It's Been a While

It's been a while since I last posted, so I thought I would drop a line to those of you who haven't drifted away. Life continues to consume a good portion of my time, but I think I can eek out a post per week, minimum, for the next month, after which, I should be able to get back to my every-other-day posted schedule, barring any unforeseen circumstances. I know it's bad form to post that you're going to post, but I'd rather keep posts as topical as possible. Expect a proper post this weekend. It might be about mapping, or it might be about science fiction stuff.

In the meantime, check out some of my recommended reading or the posts from blogs I follow!

A Short Hiatus

I am getting inundated with work as I wrap up my second degree and won't be able to maintain my every-other-day posting schedule in the coming couple of weeks. As such, I will be taking a short break while I clear out some work. I'll be back to it in two weeks, though, with more hexy goodness, and maybe some ruminations on science fiction gaming.

Until then, have fun and enjoy the onset of spring!

Mapping Update: Placing Locations - not Encounters

I have been working to place interesting locations on my hex map, and I've come to a conclusion. I am placing locations, not encounters. Why make that distinction? Because "encounters" has a specific connotation that revolves around conflict and implies a degree of railroading. If you enter this hex, the GM rolls and if the dice come up Encounter, the players have to deal with something predetermined by the GM. That isn't good GMing, in my view.

So instead of placing encounters that unfold a predetermined way, I place locations where something might be happening. I will roll to see if the players stumble on the location, and if so, give them information based on what they witness. What happens from there is 100% up to them. It might be a dungeon entrance. It might be a gnarled tree with a rope tied about its trunk. It might be a pile of rotting corpses. Whatever.

That doesn't mean there aren't random encounters rolled for hexes. These represent stumbling on an event that potentially provokes action. These could be combat-oriented like a dozen orcs charging a wagon with drawn swords, or they could just be creepiness like catching a glimpse of fish-men playing pipes in the distant fog. Again, these provide the opportunity for the players to make decisions. They don't exist to force players into a specific course of action...unless they really mess up a Perception check and get ambushed by a hostile encounter. But even then, there is a string of rolls that create that situation - Reaction rolls by the hostile party that indicate it will attack, opposed Stealth checks to see if they can sneak up and waylay the party, failed Perception rolls by the party, etc. The players get their chance to avoid it, dice gods willing.

So that's a whole lot of ranting about a concept, but how has it been implemented in the hex map? I have placed several locales in the uncivilized parts of the map so far. These are, for the most part, stationary (with one fun exception that might move once per week). I'm generally picking locations that scream out for something initially and then going back to fill in other ideas afterward. So far, Alnwich is pretty well covered, so I'm starting to expand the adventure bubble outward.  This method seems to be working well, so far.

Mapping Update: Alnwich

I have finished filling in terrain and towns for the entire northeast corner of my hex map. I started out going this direction because it provides natural barriers to PC exploration. To the north are the Skaldafjoll, which as subarctic to arctic mountains, present something few prepared high level PCs will easily cross, let alone starting PCs. Of course, the foothills and forests to their south are definitely good adventuring sites.

Mapping this corner first also gives me some ideas about how Alnwich relates back to Northmarch and Usk. It has already become apparent that there is a main road that leads back southeast toward civilization, and there is a full-blown town town around a week or two away.

I'm also starting to see what the edge of civilization looks like in Usk. There are a string of fortified villages that run along the wilderlands' edge in the north and the west. These are largely supported by market villages one to two day's ride away, depending on the sparsity of the local forest. Trails connect these village-forts to each other, and roads connect them to their supporting market villages. this suggests that they can shift resources to support each other as needed, but not very quickly.

We also see that where the forest has been cleared or grows thin, dirt roads tend to replace footpaths and trails and villages tend to be about five miles apart, instead of ten or more. Furthermore, the land tends to be cultivated with small patches of woodland still presenting physical barriers to travel.

I suspect that as one travels deeper into Usk, villages tend to reach their maximum packing density and the map becomes far less interesting from an adventuring standpoint. This also provides a barrier to PCs. If you move into Usk, there are fewer opportunities to get rich, achieve glory, etc. because there just aren't many monsters sitting on hordes of treasure left. So if players want a game of intrigue and cunning, head to Usk. If they want game of exploration, violence, and adventure, head to the wilderlands. And that's exactly the point!

Naming Conventions for Stars, Planets, and Moons

As you all know, I have been working on automating Jon Zeigler's Architect of Worlds system, and I've come to realize recently that I need a nice, coherent naming convention for stars, planets, and moons.

As far as I am aware, the current convention is that individual stars get names A, B, C, etc. in order of mass from most massive to least massive, and planets append a lower-case letter on that based on the size of their obit, from innermost to outermost. In this convention, Earth would be designated Sol c. The second planet around the second most massive star in a binary would be [StarName] B b. I am not aware of any standing convention for naming moons around exoplanets.

I have a couple of issues with this convention. Firstly, it lacks a means by which to address moons. I need that because I will be generating moons. Furthermore, I dislike that both the star and planet are designated by letters. This just sounds weird when said aloud. It will also invariably become the butt of jokes at some point - there are just too many combinations that will elicit a giggles (Planet B-j?). So let's take a look at some alternatives.

Immediately, alternating between letters and numbers for unnamed planets comes to mind. So the third planet around the second star would either be 2-C or B-3. I kind of like keeping the stars designated by letter, so I'm going to opt for the second in this case. Also, that number might be designated by Roman numeral or by Arabic numeral. Using the previous example, we get either B-3 or B-III. Again, I like the latter - mostly because it looks cool.

