I don't mean just a wilderness adventure, in a pre-designed wilderness. I'm talking about sketchbox hexcrawls, starting with the most rudimentary geographic features and no details of what is found in each hex (or often, what is found beyond the local mapped area.) I talked a little bit before about possible mapping tricks for settlements (the basic barony mapping procedure, mapping routes to the next settlement during conversations with NPCs, mapping settlements with a dice map.) I've got some rudimentary ideas on some other hexcrawl tricks I'll be mulling over.
Your basic hex is 2 leagues across, and adventurers on foot travel 6 leagues a day. When a party travels over long distances, we customarily skip step-by-step detail, in contrast to short-distance travel in a dungeon. We don't say where the peak of a hill is, where a grove of trees is, or which way a stream turns when describing long-distance travel; we just mention the general landscape and any specific landmarks of interest (in other words, stuff we may have mapped as an encounter.)
But what if the adventurers are in a town and they don't want to go a full hex away, but just explore "things along the north road" or "the small hills in the east"? That sounds like the potential for another variety of exploration, a middle scale between dungeon exploration and wilderness exploration: the subhexcrawl. Exploration of mapped outdoor encounter areas is pretty well covered, but there are no tools that I know of for a truly random, sketchbox-style subhexcrawl.
What would tools for a sketchbox subhexcrawl look like? I have some ideas, but I thought I'd ask what others thought.
9 comments:
http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-requested-map-of-dreams.html
It looks like this.
Like the idea, love the map -C provided. Looking forward to what comes from this.
TB
I like using hexes that are reduced each time by 1/3.
My hexes are 9 miles, 3miles, 1 mile, etc...
Each hex contains 7 smaller complete hexes, plus six partial peripheral hexes. Ignoring the partials, we're dealing with 7 hexes.
If the hex is designated "forest", that means that over one half of the sub hexes are forest. So at least 4 out of the 7 hexes are forest. You could say 3+1d4 hexes are forest, leaving 0 to 3 hexes as clearing. They can be randomly assigned, or you can create a few predetermined patterns, choosing the pattern by an additional dice roll.
The process would be repeated for hills, as a hex can be forested and hilly.
I'm sure you can come up with a number of other permutations as well. That basic idea is, the parent hex determines the content of the child hex, then the child becomes a new parent.
Following my train of thought...
My "miles" are actually 7290 feet (actually over a mile and a half in real life)
Characters enter a 3 mile forested hex. Determine that 5 1 mile subhexes are forest, and 2 are clearing.
Characters enter a 1 mile clearing hex. Determine that four 2430' sub hexes are clearing, and 3 are forest.
Characters enter 2430' clearing hex. Determine that six 810' subhexes are clearing.
Characters enter 810' clearing hex. Determine that six 270' hexes (each about a football field) are clearing. What can you see?
As this level of "granularity", if there is anything worth exploring, it should be visible.
I think both -C and Niccodaemus's ideas have merit, that is to say a super detailed hex of the standard size, with sub hexes generated by the usual random methods.
However, at this sort of size, you are going to get mostly "fields" "pastures" and "woods" close to your towns. So you might want to skip that, and concentrate on only the landmarks of the hex. So you only roll up a number of landmarks (say d4), and then on a random table to say what they are, and where they are distributed in relationship to the larger hex. Skip the definition of all the other sub-hexes, as ultimately they do not matter unless you are entering into a domain game level of play.
The Judges Guild Wilderness Series books have sub-hexes like this, detailing a hex of Campaign Map 1. Like Lasgunpacker said, above, lots of "fields," "woods," etc.
Still, real cool, though. :)
Another thought to consider is elevation. My idea is that if you imagine a hex to have depth, the depth would be 1/10 of the width of the hex. This would be a "unit" of elevation. The elevation of the hex would be given in units. This is not elevation above sea level, but elevation in relation to surrounding hexes.
So, if a hex is 270 feet, each unit of elevation is 27 feet. An elevation of 5 units would mean that the hex had a 45 degree slope, as the center would be 135 feet above the edge of the hex. An elevation of 10 units would be close to a vertical cliff face.
Hills would have elevations of 1 to 4 units, while mountains would have elevations of 5 to 10 units.
Interesting ideas, guys, but maybe I didn't make some things clear. Follow-up post on the way.
I think you've got two approaches working here. Talysman's is more of an "on-the-fly, throw down some dice" method vs. Niccodaemus' method which you'd use to pre-map using a hex/subhex system.
Erin Smale discussed something similar top Nicco's approach here:
http://www.welshpiper.com/hex-based-campaign-design-part-1/
This idea seems interesting overall, but I'm having trouble envisioning how it all plays out in use. I'd love to see a sample area worked up and mapped as a post once you've got the tools all done.
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