Worldbuilding Thru Play

So here's my plan. I am running two duet games (1-on-1 games), soon to be three. This in addition to playing in another. I took a break for a few months. I needed it. Now I've dove head first into a pool of dice. Why would I run three duet games? To worldbuild. To expand my campaign world through game play.

Also, to build content for my channel. I am lax on the content making. I like exploring creative aspects and tonight I'm struggling how to do Shorts. You'd think I'd be a natural since they are named after me. It's true. I was given suggestions on which program to help me with such a task.

Paul is a great person to assist with this. Joe knows how to push me into things I hadn't developed yet and Ken has played in my world as long as anyone so he knows the clock is always ticking.

I hope you'll give it a watch. I'm attempting to keep these videos as brief as possible.

Thanks!

Rival Adventuring Groups and Adventurer Friendly Kingdoms

Has a party ever come upon a dungeon they have prepared to enter to find another group leaving? One of the large fighters in the other party has Acererak on his hand and pretends it's a puppet, "You're too late. But you can have the scraps we left. Tell the green devil I said hello." Then laughs as he hefts a sack overflowing with loot and walks off.

Well crap, your party is all dressed up with no place to go. In a world where all the bad guys are plotting world domination or ancient tombs and temples filled with forgotten treasures does the party believe they are the only ones out there waiting to save the day or to gather the loot? Come on they can't be that arrogant can they? Do they believe the dungeons, temples, mines, ruins, towers or god forbid crashed spaceships are waiting just for them to plunder?

To add a little competition to a dungeon crawl world I add other parties of varying degrees of competence. Some helpful, some who would rather lop off the heads of the players than speak to them. Some of the advantages of this are if a player dies they have a pool of 'free agents' they can pull from. If the players find a higher level party willing to mentor them they could discover what the weaknesses are of certain critters and possibly get a hand me down magical item or two to help them on their next quest. It can also set up foreshadowing, say a high level party comes back half its number and the rest bloodied, the players might be the next group to be called upon to deal with the menace.

Having a kingdom that is tolerant or maybe even friendly towards adventurers has a great advantage.

1. The adventurers are going to buy their stuff from that kingdom and pour in the money they gained from the adventurers. So there is no need to tax them too high, the kingdom will get their share soon enough.

2. The kingdom is safer. It will have its own standing army, but have groups of incredibly skilled mercenaries that could easily change the tide of battle.

3. The king doesn't have to pay them. If there is trouble coming from the nearby swamp he has his people spread a few rumors about a treasure horde and watches the adventuring parties stumble over themselves racing to collect it.
4. It keeps nobles on their toes. Hereditary claim is no match for competence in battle and the ability to lead. The king is always assured that his nobles will be the strongest in the land. He can select among those who will serve him best.

5. Even though the king will need to watch during times of peace, because all those players boiling and seething for victory, glory and fame don't like to sit at home for very long, he must create grand distractions such as tournaments and contests that glorify what players most hold dear.

6. Finally, it provides competition. Who will be the first, who will be the best, who will last the longest and who will be remembered.

Giving Mundane Treasure a Kick

Over at the Tower of the Archmage, David is doing a series of posts based on how he is stocking his megadungeon, particularly the first level. His most recent post was on rolling random treasure and fitting it into his dungeon. He adjusted the values of the gems so 1st level character could not retire after a few rooms. That got me thinking how I do treasure, especially coins, gems and jewelry and some artwork.

I'm always one who likes to add a few layers to things. Sometimes I over complicate them, in which I just toss the idea into the mental bin and continue. When I decide treasure I may add a few curves into the value of things. Easiest one is coins. The standard is copper, silver and gold. I'm not one for platinum or by all the horrors above and below, electrum. What I do like to do is introduce simple variants in value and worth to them. An example is there is silver and hard silver. Hard silver is worth much more that regular silver and not found in coins, but rather small bars. What makes hard silver so valuable is that it accepts enchantments easily. It is usually part of a recipe when someone wants to make an enchantable weapon.

