[Gygax 75] Carving out the Valley

Here's what I'm doing. Here's what I did last week. And now:

Week 2 - draw a region map of the wilderness adventuring sites that will surround the dungeon that will form the heart of your campaign.

To ease the decision paralysis, I started with Just Three Hexes. Three became seven, then I expanded them seven-fold. The final result is still probably a little too small, particularly as you get deeper into the forest/higher into the mountains, but I'd rather keep it idea-dense to start with.

An early hexmap key:
00.06 - Some kind of mountain-top observatory
02.01 - The Great Tree, mother deity to the faeries, the estranged offshoot of a much older arboreal intelligence, sort of like a vulcan in charge of toddlers. She makes the faeries out of childrens' souls, which are plentiful in the valley since the tombs at 05.03 opened.
02.04 - Mushroom village: they cut spirits from the river corpses and mulch the bodies. Their wizards know gravity magic; obsessed with ruins at 01.04
02.07 - Hot springs, visited by the monkeys from 03.06
03.06 - Monkeytown oo oo banana
04.03 - Village where the rivers disagree, men dredge corpses out of the swamp and send them downriver in either direction. They're employed by the crabs at 08.04 and wear ghosts on their backs like sea anemones
04.08 - Irradiated lair of the skink. Hunts the monkeys at 03.06
05.00 - Petrified forest in the old riverbed, full of ghost-coral. Something sinister/mournful, related to 06.06 (?)
05.03 - A pile of ancient burial mounds, open tombs, and graves, gradually being carved open by the force of the river
06.06 - Abandoned mining operation, faeries can't cross the circle of iron, fossil-worshipping kobolds
06.07 - The Scar, a massive hunk of iron in the shape of a lightning bolt. They were dragging it back to the forge when the dogs stopped them.
07.02 - Huge cliffside waterfall, home to enormous spectral man-o-war
08.04 - Crab merchant, picking trinkets off of corpses that wash down the river
08.07 - Irontown: the forge is quiet (a giant centipede resides within), and food is running out.
09.02 - Moonrise Keep, tortured refuge of the Half-wolf. A man raised by faeries, cursed by his adopted mother after a terrible argument
10.07 - Hidden camp of spies for the White Tiger, keeping an eye on the valley
11.03 - Ancient battlefield full of ghosts

2d6	Random Encounter Table
2	Radioactive Skink (Dragon) - Stalking; Devouring; Sunning itself
3	Wolf-Bearing Moose - Heavy with a cornucopia of hungry wolf heads
4	Wandering Megalith
5	Bloom of Ghosts - Drifting, Howling, Lurking
6	6d6 Deer - Grazing; Migrating; Fleeing something else (-1d4 to encounter roll)
7	1d6 Recurring Characters - White Tiger Scouts; Blood Sorcerers; Monkeys
8	1d4 Faeries + 2d6 Wild Dogs - Patrolling; Hunting; Grooming
9	1d4-1 Stumbling Irondead - Shambling towards the nearest (unexplored) dungeon
10	Ghost of an Old Hero - Blocks the path: appease or avoid
11	Lead-Lined Knight - From outside the valley, on a quest (?)
12	A Terrible Wizard - Faerie Lord, or Faerie-Eating Lord

The faction structure is pretty explicitly stolen from Mononokehime: the humans need iron, the forestfolk need land. The forestfolk are a big, dysfunctional family of fungusmen, monkeys, erudite wild dogs, crabs, ghost farmers, and faeries. Meanwhile, Irontown resists the influence of the White Tiger, who in turn is preparing to resist the Sorcerer Kings. (I'll try to layer in more external human conflicts in Week 5.)

A lot of stuff in the valley is Japanese folklore with the serial numbers filed off. I'm also choosing to avoid culturally coded words like samurai and tanuki.

Quick breakdown of how the map ended up the way it did:

The first 7 hexes. I started with Irontown and the forest (BCD), then added the hill of barrows (A) and downstream regions (EFG). I liked the idea of the valley coming to a choke point, overlooked by a keep on a hill: two important strategic locations for defending the valley during early domain play.

A more respectable hexcrawl. The feature I'm proudest of is the elevation changes, which break up the space and imply a really serious hike up the mountain: cliffs, waterfalls, and all kinds of cool vistas. Finding and documenting the easily walkable/impassable trails would be crucial to mastering the valley.

Oh, and the mountain needs a name.

I turned this map into my current Hexographer map (see above), but there was still some stuff I hadn't decided on locations for yet:

• Mountain passes for marching secretly thru
• Sulfur and saltpeter mines (obvi)
• Migration path
• Raccoon-dog wedding
• Snakes: drunk snakes, immortal snakes, tree snakes, blood-sucking snakes, radioactive snakes
  
• Walking Mausoleum (there's N megaliths in the valley and if you find them all one of the mountains will give you a gift)
• Quest location, wandering knight is trying to get there but is terribly lost
• Snowy region
• Blood sorcerers need a base
  
• Alternate "evil" faerie tree that opposes the first
• Petrified forest full of fossils
• Source of radiation
• Ghost coral forest
• Unexplained signs of civilization: walls, wells, monoliths
  

Fitting all this stuff would take a larger hexmap, so I took another crack at it.

1-mile hex map, already looking much roomier. Plenty of space for extra "biomes": fossil forest, dark forest, radiation forest, snow zone -- looks like a bitch to key tho

If I have the strength, I'll return to finalize this. For now, I'm happy with what I've got. Tune in next Friday for the beginnings of a big, sexy dungeon.