) doesn't have a fungus-forest? Tracking all of those lose ends and tying them up is I think going to be the tedious bit.
However, the map is I'd say 90%+ complete. If I got a call saying there were people to game this tomorrow I could start running it as a hex-crawl as it is and make up the missing details on the fly. But tying a few more things down first would be useful. Where is the nearest Orange Man settlement to the hex where the escaped Orange Man slave is hiding? The party might not know but the inhabitants of the next village they visit possibly (probably?) would. Where are the Black Men going with their Mummy Brain, and why? Are there carnivorous fungi in hex AM 02 after all, and if not, where are they? It's not so much work to tie up the lose ends once I have determined what they all are.
And I don't think there's much chance I'll be gaming this tomorrow, so that's all right then...
 |
| 200-hex map with sequential numbering |
There are a few other things that need to be sorted out: there is occasional reference in the descriptions to things that don't exist in the same format (eg, in one hex there is the description "An abandoned space alien outpost is now home to a group of 23 Dolm bandits. Amongst their possessions is a map of the first level of a space alien research base in hex 1505" - I don't have a hex 1505, but I do have a hex AO 05 which is pretty much the same thing) or at all (eg the map is 20 hexes wide and 10 deep so there isn't anything higher than AT 10, which equals 2010). I need to integrate the Carcosan Rituals in a systematic way too; divorcing them from the 'official' map means that link between components and Rituals is broken, for example. How does a Sorcerer bind the Foul Putrescence with the essence of the fungi of 1302, if a) 1302 is AM 02 and b) doesn't have a fungus-forest? Tracking all of those lose ends and tying them up is I think going to be the tedious bit.
However, the map is I'd say 90%+ complete. If I got a call saying there were people to game this tomorrow I could start running it as a hex-crawl as it is and make up the missing details on the fly. But tying a few more things down first would be useful. Where is the nearest Orange Man settlement to the hex where the escaped Orange Man slave is hiding? The party might not know but the inhabitants of the next village they visit possibly (probably?) would. Where are the Black Men going with their Mummy Brain, and why? Are there carnivorous fungi in hex AM 02 after all, and if not, where are they? It's not so much work to tie up the lose ends once I have determined what they all are.
And I don't think there's much chance I'll be gaming this tomorrow, so that's all right then...
Tuesday, 11 July 2017
Mapping Carcosa part the Third
Right, to recap (again)...
I'm more than half-way through mapping my 200-hex region, and frankly there's not enough desert. My second lot of terrain determinations (again in a 28-hex area, this time I've been a bit more careful not to go over the edges because I'm effectively starting in my own south-east corner) looked like this:
Don't forget this is approximately the size of an English county - the area of an earldom. In a feudal society we'd expect a population of tens of thousands. The Domesday Book lists 529 population centres in Gloucestershire in 1086. This area is a bit smaller, but the same order of magnitude. I'm expecting that I'll get about 6 settlements.
For the rest of this side of the map, I just filled in the hexes on the big map because I can't tile any more of these small 'county' level grids onto the regional map on this side. I can fit one on the west side - but I think I'll change my style for that, to produce a different distribution of terrain types.
My terrain generation table currently looks like this:
1 - sandy desert
2 - rocky desert
3 - salt flats
4 - swamp
5 - mountains
6 - volcanic badlands
7 - barren plains
8 - open water
but probably needs to look more like this:
01-25 - sandy desert
26-50 - rocky desert
51-60 - salt flats
61-70 - mountains
71-80 - volcanic badlands
81-90 - barren plains
91-95 - swamp
96-00 - open water
That's what I'll use for the next lot of determinations, in the north-west of the regional map.
So, this whole region will be transitional between the slightly damper more volcanic area in the centre (first bloc) and east (second bloc), and the area to the west which is likely to be more characterised by desert.
This new map looks OK; there's much more desert obviously and no open water (the purpley sections are 'barren plains', even though I'm not really sure what the difference is between 'barren plains' and 'rocky desert'). Smashing through the terrain generation with the new formula, and adding it to the areas I've generated with the old formula, produces a map that looks like this (including not just the odd single desert square on the extreme west of the map but an odd mountain added to the three more-or-less in the centre):
So, we have a map which is dominated in the west by rocky desert, but in the centre and east a more mixed landscape prevails, where mountains. lakes, swamp and volcanic badlands all crowd together. I'm perfectly happy with that as a landscape.
Now to do the encounter rolls. I've added in the encounters generated for the first map (though on the regional map, I haven't attempted to place the encounters in specific locations in the hexes, just noted which hexes they take place in).
The first bunch of encounters are keyed to the following hexes on the regional map:
So what I need to do now is determine the next lot of encounters. OK, 1 is in an inconvenient and weird place, but I didn't really think about that when I started.
For the next lot of determinations of encounter location, I think I'll tweak the table from the other day. It looked like this:
where the number along the top is a d6 and the number down the side is the number of the hex in the 3-hex group (generally reading from top-bottom and left-right) where the encounter is to be found. Due to electronically determining lots of numbers 4+ (in fact only one of the 13 numbers wasn't a 4, 5 or 6) there was a lot of clustering of encounters. I don't mind some clustered encounters, but I want a more even (ie, non-random) distribution. Settlements don't form at random, there are some random factors but also non-random factors, and other encounters will also follow both random and non-random tendencies. Some of these I think will act as forces repelling other encounters (eg, it's less likely to get monster encounters near a settlement if the people in the settlement are going to hunt to monsters - though of course, the monsters may be close by because they're hunting the people...).
I think I'll try the following tweak to the above table, replacing a d6 roll with a d12, weighted towards the bottom end of the scale, increasing the chances of separate encounters from 1/2 to 3/4 and decreasing the chance of clustered encounters from 1/2 to 1/4.
That has given me an overall distribution of encounters on the map that looks like this:
Unfortunately that's really difficult to deal with due to the encounter numbering effectively spiralling out from the lower centre of the map. I hate maps where the numbers are scattered on the map as I find them more time-consuming to use, so I've already decided that I'm going to renumber everything starting with 1 in the north-west corner, but I have another more procedural choice to make here. I can either determine the encounters first and change the numbers afterwards (which is basically doing the fun part now and the tedious hard work later) or I can change everything over first and then do the fun part afterwards.
I know what I'm like, if I d the fun bit now the tedious bit will never get done. So I'd best start with the boring stuff . Maybe I'll reward myself with breaking it up - when I've done the first group of 34, I'll determine the encounter details for them. That might prevent this from getting too tedious.
A lesson in forward planning methinks... don't start numbering your map in a random location.
I'm more than half-way through mapping my 200-hex region, and frankly there's not enough desert. My second lot of terrain determinations (again in a 28-hex area, this time I've been a bit more careful not to go over the edges because I'm effectively starting in my own south-east corner) looked like this:
 |
| 'County'-sized area in south-east corner of 200-hex map |
Don't forget this is approximately the size of an English county - the area of an earldom. In a feudal society we'd expect a population of tens of thousands. The Domesday Book lists 529 population centres in Gloucestershire in 1086. This area is a bit smaller, but the same order of magnitude. I'm expecting that I'll get about 6 settlements.
