World Building Wednesday Week 2

Next time I need to plan farther ahead.

I have to take a break in my Hex-A-Day 2025 efforts to a lesser extent because I done goofed. As a side note, I’m learning lots about analog hex mapping, layout, and design. However, I kinda forgot I was running off of the tables in Sandbox Generator. If this was an Old School Essentials hexcrawl, we’d be fine.

So the brakes have been applied when it comes to the encounters for a few days while I come up with all of the sentient Kin and monster encounters. I’m tossing all of the old fantasy tropes such as Goblins, Orcs, Vampires, Werewolves, etc and replacing them with Dragonbane Kin or creating my own. So far I’ve either been penciling in the entry for the hex with a question mark or leaving it intentionally blank for when I have the new tables.

The good new is that I’m developing an overall worldview.

Generating these hexes has given me some insight into my overall goals for this world. Nature rules. Plants grow back at astonishing speeds when not kept at bay by magic rituals, fire, pavement, etc. Have you ever seen Restart the Earth? Basically plants grow at crazy fast rates. Whatever happened on my new world before the PCs found it was huge and overwhelmingly catastrophic. As far as they can tell, civilization as we would define it in the modern world has collapsed.

The PCs are finding out that there have been multiple overlapping calamities. It’s almost as if hearty adventurers failed to prevent world altering villainous plots from occurring. The results are varied and bizarre at times. Obviously some sort of zombie apocalypse has occurred. The forests are overrun with frightening abominations that can only be explained by magic. Demons inhabit once thriving villages. (As an aside, I’m thinking about starting a 1d8 timer that winds down to a demon encounter.)

The group has not run into a dragon yet, but when they do it’s going to be pretty intense. I’m tossing out the traditional dragons people know from Dungeons & Dragons and starting over. I might hold off on publishing those until I have some kind of art and actually put them in a book. I’ve been dreaming of using these dragons in a game for a very long time and several games ago. (AD&D 2E to be exact.)

New Year, New Monsters.

Speaking of huge and extremely cool. The party’s animist “Old Wolf” of the Long Tooth, our Wolfkin Animist, has peered into the spirit world. At first the experience was overwhelming as there are a magnitude of spirits higher than the world they came from. Some friendly, others not as much. Spirits are everywhere in almost all things. They come and go from other dimensions and places seemingly at will. Old Wolf is eager to make contact with what the Otterkin called a “shaman,” or spirit speaker.

I’m also working on a bestiary for this new world. I’m adding the notes from a monster book I had started over a decade ago. (Again, several games back. BareBones Fantasy.) Lucky for me, Dragonbane monsters are easy and fun to create, practically a game within a game.

Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.