Hexcrawl/Sandbox for Warriors of the Red Planet

I'm way deep into Warriors of the Red Planet, the Sword and Planet D&D clone. I wanted to do some solo hexcrawling to get used to the system. Well, the first thing I needed for that was a map.

I recently used Delving Deeper to do this same thing for a generic solo hexcrawl, though I had a map already, the Outdoor Survival map. So, I thought tweaking DD's mapping and hexcrawl methods would work well.

First I generated the map. I used DD's Table 2.12: Random Wilderness Terrain to generate the terrain, but I changed each Woods result into Jungle. After rolling the first column of the map, I used the two adjacent hexes together to create the second columns hex. I made one die roll and checked both columns of the terrain table. If the result was mutually exclusive, I rolled a die to decide or simply picked one I wanted. If the results were compatible with each other, like Mountain and Jungle, I used both.

Using Hexographer from Inkwell Ideas, I started building the map. The terrains I used in the map were Light Jungle, Heavy Jungle, Savannah (clear), Mountain, Jungle Mountain, Grassland, Jungle Hills, Jungle Wetlands (from combining Jungle and Swamp), Jungle Mountains, Hills, Mountains, Swamp, Dunes, and Sandy Desert.

Next, I used DD's Table 2.13 Random Wilderness Features table to place villages, towns, lairs, bridges, rivers, trails, fords, and ruins. Any Stronghold result on this table became a ruin from WotRP's Random Ruin Generation tables.

For this map, if I rolled a River result, I then rolled a d20. On a 20, I replaced the river with a Canal, then using a coin flip to see if it is North-South or East-West. After that or if the d20 is not 20, a River result is just a river. In other words, if you get a Canal, you can't get another canal on the same map.

The canals were a feature of a jungle world I had been thinking about for a couple months or so, and this map was a way to test it out. The canal on the left of the map is a mile wide and carved with precision orbital fusion lasers thousands of years ago. They run straight north/south or east/west 500 miles apart. Vast high tech bridges cross every 100 miles. These canals circle the planet. The zero-180 degree meridian canal, the 90-270 degree meridian canal, and the equator canal are all 5 miles wide.

Then I used the WotRP Random Name Generator for village and town names, and the Random Wilderness Encounter tables for lairs.

Hex	Description
0000	Village: Ghoji-Yif (pop. 400)
0007	Lair: Bubrille
0010	Village: Gormix (pop. 500)
0201	Lair: 2d10 Mukup
0204	Lair: 3d4 Arcris
0308	Ruins, obscured by clouds and fog, walls of a ruined fortress overgrown with stinking fungal growth.
0404	Lair: 2d4 Banthe
0503	Village: Ur-Drim (pop. 400)
0703	Lair: 8+4d10 Black Pirates, large cruiser airship
0801	Lair: 5d12 Sassam
0802	Town: Hubyl Bhalhyth (pop. 2000)
0808	Lair: 4d10 Armae
0904	Lair: d3 Turl
1003	Town: Zilzim-Dar (pop. 5000)
1005	Ruined city: Quijag
1009	Village: Kjilford, ford (pop. 200)

The Sunken Lands

I've posted in the past about Midkemia Press, and the Midkemia setting published in the late 70s and early 80s. I've started reading Heart of the Sunken Lands, a wilderness campaign of exploration, discovery, and getting either rich or dead. It really is a wonderful setting, and you could find ways to insert into campaigns not set in Midkemia.

The book describes The Sunken Lands, a vast wilderness created from a mountain range when the gate to Kelewan was closed 800 years ago (events in Feist's Magician). The resulting backlash of magic destroyed the mountain range and twisted the inhabiting people, creatures, and plants. 

Now, expeditions are mounted into the interior of the area, looking for gems, exotic animals and plants, wood, insects, and other resources. 

Jonril: Gateway to the Sunken Lands is a companion book that details the city of Jonril, situated just outside the pass into the Sunken Lands. The two books really go together. A large part of the purpose of the city is to supply the many explorers going into the wasteland. As in the California Gold Rush, it is the outfitters that get rich, not necessarily the prospectors.

The Midkemia books use the Tome of Midkemia rules, which were never published. They are vaguely D&D-like, with levels, Hits To Kill (HTK), and percentile skills. Monsters have Armor Ratings (translatable to AC), HTK, size, attacks, damage, and movement, and they are very easy to translate to D&D or a clone. So, it will be extremely simple to run using any D&D variant. 

I've decided that I want to run this. I want to use Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures for the ruleset. It has skills, and the magic is something I like. Building connections between the PCs through character generation is also a wonderful thing. I was thinking about using Heroes and Other Worlds, but the translations would be somewhat harder.

I went to FedEx Office and made 17"x22" copies of the players maps of Jonril, Tulan of the Isles, and The Sunken Lands (as well as a scanned image of the map).

