Hexcorl

I got bored yesterday and started making a new hexcrawl.  The first thing you have to do when creating a new hex map is figure out how big you want your hexes to be.  Initially I was thinking large--say each hex would represent two days of travel for an unencumbered person walking presuming no obstacles whatsoever.  But that was a little crazy.  I decided to make them six miles on a side and twelve across, or essentially one day's travel for an unencumbered person walking at an easy pace and facing no obstacles.

Next,  I created d6 terrain types, each marked by a symbol.  Then I thought of d8 things to be in hexes and marked each with a certain color.  Then, to determine the path of rivers and roads, I made a chart of d8 directions.   I recorded the three columns on a notecard as shown here:

To spare you the effort of peering at my crimped handwriting, here's what the columns say -

Terrain
1. Temp. Plain (T in a circle)
2. Temp. Marsh/Swamp (T over three squiggly lines)
3. Temp Forest (T between two trees)
4. Temp. Hills (T under a curving line)
5. Temp. Mountains (T under a cone)
6.  Cold Mountains (C under a cone.  Presumably a cold mountains hex represents a massif or table-land which is sufficiently high above the surrounding environs to have its own climate). 

Directions: 1 - N; 2 - NW; 3 - W; 4 - SW; 5 - S; 6 - SE; 7 - E; 8 - NE;

In This Hex
1. Town/Community (fuchsia)
2. Ruin (green)
3. Superpredator (yellow. I define a superpredator as a creature of CR 7 or above which could well dominate at least one hex area.)
4. Magical Wonder (pink)
5. Warzone (red)
6. Fortress (blue)

I began from the lower left hand corner of my paper and worked rightwards by row, eventually filling out 51 hexes (three rows) in this way.  Once this first bunch of rows was completed, I first tried using a "die drop" method employing a d4 to draw in paths/roads, as suggested at excellent blog, The Retired Adventurer.  This didn't go too well because the hexes made by my printer turned out to be much too small so after producing some truly ugly and bizarre pathways I settled on rolling a d8 for singular direction for roads and then streams.  Essentially once I had a next direction I just drew the river flowing into the next hex over in a way that looked, I dunno, good.  Where the rivers doubled back, I filled in the space with a lake.

So here's what the thing looks like -

Obviously, The Thing In The Hex is not literally where I marked it with a dot.  However the lakes and rivers will hew to those shapes. 

What you might notice right away, beginning from the left, is there are a LOT of mountain hexes interspersed with bunches of marsh hexes.  So we have here a very stark landscape with chains of stony vaults, in the rifts of which are reaches of spongy lowland (perhaps brackish lagoons) fed by mighty but rambling rivers. 

Looking back at this horizontal strip of land we see a profusion of Magical Wonders.  My thought with this is there's a thing in the hex that does something weird, like maybe a statue that polymorphs you for 1d6 days or a flock of birds that can foretell the future---off-the-wall, potentially gamechanging stuff you're not going to find in the Core Rulebook's list of magic items.  Apparently this country has a lot of such things. 

Notice, interestingly, the triad of connected communities to the south and east (hexes 12, 13 and 14); two occupy hilly country and the eastmost a plain.  Immediately eastwards of them you have a similar chain of ruins (hexes 15, 16, 17) semicircling some local oddity against the lake (hex 33).    In fact, if you look at where the settlements are they seem to predominate in the eastwards third--hexes 15, 16, 17, 30, 48 and 32 are longitudinally close and hold communities of some form.  To the west, however, we see a dense cloud of active fortifications:  hexes 25, 8, 6, 41, 39, 38, 20, and 35.  Whereas in this western longitude only 18, 2, 5 and 37 contain non-militarized(?) settlements.  A community will probably have some defensive measures and many fortifications may well have a smaller attached community, but the colors show where the emphasis is.

