3d8All of these are rolled at once. The 2d4 roll can be dropped, as will be explained.
1d10
1d6
2d4*
The eight-sided dice indicate the compass direction towards one, two, or three large bodies of water. The compass directions start with North and are read clockwise:
- North
- North-East
- East
The ten-sided die indicates the basic climate. The number rolled, times ten, is the approximate latitude equivalent. See this table:
| d10 Roll | Climate | Elevation | Altitude |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7+ | Arctic | Treeline | 10k+ feet |
| 6 | Sub-Arctic | High | 5k-9k feet |
| 3-5 | Temperate | Medium | 500 to 5k feet |
| 2 | Sub-Tropical | Low | 250 feet |
| 0-1 | Tropical | Sea-Level | 100 feet or less |
Note that this table does double duty, since you can also use it to roll Elevation/Altitude, either with a d10 (as we will do in the step) or with a d6. For climate, the d10 tells us whether the area is hot or cold, with the extremes being hot/cold all year round.
The six-sided die is used for the basic elevation for the starting region. We use a d6 instead of a d10 because we usually don't want to start in high-altitude environments above the treeline. This tells us whether we're creating a high plateau, hill country, or lowlands.
The four-sided dice tell us how varied the terrain and other features will be. Basically, it's the number of feature rolls we're going to make in Step Two. If you don't want to roll for an average of five features of the landscape, you can drop the 2d4 roll and just assume there's only two features on the map.
The distribution of latitudes should really be weighted by the amount of surface area at each latitude, at least on a spherical world. The artic zone has very little surface area compared to the tropical zone; geometrically, the weighting is proportional to the cosine of the angle. I think you could simulate this effect approximately by rolling an extra d10, and taking the lower of the two dice.
ReplyDeleteYou can do that, if you are trying to emulate a spherical world. But I'm not using that d10 roll to actually indicate a latitude; I'm just equating it to a latitude as a mnemonic for what climate each die result indicates, so that I don't actually need the table handy to make the roll.
DeleteA better alternative might be to use a d6 of a different color for the climate, since you probably won't want arctic, anyways. Or use a different colored d4 and add 1 or 2, to keep the climate in a smaller range.