To get used to the nature of hexcrawling in the Sunken Lands, I'm going to start by doing some solo explorations. Then I'll have some NPCs that have been through a few expeditions and have tales to tell.

Sandbox and Rules

I've started thinking about rules for the Sandbox Campaign as I'm calling it now (discussed here). I'm also calling it daVinci-punk.

But here is a summary of elements I see as important to the setting :

• Renaissance technology - sailing ships, gunpowder, fine steel
• Age of Exploration: geographic, scientific, metaphysical
• Explosion in art
• Magic with a Renaissance flair
• Witty repartee

Here are specific things I want:

• Rules-light. I'd like to encourage fast play, quick decisions, and witty repartee.
• Narrativist elements. Perhaps a plot point system or some other way for players to influence the situation.

Here are the systems I've contemplated:

• The Fantasy Trip has all the medieval equipment and skills, plus it includes fencing, grenades, and guns (arquebus and blunderbuss). There are several clones that could be used as a foundation. Advantages: not much modification needed. Drawbacks: no narrativist system, no renaissance-style magic system. 
• Renaissance from Cakebread & Walton is a BRP-clone specifically for the black powder age. It is the basis of Clockworks and Chivalry and several other games. Advantages: Hero points for narrative. Drawbacks: No ship combat.
• FATE seems to be the system of the hour right now, with the Kickstarter drawing to a close (I'm pulling for Dresden Accelerated). Advantages: Built around narrative. Drawbacks: Must build everything from scratch (unless someone knows about a Renaissance-era game using this).
• D6 is a cinematic system used to build the first Star Wars game from West End Games. It could be used to build the right mix of swashbuckling and magic. Drawback: Will require heavy modification.
• Heirs of the Lost World is a pirate-era alternate Earth game with magic. 
• Principia: Secret Wars of the Renaissance is another alternate history game I've looked at briefly.

If you have more systems I should look at, let me know.

Fantasy sandbox III

I was riffing in the car about the creation myth for Lorimyr, my C&S campaign turned GURPS campaign that will be the location of this sandbox. Read this origin of Lorimyr before reading the rest of this post.

Originally, Lorimyr was a flat place with the stars and planets rotating above it on the crystalline spheres of heaven, similar to some of the medieval ideas of the universe. Since it started as a C&S world, and everyone and every magic item has a astrological sign, then it needed planets and stars. Also, since Lorimyr was created by magic, this fits right in with the C&S magic system, where everything has an intrinsic magicality.

I have decided that Belkar has over the years shaped Lorimyr into a round planet because of its size and seeing other places as examples. But it's a small planet, about 2000 miles across. And the sun is the same size and as far away as the moon (240K miles). The moon is 500 miles in diameter and 60K miles away. The other planets are similarly close and small, since there are no considerations for gravity -- the advantages of making your own universe magically.

Then I was thinking about the Renaissance meme of exploration. This is manifested in Lorimyr in an effort to explore the physical universe, to delve into the secrets of magic and science, to study other planes. Being a Renaissance TL 4 world, they have sailing ships. Someone is going to get the idea of exploring the planet, perhaps with magically-levitated ships. And someone is going to see if they can sail to the moon.

So, I can see my way clear to a Renaissance Planetary Romance/Sword & Planet setting. This is very exciting. I may have to write some fiction for this.

Fantasy sandbox II

Continuing from my previous post, I've decided I really love the swashbuckling era just too much to not have my sandbox in that era. I love the idea of the clash of budding technology and magic, as well as the common memes of the era:

• exploration
• colonization
• art
  
• science
• religious conflict
• firearms
• guilds
• sailing ships and pirates

This sounds more and more like what The Fantasy Trip assumes for many parts of  the rules. TFT has firearms, grenades, fencing, powerful guilds, mechanicians (engineering), chemists (science), and thus has the technology and some of the social stuff covered.

This looks like I should either run this as TFT, GURPS (easily handles the time period), or some other rule system that handles this time period.

Does anyone have suggestions for other rules that cover the Renaissance technological period? If it was not focused on Europe, so much the better.

Fantasy sandbox

Somewhere this weekend I got into my head to create a sandbox for a fantasy campaign. I'm thinking a city-state is the right size. My old-old C&S campaign map has a continent that is not well-defined where I can put it. The last time I ran fantasy I ran in on that continent.

My bullet list so far:

• city-state
• seaport
• King-mayor died suddenly of dysentery
• Queen-mayor-regent rules until 4 year old son comes of age
• 3 shell keeps in the frontier

I feel the need to do a little research on city-states. If someone has a good resource, let me know.

In this sandbox, I want to try out new (to me) digital map-making with GIMP or some mapping software. I also haven't decided on which rules to use. My inclination is to continue my conversion of C&S to GURPS, but I might go another route. Basically, use the tools and techniques I've read about online and elsewhere to get the job done.