For the rest of this side of the map, I just filled in the hexes on the big map because I can't tile any more of these small 'county' level grids onto the regional map on this side. I can fit one on the west side - but I think I'll change my style for that, to produce a different distribution of terrain types.
My terrain generation table currently looks like this:
1 - sandy desert
2 - rocky desert
3 - salt flats
4 - swamp
5 - mountains
6 - volcanic badlands
7 - barren plains
8 - open water
but probably needs to look more like this:
01-25 - sandy desert
26-50 - rocky desert
51-60 - salt flats
61-70 - mountains
71-80 - volcanic badlands
81-90 - barren plains
91-95 - swamp
96-00 - open water
That's what I'll use for the next lot of determinations, in the north-west of the regional map.
So, this whole region will be transitional between the slightly damper more volcanic area in the centre (first bloc) and east (second bloc), and the area to the west which is likely to be more characterised by desert.
 |
| Next group of hexes in north-west, with single 'odd hex' on west side |
This new map looks OK; there's much more desert obviously and no open water (the purpley sections are 'barren plains', even though I'm not really sure what the difference is between 'barren plains' and 'rocky desert'). Smashing through the terrain generation with the new formula, and adding it to the areas I've generated with the old formula, produces a map that looks like this (including not just the odd single desert square on the extreme west of the map but an odd mountain added to the three more-or-less in the centre):
 |
| 200-hex regional map |
So, we have a map which is dominated in the west by rocky desert, but in the centre and east a more mixed landscape prevails, where mountains. lakes, swamp and volcanic badlands all crowd together. I'm perfectly happy with that as a landscape.
Now to do the encounter rolls. I've added in the encounters generated for the first map (though on the regional map, I haven't attempted to place the encounters in specific locations in the hexes, just noted which hexes they take place in).
The first bunch of encounters are keyed to the following hexes on the regional map:
1 - AH 09
2 - AH 09
3 - AI 04
4 - AI 04
5 - AI 05
6 - AI 05
7 - AJ 06
8 - AJ 06
9 - AK 05
10 - AK 05
11 - AK 08
12 - AK 08
13 - AK 09
14 - AK 09
15 - AL 04
16 - AL 07
17 - AL 07
18 - AM 04
19 - AM 04
20 - AM 05
21 - AM 06
22 - AM 06
23 - AM 07
24 - AM 07
25 - AN 09
26 - AN 09
For the next lot of determinations of encounter location, I think I'll tweak the table from the other day. It looked like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 yes yes no yes/yes no no
2 yes no yes no yes/yes no
3 no yes yes no no yes/yes
where the number along the top is a d6 and the number down the side is the number of the hex in the 3-hex group (generally reading from top-bottom and left-right) where the encounter is to be found. Due to electronically determining lots of numbers 4+ (in fact only one of the 13 numbers wasn't a 4, 5 or 6) there was a lot of clustering of encounters. I don't mind some clustered encounters, but I want a more even (ie, non-random) distribution. Settlements don't form at random, there are some random factors but also non-random factors, and other encounters will also follow both random and non-random tendencies. Some of these I think will act as forces repelling other encounters (eg, it's less likely to get monster encounters near a settlement if the people in the settlement are going to hunt to monsters - though of course, the monsters may be close by because they're hunting the people...).
I think I'll try the following tweak to the above table, replacing a d6 roll with a d12, weighted towards the bottom end of the scale, increasing the chances of separate encounters from 1/2 to 3/4 and decreasing the chance of clustered encounters from 1/2 to 1/4.
1-3 4-6 7-9 10 11 12
1 yes yes no yes/yes no no
2 yes no yes no yes/yes no
3 no yes yes no no yes/yes
That has given me an overall distribution of encounters on the map that looks like this:
 |
| 200-hex region with encounters keyed to hexes |
I know what I'm like, if I d the fun bit now the tedious bit will never get done. So I'd best start with the boring stuff . Maybe I'll reward myself with breaking it up - when I've done the first group of 34, I'll determine the encounter details for them. That might prevent this from getting too tedious.
A lesson in forward planning methinks... don't start numbering your map in a random location.
Saturday, 8 July 2017
Mapping Carcosa part deux
The experiment to map out a Carcosa-style environment continues... with a look back at what has happened so far. So in the spirit of all TV shows at the moment:
"Previously, on 'Mapping Carcosa'... (FX: bell-like theme tune)"
2/3 of 200 is therefore more like 2/3 of 198, plus 2. I think that is 134 encounters (therefore mimicking 134/2 or 67 10-mile hexes), of which I so far have listed 26. I also have a couple of things I've found that I'm going to slot into the space - I'm going to put Bernie the Flumph's Vaults of Man and Joesky the Dungeon Brawler's Carcosa adventure into the map as locations in specific places (the Vaults of Man implies a mountainous location for a start so that will be prioritised for a mountain area), as well as a few locations I've been working on recently. I haven't found much material from other sources - the Carcosan Grimoire aside, which has a set of procedures for settlement generation - but there are some things I think will work in a Carcosa-style setting: I'm going to be going over Chris R's Carcosa blog very carefully, and some of Michael Prescott's material from http://blog.trilemma.com I think might work nicely.
 |
| Current map showing settlements with individuals and groups that may belong to them |
Well,
the area of the Ulfire Men is pretty interesting I think. I didn't put things
there on purpose - it just happened that I'd put two encounters in one hex and
they both turned up as villages of Ulfire Men, and it happened that one of the encounters in the hex next door was also a village of Ulfire Men. The middle and north-eastern village were
- co-incidentally - ruled by Chaotic Sorcerers, and again co-incidentally I
generated the same 'cultural quirk' for them - the uniform with the red stripe.
All just random determinations.
So,
there's definitely something going on there. 800 Ulfire Man is a decent
population, about 55% of population the region. If they were united (especially by a gaggle of Chaotic Sorcerers)
they'd probably overcome most opposition in the area. Perhaps that's why there
are so many settlements on water (1/2 of castles and 2/5 of villages) - because
the Ulfire Men rule the land in that eastern portion. Another way to look at this is every non-Ulfire settlement bar one is on water (3/4), no Ulfire settlement is, and of land-based settlements, 3/4 are of Ulfire Men. Ulfire Men avoid water; pretty much everyone else favours it. However (perhaps luckily for the others), the Ulfire Men are
not united.
Two
things may have happened to a posited 'Unified Ulfire Culture' in that area; either a Neutral Fighter has taken Village 17 from a
Chaotic Sorcerer, or the Chaotic Sorcerers in 16 and 23 have recently taken
over and are building a power-bloc. Either way, it looks like war between
different Ulfire factions. Even the idea that the Neutral-led Ulfire Men have a communal toilet might hint at a militarisation of the village under the threat of the Chaotic Uniformed Sorcerers.
If
I was the ruler of the Black Men, or the Orange Men, or maybe especially the
Lawful ruler of the Jale Men, I'd be trying to make sure the Chaotic Sorcerers
didn't take that last Ulfire village.
