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Post by The1True on Jul 29, 2019 18:08:01 GMT
Task G/J. I <3 a good hex map!
What are the Wastes? How wide are the Wastes? What scale are we mapping at? What's the climate like? What sort of features can be found in the Wastes? What kind of native flora/fauna?
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Post by The1True on Jul 29, 2019 18:27:27 GMT
What are the Wastes: An area of magical badlands bounded by mountains per this post. These badlands are the result of the antediluvian death of an ocean deity per this post. How wide are the Wastes/what scale: IMHO the wastes are enormous, stretching out past our initial horseshoe map, but our immediate playing area should put everything 1, maybe 2 days travel max, as the bird flies, away from everything else. Difficult terrain and geographic obstacles will stretch this out for low level characters stuck on the ground, but as characters advance, it will allow for less tedious transit between rest and adventure. I would like to go with 1 mi hexes that allow for meaningful exploration. The Wastes should be interesting. Climate: Temperate-Arid. Water is a problem in this region. I'd like to move those Frogs away from the muddy swamp/jungle trope and more towards the arid-alpine theme I've been reading here... What features: Let's go to town here. I'd like to fill these hexes up with weird, explorable, interactive stuff! A god died and we're walking around in its blighted, enchanted carcass! I want razor-rock forests and bizarre geological features, planes of carnivorous grass and rolling rocks, strange environmental effects and uncanny weather events. What kind of native flora/fauna: I don't want to invent an eco-system, but things should be hostile here. Low-level hostile. But definitely PC's should feel like things are against them; like if they sit still for too long, the Wastes are going to devour them.
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Post by The1True on Jul 29, 2019 18:42:59 GMT
Plain of Carnivorous Grass. I have this image of this plain of waving grass where the grass caresses at first, then tickles, then cuts and slashes and finally entangles and engulfs. It's a slow build-up over the course of an adventure day. The plain is an enormous entity, fighting it is hopeless. The grass can be cut back but that doesn't hold it back for long. The area needs to be escaped. Scurrying from boulder to boulder works for a time. Burning it starts an uncontrolled wildfire with a quick mini-game rules set to escape the maze of roaring flames and smoke. In the depths of the conflagration something towering and toothy emerges from the earth, bellowing its joy and agony. It needs fire to grow... PC's lost in (or not fleeing) the flames find themselves facing the God of the Grass as she absorbs the flames, transforming the fields around herself into lavagrass*.
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Post by The1True on Jul 29, 2019 18:53:40 GMT
Oceanic Effects: Psychic ripples from a distant era suffuse the characters passing through this region: Sea Sickness; the dunes under foot seem to bob and lurch, disturbing your equilibrium. Nausea. Pressure; the crushing force of impossible depths drives the air from your lungs and grinds your bones. Slowed. Thermocline; a sudden steep dropoff in temperature numbs body and senses. Hypothermia. Current; an invisible current drives you inexorably towards one direction. Movement effects.
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Post by DangerousPuhson on Jul 29, 2019 19:02:53 GMT
What are the Wastes: I agree with True, and what we've got so far. Let's formalize it, shall we?
How wide are the Wastes? What scale are we mapping at?: I have no specific opinion on this. Again, True's suggestion sounds fine to me.
Climate: Works for me. Like a desert, but dust instead of sand. Maybe the dust has some weird property, and then we find out it's actually ash from the dead god's corpse or something. The random encounter table should be peppered with weather hazards (dust storm, dirt devil twisters, sinkholes, obscene heat wave, lightning storms without any rain). Frogs should definitely be alpine; they hang around at the mountain base, but some have been forced to relocate to the badlands because of BEG.
