Filling in the map (Mini Campaign post #2)

Last post was just the delaration of the start for buildign a mini-campaign. The whole idea is to not over do it but even minimalist design has some sort of process. I'm going to let seat fo mey pants random rolls based decisions guide my way.

Now let’s setup the terrain. I want to have a fairly typical temperate-like area. We’re going to have mountains, hills, forests, swamps, water, and open terrain.  If we didi each hex with a 1 in 6 chance of each terrain we could populate the map that way. I want to used a few simple rules to give the map a “look” and I’ll role for each terrain a certain number of times to generate the map with a pattern for each type.

Let’s do mountains first.  I don’t want the whole map covered in mountains but I want  them to look okay when I do so. I’m going to roll 6 times to place mountains, each mountain roll is going to place 3 mountain hexes in the hex rolled, one under it and one to the north east.

Here are the rolls: 6-2, 6-5, 10-5, 2-3, 6-6, 7-1, i.m going to slap down a pattern of M’s at those locations.

Due to edges and overlapping we get 12 of our 60 hexes with mountains. I can already spot an important area on the map.

Next let's  put in water, this could be lakes, oceans,  or rivers so  it can overlap with anything at thus stage. Let’s make each water roll be 2 hexes the one rolled and the one southwest of it. I’m going to roll 12 times which could put a water feature in almost half of the hexes on the map.

The rolls: 1-2, 7-2, 8-2, 5-5, 9-4, 4-4, 10-2, 2-2, 3-4, 3-2, 5-4, 2-3. 

With the pattern defined and random rolls resulting in some overlapping we end up with 21 hexes with water, not going to worry about what sort of water yet.

Now we have hills. A hill roll is going to populate the hex rolled , the one to the north and the one to the northwest of the hex rolled with hills. I going to do 10 hill rolls, half the map could in theory end up covered in hills.

The rolls 9-4, 5-3, 7-4, 1-2, 7-2, 1-3, 3-5, 6-1, 1-2, 8-3.

 I ended up with 17 hexes with hills, I let them over lap with water hexes but no overlap with higher mountains.

Next we get forests. Forests are going  to be in the hex rolled and all six surrounding hexes. I’m going to roll 8 time for forest. Technically a lot of the map could get covered in forest but with overlapping that’s not too likely to happen.

The rolls 2-5, 3-6, 6-5, 4-3,4 -4, 5-1, 3-6, 4-5.

 Due to duplicates and overlapping there are 27 hexes with forest.

Let’s slap down a couple swamps. I’m only going with 6 here. Each roll will be the target hex only.

The rolls: 4-3, 5-3, 7-1, 4-4, 10-4, 5-6.

 I let swamp overlap everything but mountains. We have but 5 swamp hexes. Swamps are going to be fairly uncommon by roll and low # of times I chose to roll. Chance has still given us oen large swamp on the map.

I’m not going to roll for clear hexes, anything clear is still clear.

Next post will be castles and villages.