If
on the other hand I was part of the Sorcerous cult that has supplied the
leaders and ideology of Village 16 and Village 23, I'd be trying to not only
conquer the last 'free' Ulfire territory, I'd also be trying to destabilise other local settlements. I might be particularly concerned about the
Black Men village to the north - perhaps I'd get Black Men to bring me Mummy
Brains to increase my power, or maybe, I'd give them Mummy Brains to take back home in a bid to
destroy their village from within...
Moving Forward
I have a big bad hex-map with 200 hexes on it (about the size of 7 Gloucestershires or Athens-es). That, of course, is not divisible by 3. But, given that my 3-hex squares are very slightly bigger than the 10-mile hexes they're supposed to be mimicking, I'm not really bothered. I'll have 2 encounters over 2 squares and not worry about it. My version of Carcosa will probably still be slightly-less-densely-populated with encounters than the official version, on a comparison of encounters per square mile covered.
I have a big bad hex-map with 200 hexes on it (about the size of 7 Gloucestershires or Athens-es). That, of course, is not divisible by 3. But, given that my 3-hex squares are very slightly bigger than the 10-mile hexes they're supposed to be mimicking, I'm not really bothered. I'll have 2 encounters over 2 squares and not worry about it. My version of Carcosa will probably still be slightly-less-densely-populated with encounters than the official version, on a comparison of encounters per square mile covered.
2/3 of 200 is therefore more like 2/3 of 198, plus 2. I think that is 134 encounters (therefore mimicking 134/2 or 67 10-mile hexes), of which I so far have listed 26. I also have a couple of things I've found that I'm going to slot into the space - I'm going to put Bernie the Flumph's Vaults of Man and Joesky the Dungeon Brawler's Carcosa adventure into the map as locations in specific places (the Vaults of Man implies a mountainous location for a start so that will be prioritised for a mountain area), as well as a few locations I've been working on recently. I haven't found much material from other sources - the Carcosan Grimoire aside, which has a set of procedures for settlement generation - but there are some things I think will work in a Carcosa-style setting: I'm going to be going over Chris R's Carcosa blog very carefully, and some of Michael Prescott's material from http://blog.trilemma.com I think might work nicely.
One
thing I want to do is try and keep a Carcosa-y feel while re-skinning monsters
from other sources. So my 'Space Aliens' are technologically-minded yes, short yes, and grey-skinned; but I suspect that they will be a bit weaker than a standard human fighter (about HD1-1, for example); they will have good vision for seeing in darkness but will likely have a penalty for fighting in full daylight (I expect this will be -1 to hit), and they will scare easily.
Some things will, and some things will not, be like standard Carcosa. I really like the idea of using Treants as huge carnivorous plants. Pretty sure there'll be at least a few dotted around 'my' Carcosa. In fact one of them I think will be part of a locale I'm working on. On the other hand, I don't think getting rid of Thieves as a class as a class makes much sense. Sure, Thieves' Guilds (something I don't really use anyway) don't make much sense in a world without significant urbanism, but I'm happy to divorce 'skill-set' from 'cultural construct'. Essentially, not everyone is 'hard'. Some people are faster or more nimble or more sneaky (because if they can't intimidate other people, they have to be more devious to get what they want). I don't think that will change in Carcosa. I think even in a setting that's less 'feudal' and more 'heroic' (and I use that word advisedly) than the norm for elf-games, one characterised by low-intensity conflict between villages and petty warlords, some people will have sneaking, hiding and sleight-of-hand skills. Think of them as spies, assassins or explorers if you like, and justify their existence as being people who loot ancient and alien sites or got their training from sorcerous or militaristic cults who sometimes need a sneaky skill-set, but I think there's scope for such skills in Carcosa. My version, at least.
One thing I don't understand, but am happy to run with while I work out a justification, is the prevalence of castles and citadels (2/7 in the test area). To me this implies small settlements subsidiary to somewhere else. So, for example:
Encounter 7:
Citadel of 82 Yellow Men led by "the Brilliant Illumination," a Neutral 6th-level Fighter.
This implies to me that somewhere close by there is a settlement (or group of settlements) of Yellow Men that has sent them as an organised force, rather than a settler community - there are no children or elderly there, it's a military establishment. How do 'young Yellow recruits' come and take up duties in the citadel? Of course, they could just be bandits, taken over a ruin or fortified a site for themselves, but it's difficult to see how they could sustain themselves, especially if Carcosan species of humans are not inter-fertile. If it is to be anything other than a brief occupation of Yellow Men, there needs to be some support network in place to prevent such places being obliterated by more-powerful neighbours before help could arrive from nearby Yellow settlements. Or, perhaps it's more like a 'military order', and there's a known network of Yellow settlements across a much wider area that sends recruits to the 'Citadel of the Order of the Brilliant Illumination'. Or perhaps I need to deconstruct the entries and move the descriptor 'Yellow':
Encounter 7:
Citadel of 82 Men led by "the Brilliant Illumination," a Neutral 6th-level Yellow Fighter.
If the Citadel was open to all Men (possibly except Bone Men, see the Carcosan Grimoire) then it could be self-sustaining easily as recruits could come from any of the villages in the region. I'll have to think about whether I deconstruct the generated results though, it looks a bit like cheating (OK, I'm the sort of person who, when presented with a system immediately goes 'yeah? But what if you do it like this?'... but on the other hand, I set up a system and I'm not going to subvert it just because I can't immediately explain the results. Best to try and find a justification before abandoning the system I think).
Perhaps there's information that could be gleaned from distinguishing between 'village, castle, citadel and monastery (I haven't yet generated a monastery)' in the listings. I've been thinking that 'castle' and 'citadel' are synonyms but there's no reason for them to be so. In English usage 'citadel' is used to mean 'castle-in-a-city' and that's not really appropriate, unless every Citadel generated has an unmentioned settlement outside it. It carries connotations of a central or final fortification, probably on a hill unless it's a metaphorical citadel (of faith or something), where you retreat to when all else has failed - the last impregnable fortress.
But I'm going to use 'Citadel' to mean 'wooden fort on a hill', I think, a stockaded camp of non-settlers (bandits or 'soldiers' whatever that mean in this context). 'Castle' will imply 'stone construction of 1-6 towers (and connecting walls if number of towers >1)' and could be either an ancient ruin or a relatively-recently built construction. 'Monastery' (if I ever get one), which really means something like 'place of those who are separate', will mean 'walled settlement inhabited for educational or devotional purposes' - they will have some defences but not like castles. Their ideology will depend on the generation of their leader - leaders can Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic, and classed as Fighters or Sorcerers. A monastery commanded by a Lawful Fighter implies something very different to a monastery led by a Chaotic Sorcerer, so that's a place to start with determining the character of the place. I might need to determine the monastery's age and/or construction material too. Say, d8 a table something like this:
1 - less than 10 years, wood
2 - 10-50 years, mixed wood and stone
3 - 50-100 years, stone
4 - 100-200 years, stone
5 - 200-300 years, stone
6 - 300-500 years, stone
7 - 500-1000 years, stone
8 - more than 1000 years, crystal or other exotic material
- where 'wood' and 'stone' can be replaced with any suitable local materials (eg the most easily-obtained relatively-tough building material is the carapaces of giant arthropods, that might be a substitute for wood).