Keeping with the coins I like to slip in ancient coins which are different size and value. A gold coin from the third kingdom is three times as large as the ones minted today. The reason I like this is it adds depth and character to the treasure connecting itself to the world around. But again, sometimes it gets too complicated and the focus is elsewhere so then the players will just find a pile of gold coins.

Gems can hold enchantments, be an ingredient in an alchemical recipe or a component in some spell ritual. To cast a gate spell a mage may need to have the dust of 10000gp worth of diamonds or some such thing. To create a potion of strength the potion may require the chips off a ruby. Its fun to have these layers, but only if the players buy into it. Again if it seems to be something that bogs down the game or the players don't seem interested in that aspect I drop it.

Artwork is tricky, but I like to add a significant painting or sculpture. Like in the real world the value is not often the quality of the work, but who created it. Some of the paintings in a recent adventure I designed show significant details of a lost dwarven mine. It was an adventure hook I laid there to see if the players would pick up on it. If they do plan to explore, fantastic. If not, no problem.

As I have stated above sometimes this gets me too involved in details many times may not matter, but if done correctly and with a light touch, adding this kind of thing to your mundane treasure rewards will make it more exciting.

World Building, Villages

Back in October I wrote about Villages . The few things I would add are villagers are the masters of 'making do'. They do not have the crafting experts, the best healing or bravest fighting men, but they have a way of getting things done. If a tool breaks in the village a craftsman might only come around once a month to fix things. They need to work those fields so they find a way. Maybe the farmer just uses the tool as is or he binds the handle with some rope and a branch to support it.

Villagers fall sick or injure themselves depending on your campaign. I doubt there is a healing cleric in every village. In my campaign there is a church/temple/abbey/shrine within a day's walk or more from a cluster of villages. The priests do a circuit of the villages every so often to do any ceremonies that might need done. The big the three are the birth of a child, a marriage ceremony or the death of someone. And as long as the villagers pay their tributes to the priests they don't care much about what goes on in the villages. So healing is handled by healing women who are experts in the local herbal lore. Their ways work they just take a lot longer.

Defending the village is very important to my campaign because there is always some critter or group trying to make trouble. Most of the villages have a simple stockade around them, but it does little to keep an organized force from invading. The village usually has a semi-trained militia, men and women who are armed with typical villager weapons, but there might be a few who are ex-soldiers, ex-mercenaries or ex-adventurers who have some swagger to their swing.

Whatever the case, the villagers know how to survive on less. That's why these villages continue to stand after sickness, invasion and drought. When the adventuring party comes traipsing through the village I doubt it is the first time these people have ever seen this. They know how to appease the players. They know how to act like gracious hosts and acts like they have nothing to possibly get a coin or two of charity. They know to send a runner to the local knight to inform them of the players. And the villagers know sometimes they need to just leave. Everything they have can be replaced and sometimes they just need to wait things out.

World Building, Baronies

Time to take that kingdom map you've moved the boundaries on and start dividing it up with more lines. I'll be using the word, barony because it's the most common term I use, but duchy, county, territory, shire will all do. This scale is what I prefer. It suits me best and I think it is a wonderful scale for a sandbox setting. This scale is small enough to get into a detail, but large enough to provide a variety of opportunities. My baronies tend to be as small as 30 miles (a little less than three hexes on the large map) up to hundreds of miles. I have no idea if this is historically accurate. Don't really care. I just want it to fit what I am doing and be interesting.

With a barony level map I get more detailed with the features in the area, both natural and not so natural. The one map I have hanging in front of me on my wall is the Barony of Absalom. This is where I can give the land personality and before I even write a word it gives me details on how this place is run and why. For example there are hill to the east and there are several mines all of them tin or iron, there are several forester camps around the forests. To the west there are plains but the land is poor and difficult. So just from the layout I got the idea this baron is militaristic. Not rich, but is able to support a large group of soldiers. I let the land suggest the story of the region.

Then I take that suggestion and start developing a history. Usually I go back one or two generations. I look at the immediate history as to how the Barony of Absalom came into its current state of existence. What I discovered by just doing a stream of consciousness history was the grandfather and father of the current baron were brutal men who forged their barony from the inhospitable land, but the current baron is weak and timid. His wife, the daughter of neighboring baron, is the strength. Her father had her marry to have a son so that the baronies would join. But they have yet to have a son so she has taken on other lovers to speed the process.