Finally we notice that where we see a ruin, they are always part of some contiguous grouping: hexes 3 and 4; 26, 27, 28, 44 and 45; 15, 16 and 17.  Of course they may be part of some linked chain of ruins or not.  It is interesting how the largest grouping of ruins occupies the center of this latitudinal strip of land. 

So we have a region, starkly divided between mountains and lowlands, festooned with unique and probably dangerous magical oddities, with a cluster of sagging ruins at its center, lots of fortified/militarized little communities with some marginal areas of peaceful settlement and dotted with a few hot spots of currently active warfare.   And three, count 'em three, giant monsters everybody tries to stay clear of.  Honestly it's cray cray how well this worked out.

Time to Brainstorm
So the rote part of our hexmap is done and now it's time to pick my own brain and come up with some stuff. Each of my categories needs a broad list of things I can roll for randomly to see which of those is in the hex.

 1d10 Superpredators (must be CR 7+)
1. Really Tough-Ass Manticore
2. Wyvern
3. Nymph (I'm kind of borrowing Goblin Punch's neat idea of Nymphs as a kind of local menace just through sucking everything in around them with their beauty)
4. Chymera
5. Dire Bear
6. Really Tough Old-Ass Owlbear (I should probably share my headcanon on the lifecycle of owlbears sometime)
7. Androsphinx
8. Dragonne
9. Athach
10. Medusa (I don't remember if I got this idea from Goblin Punch also but in my D&D headcanon Medusas are basically Nymphs That Went Bad)

1d12 Who Rules This Fort?
1. Elflord level 8+1d4. Is (1d3) 1) Fighter-Wizard crossclass type; 2) A cavalier; 3) A Sorcerer with some weird-ass monster ancestry. Rules a small village of hot elves, has a cadre of Extremely Badass Sword-Dancers or Magic-Archers or whatever. Probably under the protection of Giant Eagles. Expect lots of feasting, dancing and snooty remarks.

2. Death Knight, cavalier level 7+1d3. Castle guarded by skellingtons, rules over a dilapidated hamlet of terrorized peasants. Undoubtedly has a tragic backstory.

3. Vampire, cavalier level 7+1d3. As Death Knight but it's way sexier. Probably has a pack of werwolf thugs collecting his taxes.

4. High Priest, Cleric lvl 9+1d4. This dude is undoubtedly only in his fort long enough to gear up for his next crusade and he's probably looking for donations.

5. Courteous Baron. Fighter level 9+1d4. Totally a straight-up dude.

6. Robber Baron. Fighter level 9+1d4. Will shake travelers down for all they've got, generous with handing out stints in the oubliette.

7. Paladin. Level 8+1d6. Undoubtedly just on his way to go take care of something in some other hex. If PCs are susceptible to moral guilt they will probably end up as his new followers.

8. Ranger (or maybe Inquisitor) cadre. This fort is the headquarters of some kind of specialized monster-hunter society and they're looking for MEN OF TALENT to go scout out some other hex for them.

9. Cadre of Thieves. This castle has been bought or leased by the Thieves' Guild and is being used as an innocuous base of operations (because who would think the Thieves would operate IN PLAIN SIGHT???) Leadership is a committee 1d4+2 Rogues of level 4+1d3; at least one will be a fighter crossclass. They are undoubtedly plotting a raid on some castle or town nearby, able to scope their target just fine from their TOTALLY LEGITIMATE fortress that they LEGIT BOUGHT and DON'T LOOK IN THE PANTRY THERE'S NOTHING THERE I DON'T KNOW WHO THAT DEAD GUY IS

10. Archmage. This castle is the domicile of an archmage (Wizard lvl 10+1d6). He does not want to be disturbed and his robot guards will be showing you the way out. Alternatively (1d3) 1. Sorcerer; 2. Summoner; 3. Alchemist.

11. Tax Farmer. The guy who lives in this castle and collects rent from the little hamlet around it is not a military dude. He has like 7+1d3 levels in Aristocrat or Expert and some decent political connections.

