Beyond the shape of the land a party of adventurers passes through and the vegetation and other stuff covering it, there are the individual objects dotted around the landscape. This would be individual trees (if there are no woods or forest present,) clearings (in woods or forests,) boulders, territory markers, cairns, totem poles, statues, lampposts, buildings, or even more fanciful features (water spouts, glass pillars, snowmen, unexploded artillery shells.) A GM decides which landmarks are necessary for a particular area and rolls separately for each, or rolls several colors of dice all at once to generate the exact locations.
This roll always uses d6s with pips instead of numbers, unless you can find other types of dice labeled with pips. Each pip represents one object, for things like trees or boulders, with 2 and 3 representing a line of two or three trees, boulders, or other items, 4 or 5 representing a cluster of objects, and 6 representing a double line. For clearings, the pips represent areas of a standard size (larger than the predefined space between trees in a forest, for example,) and the pips are merged to get clearings of different sizes and shapes; this could apply to pools of water, bubbling tar, or other liquids as well.
Note that these "landmarks" are mostly of the common feature or obstacle variety, rather than a unique object used for navigation. However, as long as you know what a special landmark is (old church, fountain with snake motif, giant stone head,) you can use the same procedure to place it exactly; just roll one die instead of two or more and interpret the pips in most cases as indicating shape and size, as for clearings.
You want to place elevations and landmarks before drawing paths (roads, streams.) I'll get to paths in a future post, since I'm still considering a couple different methods of doing them. Sometime after that, I'll do an example, as requested, but I need to do diagrams for that first.
1 comments:
I agree about landmarks. They are important in being able to describe an area, in allowing the players to navigate, and to ensure that everything mentioned isn't an "encounter".
Landmarks also allow NPCs and PCs to communicate. "You know the lightning-blasted oak tree north of the lake? Well, head east from there, and you should reach the trail that leads to the goblin caves. Take the path to the left."
Finally, some landmarks can be clues about local encounters. A pile of smashed statuary might indicate a medusa is about, for example, and a tailing pile indicates some mining is occurring.
RC
Post a Comment