The idea was they were mini adventures with simple set-up for each room and it could all be put on an index card...creating a Pocket full of Peril!
This is the way I still do a lot of my adventures...but rather then just stumbling on a hole in the ground, these sorts of adventures need a place to be and stuff that happens before you get there. Thus Hexploration or sandbox environments are a perfect way to create a setting for your adventure! May times, the journey can actually become the adventure!
I love the hexcrawl concept and game play style, but my time is limited and populating 300+ hexes feels more like a chore than a joy. Populating a handful of hexes though with a neat idea or concept though when the idea strikes is a a lot of fun!
So with your help, here is my concept for a crowd sourced Pack Full of Peril!
I'll put together an overview setting theme/idea for the setting.
Then each participant uses a 7 hex template and an open source hex map iconography to "draw their map".
Next you populate 7 hexes, and there should be only one major encounter (adventure locale, city, village, town, ruin, or unique hook) in your 7 hexes. Every hex should have a description of terrain and any points of interest, challenges, or other strangeness that might be encountered.
Then any referee could cobble the 7 hex treasures into their own larger, unique and very detailed sandbox setting map! This would be a creative commons effort and made availble freely after completion.
This is just a basic idea outline, and I will need to work on better detail of the project and better directions, but this would be a unique resource for your Heroes & Other Worlds game!
Interested?
I'd be up for it !
ReplyDeleteGeordie I am damn glad to see you skulking back around the interwebs! :)
DeleteYes. I would do one.
DeleteI like it. I just ran a hexcrawl at a con last month. It went well, because I pre-generated 20 places of interest and mapped them out (some with Dyson Logos maps). I rolled the terrain randomly during the game, rolled encounters from a chart, and if the hex had a feature of interest, I had the party roll a d20 to determine which of my pre-gens was in the upcoming hex. If I'd had to randomly generate the place during play, I think it would have slowed things down and I wouldn't have had time to flesh things out.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm in.
Brett that is awesome! You are one of the most creative and inspirational guys "I know" on the blogosphere.
DeleteI can't map, even on a computer. So if there's anyone out there that can map, but doesn't write I'd be up for a team effort.
ReplyDeleteHey Lee, no art talent will be required beyond some MS Paint cut and paste! Easy as can be my friend!
DeleteThe devil is in the details on this one. If folks are allowed to randomly create whatever terrain they like, how do you ensure a major river runs continuously from the mountains to the sea? For that matter, where exactly ARE the mountains? Or the sea? Not sure how you solve that, but it could be a real issue. Unless you just want some "megahex" tiles you can lay into some map somewhere, but even then, you'd still have to create all the intervening terrain to try and tie them together in some fashion. Still, the concept is awesome, if you can figure out how to beat those issues!
ReplyDeletei don't see a problem with rivers so long as you stipulate that they flow along hex borders. not all rivers begin in the mountains nor do they all end in the sea. since we are in the business of creating outlandish worlds (isn't that where adventures take place?), you don't even have to burden yourself with the constraint of making tiles with rivers align properly. perhaps the river goes underground into a vast system of caves in one megahex, collects into a large underground lake, and resurfaces in another megahex.
Deletei am looking at these 'terrain megahexes' as pre-made building blocks, sort of 'terrain geomorphs'. as you say, the devil is in the details. geomorphs don't write adventures or encounters - they facilitate them, as any setting facilitates a story. if some craziness gets introduced because they are 'random', it can inspire some very creative explanations and points of interest.
^ actually, you don't even have to stipulate that the rivers flow along hex borders - thanks to the underground river concept - although, i do think it would be best to keep that stipulation. if you have underground rivers and lakes all over the place, it might feel a little too henky.
DeleteThere are hurdles and you raised a lot of good points to be sussed out!
DeleteMy goal is not to assemble the works into one map, but its to create 7 hex building blocks that can be assembled by anyone in anyway they choose! Will that lead to oddities or strange vistas? Yes, I hope it will! :) It may take some rules like 3 edge hexes have to contain the same kind terrain or something similar but that is TBD, you have given me good food for thought!
here's some more food. just using the following terrain-types: forest, mountain, desert, hills, countryside (empty), and wetlands.
Delete3-hex alignment is a little too strong. i would say 1-hex alignment but desert-hexes can only be adjacent to mountains, hills, and countryside. those are the only constraints i would impose. the user of these building-blocks is free to add more constraints.
^ same thing but worded differently: desert-hexes cannot touch forest or wetland hexes.
Deleteanother rule i would use for creating these tiles (not placement): one major 'point of interest' per megahex and it should be in the center hex. this ensures there is space between those major points of interest. when i think of 'major points of interest', i think of settlements, ruins, keeps, towers...vestiges of civilization. i would leave everything else off these tiles. 'dungeons', bandit hideouts, etc. can be placed virtually anywhere.
Deletebtw, fenway...i remember seeing just a couple of these pocket adventures on your older/other blogs when you first appeared on my radar. i thought they were really cool. i followed all of your cyber-trails i could find and never saw more than just 2 or 3. are there more? where are they located? i'd like to stuff my pockets with your gold! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks all for your interest and support for this potential publicwerks project! There are details yet to sort through and I am too near the end of Raedwald editing and layout to divert right now, but I am heartened there is interest! Some good concerns and thoughts are raised and will need to be worked out further.
ReplyDeleteAs to The Pocket Full of Peril, they are all still up as blog posts on my Sword & Shield blog http://swordandshieldrpg.blogspot.com/ I just did a post with links to the original six!
cool! thanks, man!
Deletei started making a few of these and hit a forks in the road. using symbols to mark terrain makes the tiles less attractive if they need to be rotated. using textures or colors seems better suited. using symbols or textures seems to increase the complexity of the graphical work also. using colors is easy-peasy. just pick your color and use the fill tool in mspaint or paint.net or whatever.
ReplyDeletehere are a couple. please excuse my color choices. i've been told i'm color-blind.
http://tinypic.com/r/2n6f3gm/5
http://tinypic.com/r/5p7cj/5
in each of those, the asterisk could be anything - abandoned mines, ruins, mountain pass, good or evil stronghold, etc. however, i'm pretty sure i've boiled this down into a form that is more generic than was intended or desired...
oops, forgot to explain my colors. dark green = forest, orange = hills, gray = mountains, light green = flatlands, gold = desert, light blue = wetlands, dark blue = water
Deletejust as each terrain-type can have it's own random encounter table, each asterisk can have a random structure chart based on it's terrain-type.
Delete...or you can manually and purposely choose what the asterisk is.
Delete