SubHexCrawl Tools: Layering

In addition to general elevation (where various mounds, cliffs, caves, and pits are located,) you can also roll for layers of distinct substances to further refine the details of an area. To illustrate what I mean, let's start with a two-layer or three-layer process that doesn't require a separate roll: distribution of plants or water. In an area of fields or hillocks, grass or other plants may not be evenly distributed across all surfaces. Milder slopes would be covered with the same kind of plant life as flat areas, but as a hill or pit becomes steeper, parts of it may fall away to expose dirt or rock beneath. Thus, you can assume that a layer of grass covers all flat and Slope 1 or 2 areas, but Slope 3 areas would have patches of exposed dirt and Slope 4 (cliffs) would have no grass at all, only dirt or rock (and perhaps brush, moss, or lichen, as appropriate.) Similarly, you can decide that, in a wet or marshy area, any low areas turn into ponds of water, becoming part of a "water layer".

The position of these grass, rock, and water layers are determined by the elevation roll, but you can use a separate roll to establish more variety. For example, roll three dice for the location of underbrush or thickets, as opposed to grass. One of the main reasons I selected d4s for the elevation roll in the previous post was so that I could simultaneously roll d6s for vegetation varieties, or patches of mud, or other layers of various materials. For layer rolls, the numeric result of each die indicates different material types; thus, if you have a field (grassy base layer) with patches of bare gravel, thickets, and light woods, you can break down the d6 results this way:

• 1 Gravel
• 2-5 Thicket
• 6 Woods

The exact numbers vary based on the overall feel of the area. You can give more weight to Woods and increase the number of d6s if you want a more equal mix of woods and fields.

The dice rolled for distribution of layers are interpreted as areas rather than individual objects. Draw boundary lines around each die, merging any areas of similar composition together if they are no farther away than the width of one die. If the layer is composed of individual objects, the objects are assumed to be evenly distributed; woods, for example, would be defined as multiple trees with an average distance of 5 or 10 feet between trees. If you want much smaller clumps of individual trees, you would roll for landmarks instead, which is what I will cover next.