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Post by tetramorph on Apr 7, 2015 16:49:43 GMT -6
Hey guys, I'm starting this thread because I am looking for advice and ideas. I want to run a session that can turn into a campaign at my FLGS and advertise it on our local Meetup site. I want it to be an "Introduction to" D&D for new players and 0e for D&D players who are only familiar with later editions. A recent thread talked about using B1 or B2 in an 0e campaign and it got me thinking that this may be a cool way to do this. I studied the "wilderness" map in B2. It is a rather small, "sub" -wilderness. It can all fit into one 5-mile hex. I am thinking about placing either B2 (or B1 if you all recommend it more) as the keep that is in the center of the Outdoor Survival map. This way they can explore the dungeon to lvl up in the low lvls, explore the B2 wilderness map for the next few lvls, then graduate to full "hex crawl" and discover that they are on the Outdoor Survival board (eventually!). If I go with B2, could I drop B1 into the B2 map? Thoughts? Help? Suggestions? ( Finarvyn, feel free to move this to the Workshop thread if it makes more sense there.) |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2015 20:12:07 GMT -6
Many have used B1 for the Cave of the Unknown.
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Post by Red Baron on Apr 7, 2015 22:15:51 GMT -6
I am thinking about placing either B2 as the keep that is in the center of the Outdoor Survival map. I was thinking about doing this myself in a B2 game I'm going to run. I'm going to flip/invert and rotate the map, so as to throw off savy players. Which Hex were you thinking of using? The one along the road through the forest? |
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Post by Scott Anderson on Apr 8, 2015 1:30:21 GMT -6
B1 is just a bloody waste for anyone who knows how to make up a dungeon. It is a great teaching tool but not a great adventure site. The Dungeon of Signs blog has a great recap. Pay close attention to the "How I'd Run..." section. Great advice. dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2014/08/in-search-of-unknown-b1-review.html?m=1If you want to run B2 as a hexy mini-sandbox, which I think is a perfect idea, here is a thread with the maps you will need to maximize that vector, and fool veterans who have played it before: www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=56433Putting it in the middle of the OSM is a great idea. You should probably enpeople the other castles too and give the players reasons to cross what is essentially Mad Max meets Land of the Lost to get there. I put my current nascent campaign's B2 sand box in Blackmarsh by Rob Conley because I want to try out Blackmarsh, but the OSM is really the Ur-map for 0e. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2015 6:00:11 GMT -6
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Post by tetramorph on Apr 9, 2015 13:50:51 GMT -6
Thanks for the help and the link, guys. Cool knowing B1 can so easily fit into B2, @droll! Scott Anderson, I think I would only use B1 for a pre-made map anyway. I don't like drawing maps. But I enjoy populating them! Thanks |
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Post by makofan on Apr 10, 2015 8:44:04 GMT -6
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Post by tetramorph on Apr 10, 2015 9:29:25 GMT -6
makofan: very cool resource! Thanks!
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Post by Finarvyn on Apr 11, 2015 5:13:50 GMT -6
Great thread!  I studied the "wilderness" map in B2. It is a rather small, "sub" -wilderness. It can all fit into one 5-mile hex. I think this is perfect for starting players because it keeps things 'local' instead of moving to kingdom-sized adventures too quickly. When we first discovered D&D in the 70's, we naturally went through an evolution from the small to the large. Perhaps a "campaign spectrum" if you will. (1) Sample dungeon; one level (2) Deeper dungeon; many levels (3) Dungeon with town; appear there in between sessions (teleport?) (4) Local map; travel to and from dungeon from town (this could be your 5 mi hex) (5) Larger area map; surrounding castles (perhaps the OS map) (6) Megadungeon somewhere on the larger area map (7) Kingdom and surrounding map (as we moved on to Barons and Lords fighting) (8) World map (as nations went to war with other nations) In general, once you move down the list it becomes hard to move too far back up it again so I think that starting characters off somewhere in the (2) to (4) range is a good place. In other words, give them a home base and some interesting stuff to explore within a few miles of it. I think about where I live in the real world, and how I have to drive 20 minutes every day to get to work, and how work is in reality only 8 miles away. If I'm at the gym walking on a treadmill, I can easily cover around 3.5 miles in a single hour of walking, but in the wilderness going up and down hills and walking in woods with no path this would be a lot slower. If I was an adventurer on foot I could explore a hex of size 5 miles for a long time. There could be houses and caves and various monsters lurking in the wilderness to fight or avoid. Unless characters have some reason to pick a direction and keep walking for days, they don't need a map larger than that for a while. Just my two coppers. |
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Post by geoffrey on Apr 11, 2015 7:57:28 GMT -6
I read somewhere that most people in the ancient and medieval world never traveled more than 30 miles from where they were born. I don't know if that's true.