That all seems a reasonable workaround I think.
Now I'll start applying some of that in another area to work up. I have 6 or 7 more areas the same size as the region I've already detailed, but I will experiment with alternative generations in other areas - in a future post...
Some things will, and some things will not, be like standard Carcosa. I really like the idea of using Treants as huge carnivorous plants. Pretty sure there'll be at least a few dotted around 'my' Carcosa. In fact one of them I think will be part of a locale I'm working on. On the other hand, I don't think getting rid of Thieves as a class as a class makes much sense. Sure, Thieves' Guilds (something I don't really use anyway) don't make much sense in a world without significant urbanism, but I'm happy to divorce 'skill-set' from 'cultural construct'. Essentially, not everyone is 'hard'. Some people are faster or more nimble or more sneaky (because if they can't intimidate other people, they have to be more devious to get what they want). I don't think that will change in Carcosa. I think even in a setting that's less 'feudal' and more 'heroic' (and I use that word advisedly) than the norm for elf-games, one characterised by low-intensity conflict between villages and petty warlords, some people will have sneaking, hiding and sleight-of-hand skills. Think of them as spies, assassins or explorers if you like, and justify their existence as being people who loot ancient and alien sites or got their training from sorcerous or militaristic cults who sometimes need a sneaky skill-set, but I think there's scope for such skills in Carcosa. My version, at least.
One thing I don't understand, but am happy to run with while I work out a justification, is the prevalence of castles and citadels (2/7 in the test area). To me this implies small settlements subsidiary to somewhere else. So, for example:
Encounter 7:
Citadel of 82 Yellow Men led by "the Brilliant Illumination," a Neutral 6th-level Fighter.
This implies to me that somewhere close by there is a settlement (or group of settlements) of Yellow Men that has sent them as an organised force, rather than a settler community - there are no children or elderly there, it's a military establishment. How do 'young Yellow recruits' come and take up duties in the citadel? Of course, they could just be bandits, taken over a ruin or fortified a site for themselves, but it's difficult to see how they could sustain themselves, especially if Carcosan species of humans are not inter-fertile. If it is to be anything other than a brief occupation of Yellow Men, there needs to be some support network in place to prevent such places being obliterated by more-powerful neighbours before help could arrive from nearby Yellow settlements. Or, perhaps it's more like a 'military order', and there's a known network of Yellow settlements across a much wider area that sends recruits to the 'Citadel of the Order of the Brilliant Illumination'. Or perhaps I need to deconstruct the entries and move the descriptor 'Yellow':
Encounter 7:
Citadel of 82 Men led by "the Brilliant Illumination," a Neutral 6th-level Yellow Fighter.
If the Citadel was open to all Men (possibly except Bone Men, see the Carcosan Grimoire) then it could be self-sustaining easily as recruits could come from any of the villages in the region. I'll have to think about whether I deconstruct the generated results though, it looks a bit like cheating (OK, I'm the sort of person who, when presented with a system immediately goes 'yeah? But what if you do it like this?'... but on the other hand, I set up a system and I'm not going to subvert it just because I can't immediately explain the results. Best to try and find a justification before abandoning the system I think).
Perhaps there's information that could be gleaned from distinguishing between 'village, castle, citadel and monastery (I haven't yet generated a monastery)' in the listings. I've been thinking that 'castle' and 'citadel' are synonyms but there's no reason for them to be so. In English usage 'citadel' is used to mean 'castle-in-a-city' and that's not really appropriate, unless every Citadel generated has an unmentioned settlement outside it. It carries connotations of a central or final fortification, probably on a hill unless it's a metaphorical citadel (of faith or something), where you retreat to when all else has failed - the last impregnable fortress.
But I'm going to use 'Citadel' to mean 'wooden fort on a hill', I think, a stockaded camp of non-settlers (bandits or 'soldiers' whatever that mean in this context). 'Castle' will imply 'stone construction of 1-6 towers (and connecting walls if number of towers >1)' and could be either an ancient ruin or a relatively-recently built construction. 'Monastery' (if I ever get one), which really means something like 'place of those who are separate', will mean 'walled settlement inhabited for educational or devotional purposes' - they will have some defences but not like castles. Their ideology will depend on the generation of their leader - leaders can Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic, and classed as Fighters or Sorcerers. A monastery commanded by a Lawful Fighter implies something very different to a monastery led by a Chaotic Sorcerer, so that's a place to start with determining the character of the place. I might need to determine the monastery's age and/or construction material too. Say, d8 a table something like this:
1 - less than 10 years, wood
2 - 10-50 years, mixed wood and stone
3 - 50-100 years, stone
4 - 100-200 years, stone
5 - 200-300 years, stone
6 - 300-500 years, stone
7 - 500-1000 years, stone
8 - more than 1000 years, crystal or other exotic material
- where 'wood' and 'stone' can be replaced with any suitable local materials (eg the most easily-obtained relatively-tough building material is the carapaces of giant arthropods, that might be a substitute for wood).
That all seems a reasonable workaround I think.
Now I'll start applying some of that in another area to work up. I have 6 or 7 more areas the same size as the region I've already detailed, but I will experiment with alternative generations in other areas - in a future post...
Sunday, 2 July 2017
Hex marks the spot (quite a big post)
I don’t do 10-mile hexes. It’s a bastard scale with no
justification that I know of. It’s not Judge’s Guild or Greyhawk (based on 5 &
25-mile hexes), it’s not Known World/D&D Wilderness (6 & 24 miles), it’s not Mystara (when
that was developed from the Known World, with 8 & 24 miles). It’s not
Pathfinder’s 12-mile hex. I’m not sure if there was any classic setting mapped
at 10 miles/hex, or if anyone at the moment is working in 10-mile hexes – except
for Carcosa.
And there’s the rub. Carcosa
is intriguing. Save vs Total Party Kill in
particular has made it look awesome. Honestly, play about with Random Carcosa and the Carcosa Character Generator here - http://save.vs.totalpartykill.ca/web-apps/
– and I dare you not to be hooked if you aren’t already. Easiest fun for my money is taking a random numbered map - especially of an already-known area, such as the hexed-and-numbered map of NW Middle Earth found here - and seeing where the Spawn of Shub-Niggurath and mutated dinosaurs live.
I don't have Carcosa. I'm sure I will at some point in the not-too-distant future. But I will be definitely be putting a gate into the Abyssal Realms (which already has Serpent-men, fallen high-tech societies, Lovecraftian horrors and whatnot) that leads to a planet with two suns that is heavily-inspired by what I know of the Carcosa setting. Maybe mine will be a little more sword-and-planet, Carcosa meets Barsoom, but there you go. There are definitely elements from Carcosa that I want to use. But 10-mile hexes are something I'm not keen on.