Features: Weird hexes are what make for good hexcrawls, so I agree. Nobody wants twenty hexes of empty dust. Forests should be harsh, filled with petrified trees and cacti that hold little water. Spots of random sinkholes, fast-drifting dunes, and deceptively deep dust pits. A giant psychic snail that hosts a mirage community, which it sustains in order to eat the dreams anyone that sleeps within its borders. Angry briar patches and man-eating grass (I like that idea True). Plains so hot that the dust has turned molten. Dry riverbeds pockmarked with old bandit hideouts. But also there should be good spots: fungal forests that pick up and move at dawn like tumbleweeds, a solitary patch of inexplicable and welcome coldness, an hidden oasis at the bottom of a crater, a hill with weird magnetic properties where everything floats a foot off the ground, a geyser that consistently erupts once every full moon and draws animal migrations from all around, and of course Vanished structures with unknown purposes.
Flora/Fauna: Harsh things for sure. Prey should be slow and energy conserving, but really hard to kill (tortoises with steel-hard shells, lizards that can split into two smaller lizards when attacked, spiny gerbils that explode in a cloud of quills). Predators should be mostly cunning, ambush predators to conserve energy (ooze that looks like a patch of wet dust, giant antlion pits and trapdoor spiders, birds that cast no shadow and appear invisible from below). There should also be a couple mobile apex predators stalking certain territories, with rumors about where they've been spotted and how to avoid them (re-skinned t-rexes/bulettes/purple worms). Plants should be deficient in nutrients and thorny or toxic (cacti and brambles and thin trees with shitty sour fruits and such), but every once and a while the players come across a sort of waterless-oasis with plants that are edible and healthy (along with all the animals attracted to such sites).
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Post by The1True on Jul 29, 2019 19:14:26 GMT
Marauders of the Wastes:
A group of particularly well-equipped brigands led by a level headed old veteran who frequently defers to a haughty younger officer. -They are the young heir to a distant empire and his royal guard who have fled a palace coup. He is worth a substantial bounty. He caused a stir at the Obelisk recently claiming that he was their God-Emperor, instantly creating several cults in the process. Interestingly he has begun manifesting uncanny powers since then. His guard captain is resorting to brigandage for survival and beginning to regret his oaths.
A mob of weakened Demons from beyond the maze. -They're starving and desperate but wounded/weakened and cowardly. They are being hunted by something far far worse.
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Post by The1True on Aug 2, 2019 1:49:25 GMT
Weird Mounts of the Wastes: Giant Dire Chinchillas - slower, but they climb. (They can climb right? I'm too lazy to do my due diligence right now...) War Llamas - yes Giant Iguanas - awesome but they eat inconvenient things (henchmen, key NPC's you were in the middle of negotiating with, other players' mounts etc...) Giant semi-flightless Birds - they can do short flying hops over/across major obstacles Waste Leviathan - like a Bulette but a mammal. They burrow half in, half out of the blighted soil. The big ones can carry a palanquin on their backs. Broncopedes - Huge Centipedes treat most terrain as flat but can't travel icy terrain. Extremely difficult to ride. Anything else?
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Post by The1True on Aug 2, 2019 1:54:39 GMT
Corduroy Land: Several hexes of deeply rutted land. The receding seas followed numerous criss-crossing channels which continued to erode and then solidify over the eons leaving a landscape of deep trenches. Conventional travel is extremely difficult off the many-shoddily-bridged trade-ways. Dangerous creatures and criminals shelter in the shade of the trenches following paths only they know to ambush the unwary.
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Post by The1True on Aug 5, 2019 2:26:25 GMT
Salt Gorgon: 'Swims' through the shallow soil of the Salt Flats. Its breath turns flesh to pillars of salt. Its body soaks the cracked soil of the flats allowing it to slither quickly through the muck. -This moistening effect melts the salt pillars forever dissolving the transformed creature. -You can tell you have entered its hunting ground by the lonely pillars of salt dotting the landscape. --You can tell the creature us nearby when the cracked salt-pan becomes unstable and moist beneath your feet...