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Post by Red Baron on Apr 11, 2015 10:03:38 GMT -6
I read somewhere that most people in the ancient and medieval world never traveled more than 30 miles from where they were born. I don't know if that's true. I think that was about medieval England specifically, which makes perfect sense as a shire (county) was usually no more than about 30 miles across. |
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Post by Red Baron on Apr 11, 2015 10:06:04 GMT -6
Great thread! I studied the "wilderness" map in B2. It is a rather small, "sub" -wilderness. It can all fit into one 5-mile hex. I think this is perfect for starting players because it keeps things 'local' instead of moving to kingdom-sized adventures too quickly. When we first discovered D&D in the 70's, we naturally went through an evolution from the small to the large. Perhaps a "campaign spectrum" if you will. (1) Sample dungeon; one level (2) Deeper dungeon; many levels (3) Dungeon with town; appear there in between sessions (teleport?) (4) Local map; travel to and from dungeon from town (this could be your 5 mi hex) (5) Larger area map; surrounding castles (perhaps the OS map) (6) Megadungeon somewhere on the larger area map (7) Kingdom and surrounding map (as we moved on to Barons and Lords fighting) (8) World map (as nations went to war with other nations) In general, once you move down the list it becomes hard to move too far back up it again so I think that starting characters off somewhere in the (2) to (4) range is a good place. In other words, give them a home base and some interesting stuff to explore within a few miles of it. I think about where I live in the real world, and how I have to drive 20 minutes every day to get to work, and how work is in reality only 8 miles away. If I'm at the gym walking on a treadmill, I can easily cover around 3.5 miles in a single hour of walking, but in the wilderness going up and down hills and walking in woods with no path this would be a lot slower. If I was an adventurer on foot I could explore a hex of size 5 miles for a long time. There could be houses and caves and various monsters lurking in the wilderness to fight or avoid. Unless characters have some reason to pick a direction and keep walking for days, they don't need a map larger than that for a while. Just my two coppers. I started at 4, and it took a decade to get to 5. |
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Post by Scott Anderson on Apr 11, 2015 13:51:50 GMT -6
Something else about B2 is that is it not necessarily unusual. Is there a keep in every hex? Probably not by a long shot. But he rest of the ecosystem- there are tons of encounters to have in a hex.
If the players say they want to clear a hex, I tell them it will take X days, where X = 3d6. Two chances for encounters per day- day and night- the hex may end up being relatively empty or positively deadly. Anywhere from 0 to 36 encounters, with some being lairs, and some certainly being too powerful for them to fight without preparation.
The other cool thing, and it's more for overland travel than for stopping to live there, is some hexes have really unusual and weird tourist attractions. Not every encounter has to be with a monster.
Let me think this through, because I don't have my wandering monster tables set up like this. Maybe there is a 1 in 6 chance (or you pick the number based on your tables but it should be significantly nonzero) that an encounter is something weird, rather than a wandering monster? Weird stuff that doesn't have a game mechanic easily assigned, or is not subject to random generation. Courtney Campbell periodically blogs short lists of amazing and weird places to visit. I could just plug those in.
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Post by tetramorph on Apr 11, 2015 14:18:33 GMT -6
Scott Anderson, yes, good points all. And the Ready Ref sheets are full of non-combat cool things to encounter. I especially love the ideas it gives for ruins and statues.
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Post by tetramorph on Oct 16, 2015 15:36:29 GMT -6
Update: I used Draken Games " How to Create Great Fantasy Maps" to make a player's map of B2 as one of the "treasure maps" they randomly found.  I named the borderland "Agnor March" and the keep "Agnor Keep and Town."  Read more about it on my blog. Hope y'all like it. Share and enjoy. |
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Post by Finarvyn on Oct 17, 2015 7:49:13 GMT -6
I like this map. Simple, yet full of places to explore that might be boring or might be quite interesting as you see fit. Patches of woods, a river, some marshland ... like it! |
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flightcommander
Level 6 Magician
"I become drunk as circumstances dictate."
Posts: 387
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Post by flightcommander on May 27, 2022 12:45:18 GMT -6
Was just looking at the B2 wilderness map and the Outdoor Survival map and wondering how they might fit together. I think I'd stick the Keep somewhere in the bottom-left/south-east corner of the map, just to the west of the big swampy place — specifically, four hexes in from the left edge and nine hexes up from the bottom edge.
The text of B2 states, "The 'Realm' is to the west, off the map. The road branches, one path to the KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS, the other leading off into the forsaken wilderness beyond the ken of law." That seems to suit the location and makes potentially the entire rest of the map a "forsaken wilderness".
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2022 11:06:41 GMT -6
Was just looking at the B2 wilderness map and the Outdoor Survival map and wondering how they might fit together. I think I'd stick the Keep somewhere in the bottom-left/south-east corner of the map, just to the west of the big swampy place — specifically, four hexes in from the left edge and nine hexes up from the bottom edge. The text of B2 states, "The 'Realm' is to the west, off the map. The road branches, one path to the KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS, the other leading off into the forsaken wilderness beyond the ken of law." That seems to suit the location and makes potentially the entire rest of the map a "forsaken wilderness". Saving this idea for future notice. |
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Post by Starbeard on Jun 20, 2022 14:03:16 GMT -6
Was just looking at the B2 wilderness map and the Outdoor Survival map and wondering how they might fit together. I think I'd stick the Keep somewhere in the bottom-left/south-east corner of the map, just to the west of the big swampy place — specifically, four hexes in from the left edge and nine hexes up from the bottom edge. The text of B2 states, "The 'Realm' is to the west, off the map. The road branches, one path to the KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS, the other leading off into the forsaken wilderness beyond the ken of law." That seems to suit the location and makes potentially the entire rest of the map a "forsaken wilderness". Saving this idea for future notice. Indeed! Just marking the obvious here, but as scale considerations go: the B2 wilderness is just under a modern league across, N-S (we won't bother that the Caves on this map and the detailed Caves map are wildly out of scale). So, if you are using 3-mile hexes on the OS board then something B2 sized will nicely fill out the adventuring area of exactly one hex. Using the more standard 5 and 6 mile hexes will each need more space to fill—or you can just assume that everything surrounding the adventuring area is boring abstract wilderness. As a rule we might figure that each hex is 75% or 83% dead space, where only wild animals will ever be encountered, and if there's anything exciting to do, it will all be huddled together into a 2-3ish square mile area buried somewhere deep in the hex. The advantage of this is never having to worry about exact ground scale to the campaign map, or ensuring "terrain continuity" across borders from hex to hex. |
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