So now I have a way to deal with stars and planets, but what about moons? Again, we want to avoid repeating what just preceded it because that looks weird and sounds weirder. So the current form is <letter>-<number>. This suggests the next should be a letter. Let's consider that moons are small, so let's make this a lower case letter. Taking the first moon about B-III, we get B-III-a. This is easy to read but in text, it's a little aesthetically lacking. So let's drop that last hyphen. Now we have B-IIIa. That looks good to me.

That covers moons around planets around single stars, but what about planets that orbit entire binaries...or trinaries...or quaternaries? I suggest the letter grouping for the cluster being orbited be used in the first spot. So a planet orbiting a binary would start with 'AB', and one orbiting the second binary in a quaternary would be 'CD'. If a planet orbits an entire trinary, it'd start with 'ABC'.

With this, we can describe any planet, moon, or star in a star system, and at a glance, know the basic nature of its orbit. I think that's a good start for now.

Automating Architect of Worlds

I've been using the Architect of Worlds system as a small side project to get some extra experience doing non-numerical-solving things in Python, and I am up to Step Eight of the Star System Creation bit. So far, its going amoothly, but I think I'm reaching a point where I need to sort out how to handle all the data being generated.

I'm currently thinking that I'd like some sort of parent-child structure so moons belong to their planets, and planets belong to their primaries, which in turn belong to their systems. I've never had to do this sort of data handling before, so this will be a good learning experience.

I'm also hoping to round out the sequence by generating as much of the non-gaming-information available on a typical Wikipedia page as possible - stuff like flattening, surface area, etc. Ultimately, I'd love for this to output a database I can keep in Access and use to generate pretty system reports for players with a couple of button clicks. I have no idea if I can pull that off, but I'll definitely learn a lot trying.

Architect of Worlds PDFs

Today I have a quick update on Architect of Worlds, Jon Zeigler's update to the star and planet generation system from GURPS Space. He has been posting individual steps for some time now and has covered how to create star systems and planets, thus far. He also has announced plans to post the remainder of the core system this year. But this isn't new stuff.

What's new is he has created a dedicated page with PDFs of the entire process that he plans on keeping up to date. This will make using the system much easier to use. So without further ado, here is a link to the new Architect of Worlds page.

Monster Lists & Mapping

As everyone who has read this blog for any time knows, my system of choice is GURPS, mostly out of laziness. Yes laziness. GURPS can handle any play style and genre pretty well, even if specialized systems might potentially outshine it on a case-by-case scenario. So what that means for me is that, while I might not get optimal performance for each genre I enjoy, I only need to know one system. That is valuable to me. It doesn't hurt that GURPS handles my two favorite genres pretty well, too!

This post isn't a plug for GURPS, though, so I'll get to the point. I use GURPS. I am lazy. These are sometimes at odds. GURPS does not have a dedicated bestiary in the way that Dungeons & Dragons does. There's no single book I can open and get my hands on hundreds of premade monsters. Sure, Dungeon Fantasy has four books of monsters, now, and I use them, but two are toolkits for making specific types of monsters - oozes and dragons, and the other two have 60 monsters combined, at most. My point here is that as a GM, if I want monsters, I very regularly have to make them myself.

Of course, I've been doing this for a while and have my own repository of monsters at this point. I've even posted some of them on this blog. So that helps, but that doesn't mean I always have the monsters I need on hand when I start placing them on maps. So this is what I do.

As I map, I jot down notes of what goes where and keep a running list of every monster I've placed. This includes different flavors - e.g., Goblin Archer, Goblin Mook, Goblin Priest, Goblin Fighter, Goblin Kamikaze (don't ask), etc. I also jot down monsters with affix combinations - e.g., Possessed Berserk Killer Minotaur of the Juggernaut and such. Some of these will eventually turn into monsters in and of themselves. Lastly, I jot down any monsters that might be traps or traps that might be monsters. Sometimes there are gray areas.

This list becomes my To Do List for monster creation. Anything that doesn't come in flavors or with affixes are just base monsters. Those that have flavors get a base monster and then flavors built on those base monsters. The same goes for monsters with affixes. Finally, those that blur the lines with traps get a final sorting at this stage, and those that make the monster cut get statted. Usually, inspiration or tangents grab me during this process and spawn a few other monsters for the ever-growing folder of That-Which-Paper-Men-Were-Not-Meant-to-Survive.

So if you're mapping and have an idea for a monster, jot it down on a list. Keep that list handy. It's nice to know what's in your dungeon or wilderness area. It's also nice to have a ready-made list of stuff to do when you find some down time.

Map of the Region around Alnwich

As promised here is a hex map of the area around Alnwich. It uses 5-mile hexes and has all of the major geographic features and points of interest mentioned so far. I'll start dropping interesting locations, next, and cataloging those in a database. After that, it will be time to start rolling randomly.

It's worth noting that I will likely steal profusely from my favorite published material for "interesting locations". So expect Caverns of Thracia and the Dark Tower to make an appearance somewhere., and I'll probably do my own spin on the Demonweb Pits and Tomb of Horrors, too. That said, this map will likely be lair-heavy, owning to the extensive wilderness areas.

And on one last side note, I haven't really placed any rivers yet because the Trollenmere specifically lacks any inflows or outflows. As I map out more of the Skaldafoll or other elevated regions, I'll start drawing them. After all, rivers flow downhill, and until I know where that is, there's no point in starting!