12. Brigand Lord. Not that different from a Robber Baron except this guy doesn't have the support of the Count/King/Whatever. Technically he is fair game to get steamrolled by the first people to roll up to his door but he has enough men/local support/is a huge enough hardass to make it a tough undertaking. Probably a fighter or cavalier lvl 8+1d6.

1d8 Magical Wonders Brainstormery Prompts
1. Magical statue
2. Giant crystalline formation
3. Magic well
4. Magical creature(s)
5. Peaceful/blessed cemetary
6. Magical plant(s)
7. Hallowed ancient battlefield
8. Disused/ruined magical device (like an arcanotech steampump or something)

You'll notice none of the ruins are anything inimically hostile like ACCURSED CEMETERY THAT SPAWNS INFINITE GHOULS or something LotFP-y like that. If you've read enough by me, by now you know that's not the vibe I go for.

1d12 Ruin Origins
1. Giant/Cyclopean
2. Elven (type based on terrain)
3. Dwarf
4. Destroyed human fortress
5. Destroyed human temple
6. Raided Wizard's Seclusium
7. Fey Ruins
8. Druidical Ruins
9. Snakemen Ruins
10. Ruined purpose-built arcane complex (like a transplanar airport or something)
11. Ruined Evil Humanoid temple
12. Ruined Horde of Tiamat Spawning-Palace

1d10 Town/Community Races
This place is inhabited by...
1. Mens
2. Elfs (type by terrain) (Plains, Hills = High; Forest = Forest; Marsh = Wild; Mountains = Grey)
3. Dorfs (type by terrain) (Forest, Plains, Marsh = Reroll race; Hills = Hill; Mountains = Mountain
4. Catmans (1d2: 1. Elder Scrolls style; 2. Thundercats style)
5. Crowmans
6. Illumians
7. Gnomes (type by terrain) (Plains, Marsh = Reroll; Mountains, Hills = Rock, Forest = Forest)
8. Hobbits (never bought into the halfling subraces)
9. Dragonmans
10. Monstermen (Marsh or adj. body of water = Locathah; Mountains = Aaracokra; Plains = Centaurs; Forest = Nycter)
-NOTE: Roll a d100 for each community.  If you got 50 or under it's just humans. 

With this list of items for fleshing out each hex, there remains the final thing of course: DUNGEONS. I will go with a 25% chance each hex may hold a dungeon.

NEXT -  We flesh this out, beginning with hex 1 (but definitely not ending with hex 51)

More About the Purple Plains/Thunderfolk

Items in No Order
1) The Purple Plains stretch about 720 miles East to West and average about a fifth of that distance North to South.  I derived this distance starting with the assumption that, on average, a herd of Ghost Cattle migrates about eight miles in a day.  Their leisurely transit between the East and West poles of the grasslands occupies about 180 days of the year.  8 x 180 = 1,440 miles round trip, meaning the crossing from West to East should cover about 720 miles.

2) The Thunderfolk are seminomadic.  They essentially roam around in a closed circuit, with regular stops that are more like seasonally-occupied homes than temporary campsites.  In fact, these "stations" all have little communities that live there permanently, though the vast majority of the Thunderfolk bands are continually passing through.

3)  The Thunderfolk hunt the Ghost Cattle/Phase-Oxen, but leave the bovine herds offerings of milk, almonds, sweet-grass and occasionally even sugar (must be imported from the far south, very precious).  They do this by placing the offering in a great bowl ahead of the herd's path and backing far enough away to remain in sight while looking non-aggressive.  The beasts are allowed to come on and eat the offering in the sight of the officiant.  The cattle never see dismounted Thunderfolk (or by extension, other humanoids) as a threat (although they may expect offerings), and as long as you avoid the herd's bull you can walk among them quite safely. 

