D66 Maps & Havencraft

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This almost certainly has already been figured out by someone else, but here goes: D66 is really handy to index a radial hexmap, so long as it has a radius of 3 from the center. Then you can use a hex stocking procedure but—instead of rolling for the content of each hex—calculate how many features of each type are likely to be there, and roll their coordinates for each individual instance. If you use Luke Gearing’s, for example, that’s: six settlements, six lairs, and six weird spots. And later, you can use the indices to roll for locations of events or rumors! Elmcat told me he did something like this for his Mythic Bastionland campaign, except he used 2D12 to index along horizontal and vertical axes. Not sure if that’s native to the game, but it’s also cool!

But I think this could also help me out with difficulties I’ve been having with maps in my own home campaign.

Region Generation

I’ve been using an upside-down map of the Caribbean this entire time. I just don’t have a good map-drawing brain. But, this way gives me a quick way to generate maps, as well as index them, since we’re often plopping down new points of interest. I rolled D66 twelve times and drew land on each hex rolled (as well as on the unindexed center hex, which I’m treating as the base island). Do the names and physical locations still correspond with the original islands from which they’re inspired? Not anymore, but this still feels more useful for me than whatever I had going on previously. Now I can more easily randomly select a hex for events or rumors.

One may ask: why not just roll for 2-in-6 on each hex, besides that resulting in potentially more or less land hexes than 12? No reason: I just like having a controlled number.

Island Generation

I’m not usually a fan of nesting hexes, but I’ve been introducing base-building aspects to the campaign and this method makes it really easy for me to zoom into a macro hex, and elaborate on its contents so players can decide how to transform the island (or section of an island). A hex here is land by default, and then I roll D66 twelve times again: if a set of hexes touches the edge, it becomes coast; otherwise, they turn into mountains. Only land can be built upon—duh, I guess—so having a map like this lends the base minigame some verisimilitude, and could even introduce challenges if certain buildings require adjacency.

Havencraft Sketching

In my campaign, building havens is how you recruit lackeys into your service. Each unit of treasure you spend lets you construct one building on the island. I'm going to make it so each lackey needs a house, still costing 1 treasure to build or relocate (and presumably, the treasure should be something attractive to the lackey). Each lackey has (or starts with) a total ability bonus of +6, split between a +4 major ability and a +2 minor ability; now, I'd like to introduce advancement for them.

I see two ways of going about this: maybe just constructing a building they want will increase their level by +1, resulting in +1 to any ability of the governor's choice. Or... maybe specific buildings can provide boosts to specific abilities, such as blacksmiths boosting combat or libraries boosting magic—for both lackeys as well as for players who live in adjacent houses. The latter feels attractive to me because it ties havencraft directly to character advancement, but then (as such) it makes experience levels obsolete. Not a bad thing! Just wide-reaching and a departure from typical D&D fare. Simultaneously, I don't think I have any friends who don't play either the Sims or Minecraft, and I think this scratches both those itches. I'm hesitant but very excited to give both approaches a try eventually.

I may also have to think then about not just allowing 1 building to be constructed per 1 treasure invested... I guess at least there's still the limitation that you can only construct 1 building per downtime period, and there's still other downtime activities like research or partying, but I still need something like a money sink to replace the increasing costs of leveling up. Maybe lackeys need a salary.

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