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Post by DangerousPuhson on Aug 6, 2019 15:37:44 GMT
Mirage Mimic:
A lone structure or landmark (a saloon, a bathing oasis, or a tea salon) stands out in the dusts, seemingly buzzing with activity. On approach, groups hear voices and laughing and songs and other jovial sounds - this is akin to a background noise that permeates the establishment, but has no definitive origin. People are hanging around outside and mingling on the balconies, swimming in cool waters, or sipping teas on the front patio or whatever - they watch the party approach but nothing more than smile if addressed. Inside the scene is the same; background jovialities with no origin, people pantomiming interactions but unable to actually communicate with the party. But then, once inside, it's too late. The door to the place vanishes behind the group. The people and contents phase away. The background noise turns into a high pitched, debilitating squeal which threatens to deafen the party and render them unconscious for digestion.
The creature itself is a large, flat square of flesh buried under the dust for camouflage. It uses a psychic illusion to lure prey onto it, where it knocks them out and then curls around them for consumption.
Bone Harpies:
Hunched bipedal creatures with tattered wings, caged in an exoskeleton made from the bones of a colossal fish (there should be a few such skeletons in the wastes, alluding to the "this area used to be underwater" premise). Like regular harpies, the lure with a song and attack. They are fond of setting punji stick booby traps or luring victims into giant antlion pits. They're also total jerks, pelting and harassing a group constantly from a position high above in the sky.
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Post by The1True on Aug 7, 2019 18:05:03 GMT
Love the Bone Harpies in particular since I was thinking of an area called
The Fossil Flats: A miles-wide area littered with hills and bizarre constructions of fossilized bones like a mass die-off occurred here and only recently has the strata of ages begun to wear away. I was still trying to think of what to put here other than:
The Fossil Colossus: Anguished Spirit of the Fossil Flats
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Post by The1True on Aug 13, 2019 16:43:41 GMT
Update 1: The Map; Broad Strokes I generated several maps, dicked around with them and mooshed them down to flat colours so we could look at the Wastes/Hills/Mountains distribution. I picked the two with the most divergent patterns and present them here before moving on to the next steps: This one has a bit more rugged terrain contained inside the bowl of the Wastes. This serves to slow or even hamper movement in certain directions suggesting potential interesting choke points and avenues for trade and other regular travel. All of it would be badlands to one degree or another, but the conventional dusty, wide plains are mostly in the north, with some smaller, isolated flats to the south. I can almost visualize this like a very wide dungeon map and maybe that's what makes me partial to it? This one has more wide flat area to it. There are hills, but fewer treacherous peaks preventing travel. Here, choosing to go around hills would be more a decision of speed rather than danger and obstacle avoidance. There are a good four discrete areas of wasteland plains here which each could have their own set of characteristics, rumours, reputed dangers - Clear adventuring areas which could be given recognizable challenge ratings so PC's could make an educated guess at what they're headed into when they pass certain landmarks etc. Both of these maps are 30x24 hexes which puts them at about 26x24 mile. That puts the center of the map roughly a half day of travel away from the edges under ideal circumstances (which until PC's find routes/mounts/guides/roads will be never). Lemme know what you think and I'll get to work fleshing one these beasts out and prettying it up!
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Post by DangerousPuhson on Aug 13, 2019 17:20:46 GMT
So grey is mountain, brown is hill and beige is wastes yes?
Could you dapple more hills into the southern half of the map to represent the rift canyons? Or is there an intention to add them as geographical icons to the hexes?
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Post by The1True on Aug 13, 2019 18:55:25 GMT
Yeah, grey is mountains, brown hills, beige plains. It's super simplified just so we can get an idea of where the major paths and spaces are. I will be adding foothills to the surrounding mountains, the Cracks to the south and one-hex features as they pop up. After that there will be another pass as I place the major features based on your earlier diagram and bring the procedural elements together into recognizable biomes or regions.
The colours are in no way final. Just default desert badlands. I'd kind of like to make at least some of the dusty areas a funky colour. Maybe an extremely desaturated turquoise to help that under-the-sea feeling along?
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Post by grutzi on Aug 16, 2019 19:58:37 GMT
The first map seems better to me .. there is just more going on there. While I like the idea of subregions (plains) you spoke of for map 2 I simply like map 1 better ... and theres nothing stoping us from adding subregions there too
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