4) Thunderfolk hunt via archery, using recurved oxhorn-and-oak composite bows from knolls 60-100 yards away (obviously, the greater the distance at which you hit your mark the more plaudits you win, and Thunderfolk men set great store by the range at which they can hit a target).  This is far enough away that the cattle will not even realize they are being hunted.  It is extremely important to shoot the ox or cow behind the breast-bone or in the neck and kill the beast instantly, and in this way the Ghost Cattle never see mankind as predators and so never use their phasing ability to escape them.  The Thunderfolk believe that a sloppy archer who must shoot multiple times to make a kill risks disabusing the Ghost Cattle of the truth of their true relationship to Man.

5)  The Thunderfolk, as mentioned previously, are so pale that in places their skin shades into a faint blue.  Their eyes are blue or hazel, and their hair is a near-platinum or golden blonde.  Men and women alike dread their hair and tie the dreadlocks into plates or knots in various styles, often held in place with bronze or bone tubes.  The thickness of their long hair is the first protection of their pale flesh against the harsh sun of the Purple Plains.  Almost all of them wear thick leather mantles or hoods, a few of the richer ones wearing cloaks/serapes of interwoven thick white Ghost Cattle fur, and wound about face and neck on a hot day they will wear whatever linens they can.

6)  Although still hairy in Spring to Summer, it's in Autumn to Winter that the Ghost Cattle's coats of long fine white hair begins to grow truly shaggy and enormous.  By February the enormous coats trail to the ground.  

7) Here are the things you can be in Thunderfolk society:

Patriarch
Priest/Elder
Smith
Saddler
Horse trainer/breeder
Midwife
Weaver
Carver (of bone, wood, etc.)

Weavers, Carvers, Smiths and Saddlers occupy the otherwise almost-empty permanent settlements along the circuit of the Thunderfolk's migrations.  Saddlers are actually generalized tanners/leather-workers but saddles are the most prestigious objects they can make.  The Thunderfolk make saddles as fine as any more materially elaborate civilization, in styles suitable for riding, fighting and pack-bearing.

Weavers actually weave great blankets, cloaks, mantillas or serapes out of the Ghost-Cattle's long white fur.  That's all they do, and it's an extremely prestigious and important position.  These half naked dudes in their hide tents patiently knitting for 14 hours a day have the prestige of a royal tailor.  The furs aren't even fancy.  It's considered irreligious (or at least gauche) to die one of the Ghost Cattle furs, although they will be decorated with attached horns or extra bone pins.

Midwives are also generalists who help women to give birth and horses to foal.  They travel from band to band and even if their services aren't needed it's a good idea to pay one a bowl of fermented mare's milk whenever you see her.  

Horse trainers are like midwives although sometimes they might stay with a band for as long as a year or two years, breaking and teaching up young horses.  Every Thunderfolk knows something about handling horses but for a particularly willful beast sometimes you need a specialist.

If it has a particular need for a midwife or a horse trainer, a band can leave word with other bands they pass on the plains.  Invariably the word will get out to the nearest professional.

Smiths usually just make ornaments, often incorporating precious stones, bones, and bits of glass (natural or traded for) into elaborate armlets, rings, plugs, necklaces etc.  They have very little access to iron; what's found in the Purple Plains naturally is copper and tin, so the smiths produce bronze with a great degree of skill.  (There are a few mining communities of Thunderfolk.  They are basically untouchables and otherwise not worth mentioning).  The best smiths make bronze swords like this:

 Yes, technically Iron Age I know.

The Thunderfolk call these blades "Horse-Swords," and they are the primary preferred weapon for raids and duels (of course Thunderfolk bands raid each other, just never in the scattered towns.  What happens on the plains stays on the plains).  When two Thunderfolken duel, the gentlemanly way to do it is to ride at each other on their best horses and slash at each other on the pass with their Horse-Swords.  Yes, lances and spears are technically the better weapons, but you know what's better than those?  Composite bows, and every Thunderfolk has one of those.  If the Thunderfolk ever get into a real conflict with outsiders it's time for bows and steel mail; for everything else there's Horse-Swords.   

