Let's imagine you're creating a sandbox hexmap with 5- or 6-mile hexes. For the sake of argument, imagine it's a 10 x 20 hex area.

On how many hexes do you usually pre-plan something of interest (meaning an encounter, named settlement, dungeon, lair, etc., not just geographical features)? Every hex? 1/2? 1/4? I would say I have about 1 in 10 hexes containing something pre-planned, with everything else blank except for geographical features; random encounters take charge of them.

What about you?

For my current 15 miles/hex Wilderlands game I really wanted something in every hex*, but in the end I gave up after a about a dozen hexes.    
That'd be ca 9 5x5 hexes per 15 mile hex, so your 1 in 10 figure looks pretty spot-on to me.

*In the initial campaign area, that's be about 8x8 hexes.

Every hex can end up being interesting because I plan for the map to change over time. A purple worm could burst through the surface, eat some people, and retreat underground leaving a tunnel for adventurers to follow. A giant ant nest may get established near some farmlands and leave a lair complex behind. A heavy rainstorm may cause some ground to collapse in on an ancient dungeon complex below it.

When I make the initial map, I try to keep some of the above mentioned possibilities in my DM's bag-o-tricks to use if things become a bit slow in game.

Quote from: jeff37923;477979Every hex can end up being interesting because I plan for the map to change over time. A purple worm could burst through the surface, eat some people, and retreat underground leaving a tunnel for adventurers to follow. A giant ant nest may get established near some farmlands and leave a lair complex behind. A heavy rainstorm may cause some ground to collapse in on an ancient dungeon complex below it.

When I make the initial map, I try to keep some of the above mentioned possibilities in my DM's bag-o-tricks to use if things become a bit slow in game.

Cool ideas. In my experience it's unusual for a random encounter not to leave a mark on the world in some way, or eventually have a wider impact on the game.

I also use a sort of hybrid random/pre-planned encounter system, where some results are stuff like "there is a witch's hut here" or "there is a small keep here that is haunted by a banshee" or whatever.

The players aren't playing Battleship, they are traveling from one hex to the next. You don't have to populate the whole map, you have to populate a few hexes in every direction from where the players are, and populate enough hexes scattered around on the map with city icons and rumors dropping about what is there and stuff that it looks like there is something in every hex to the players. Since there is some amount of time between adventures, if the players decide that they want to start traveling to Wraithport because "it sounds interesting", you can throw enough encounters in the mix that the session ends and then write encounters for the rest of the journey before the next session starts.

If the game goes on long enough for them to go to every hex, something should be in every hex. But that'll take long enough that you can write most of it during the course of the campaign.

-Frank

I try to use the same ratio I do when stocking dungeons

- Monsters in 1/3 - 1/6  of the hexes
- "Traps"/Hazards, Hidden Treasure and "Specials/Tricks" in 1/6 to 1/12 of the hexes

Although Carcosa really blew my hair back with it's descriptions for every single hex. Next level shit.

Quote from: Planet Algol;477984I try to use the same ratio I do when stocking dungeons

- Monsters in 1/3 - 1/6  of the hexes
- "Traps"/Hazards, Hidden Treasure and "Specials/Tricks" in 1/6 to 1/12 of the hexes

Although Carcosa really blew my hair back with it's descriptions for every single hex. Next level shit.

How big are Carcosa hexes though? And how many are there?

10 mile hexes, 25x16 hexes I believe; the LOTFP version is going to have two entries for every hex.

Quote from: Planet Algol;47798610 mile hexes, 25x16 hexes I believe; the LOTFP version is going to have two entries for every hex.

400 isn't that many - I can probably populate 5 hexes an hour if I put my mind to it. It's finding the time which is the killer.

Certainly, but prior to Carcosa I can't think of any sandbox/hexmap products that contained an entry for every hex. If you combine that with locations that aren't automatically stumbled across when you enter a hex, there's a lot more depth to the sandbox.

It makes me think of text adventure games and MUDs; every location has something.

Quote from: Planet Algol;477990Certainly, but prior to Carcosa I can't think of any sandbox/hexmap products that contained an entry for every hex. If you combine that with locations that aren't automatically stumbled across when you enter a hex, there's a lot more depth to the sandbox.

It makes me think of text adventure games and MUDs; every location has something.

I wonder how much of Carcosa evolved during play, and how much of it Geoffrey McKinney (sp?) just sat down and designed. It could be that a lot of the detail just comes from randomly generating hex contents during the process of campaigning. It's possible with a regular group and a number of years, I guess.

Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/6 feels about right to me, depending on how big the hexes are and how much random generation of contents and random encounters you plan to do as PCs travel. I'd say err on the side of emptiness, so you populate it as inspiration strikes, rather than trying to come up with everything at once.

Quote from: noisms;477992I wonder how much of Carcosa evolved during play, and how much of it Geoffrey McKinney (sp?) just sat down and designed. It could be that a lot of the detail just comes from randomly generating hex contents during the process of campaigning. It's possible with a regular group and a number of years, I guess.

I think a lot of it emerged in play, as Geoffrey has stated that there's three more Carcosa hexmaps that he won't release because his players didn't adventure in them.

Quote from: noisms;477959Let's imagine you're creating a sandbox hexmap with 5- or 6-mile hexes. For the sake of argument, imagine it's a 10 x 20 hex area.

On how many hexes do you usually pre-plan something of interest (meaning an encounter, named settlement, dungeon, lair, etc., not just geographical features)? Every hex? 1/2? 1/4? I would say I have about 1 in 10 hexes containing something pre-planned, with everything else blank except for geographical features; random encounters take charge of them.

What about you?

I would shoot for 10% to 20% detailed hexes. In the dozen or so sandbox settings I wrote so far that what I averaged.  Out of 512 hexes Blackmarsh had 76 detailed hexes.  Most people have a dozen detailed ideas, two dozen more sketchy ideas, and the rest that was God invented random tables for. A good set of random table is worth it's weight in gold as it is easier to explain why something is then make it out of nothing.

Remember it is meant to serve as a framework for you, the referee, to fill out in detail as the players traverse the landscape, and have adventures. Not as a fully fleshed out world detailed to the nth degree. So in the end it boils down to whatever you need to get at the proper area in your "Bag o' stuff" to construct the various encounters the players run into.

Quote from: estar;478030I would shoot for 10% to 20% detailed hexes. In the dozen or so sandbox settings I wrote so far that what I averaged.  Out of 512 hexes Blackmarsh had 76 detailed hexes.  Most people have a dozen detailed ideas, two dozen more sketchy ideas, and the rest that was God invented random tables for. A good set of random table is worth it's weight in gold as it is easier to explain why something is then make it out of nothing.

Remember it is meant to serve as a framework for you, the referee, to fill out in detail as the players traverse the landscape, and have adventures. Not as a fully fleshed out world detailed to the nth degree. So in the end it boils down to whatever you need to get at the proper area in your "Bag o' stuff" to construct the various encounters the players run into.

:hatsoff: