Sunday, January 13, 2013

Playing in my sandbox

So, I've been promising this for a while. Here's the map I developed for my sandbox campaign, but I'm not sure if I want to use it. I'm still learning how to use Hexographer, so it's not as purty as it could be, but.....

 
Right now, I'm not sure if this is too big, or too sparsely populated, or what. I bought a copy of the Blackmarsh campaign setting, so I'm reading over how that was done to determine if I am going to overhaul this. To go along with the map, here is my current key, with some notes...
 
1.       Fort Castellan (starting point - I'm using the Keep on the Borderlands, but modifying the characters who populate the Fort a little, and maybe adding a forgotten minor dungeon underneath it, a la the Hackmaster version)
2.       The Caves of Chaos (from Keep on the Borderlands)
3.       The Cave of the Unknown (I am going to use this as my "tentpole" megadungeon, and actually have different ways of accessing it, leading to different areas that may not be available from different areas... for instance, in addition to the surface egress, there will be an entrance from the Caves of Chaos)
4.       The Fane of St. Toad (I am throwing this dungeon in, that I stole from the excellent Michael Curtis)
5.       Elven Temple (I am going to use Rahasia for this, with some modifications, and also have it accessing the Cave of the Unknown)
6.       Quasqueton (using In Search of the Unknown.... this used to be the limits of civilzed society, but not anymore)
7.       Eaglespire Tower (Wizard's tower)
8.       Town of Airdrie
9.       Village of Harrowdown Hills (werewolves!)
10.   Village of Hardscrabble / Lost Lode Mine (I have a few lost mines/goblin warrne modules I've cribbed from the net for this area)
11.   Scaly Mound (lizard men and bullywugs)
12.   Wrathrun Rapids (some sort of watery adventure)
13.   Druid’s Circle
14.   The Mad Hermit of the Castellan Hills (modified from B2, with access to Cave of the Unknown)
15.   Burial mounds
16.   Blue Lake (some sort of big water beastie)
17.   Orc scouting camp
18.   Abandoned elvish town ruins
19.   Dowton Abbey (abandoned) (UNDEAD!)
20.   Abandoned town (weirdness)
21.   Old Marsh bridge
22.   Abandoned mining town / abandoned mine
23.   Sign of the Gutted Goblin roadhouse
24.   Ruins of Blue Lake Bridge
25.   Ruins of Rolling River bridge / haunted battle site (weirdness and undead)
26.   Wrathrun village (inbred rednecks!)
Obviously, I still have a lot of gaps to fill in. That's where I'm stuck.... just how many "extras" should I put in?
 


4 comments:

  1. I'm not super experienced with running pure hexcrawls, but I'd say the more features the better. It depends on how your players will be navigating the map. I rule that the party can see into adjacent hexes on open terrain, so my players might cover 3 hexes per day on foot and "see" another 7. So I try to have at least one interesting feature per 10 hexes. Your hexes look a lot finer gauge, so it'll be easier for the party to miss stuff. Divide the total number of hexes on the map by the number the players can explore per day, multiply it by the average number of features you'd like them to discover each day, and try to fill at least that many hexes.

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  2. I think my original scale on this map was 1 hex = 3 miles, if that means anything. 8)

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  3. Then assuming they travel light and cover 24 miles a day that's about 80 features, if you do what I do. They wouldn't all have to be fully developed locations, of course.

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  4. Hey do you still have all those Gamma World Blisterpacks?

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