In the northern area is a tower dedicated to the blood god, Azeel. It is an illegal religion throughout the civilized world, but baron has granted them station here as long as they assist him. This baron is obsessed with the future. He is afraid to make a wrong move without consulting the blood priest. To look into the future he must sacrifice to the god Azeel. So if you are one of the baron's slaves your length of stay is determined by his level of paranoia. So now this dark secret permeates this land and the people suffer for it.

With a rough sketch of the baron and his family I start working on the next level which is his knights. The way the baronies are set up in my campaign are there are several villages all within a half day or day's walk of a tower or keep. These are usually run by a knight and his soldiers. Is this historical accurate? Again, not so much, but it works for me. So now I detail each knight in the barony and how he settles disputes and so on.

The next part is determining how many villages you want to detail. In the Barony of Absalom there are 78 villages. I'm not going to draw an individual map and detail every villager for each village. My head would explode. So I select a village I want to detail and draw it up and detail its inhabitants. I use the reeve as the leader of the village with maybe a hayward and woodward with a few yeomen mixed in. Detail the primary people in the village and maybe a little bit about what it going on. So if the players go tromping through the village there will be a storyline or plot hook established.

The last part I do is detail places of interest and monster lairs. This is easy to do and a lot of fun. It's like doing a 2000 piece puzzle and you're down to the last couple dozen pieces. I'll put a notation if there is a dungeon there. In which case I'll assign one of my many maps I draw when I watch a movie. If I have time to prep the week before a session I will flesh out the dungeon. I'm pretty decent at ad lib adventures so I don't worry about it too much. But I like to detail the strangeness of the land in this area. The massive ruins of a fortress build into the side of a mountian that no one can reach, ruin villages or towers whose history is unknown to the inhabitants. To provide a sense of mystery and history I guess. Most the time I don't know what's going on with them until the players take an interest.

I think the most important thing is to have a very flexible approach to building these baronies. Sometimes when I am writing something I am thinking "This is very cool." But when the players begin interacting with what I wrote I see it's not working out like a thought. So I change it. Don't make any of your ideas or writing sacred and untouchable. Situations are fluid and if the players are doing something that might connect a ruin to the adventure better than the elaborate history you have developed, scrap it for now and slap it on another ruin later.

Next will be villages. I'll go into more detail about these little dots that are scattered across all our maps.

World Building, Kingdoms and Empires

Without a doubt this is my weakest area of development. For some reason the kingdom scale eludes me. So I recruited some assistance from Rob Conley. He is going to write a more extensive blog about this in the future, but I will tell you what little tidbit helped me the most. Take your map that has all the major terrain marked. Copy it ten times or however many times it works for you. Draw the boundaries of your initial kingdoms, date the map. Then date the next map 50 or 100 years ahead then redraw the boundaries. While you are doing this you can come up with why there are conflicts, where the barbarians are raiding in from or some horrible mass of creatures has devastated the countryside. If you have a war going on just roll a die to determine which side wins. Redraw the lines. Continue to do this until you have a visual history of you current kingdoms.

Now this is a very simplified version of what Rob does. He adds in religious influences, immigration patterns and how many brown cows have spots. But I like the idea of the different versions of the map telling a story.

In most of my campaigns the regions the players tromp through are small in scale. I had a three year game where the players never left the kingdom and mostly stayed in one barony. But this new world mixed in with the old places I've run will be combined. I think having an overview of your world can be great but not essential depending on how you play. I've seen some worlds where it is so expansive that there is little in between the places of interest. Or as Rob calls them the "Howling Vastness of Emptiness".

Next stop on my World Building tour will be Baronies or small principalities which I am much better at creating. Thank you Rob for you advice for this one.

