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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2020 5:12:35 GMT -6
I'm sure this topic has been covered in some depth other places, but I wanted to use this thread for particular subjects and minutia pertaining to folks who use the Outdoor Survival map as the main campaign world.
1. Do you flesh out the Strongholds and towns ahead of time or people them on the fly as needed?
2. What nook or cranny of the map does your campaign begin on? Where's the starter dungeon or starter town?
3. Do you ask yourself questions about how the terrain might affect the economy or movement of people and goods in this world? Perhaps a river based trade route?
4. What, if anything, is beyond the arbitrary map borders to the North, South, East and West?
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Post by dicebro on Oct 11, 2020 6:28:25 GMT -6
1. Yes to both
2. My first player selected a village and we started there
3. No
4. Unknown!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2020 7:09:35 GMT -6
2. My first player selected a village and we started there Interesting. I've done something similar in the past, but with my homebrew World of Perdition and not the Outdoor Survival map. They chose a village called Balani because they thought it was "Baloney". Do you remember the name of the village your player selected and what sort of place it was? |
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Post by Finarvyn on Oct 11, 2020 7:46:07 GMT -6
4. What, if anything, is beyond the arbitrary map borders to the North, South, East and West? This is an interesting question, as it's actually backwards from the original campaign. Dave Arneson started with his Blackmoor campaign map and most of the adventures took place there. It was really only when the characters ventured "off the map" that he pulled out Outdoor Survival and used it to represent far-away places. In other words, OS was never really "the campaign" but was designed to be an expansion. That's why it is referred to sometimes as "the southlands," as when you look at maps like those given in the FFC you often see "Great Kingdom to the South" or similar. It was assumed that Blackmoor was far to the north of the main part of civilization and it was more like a frontier land where folks were still carving out eventual civilization. Also, Dave used the map as "geomorphic," which is to say that when characters left one end of the map they moved onto another identical map at the opposite location. When I did this I tried to rotate the map either 90 or 180 degrees so that the terrain looked different, but I gave up on this because I needed to keep track of which orientation happened for each location and that turned out to be a real bother for me. If you make the size of hexes big enough, they don't go off map much, anyway. Now, to steal a page from the "Forbidden Lands" RPG, one could assume that the map is essentially unknown everywhere to both players and DM. When the players enter a new hex you could roll to see if there are any cities or castles there instead of pre-determining location. Forbidden Lands actually provides stickers so you start with a blank map and then add stickers for castles and villages as the group explores. A cool concept but I can't bring myself to use up my stickers. I'm a little OCD or something, but I like to keep that stuff pristine. (The irony is that I bought a SECOND copy of map and stickers so that I could keep one nice and use the other one. I think it's an illness.) So you can do it either way, obviously, as this is your campaign. If I was to use OS as my main campaign map I would put the starting village or castle in the middle so that characters could explore equal distances in any direction. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2020 8:03:50 GMT -6
Ah, yes. I had read that Blackmoor was far to the North. In my campaign world the Northern border is a huge "great wall of China" situation. It's said that the land North of this is heavily poisoned and filled with angry ghosts and horrendous monsters. If I were a player I'd be curious to try to find a gap in this ancient structure and see what's actually beyond, but in my experience so far people kind of nope out at the description alone. It is a very widespread and persistent rumor, after all. I won't post what's actually North of the Wall here, of course, as I do intend to run some play by posts at some point.
My starter village is smack in the middle, anyway. The prominent river town. I named it Lorport and it's somewhat of a trade hub. The central location makes the most sense. This general region seems to be the population center of the map. There's several terrain types nearby including mountains, river, meadow lands and forest. The deserts and swamps are farther away but as they're hazardous zones that makes sense. It just "feels right" to me.
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Post by Zakharan on Oct 11, 2020 11:30:03 GMT -6
1.) Done in advance (peopling them in-the-moment can be time-consuming).
2.) Dead center, tucked between the two mountains and along the river (the same place I recently learned "Blueholme" is established).
3.) Nah
4.) West, South: who knows?
North: the Blackmoor map (the rivers connect).
East: the notorious Thonian Empire (*puttup*)
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Post by dicebro on Oct 17, 2020 6:19:56 GMT -6
2. My first player selected a village and we started there Interesting. I've done something similar in the past, but with my homebrew World of Perdition and not the Outdoor Survival map. They chose a village called Balani because they thought it was "Baloney". Do you remember the name of the village your player selected and what sort of place it was? The Village of Forthsted. Started with one player. He’s the village priest sent on a quest by the Patriarch of Law. Here’s the Summary: Once upon a time there was a village priest. His name was Brother Jangle of Forthsted. He liked to heal people and became a friend to almost everyone in the village. One day the High Priest of his religion sent him on a mission. "Capture the Mascot of our Adversaries to the North!" the High Priest commanded. And Brother Jangle obeyed. He loaded up his mule,named "Majesty",with supplies. He bought a warhorse named "Reaper". Together they crossed the Grim River and the Plains of Valor to the village of Longcroft. Days later Brother Jangle met up with his special friend named "Sybel". Sybel enjoyed gathering dirt on enemies of the faith. She was good at it, and was handsomely paid by Brother Jangle to do some "recon" at the location of the enemy mascot. When the time was right, Brother Jangle acted. He traveled through the Ash Mountains and successfully evaded a pack of cockatrices! He scouted out the enemy post, a small hermitage with goblin guards. The mascot, a golden calf named "Lemmy", grazed quietly in a pen. Brother Jangle bravely crept down to the hermitage. He surprised one of the goblins and bopped it on the head with a morning star, killing the foul minion of chaos! He then dropped his magic shield and weapon, grabbed the calf in both arms and got the hell out of Dodge! There was much rejoicing when Brother Jangle returned with the golden calf. Jangle had accomplished another dangerous mission on behalf of his faith and the forces of law. Later, Lemmy the mascot was sacrificed in accordance with the law. But do not fret! Lemmy was not the innocent creature he appeared to be...he was in fact the avatar of a horrible sleeping demon of chaos. Trust me, the world is better off without Lemmy! At the conclusion of the adventure the High Priest rewarded Brother Jangle with a jewel worth 1000 gp and a magical ring. More on the ring later. |
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