I don't have Carcosa. I'm sure I will at some point in the not-too-distant future. But I will be definitely be putting a gate into the Abyssal Realms (which already has Serpent-men, fallen high-tech societies, Lovecraftian horrors and whatnot) that leads to a planet with two suns that is heavily-inspired by what I know of the Carcosa setting. Maybe mine will be a little more sword-and-planet, Carcosa meets Barsoom, but there you go. There are definitely elements from Carcosa that I want to use. But 10-mile hexes are something I'm not keen on.
The best objective reasons for using a 6-mile hex are explained
here: http://steamtunnel.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/in-praise-of-6-mile-hex.html. But that’s all beside the point really. I use a 6-mile hex
because I had the Mentzer Expert Set which uses 6 & 24. Simple as. I’ve
used those scales since 1983, I’ve tried really hard to get the rest of my maps
to scale properly with them, and I’m buggered if I’m going to change now. Were
I playing a different game, I’d certainly be open to different scales of
mapping because there’s no reason for cross-compatibility. But for D&D
(even if in a wildly different setting) I’m sticking with 6-mile and 24-mile
hexes.
 |
| 10-mile hexes with hexes at 60% size (ie 6-mile hexes) |
So if the Orc won’t go to Carcosa, then Carcosa will have to
come to the Orc.
The area of 1 x 10-mile hex is 86.6m2
The area of 1 x 6-mile hex is 31.18m2
That means that the area of 3 x 6-mile hex is 93.54m2.
That’s broadly comparable to Carcosa’s 10-mile hexes (to get a single hex of area
93.54m2, you’d actually have a hex 10.4 miles across).
 |
| 6-mile hexes with 3-hex area outlined |
 |
| 3 x 6-mile hexes on a 10-mile hex background |
Every 3 x 6-mile hexes on a Carcosa map will have the same
rate of encounters as 1 x 10-mile hex.
But how to get groups of three hexes?
There are multiple ways of arranging collections of 3-hexes on a map. Perhaps the easiest is to assume that the shape in the third diagram - a sort of '12-sided triangle' - is repeated in a regular pattern (as in the first illustration below).
 |
| 3-hex groups regularly arranged; 3-hex groups irregularly arranged; irregularly-shaped 3-hex groups |
But that's by no means the only possibility, as the other possible layouts above show. The same shape can be rotated and moved about, or different arrangements of 3-hexes can be used. Maybe a randomising table that generates different arrangements of 3-hex shapes is the way to go here? It could even be an environment generator, producing a map as it groups 6-mile hexes into 3s of varying shapes.
I tried out a very simple idea - number the faces of the hex from 1 to six and throw a d6, then join the hex in the direction indicated.
 |
| Randomised hex-connections |
However, it does seem pretty easy to get blocked with such a simple generator. Possibly I need a procedure that says I should move into an adjacent hex and try again if I can't get out (eg I keep not rolling a 4) - maybe, after 3 fails I move on or something...
But, perhaps randomisation isn't the way to go. The example of irregular groups I produced above was just a case of me joining hexes together without really thinking about it. I'm not subconsciously creating the terrain (the flipside is, I don't have to worry about creating the terrain), because I don't know what the terrain is yet, I haven't generated it. What I did however when I created those shapes was allow myself to go off the map. Maybe I shouldn't, it's going to bite me in the butt later. Anyway, as it's the closest thing I have to a 'map', I'll work with it. Taking the shapes I produced and then applying a range of possible terrain types produced the following map:
 |
| Irregular 3-hex shapes with randomised terrian |
It's not amazing but it's at least semi-random. More lakes/sea than I expected, and no deserts/plains, but the table itself is just a sketch towards a proper random terrain generator, intended to show a process. Perhaps when I do this on a larger scale I can make the table a % roll and weight it - 33% sandy desert, 33% rocky desert, 10% volcanic badlands, 2% open water or whatever.
Anyway, I now have a map that approximately corresponds to 13 x 10-mile hexes (even though I only have the edges of many on them). In the original Carcosa sourcebook, each 10-mile hex has 2 points of interest. That means, each of my 3-hex shapes will have 2 points of interest.What I need to do now is determine which 2/3 (two per 3-hex block) have points of interest.
Assuming each hex has an equal chance of either point of interest (which may not be sensible, perhaps I should build in an exclusion principle) gives the following possibilities, where the number down the side is that of the hex and the roll on a d6 is along the top:
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 yes yes no yes/yes no no
2 yes no yes no yes/yes no
3 no yes yes no no yes/yes
So, if I've got my maths right here, there are only six possibilities for grouping the points of interest. If we go with an exclusion principle, there seem to be only three possibilities which are the first three columns. Essentially in that case we only need to know which of the 3-hex group doesn't have a point of interest. 6 possibilities is more fun I think, so I will go with the distribution given in the whole table above and add points of interest to the coloured map...
The numbers I (electronically) generated (4, 4, 6, 6, 5, 6, 5, 6, 2, 4, 6, 6, 4) indicate two in hex 1 of the first group, two in hex 1 of the second group, two in hex 3 of the third group, two in hex 3 of the fourth group, two in hex 2 of the fifth group, two in hex 3 of the sixth group, two in hex 2 of the seventh group, two in hex 3 of the eighth group, one each in hex 1 and hex 3 of the ninth group, two in hex 1 of the tenth group, two in hex 3 of the eleventh group, two in hex 3 of the twelfth group and two in hex 1 of the thirteenth group... which is a shitty distribution with way more clustering than I expected. The other way of grouping those without clustering is to read them as 1-2, 1-2, 2-3, 2-3, 1-3, 2-3, 1-3, 2-3, 1-3, 1-2, 2-3, 2-3, 1-2 which might have been better. But I'll stick with this for the moment.
 |
| Terrain and points of interest |
Save vs Total Party Kill has a breakdown of the original 400 10-mile hexes.
There are two encounters per 10-mile hex, so 2 x 400 x 10-mile hexes = 800 encounters.
About 10% of the hex
descriptions in Carcosa are simple monster encounters. .. (10% = 80)
There are 103 Spawn of
Shub-Niggurath encounters described in Carcosa. .. (= 12.5% pretty much)
Of the 800 hex
descriptions in Carcosa a little more than a quarter describe a village,
citadel, castle, or monastery… (If
that’s c 217 or about 27.5%, the first 3 categories make up 50% of encounters)
Several mutant
dinosaurs are described in Carcosa… (no real idea except it’s a small
number, so I’ll go with 40 = 5%)
Most hex descriptions
in Carcosa are kind of crazy… (‘most’
may be an exaggeration, it doesn’t seem to be ‘more than 50%’ on the rough
maths here, but it does look like the weirdness makes up ‘the largest group’ – maybe about 360 = 45%?)
I'm going to use a percentage table and need to tidy up the halves. My usual practice is to round up small numbers and round down big ones. So 12.5% Spawn (actually the 12.5% was a slight rounding down) goes up to 13% and the 27.5% Settlement goes down to 27%.