World Building, Evil Religions

A while back there were a couple of excellent posts about evil and evil religions one by Friar Dave at Blood of Prokopius and the other by Rob Conley at Bat in the Attic. Friar Dave goes into detail about what is evil and his concept boils down the absence of good (or God) there is evil. Fair enough. But for gaming purposes it doesn't work for me. Rob Conley takes on evil religions from a historical point of view. It sparked quite the flurry of activity and debate. Rob's points are solid, but the problem I had with it is it based in reality. I don't know about all you out there, but I play a fantasy game with spell slinging wands and greedy little goblins and swords that glow and beans that turn into giant bean stalks and where decapitating a troll is celebrated with elven wine. I'm not anti-reality, in fact I use it as a foundation to my campaigns, but there is a strong fantasy element that lets me tweak whatever I want. And I want evil religions in my campaign. There, I said it and it doesn't make me a bad person.

Developing an evil religion is tricky. I don't like to make mine the mustache twirler. Again for this there are different ways I approach this. One version is a cult or sect of an established religion. This group is usually made up of extremists that have taken one part of the teachings and developed their entire philosophy around it. Skewing the intended meaning when taken out of context. These make wonderful enemies and add a lot of flavor on a small scale. Cults are formed around a charisma leader. The leader is usually well versed in the religion he is preaching. He develops an 'us against them' mentality. He wants to build his own power base by keeping those around him loyal by using fear. Soon you have this core of people who will do anything. When something threatens the power structure, whether that threat is within or outside the group, it is dealt with harshly. All in the name of the god they worship.

The second version I use is 'it depends on which side of the line you are standing' evil. I have two gods that are always battling and their people follow suit. The followers of Delaquin think the followers of Sarrath suck and Sarrath followers of Delaquain are the suckiest. Both believe the other is evil. If I have characters that are coming in from the Delaquain side and they are in a culture that prays to her then Sarrath is going to come off as the evilest dude since the guy who decided to put peanut butter and jelly in the same jar. That just ain't right. And the same if they decided to start on the Sarrath side. In the beginning it's easy for one side to start hacking away at the other. They are evil and need to be destroyed. But once the religion is explored they may find they have way more in common than different. Epiphany baby.

The third type of evil religion is the true evil. The kind of evil where the followers of both Sarrath and Delaquain agree to put aside their differences and deal with their common enemy. This is usually some sort of primal force such as chaos or in my campaign oblivion that manifests itself and needs to be purged from the realm. Is this a religion? There is a strong enough movement that believes if the structure of pantheon can be destroyed and all those in power are brought down then a new world can be rebuilt in their view of how things should be. Another example from my campaign is when the god of the underworld decided he should lord of the gods and started putting foot to them. And everyone pays their respects to the god of the underworld, he decides who goes where and they want to get where they are going. During this time this god ended up murdering one of the more beloved goddesses who promoted peace and harmony. Her death corrupted him further. So you have this god gone insane who controls where the souls go. The people are screwed. The gods are screwed. He demands to be the only god worshipped and his clerics threaten if the people don't worship him alone than when they die they will be sent to the very worst of places.

The forth version of an evil religion is the racial version. This is a fantasy campaign and you may have evil races. Well they general worship someone who shapes their beliefs. The one that always stood out for me from the old Deities & Demigods was Gruumsh, god of the orcs. It seemed like a natural fit. So this kind of god can be added as an evil religion because they have a prolific race backing him or her.

Next part will include kingdom and empire building.

World Building, One Map at a Time, Developing Gods

For me, having a good map to start with is critical. I need a map with personality. I like big continents because I'm not much for high seas adventure and I like sprawling lands that are cut up by swamps, deserts, mountains and rivers. I like a lot of unexplored land where I can hide all that nasty things I want. Plus, I know when I play, I like the feel of unexplored territory. The unknown. And the idea if I can conquer these wilds this land will be mine. Wouldn't a fortress and a town look swell over there kinda thing.

A good map starts everything for me. It helps me determine the culture traits and what gods they worship. If I have a culture set in a mass swamp they will be much different than a nomadic desert culture and the gods the worship would be different. The only thing I shy away from, just because it just too nuts for me to keep track of, is the same god having different names in different cultures. I try to put a twist on the way they view their god's teachings, but Norman the God of Mediocrity, will be known as Norman where ever the players go. But there will be different views on what is mediocre.

