tetramorph , that sounds interesting, and now you've got me curious to know more about your experiences.
(1) How often do you game in those 5 years (weekly, etc.)?
(2) Are all of the lairs to date placed randomly during play?
(3) How many hexes have lairs now?
(4) What's your accepted cap on lairs-per-hex (if any)?
Cool.
1. First two years was monthly; past three years have been weekly except for holidays/vacations/sick days. We have had as few as 3 to as many as 12 at the table at any one time. Active superheroic level characters: about 6 or 7. Active heroic level characters about the same +2 or 3 more, perhaps. Few normals right now. Three established baronies. One barony on the way. It is clear that there are more to come. Mainly they take over some evil NPC's stronghold.
2. In the main, yes, lairs are placed randomly using the tables -- although I may plan the random encounter in advance of a session so that I can plan it well.
I have all 8 villages/towns planned anywhere from outline to fully (at least for my play style). I have most of the central and one of the southern strongholds figured out. I have most of the central and a couple of eccentric lairs worked out. Any HX without a village/stronghold or animal icon is worked out when I need it. I need it when either a., they pass through it due to some journey, or b., they are clearing the land.
Most of the pass-throughs have not produced lairs, and the lairs discovered have been cleared. So I have not really tracked those encounters.
The HX for land-clearing I already described in our other thread: I blow up a map of the region to be cleared and I use the tables to determine if there is in encounter per HX, if it is a lair, etc. If it is a lair I note it and then design the smallish dungeon necessary to clear that lair. Most of these are cleared, so I do not further note it. If I need history on one of these HXs, I would just go back to old play reports and files of my dungeon maps/keys.
Maybe I am too lackadaisical! My play-style/campaign-style is to focus on play more than on world-building. I only build the world to support play. We build the world together through play. So I am kind of a minimalist with that regard.
3.) Geez, I don't know exactly how many HXs have lairs at this point. Again, I would have to count animal icons and then go back to play reports for lairs cleared. Somewhere in the high teens, I would guess?
4.) Well, I've never really though about a "cap" on the number of lairs per HX, because, again, the level of play and the amount of exploration at this point simply hasn't demanded this of me yet.
I have sub-campaigns. So the village on the West is Elvenhome. There was a lair outside of Elvenhome for normals, "The Elven Tombs." The village on the East is Dawnslea, a hobbit settlement. It is KotB and it is being run by another ref who plays in my campaign world. I have a cleric there. He had previously run a campaign at the settlement near the mountains in the middle of the board. It is Meadsville, a werebear settlement. A bunch of normals cleared out a bunch of shenanigans going on there. I have dropped Badabaskor into the Dervish Wasteland, which is the desert in the NW quadrant. The animal symbol there is Dwarvendeep -- where most of the dwarves in the campaign hail from. They have sent out a cry for help with the bandits. The now-heroic level normals from Elvenhome have answered the call.They've cleared the first and almost second levels of the Keep now. Crazy fun.
So, it is really about level of scale. For normals, we can just place a module or normal level campaign of my own and I don't worry about it. The Troubles in Meadsville would NOT be something heroic+ characters would care about or notice: let the townspeople or normals handle that. They are looking, instead, for that chimera lair that needs to be cleared out -- the same lair the normals might know about (in the game world, I don't necessarily know whether they know about it or not! I mean, I might not have rolled it up yet, but we can always retcon explain it that way) but are smart enough to steer clear of it and leave it to the heroes+ to handle.
I don't know if this makes sense or helps. And maybe it is too slap-happy for you or some, but it is really working well for us.
I don't think I would allow more than 2 or 3 table-generated kinds of lairs per HX. But a little starting village of adventure with normal level lairs and dungeons -- I can be pretty free with those.
Hope that helps. I really appreciate you asking. It is fun to write about my campaign. It is so much fun and we are really loving it.
Fight on!