So the table looks like this:
01-10 - Monster Encounter
11-23 - Spawn Encounter
24-50 - Settlement
51-55 - Mutant Dinosaur
56-00 - Weird
Save vs Total Party Kill has separate generators for each of these, so I'm going to use those (they're a big part of why I'm even doing this, did I mention they were awesome?): the table-plus-functionality is this:
01-10 - Monster Encounter
11-23 - Spawn Encounter
24-50 - Settlement
51-55 - Mutant Dinosaur
56-00 - Weird
So now I need to cross-check my 'points of interest' with this table. I have 13 zones and therefore 26 points of interest, so I'm going to number them 1-26. Should have done that instead of giving them asterisks and saved a step, but it's easy to be wise after the event.
Now I need to roll 26 d%s.
So, I need to actually generate the encounters using the tables from Save vs Total Party Kill. What I am also going to do, because I found a great random cultural quirks table here - Papers & Pencils d100 Small Town Quirks - is I'm going to add one of these cultural quirks to any actual settlements (when I get a Village result rather than a Citadel, Monastery or Castle - these are the four kinds of Settlement in the random generator).
Encounter 1:
A large bird of prey stalks the players. After 1-3 hours it will turn and fly off into the distance. The bird does not attempt to hide its presence.
Encounter 3:
A humanoid robot (AC 16, MV 90', HD 4, Chaotic) guards the remains of a crashed alien spaceship. He is armed with a sword and a laser pistol. His 3 large eyes rotate about his head. He can not be surprised and will react with hostility to all who approach.
Encounter 4:
Spawn of Shub-Niggurath (AC 12, MV 90 [land] / 180 [fly], HD 3, Chaotic): a Orange amoeboid with a smooth hide, no eyes, and a suckered mouth.
Encounter 5:
A hulking Blue Man (AC 15, MV 120', HD 6, Chaotic) with unusual red hair wields a cursed two handed sword. (This character wields the sword one handed, carrying a shield in the other.) Any character possessing the sword is compelled to eradicate all White Men from the world; with each White Man they kill their hair turns a darker shade of red. The sword is -1 to hit, but +3 to hit vs. White Men.
Encounter 6:
11 Mi-Go.
Encounter 7:
Citadel of 82 Yellow Men led by "the Brilliant Illumination," a Neutral 6th-level Fighter.
Encounter 10:
A Bone Man (AC 3, MV 60', HD 1+1, Lawful) and a Jale Woman (AC 9, MV 120', HD 1+1, Neutral) explore the badlands in search of alien technology for their war tribe.
Encounter 11:
Cuddly fluff balls (2-12, 1 HP each, AC 7). Bright red, hovering, bobbing up and down gently. When observed for a turn there is a 3 in 6 chance of seeing the fluff ball lazily open one or both of its eyes. If petted, a fluff ball will orbit the character. Orbiting fluff balls will give characters a Save vs. Wands to avoid a normal missile (something like an arrow or bullet) that would otherwise hit. A success means that the Cuddly Fluff Ball intercepts the missile and is destroyed.
Encounter 12:
Castle of 64 Orange Men led by "the Chieftain of Stones," a Neutral 8th-level Sorcerer.
Oh, "Chieftain of Stones", that reminds me that Carcosan names are really interesting and I need to say something about that... *
Encounter 13:
3 Primordial Ones.
Encounter 14:
A White Woman (AC 14, MV 120', HD 4, Lawful) is locked in battle with a Deep One. She fights with a large wooden staff and is searching for her mother.
Encounter 15:
Village of 243 Jale Men ruled by "the Lover of Lords," a Lawful 8th-level Sorcerer.
And the 'Small Town Quirk', no. 32, is... Each evening the townsfolk gather in the common house to watch a new tattoo being added to one of their number. Everyone in town is covered in dozens of tattoos, and almost everyone has some skill with a needle and ink.
Encounter 16:
Village of 228 Ulfire Men ruled by "the Heart's Enthroned," a Chaotic 4th-level Sorcerer.
Quirk 35: Everyone in town wears matching uniforms. A drab grey and brown tunic and breeches, skilfully hemmed. Everyone is clean shaven, with their hair in a long ponytail. Each tunic has a bright red band at chest height, which the townsfolk take pains to keep clean.
Encounter 17:
Village of 272 Ulfire Men ruled by a Neutral 7th-level Fighter.
Quirk 54: The town has a communal poop-pit for making Jenkams. I think I get the idea.
Encounter 18:
2 Mutant Mosasaurus (AC 14, MV 30' [150' Swim], HD 13, neutral). Smooth Dolm hide. Can split into smaller versions of itself, like Voltron in reverse.
Encounter 19:
20 Diseased Guardians.
Encounter 20:
Village of 277 Black Men ruled by "the Mind of Benedictions," a Neutral 4th-level Fighter.
Quirk 59: The town has an official storyteller who spends the day walking around and observing the happenings in town. Each work day ends by gathering to hear the storyteller share what he saw that day.
Encounter 21:
A large space alien bomb stands upright in the plains, weathered to the point where it is merely the suggestion of a bomb: 1-6, inert; 7-9, still live, disturb it and it will explode (Save vs. Death if within 30' - save equals 2D10 damage, failure is death); 10, actually a space capsule - contains ancient body in space alien battle armor.
Encounter 22:
4 Black Men camp along a dirt road. They are under the control of a mummy brain, which they are transporting to 1702.
I don't have a 'Hex 1702' as such, so I need to determine a location for this quest.
Encounter 23:
Village of 305 Ulfire Men ruled by a Chaotic 3rd-level Sorcerer.
Quirk 35: Everyone in town wears matching uniforms. A drab grey and brown tunic and breeches, skilfully hemmed. Everyone is clean shaven, with their hair in a long ponytail. Each tunic has a bright red band at chest height, which the townsfolk take pains to keep clean.
This is the second village I've generated a result of 35 for, and both villages are Ulfire Men ruled by Chaotic Sorcerers. If they hadn't both been Ulfire villages ruled by Chaotic Sorcerers, I'd have rolled again. As it is, it looks like there is a Coven of Chaotic Ulfire Sorcerers who are taking over in this area and putting everyone in uniform...
Encounter 24:
Encounter 25:
Spawn of Shub-Niggurath (AC 18, MV 120, HD 3, Chaotic): a blue arachnoid with two red eyes and a toothed mouth. It currently entangled in a grappling hook and 100' of rope. An orange laser pistol can be found in its belly.
Encounter 26:
6 Mutant Camarasaurus (AC 15, MV 60', HD 16, neutral). Feathered Purple hide.
So that's more or less that... it's taken about as long to do as it has to type, so it wouldn't take any longer doing it 'for real' (this now is 'for real', this will be a small corner of Carcosa-Barsoom ... Carcoom or whatever). I use descending AC, so I'll change those; I don't actually have stats for all the monsters listed but I'm sure I can fudge that; I need to determine where the Black Men from Encounter 22 are taking the Mummy Brain: but that's about it. I have some hints at a cross-settlement faction (the Chaotic Ulfire Sorcerers who make everyone wear red-striped uniforms, like in a 1970s space-opera... it seems they don't get names until 4th level too) that could create a bit of backstory. I haven't checked on the map to see how far away the settlements are from each other but the entire map I've worked on is only about 40 by 30 miles... the size of an English county, say, Gloucestershire (1,225 square miles and 6 major settlements according to wiki’s ‘List of Counties of the United Kingdom’ - as opposed to my approx 1,200 square miles, 5 villages and 2 castle/citadels). Gloucestershire I seem to remember is also about the size of the territory of the Athenian polis around 350BC, which is all rather pleasing, and not planned at all, just a result of using that size grid and going over the edges a bit.