I tend to shy away from canned gods from known mythologies. I enjoy developing a divine storyline. Those gods are always so dramatic. If any of you have read The Points of Light books by Robert Conley, he borrowed the names of my gods and melded them with his own mythology. He used the names of gods from the original Judges Guild line and needed alternatives. Rob asked if he could use the names I said of course, for a million dollars. We bargained for a while and I got a nice lunch at McDonalds. But I digress.

I have run campaigns where I've used a monotheistic religion and campaigns with an entire platoon of gods to grovel to. You would have to ask my players, but I think I've run both successfully. Especially one campaign where I used a pseudo Christian mythology. I kept enough elements to allow the players to make it familiar but twisted it enough to keep them from 'knowing' everything.

My current roster of gods is ten. But one of them is dead. For some reason I have a thing for killing off a god or two. Since the campaign I've developed is sorta like a points of light concept many of the gods center around battle or war. I try not to assign aspects to my gods. There is no God of War or Goddess of Love. There are three gods that are warriors. The reason for the three gods of war is the different cultures have different philosophies of war. And since war is such a large part of their lives there is plenty of room for three of them.

As I've said above there are three different gods of war, are they good or are they evil, well it depends on which side you are standing on at the time. I don't like alignments in my campaign, they tend to simplify things too much such as "Hey you are neutral good, I'm neutral good, we can hang." Two cultures with the same goal, but with different approaches to that goal can be fierce enemies. Even though they agree on the end result they will fight to the death that their way of reaching the goal is the only way. To try to obtain the goal any other way would corrupt it.

Part 2 tomorrow will be about developing evil religions and maybe more.

Magic Item Creation

I started writing an extensive blog about magic item creation, but instead thought I would ask a few questions. What system of magic item creation do you use? Do your players find it worthwhile to create magic items? And how do you determine what it takes to create a magic item?

Conclusion of a Campaign

Last night our group concluded our campaign. Dwayne had a true Point of Light setting for his world where a displaced group of followers of the Maiden were transported from another world where extinction was eminent. The new world we found ourselves in was no more welcoming, but here we had a chance to survive, rebuild and hopefully one day return.

Upon arrival we were discovering many wonderful things we had no knowledge of. Most civilization was driven underground as demons and brimstone warlocks terrorized the surface and their only real competitor was a massive undead army formed by the victims of the demons. Torrun of the Red Hand and Ambrose a Priest of the Maiden slogged through an alien world trying to piece together scraps of knowledge. It was a lot of fun discovering this world. Stereo types were twisted, what you thought were truths in the old world did not apply here. I think Dwayne did a great job at keeping us guessing and keeping it consistent at the same time.

Last night we concluded the campaign. Our characters found the castle of the avatar of the maiden. He told us truths that we were not surprised to hear, but meant we had to change the way we did things as an order or we would repeat the same mistakes once we returned to our home plane.

It ended with my character Torrun marrying a woman from one of the native villages bonding our two people together. With the work ahead of us there are still a ton of story lines Dwayne could explore, but I like where we ended it with the possibilities. Down the road when Dwayne wants to run his world again we can pick up our old characters or make up new ones in the present or years down the timeline to see the effects of our work. Either way I look forward to exploring this world and discovering more of its mysteries.

Thanks Dwayne for a campaign well run.

Wilderness Maps: Locations of Interest

When you finish your map and have all the forests, mountains, swamps, deserts and seas where you want them and after you string together all the villages, towns and forts you may think your done, but not quite. That vast space of wilderness needs a personality. It needs a history. This can be done by simply placing a few Locations of Interest in an area to tell the story.

Locations of Interest can be anything. They are the wildcard of the map. We know an upside down V is a mountain and a bump is a hill, but whatever symbol you use to denote a place of interest it can be anything. Since I am using a fantasy campaign as the example many of these places will be lairs of creatures, but these lairs can be more than a hole in the ground, a nest in a tree or a camp. These lairs can among the ruins of some ancient fortification. This centuries old fortification provides a glimpse into what was here before. A depth of place. Even if the GM never explains the ruins it sets a mood and gives the place relevance.

With the recent post at Jeff's Gameblog where a GM sets an experience point value for encounter certain locations, which I think is a fantastically obvious idea I never thought (slaps forehead). Locations of Interest can add a little boost a player's xp. Now when I create a wilderness map and I list sites there will be an xp value with the description.

