Populating the Mini Campaign Civilization

Last post on the mini-campaign I nailed down where the ruins, dungeons, and other dangerous places were. Let’s now return to civilization and get to “populating” civilization.

Back in post #3 some of the details of the civilization on the map were loosely laid out, we really aren’t going in too much deeper but a few things should get a little attention. The Castle in hex 9-2 is occupied by The Overlord, the castle in 9-4 is occuipied by the wizard Allazar (a former adventuring buddy of The Overlord), in the city we can find a clerical ally of The Overlord, and somewhere out west a thief buddy/henchman hides from the attention of his former allies.

Most of the villages are going to be okay sized places to be worth visiting but not huge. I’m going to go random again and have these villages populated by 200-800 folk.

Each town is going to need 1 or 2  trades as well to make it stand out.

Populations: (pops, trades, high level NPCs)

2-4: 400, miners and goat-herders, 8^th level dwarf fighter

3-2: 700, bowyers and horse dealers, 4^th level Fighter

4-5: 300, barrels and charcoal, 8^th level thief

5-4: 600, Brewers and Amber miners (there’s amber in the swamps), 6^th level cleric, 5 1^st level clerics, 5^th level MU

7-3: 500, Vineyards(wine) and Waterwheels providing a semi-mechanized lumber-mill, 6^th level Fighter

8-3: 400, Barley and Beer, 2^nd level thief

8-4: 500, Copper Mine and an Astrologer, 4^th level MU (not the astrologer)

9-1: 400, Cow-herders and Turnips, 3^rd level fighter

9-3: 2300 (it’s the big town I set it to half the size of the total of all the other villages), Shipyard, Churches, Taverns, 9^th levek Cleric, 8^th level cleric, 2- 3^rd level and 12- 1^st level clerics

9-4: 600, Redsmith and sheep herders, 3^rd level fighter

10-2: 400, Fishers and an oracle, 6^th level thief (retired pirate)

The Castles

9-2: Castle of the Overlord.  The Overlord 11^th level Fighter, 6h level fighter, 4^th level MU, 5^th level cleric, 10- 2^nd  level fighters (all fight as knights), 30- 1^st level fighters (half have crossbows), 100 peasant levy (a draft to keep young dangerous guys in check). The overlord and his knights ride griffons (there are 2 griffons for each knight living here). 144,000 gp worth of loot.

9-4: Allazar’s Keep, 10^th level MU. 3^rd level MU. 12 1^st level fighters (half archers), 20 Hobgoblins, 2 Ogres, and a small red dragon. Allazar has a Roc as his mount. 96,000 gp worth of loot

7-5: The Dark spire, a 6/6 fighter/MU, 30 dark elves, 50 kobolds and other possible monsters. 45,000 gp worth of loot.

5-5: Chateau De’Verde, a 3^rd level fighter rules here as hereditary ruler he resent the overlord but lacks power to deal with him.  6 3^rd level Fighters (knights), 30 0-level archers. 36,000 gp in loot.

1-3:  Morden’s hill fort. A remote outpost ruled by a dangerous 9^th levelfighter, 5- 3^rd level knights, 12- 2^nd level fighters, 20- 1^st level fighters. The master of the fort has a tamed red-dragon that serves as his mount. 68,000 gp in loot.

1-5: Elf Hall, here dwell 100 Elves and their Lady. 20 Pegasus riders among the elves. 40,000 gp in loot.

The castles hold over 400,000 gp in loot. They are  a prime target for thieves and those seeking power. From castle dwellers alone with exp awarded at 100 exp per hd and 1 exp per gp we are looking at a setting with about a half million exp up for grabs and we haven’t gotten to the dungeons yet.

Placing Dungeons, Lairs, and Ruins (mini campaign post #4)

Last post villages and castles were placed on the mini-campaign map and a little deduction was used to make them meaningful for the campaign. I want to populate the castles and the villages but we need to know what evil lurks out there also. Time to place dungeons, lairs, and ruins. I’m going to do them as one thing for now and decide what they will become as I go.

So far in 60 hexes we have 10 villages, a city, and six castles.  

In placing lairs, ruins, and dungeons I’m going to do things differently from before. I’m going to check every hex with a d6 roll, on a 1 or a 2 we have a lair,ruin, or dungeon. What the location becomes will depend on what is nearby.

Now for a little quick deduction based on location.

1-3 is in the same hex as a castle, this one will be a ruin.

1-6 if off in a forest, prime placement for a lair.

2-2 is out in the open, a ruin.

2-5 is Is in the woods, some walking to, it shall be a dungeon.

3-3 is a good spot for a dungeon

3-6 shall be a lair.