*Last thing for now is the name "Chieftain of Stones", the leader of the Castle at Encounter 12. Names that sound like titles may of course be titles. The leader of this Castle may be the Chieftain of the Stones that the Castle's defences are made from, or special stones that the castle is famous for (perhaps it has a gem-mine? Maybe it houses sorcerous glowing stones?). But then again, why is "Chieftain of Stones" not just a name, like Barry Philips or Susan Jones? Our names tend not to mean very much. We chose them for their sound or because we want to name our children after a relative or someone we admire. But it wasn't always like that. Once, 'Duncan' meant 'Dark Warrior', 'Ryan' meant 'King(ly)', 'Joanne' meant 'She who is Beloved of God', 'Fiona' meant 'Fair' or whatever.
What would the Anglo-Saxons (for example) make of the name "A(E)thelstan"? It looks like a (meaningless) name to us, but it actually means "Prince(ly) Stone". Perhaps it even means "Chieftain of Stones". So perhaps the leader of Castle 12 is actually called "Athelstan", or else the local equivalent - let's say, "Zorg" means chief and "olg" means stone, and "-y" marks the genitive, so "Chieftain of Stones" is rendered "Zorgyolg". But then do the inhabitants still think of Zorgyolg as signifying "Chieftain of Stones", or does it just signify itself, the name Zorgyolg?
I think I'm going to adopt a naming convention for my Carcosa that names are what they say. The leaders of settlements have names like "Chieftain of Stones" (like Athelstan). Other people have simple personal names like "Fighter" (like Otto or Marcus), "Strong" (like Frodi, that Tolkien derived Frodo from), "Bright" (like Claire) or "Rock" (Alan or Peter). If rulership is passed down in families, it may be the custom that the ruling family has complicated names, so their children are called "Morning Radiance" and "Coming Storm" even when they don't rule, while others are called "Fate" or "Leaf"; or it may be that a new ruler stops being called "Cloud" and takes the name "Remembrance of Glory" when elevated to rulership. Is it then a personal choice, or is there a traditional name for the leader of the settlement that is adopted? That I think will all depend on the set-up of individual villages.
Anyway this has been a mammoth undertaking and I should probably stop. I certainly have some stuff to flesh out (where are the Black Men going? WHY is "Chieftain of Stones" so-called? What is the Ulfire Chaotic Uniform cult doing...?) and so I'm going to get on with that.
 |
| Numbered Encounters |
Now I need to roll 26 d%s.
1. 20 - Spawn
2. 96 - Weird
3. 64 - Weird
4. 18 - Spawn
5. 78 - Weird
6. 6 - Monster
7. 48 - Settlement
8. 56 - Weird
9. 82 - Weird
10. 73 - Weird
11. 78 - Weird
12. 41 - Settlement
13. 8 - Monster
14. 64 - Weird
15. 35 - Settlement
16. 27 - Settlement
17. 36 - Settlement
18. 55 - Mutant Dinosaur
19. 8 - Monster
20. 44 - Settlement
21. 56 - Weird
22. 76 - Weird
23. 49 - Settlement
24. 80 - Weird
25. 57 - Weird
26. 51 - Mutant Dinosaur
Encounter 1:
Spawn of Shub-Niggurath (AC 17, MV 120, HD 9, Neutral [unintelligent]): a Black crustacean with a scaled hide, 2 eyes, and a toothed mouth. The creature is extremely hot: 1 die damage per round to all within 20' Regenerate 1 HD every 1-3 rounds.
Encounter 2:A large bird of prey stalks the players. After 1-3 hours it will turn and fly off into the distance. The bird does not attempt to hide its presence.
Encounter 3:
A humanoid robot (AC 16, MV 90', HD 4, Chaotic) guards the remains of a crashed alien spaceship. He is armed with a sword and a laser pistol. His 3 large eyes rotate about his head. He can not be surprised and will react with hostility to all who approach.
Encounter 4:
Spawn of Shub-Niggurath (AC 12, MV 90 [land] / 180 [fly], HD 3, Chaotic): a Orange amoeboid with a smooth hide, no eyes, and a suckered mouth.
Encounter 5:
A hulking Blue Man (AC 15, MV 120', HD 6, Chaotic) with unusual red hair wields a cursed two handed sword. (This character wields the sword one handed, carrying a shield in the other.) Any character possessing the sword is compelled to eradicate all White Men from the world; with each White Man they kill their hair turns a darker shade of red. The sword is -1 to hit, but +3 to hit vs. White Men.
Encounter 6:
11 Mi-Go.
Encounter 7:
Citadel of 82 Yellow Men led by "the Brilliant Illumination," a Neutral 6th-level Fighter.
Encounter 8:
2 Unquiet Worms make their home in the shade of a disabled alien tank. Within the tank, two dead aliens lay mummified in their spacesuits. Sufficiently intelligent creatures can restore the tank to working order after 2-6 turns of experimentation.
Right, I'm sorry USAians, I know that recently some of you have decided to use 'lay' instead of 'lie' but honestly fuck that. Unless they're having sex, fitting carpet or producing eggs, those dead aliens are lying in their spacesuits. Every instance of 'lay/laying' that should be 'lie/lying' will just be changed from now on.
Encounter 9:
Mummy with lower half of body buried (HD 5, AC 5, eyes shoot 2 lasers, Save vs. Death Ray or take 5 dice of damage). It wears an emerald medallion (2000 GP). Quiescent unless the emerald medallion is disturbed. Two dead Orange Men lie nearby, one with a scorched hole blown in his head, the other with a scorched hole blown in his chest. 1-6 primitively armed Orange Men huddle at a safe distance discussing how to relieve the Mummy of the medallion. They are not interested in treasure other than gems and technology, but will serve if offered such incentives.
Encounter 10:
A Bone Man (AC 3, MV 60', HD 1+1, Lawful) and a Jale Woman (AC 9, MV 120', HD 1+1, Neutral) explore the badlands in search of alien technology for their war tribe.
Encounter 11:
Cuddly fluff balls (2-12, 1 HP each, AC 7). Bright red, hovering, bobbing up and down gently. When observed for a turn there is a 3 in 6 chance of seeing the fluff ball lazily open one or both of its eyes. If petted, a fluff ball will orbit the character. Orbiting fluff balls will give characters a Save vs. Wands to avoid a normal missile (something like an arrow or bullet) that would otherwise hit. A success means that the Cuddly Fluff Ball intercepts the missile and is destroyed.