And for your perusal a simple sample of one of my Locations of Interest:

The Shallow Barrows (500xp)

The Shallow Barrows are located at the foot of the northern most mountain in the Meznor Range. There are fourteen large mounds encircled with large black stones cut from the mountainside. The stones have large runes carved into the sides, but they vanish when it rains or water is poured over the stones. This is not a magical effect, but a natural occurrence. The hill barbarians will not enter the area and the local mage guild forbids its apprentices to explore the barrows.

Not much is known except that has the distinct oblong burrows and runes tell they are Northmen origin, a now extinct culture. Who or what is buried within is not known. Those who claim to have visited the burrows have seen ghostly men raise from the mounds a patrol the area. These are in fact wraiths, 1d4 for each burrow. They will drain their enemies of life. In the central burrow is the wraith lord. The wraith lord will only rise if one of the barrows is disturbed.

The stones around the burrows once worked as a barrier that the wraiths could not pass, but their power has weakened due to the erosion of the runes. When the wraiths approach the stones they will hesitate, but they will continue on. They will not go far from the barrows, but far enough to chase away anyone wanting to plunder their graves.

The Northmen currency was made of iron chits so those have all rusted to dust as well as their weapons and armor. The only remaining treasure under the mounds is magical. Each barrow should yield 0-5 magic items. These should be weapons and armor. The central barrow should yield 3-8 (d6) magical items plus the minor artifact, Anadour's Bracers.

Anadour's Bracers provided the priests of the Northmen the power to lead their tribes. These braces provide +2 to Strength and Constitution attributes, adds +2 to Armor Class, and allow the wearer to do an automatic critical hit once/month.

Building a Wilderness Hex for a Sandbox Campaign

Playing in a sandbox campaign means the GM needs to be fairly quick on his feet with improvising situations since there is no direct point to point exploration. Players can wander where ever they please and create the adventure organically without the heavy handed scripts that fill the beginning of most adventure modules. For a good sandbox adventure to succeed the GM needs to understand the ecology of his area to give the adventure and place a sense of depth. That life continues on in this area even if the players never set foot in the hex.

The following is an example of how to build a wilderness hex and by no means the only way to go about it. I do it differently than Rob (Bat in the Attic) and Dwayne (Gamers Closet) so find what works best for you and go with it. I'm not ashamed to say I've stolen elements from most of the GMs I've gamed with and incorporated those elements that would enhance my own style.

A campaign map will have hundreds of hexes with the basic information, a symbol representing water, forest, mountains, hills or plains. A dot for a village or city. A square for a castle or fort. What I am focusing on is all that space between the dots. The places adventurers must travel to find the lost tomb of the dead god of two many vowels in a row or that tower with obligatory orcs and femme fatale princess in need of saving.

Now you have your beautifully rendered map in front of you and you have to decide how large the hexes are. Mine are 12 miles across. Then you have to decide how many miles a party can travel. The travel times I use are the ones I get from Rob Conley. These distances are based on an 8 hour travel day and weather penalties are not included. Light forest and plains is 20 miles, heavy woods 10-15 miles, jungle/swamp is 5-10 miles. A good road a party can increase their distance up to 50% or a trail can decrease the difficult of the terrain by one.

Say your adventuring party has discovered the location of the goblin stronghold. The stronghold is located four hexes into the wilderness. The party will be traveling on a road for one hex, lightly wooded area for two hexes and the stronghold is located in a heavily wooded hex. The party will reach the middle of the 2nd hex after the first day of travel. So let's take a look.



Wilderness hex 2301 is a section of the Aberdeen Forest that borders the heavily forested hills of the Cranax Wayland to the north. There are no roads or heavily travelled trails here. This area is inhabited by typical forest animals including a giant grizzly bear, a small tribe of bugbears has moved into a pair of shallow caves in the northern hills and transient population of goblins from the stronghold. On occasion woodsmen from the villages of Orton and Green Tree can be found in the southern area of the hex. Then there is the Ghost of Aberdeen, a knight who has roamed the forest for years.