Apprentice carvers make poles, planks and whatever else the Thunderfolk need in bulk.  Buxus sempervirens and quercus robur are strong hardwoods and very common on the Purple Plains. These are usually bought up by traveling bands by the bundle for tentpoles, planting, cooking spits and whatever else.  Bowyers are a highly specialized and elite order within this group.

Patriarchs are simply the leader of a Thunderfolk Band.  I probably need to think up a better name for this but I don't like "chief" or "jarl."  Bands can be as small as a family of 4-6 or a unit of several families with 36 adults.* The Patriarch is always the toughest dude and has at least 2 HD (or at least two class levels, for 3rd Ed+).  Patriarchs are almost always between the ages of 25 and 45.  Richer Patriarchs (at least three families in their band) will always have a steel sword and a mailshirt.  Steel swords and mailshirts are considered redolent of wealth and authority.  A mailshirt will be crudely mended as necessary and passed down in a Band for generations, while a steel sword will always be buried with its owner. 

*Incidentally, every adult Thunderfolk of the migrant bands who isn't a child, elder or pathetically poor owns at least two horses and a packbeast, often a pony.  So in a band of 36 adult, non-elder Thunderfolk that's a herd of 108 equines.  The noise that herd makes crossing the Purple Plains is the actual reason they are called Thunderfolk, not the first thing I thought of with the cow-horns.  Horns don't even sound like thunder, what was I thinking with that first idea? 

After the age of 45-50, a Thunderfolk is considered an Elder, and all Elders are Priests.  Priests interpret dreams and omens, prepare poultices and medicines, occasionally cook, and are considered the moral center of Thunderfolk society.  There is no requirement for this position other than aging into it (and likewise once one is old, no escaping it).  The Priest(s) of a Thunderfolk Band are councilor, apothecary, psychologist and judge all rolled into one.

8) Thunderfolk don't believe in an afterlife.  They believe that the mind remains within the body of the deceased person for a time, dreaming and insensate, until the decay reaches a certain point and consciousness dissipates.  The origin of this strange belief may be skewed perceptions of the Raise Dead and Speak With Dead spells.   A dead Thunderfolk will be buried in their finest garments with a few choice items, perhaps a finely carved horn or favorite bronze necklace.  There is no shroud or box; rather, the deceased is arranged seated with legs-crossed and stitched so as to stay in that position. They are buried sitting upright, at the bottom of a narrow pit.  If the deceased owned a steel sword, that will be laid across their lap.  In this dignified final posture they are interred. 

More on the Purple Plains

I see now that I made a mistake rolling on the "wet" column for landmarks in a grassland terrain, but I think I can still make it all work.

Baker's Pool - Actually a lake, long and kidney-shaped with the concave bank facing East.  The north end terminates in a high promontory-cliff of dusty sandstone, in the escarpments of which sprout many examples of opuntia chlorotica and towering carnegiea gigantea from which it takes the name "cape cactus."  The north side of the escarpment is difficult to approach, with many protruding and strange sandstone monoliths.

 Baker's Pool flows out of caves at the foot of the cliff, and as one proceeds south a little more than a mile it grows shallower, the water more still and fetid.  It is the single greatest watering hole known to the Ghost Cattle (only persnickety scholars insist on the name Phase-Oxen), although they must pass through dangerous stands of box elder and hardy juniper where the Canopy Owls lurk in bands.  By the lake's eastern shore they mate, and their annual migration makes Baker's Pool one of the termination points of the Thunderfolk's wandering circuit.  A small permanent community of Thunderfolk is built up on the west shore mainly  consisting of a dozen smithies, giving it the name of Iron Town (although most native metal produced by the Thunderfolk are bronze alloy, as the Purple Plains have a few seams of copper and tin but very little iron.  Any steel items owned by a Thunderfolk band will have been traded for, but they make many ornaments, harness bits, and nails from bronze, as well as the sharp, curved swords they call Horse-Cutters).