4-3 is a good spot for a ruin, this will be a big one I think maybe a city of the ancient occupants of the region, mostly looted but with some remaining secrets.

4-4 is a cool spot for a lair even better as a bandit camp, so it shall be.

4-5 has  village in the same hex, let’s make this a ruin, maybe an old burial site.

5-2 is out of the way , some hills and forest, we’ve got an intact dungeon.

5-3 we’ve got a neighboring dungeon and ruin, this shall be a lair.

6-1 a lair or maybe a rebel camp…yes it shall be a rebel camp.

6-4 is a mostly looted dungeon, pillaged years back.

7-1 is just begging to be a dungeon, looted years ago by the overlord and his companions but is being slowly repopulated by goblins and worse.

7-3  A ruined castle of the old regime.

7-4 a dragon sleeps here.

7-5 a  forested mountain with a castle is here and so is a classical dungeon under the castle.

8-2 an empty dungeon sometimes used by thieves, smugglers, or cultists

8-3 a buried treasure is secreted in this forgotten tower of the old regime.

9-6 a remote ruin, sacked years back by the overlord but still has some goodies to grab and curious residents.

The campaign map so far.

Placing Civilization (Mini Campaign Post #3)

I prettied up the map a very little bit by changing all those letters into simple icons and figuring out which water hexes were rivers and which were lakes based on  location.  I moved the swamp from hex 10,4 to hex 10,3 to put it next to the water. 9,3 and 9,4 are going to be a bay of a sea instead of a lake also , I’ll just show it going off the map.

Next we need civilization. Let’s represent that with villages and castles. Lets put in a dozen villages and six castles.  They can be anywhere as we aren’  sure what the local population will be, the placement of settlements might impact that decision.

Where are the villages:  7-3, 4-6, 9-5, 9-1, 2-4, 3-1, 9-3, 9-3, 6-3, 10-4, 10-2, 8-3.

 I’m going to push them towards the nearest water some will end up in different hexes. 

I’m cutting down the forest in 5.4 and moving a village into that hex. 

By dumb lick we have 2 villages in the same hex with rivers and the bay… it’s going to be the only big town/city on the map.

Now six castles. 1-5, 9-4, 5-5, 1-3, 7-5, 9-2. 

The castle in 9-2 looks like it may be important being near the city and so many villages. 9-4 could be a subject or enemy of the lord in 9-2. 7.5 is out of the way probably occupied by a weirdo lord or non-humans. 5-5 looks good for the lord of the villages in 4-5 and 5-4.  1-3 and 1-5 have castles not close to all that much, the village in 2,4 likely isn’t ruled by either being up and secluded like it is.

From random placement of features I’m getting a feel for who is where and what is happening in the mini campaign.

 The castle in hex 9-2 is occupied by The Overlord, he and a band of companions (along with an army) conquered the domain about a decade ago. 

Castle 9-4 is occupied by the wizard Allazar (one of the overlord’s former adventuring buddies), The cleric from the old party is an important figure in the city and a former henchman of the Overlord has betrayed the Overlord and is hiding out somewhere in the west of the map.

 There we go a nice setup for the campaign from random rolls and DM inference: an adventuring band has taken over the domain a few years back, some folks would like to reclaim their old property, not all of  The Overlord’s old friends like him much anymore. Any young adventurer can see a number of class based options for future power and we see adventurers do become lords.

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.

Mini Campaign Development

A while back in  the post  “How much campaign do you need?” I discussed just how much is required to have a campaign. I developed a small area with a number of locations, I had a number of towns and several dungeons, an a couple castles all on 4 pages.  There was enough stuff to run a campaign for a goods long time, unfortunately I never got it scanned. I’m going to do it again but this time share it in a number of posts.

First off we need a map. I’m going to be using a 6x10 hex map. I’ll show some planning scribbles on it and update as we go.

When using a hex map you have to consider the scale. I want this to be a “campaign” map so I want some room for a bit of travel but it’s not really going to be about travel since it’s such a compact area.  I’m going to pick 10 mile hexes right out of the blue. 10 mile hexes are good. 

  For this campaign I’m going to say an unencumbered party moving at walking speed can cover 30 miles a day in unchallenging terrain. An encumbered party can only manage 20 miles. If everyone has a horse add 10 miles to those rates. If everyone is dashing along on quick mounts let’s have a top move rate of 60 miles in a day, this will be enough to cross the map in 2 days assuming there isn’t too much challenging terrain, no problems along the way, and the PCs know where they are going. This might be a limiting factor we will want to keep in mind or a special event we’ll want to have in this mini-campaign.

Next post we'll start filling in all that blank space.