A brief description of the listed inhabitants above:

Giant Grizzly Bear: This beast stands 15' tall and weights over 1300 pounds. He usually stays by the streams to hunt and sleeps in the caves to the north of the hex. There are two broken arrows in his right side from a recent battle with the bugbears. The pelt will bring in a hefty price at market.

Bugbears: Twelve bugbears moved into the caves hoping to capture some of the goblins for slaves and take their treasure. Two of the bugbears were killed by the giant grizzly bear in the area. The bugbears are led by a dark shaman. He always travels with at least four body guards.

Goblins: Twenty to forty goblins travel though this hex two to four times a year on their way to a raiding camp. When they do a return trip their numbers are reduced by 20% to 50% carrying 100gp-1000gp worth of items, food supplies and coinage. When the goblins return to the raiding camp their numbers will be replenished.

Woodsmen: Paul is from the village of Green Tree and Jerrin and Lloyd are from Orton. They know each other well and are friends. They trap and fish in the streams. They know the area well. They know the location of the Well of Whispers, they've all seen the giant bear and the Ghost of Aberdeen, and they know to stay clear of the goblins when they come marching through. They don't know about the bugbears yet. All of them are competent combatants, but only do so in self defense.

The Ghost of Aberdeen: He is not a ghost, but a nameless knight who has patrolled the forest on his massive mount for over twenty years. He patrols the hexes surrounding this hex, but his main home is by the Well of Whispers. He does not speak and will not engage the players in any way. If attacked he will defend himself, but he will not kill. In combat he uses his double crossbow from a distance and a long sword and shield when engaged in close combat. His shield is battered and in poor condition as is most of his equipment.

A random encounter table would look like this;
1-5 d4 Wildlife
6 Giant Grizzly Bear
7-8 d4 Bugbear Patrol
9 d4+4 Bugbear Patrol + Dark Shaman
10-13 d20+20 Goblin Raiding Party
14-17 d20+20-25% Returning Goblin Raiding Party
18-19 d3 Woodmen
20 The Ghost of Aberdeen

The four stone long houses (the ruins) in the central part of the hex have nothing of value in them or around them. A person well versed in history would recognize the structures as those the North Men used to construct and in the center is a well. At night hundreds of voices can be heard coming from the depths of the well. Wells were holy places to the North Men. They placed their sacrifices in these wells and also offered their dead.

Now an enterprising GM could construct a cool little dungeon adventure here or keep it as an unexplained mystery. For this example this hex is to be travelled through, but this is a sandbox campaign so a GM may want to have some idea of what the players may find if they decide to explore. In just under 600 words I've got a pretty good picture of what is going on in this hex and how it influences the areas that surrounds it so if the players decide to explore, the GM has enough details to fill in the bigger picture.

Be flexible. Be prepared. The goal of the players in this example is getting to the goblin stronghold, but the journey there is just as important.

Villages

Check out most any fantasy map and you will see big dots representing cities, small dots towns, squares are castles and hollowed out dots are towers. Then there are the triangles or some sort of symbol to indicate where the dungeons or lairs are hidden. Then there are those spaces in between. The long dark lines that indicate a road or a dashed line telling the viewer that a path winds through that place. Alongside of these roads are small unnamed dots. These hamlets or villages should not be ignored because of their size. They can become intimate places of peace for your players to recover between adventures or a place to blast out their frustrations.

Name It
With all those dots on the map you're not going to want to detail every village down to the 'goober' the village dog. Use a random name generator or just crank out some names for the village. I often use the surrounding geography to determine the name or I'll name it something like, Garwin's End. I have no idea what it means, but that dot now has my attention and I want to know what's going on there.

The Lord
Someone is going to be responsible for the village, to collect the taxes and defend it from all those critters that always seem to pester humble farmers. The lord should live in a nearby town or tower, some sort of fortified area with a half-day walk from the village. If you've fleshed out the other areas on your map the lord should be apparent. The village's condition will reflect the lord's attitude.