Encounter 12:
Castle of 64 Orange Men led by "the Chieftain of Stones," a Neutral 8th-level Sorcerer.
Oh, "Chieftain of Stones", that reminds me that Carcosan names are really interesting and I need to say something about that... *
Encounter 13:
3 Primordial Ones.
Encounter 14:
A White Woman (AC 14, MV 120', HD 4, Lawful) is locked in battle with a Deep One. She fights with a large wooden staff and is searching for her mother.
Encounter 15:
Village of 243 Jale Men ruled by "the Lover of Lords," a Lawful 8th-level Sorcerer.
And the 'Small Town Quirk', no. 32, is... Each evening the townsfolk gather in the common house to watch a new tattoo being added to one of their number. Everyone in town is covered in dozens of tattoos, and almost everyone has some skill with a needle and ink.
Encounter 16:
Village of 228 Ulfire Men ruled by "the Heart's Enthroned," a Chaotic 4th-level Sorcerer.
Quirk 35: Everyone in town wears matching uniforms. A drab grey and brown tunic and breeches, skilfully hemmed. Everyone is clean shaven, with their hair in a long ponytail. Each tunic has a bright red band at chest height, which the townsfolk take pains to keep clean.
Encounter 17:
Village of 272 Ulfire Men ruled by a Neutral 7th-level Fighter.
Quirk 54: The town has a communal poop-pit for making Jenkams. I think I get the idea.
Encounter 18:
2 Mutant Mosasaurus (AC 14, MV 30' [150' Swim], HD 13, neutral). Smooth Dolm hide. Can split into smaller versions of itself, like Voltron in reverse.
Encounter 19:
20 Diseased Guardians.
Encounter 20:
Village of 277 Black Men ruled by "the Mind of Benedictions," a Neutral 4th-level Fighter.
Quirk 59: The town has an official storyteller who spends the day walking around and observing the happenings in town. Each work day ends by gathering to hear the storyteller share what he saw that day.
Encounter 21:
A large space alien bomb stands upright in the plains, weathered to the point where it is merely the suggestion of a bomb: 1-6, inert; 7-9, still live, disturb it and it will explode (Save vs. Death if within 30' - save equals 2D10 damage, failure is death); 10, actually a space capsule - contains ancient body in space alien battle armor.
Encounter 22:
4 Black Men camp along a dirt road. They are under the control of a mummy brain, which they are transporting to 1702.
I don't have a 'Hex 1702' as such, so I need to determine a location for this quest.
Encounter 23:
Village of 305 Ulfire Men ruled by a Chaotic 3rd-level Sorcerer.
Quirk 35: Everyone in town wears matching uniforms. A drab grey and brown tunic and breeches, skilfully hemmed. Everyone is clean shaven, with their hair in a long ponytail. Each tunic has a bright red band at chest height, which the townsfolk take pains to keep clean.
This is the second village I've generated a result of 35 for, and both villages are Ulfire Men ruled by Chaotic Sorcerers. If they hadn't both been Ulfire villages ruled by Chaotic Sorcerers, I'd have rolled again. As it is, it looks like there is a Coven of Chaotic Ulfire Sorcerers who are taking over in this area and putting everyone in uniform...
Encounter 24:
Encounter 25:
Spawn of Shub-Niggurath (AC 18, MV 120, HD 3, Chaotic): a blue arachnoid with two red eyes and a toothed mouth. It currently entangled in a grappling hook and 100' of rope. An orange laser pistol can be found in its belly.
Encounter 26:
6 Mutant Camarasaurus (AC 15, MV 60', HD 16, neutral). Feathered Purple hide.
So that's more or less that... it's taken about as long to do as it has to type, so it wouldn't take any longer doing it 'for real' (this now is 'for real', this will be a small corner of Carcosa-Barsoom ... Carcoom or whatever). I use descending AC, so I'll change those; I don't actually have stats for all the monsters listed but I'm sure I can fudge that; I need to determine where the Black Men from Encounter 22 are taking the Mummy Brain: but that's about it. I have some hints at a cross-settlement faction (the Chaotic Ulfire Sorcerers who make everyone wear red-striped uniforms, like in a 1970s space-opera... it seems they don't get names until 4th level too) that could create a bit of backstory. I haven't checked on the map to see how far away the settlements are from each other but the entire map I've worked on is only about 40 by 30 miles... the size of an English county, say, Gloucestershire (1,225 square miles and 6 major settlements according to wiki’s ‘List of Counties of the United Kingdom’ - as opposed to my approx 1,200 square miles, 5 villages and 2 castle/citadels). Gloucestershire I seem to remember is also about the size of the territory of the Athenian polis around 350BC, which is all rather pleasing, and not planned at all, just a result of using that size grid and going over the edges a bit.
*Last thing for now is the name "Chieftain of Stones", the leader of the Castle at Encounter 12. Names that sound like titles may of course be titles. The leader of this Castle may be the Chieftain of the Stones that the Castle's defences are made from, or special stones that the castle is famous for (perhaps it has a gem-mine? Maybe it houses sorcerous glowing stones?). But then again, why is "Chieftain of Stones" not just a name, like Barry Philips or Susan Jones? Our names tend not to mean very much. We chose them for their sound or because we want to name our children after a relative or someone we admire. But it wasn't always like that. Once, 'Duncan' meant 'Dark Warrior', 'Ryan' meant 'King(ly)', 'Joanne' meant 'She who is Beloved of God', 'Fiona' meant 'Fair' or whatever.
What would the Anglo-Saxons (for example) make of the name "A(E)thelstan"? It looks like a (meaningless) name to us, but it actually means "Prince(ly) Stone". Perhaps it even means "Chieftain of Stones". So perhaps the leader of Castle 12 is actually called "Athelstan", or else the local equivalent - let's say, "Zorg" means chief and "olg" means stone, and "-y" marks the genitive, so "Chieftain of Stones" is rendered "Zorgyolg". But then do the inhabitants still think of Zorgyolg as signifying "Chieftain of Stones", or does it just signify itself, the name Zorgyolg?
I think I'm going to adopt a naming convention for my Carcosa that names are what they say. The leaders of settlements have names like "Chieftain of Stones" (like Athelstan). Other people have simple personal names like "Fighter" (like Otto or Marcus), "Strong" (like Frodi, that Tolkien derived Frodo from), "Bright" (like Claire) or "Rock" (Alan or Peter). If rulership is passed down in families, it may be the custom that the ruling family has complicated names, so their children are called "Morning Radiance" and "Coming Storm" even when they don't rule, while others are called "Fate" or "Leaf"; or it may be that a new ruler stops being called "Cloud" and takes the name "Remembrance of Glory" when elevated to rulership. Is it then a personal choice, or is there a traditional name for the leader of the settlement that is adopted? That I think will all depend on the set-up of individual villages.
Anyway this has been a mammoth undertaking and I should probably stop. I certainly have some stuff to flesh out (where are the Black Men going? WHY is "Chieftain of Stones" so-called? What is the Ulfire Chaotic Uniform cult doing...?) and so I'm going to get on with that.
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