I am making great progress in my take on the Gygax ’75 challenge, and will complete this week’s portion with ease. Some of that is from working ahead…
What Were This Week’s Tasks?
Just as a reminder, the tasks for the second week of the Challenge were to:
- Create a Detail-level hex map.
- Place one settlement of significant size.
- Place two other settlements.
- Place one major terrain feature.
- Place one mysterious site to explore.
- Place the entrance to one dungeon.
- Name everything worth naming.
So how did it go?
Pretty good, I think. To keep within my concept of a valley in the arms of a large mountain, I ended up having to work from the macro/Atlas level back down to the micro/Detail level on my map. I ended up needing to understand how the small scale fit into the overall valley to make sure the concept worked. That helped me tremendously to understand a lot of the placement of the Detail area, and forces working on it.
I also ended up going back and working with an electronic map. I tried the hand drawn one, and had fun, but I just could not marry up the hexes between the Atlas and Detail levels. I scanned the hand drawn map into Illustrator, and went back to my old method drawing the map(s). I did leave the terrain features as lines, and not color in the hexes as in my other settings. I may do that someday, but I wanted to keep things simple for now and focus on naming things.
The placement of the town and dungeon went well. It was pretty easy to see that the town should go along the river, and the dungeon in the mountain wall. Jeff Vandine pointed out to me that placement had echos of the Caves of Chaos, which was a very intriguing idea I had not thought of… I had placed the dungeon in the mountain wall to make there be some wilderness travel to get to it, plus to add some challenge to reach it because of the mountainous terrain. The parallel of the Caves of Chaos did not occur to me, and I might explore that concept in another place.
I had also placed the mysterious site near the foot of the cliffs up to the next higher Vale. I did that to also keep some distance from the town, and make it a ruined mining village or something like that. That adds ruins to explore, plus another possible dungeon/cavern to delve.
Finally, I placed a random number of ruins/dungeons and natural features in each 6 mile hex, along with a few more villages and keeps. These are more placeholders for now, but I can add details to them as I get creative ideas. Each feature/ruin may or may not have a lair–I will keep that open for future creativity.
I tried really hard to not steal from myself, but ended up snagging a few names from my other settings. The remainder I came up with using Google Translate, then kinda bastardizing whatever it came up with make them sound fantasy-ish. Oh yeah, and because the map is electronic, I don’t plan on pimping it up for extra credit, like Ray Otis suggested!
What I Did
So here is what I completed this week:
- The Atlas Map. The Atlas map shows the framework for the Detail one, and where it is located in the Valley.
- The Detail Map. The Detail map shows the initial adventuring area, and the immediate features and ruins/dungeons that can be points of interest.
- The Town of Tirbreth. This is the base location PCs would be operating out from. It is a fortified river trading town, with a population of about 2,000 people.
- The Temple of the Dragon. The initial dungeon! See next week for more detail!
- The Ruined Mining Village. Still not sure where I will go on this, but it works as an initial concept.
- The Anamathair Mountain Wall. This is the west arm of the major mountain that shelters the Vales. The walls of the mountain arm rise up quickly from the valley below, giving a sharp boundary to the Vales.
- The Creaganrui River. This is the major river that flows through the Vales, from high up on Father Mountain. Mother River is a major focus of civilization in the Vales.
- The Fulmhor Forest. The Fulmhor Forest is a dark, forbidding forest that broods down upon the rest of Roatean Vale from the slopes above. It has an evil and dark reputation.
- The Ballarc Cliffs. These cliffs are a major feature that separates Roatean Vale from Fadaerin Vale above it. About 200 feet high, the cliffs are pretty much impassable, forcing traffic through only a few openings.
- Ruins and Features. I placed a number of random ruins/dungeons and natural features in the Detail map area. I will flesh these out as I get time and ideas. Some may be placeholders for future creations!
Bonus credit–encounter table! For my encounter table, I created 3 different ones for the 3 major terrain types: plains, forest and mountains. There are really hills in both the plains and forest areas, but to keep things simple, I will just roll Hills into each of those terrains.
Plains
2. Raiders from Fadaerin Vale.
3. Hag.
4. Wild horses.
5. Merchants.
6. Villagers.
7. Wolves.
8. Wild dogs.
9. Deer.
10. Patrol.
11. Bandits.
12. Barbarian raiders.
Other options:
Nightmare.
Boar.
Forest
2. Ghouls.
3. Giant bee/wasp.
4. Faerie creature.
5. Deer.
6. Boar.
7. Villagers.
8. Bear.
9. Wolves.
10. Giant toad.
11. Giant beetles.
12. Giant spiders.
Other options:
Shadow cat.
Creeper thorn.
Elemental.
Hags.
Harpies.
Jackalwere.
Nightmare.
Peyton.
Magical trees.
Mountains
2. Barbarian raiders.
3. Dragon men.
4. Minotaur.
5. Harpies.
6. Mountain lion.
7. Bear.
8. Mountain goats.
9. Sasquatch.
10. Elemental.
11. Ogre.
12. Ghouls.
Other options:
Shadow cat.
Gargoyle.
Jackalwere.
Peyton.
Giant raven.
What Next?
Next week is… the dungeon! I have an idea for what I want to do here, and how it all fits in to the concept of the setting. The dungeon itself is only supposed to be 3 levels, so obviously it will not be a full megadungeon, but I think this will be a fun one anyway.
Also, next week will be more challenging to me. I am much better at worldbuilding than I am at actual dungeon building, so wish me luck! The temptation will be to keep revising it, and not just calling it good enough…
Anyway, let me know what you think of my progress so far in the comments below!
Marko ∞