Reeve
Since my campaigns are set in the typical feudal medieval style, my villages have reeves that are in charge of the village. I use the reeves as the spokesmen of the village. They don't command anyone, but they have their Lord's ear and will report troublemakers if needed. They also are the main person the players will be dealing with when it comes to village matters. I won't go into all those other positions within the village because it won't matter much during the game.

Priest
There may or may not be a church in the village. There might be a central location, but if there is a church in the village it's critical to get a brief write up on the priest.

The Wildcard
There shouldn't be a wildcard in every village, but every ten or so there should be a person with some sort of talent or unusual place. In one of my villages there is a 12' stone sword thrust into the ground. I thought it was a cool image, but haven't figured out why it's there yet. When the players get more involved in that area I will make sure there are rumors floating around about it.

So it will only take four, possibly five sentences to give your village a skeleton description so when the players be-bop over hill and dale and come across the village of Garwin's End they can say, "Cool, look at that big stone sword." as Walter the reeve walks out with Gurdy the young priest and greets the players in the name of Lord Bundle Britches. These descriptions provide the dots and your imagination can fill in the rest.

Adventurers in a Living Campaign

Why is there a dungeon a half day's ride from town? Was the dungeon something else before like a mine, a catacombs or a cave system that always seems to attract the absolute worst neighbors? If there are problems coming from the dungeon why hasn't the town taken care of it? Why hasn't the local nobility taken action? The answers to these questions can vary as much as you can imagine, but in a cohesive campaign world they need to be answered.

In most of the campaign worlds there will be a social class of adventurers. The ranking of their status will be determined by the need of their services. Most of the characters are not blacksmiths, carpenters, or washer women, they are professional adventurers. Professional adventurers come in all guises. Profit, fame and power are the name of the game. Even if the players are being altruistic the residual effect remains the same.

If a dungeon is crawling with critters near town the players will not be the only adventuring party going to investigate. Rival adventuring group can add a depth to your campaign. They had their own guild in a campaign of mine. The guild would gather information on locations, monster weaknesses and have the supplies needed to defeat the monsters. It was like dungeon headquarters. There was another class of members who gathered the information and sold it to the guild. Theses members would not engage in the dungeon itself, but make a living by investigating rumors and gathering information. It was a very lucrative profession with less risk.

I enjoy the interaction with the guild whether for or against. I enjoyed the rivalry between adventuring parties. I think it added another facet to the adventure. A party may get into the dungeon and leave to go back to town to heal up and when they return they find a rival group cleaned out the rest of the place. It makes players rethink their strategies and gives a GM another option.

First Dungeons & A Thank You To Mom

Rob over at Bat in the Attic wrote about first dungeons. That got me thinking about my first dungeons. The discovery that got me started in developing dungeons was a graph paper tablet in my mother's supply closet at her office. Holy crap, I just found gold. I asked if I could have it and before she said yes. Armed with a ruler and pencil I carving out dungeon map after dungeon map.

After I finished a few dozen maps I chose the maps with the best personality and started room descriptions. There was no logic or theme to the dungeons. Just rooms with monsters and loot. Blink dogs next to a room of ogres next to a hallway of Type 2 demons with an alcove where Beelzebub lounged. Didn’t matter how ridiculous it was, it was cool. I was doing it. I was making dungeons. And it was my first real writing gig. It was exciting.

With map done, descriptions described I was ready. But it didn’t feel right. Back into my mother’s supply closet I went. Good god all mighty a box of manila folders. I fricking rule! She said take them. So I borrowed her stapler and stapled my map to one side on the inside of the folder. There was room on the other side. So I made up a wandering monster table and stapled it there. I set the folder on its side and wa-la I had a cardboard screen just like those TSR modules.

I walked the halls with my homemade modules waiting for a study hall to break them out. I had one dungeon called the Taps Six Dungeon. It got kinda famous in my school. Everyone wanted to go through it. They wanted to know what the name meant. I just smiled and said there is only one way to find out. Actually, it didn’t mean a damn thing. I just thought it was a cool name.

So thanks to the supply closet at my mother’s office I started my career in developing dungeons then world building. And being that it will be Mother’s Day soon I want to give a huge thank you to my mother for allowing me to raid her closet and being understanding and allowing me to indulge myself on this weird hobby I really love.