Here we have five more Forest Hexes (almost halfway to one hundred for just this terrain). (See prior posts here and here for more.)
This time we have a Forest Fire, a tempting target for tomb-raiders, some unusual and intriguing formations, the time-honored Wizard's Tower, and some Sylvan Ruins.
Leave no hexagon idle and empty :). As always, I'd love to hear how these work out for you if you find them useful or if there's a type of feature you'd like to see.
One of our many local
taprooms (a growler joint I believe) is selling custom-designed, D&D
miniatures with a "Local" theme. Another submission for the The Harry Clarke Bestiary
Get your submissions in! Cavegirl's blog post features a plenitude of inspiring images, and a gallery with even more.
Cavegirl has posted about a new OSR Community Project in the vein of Ford's Faeries (I reviewed her excellent The Gardens of Ynn here):
I absolutely adore Harry Clarke's illustrations. They are weird, wild, and wonderful, so I couldn't resist contributing to this one as well:
Get your submissions in! Cavegirl's blog post features a plenitude of inspiring images, and a gallery with even more.
Here's another handy-dandy table for adding some more botanical flavor to your fantasy wildernesses.
Again, my focus is still on Forests for the time being, but Trees tend to be present in most terrains1:
Generate uncommon names for real-world trees, or graft-together completely new arboreal creations. I find that arming myself with 3-4 types per large woodland is generally sufficient, but I'll produce a new one when the terrain starts to change or I want to telegraph a shift in the overall hex biome.
I like to make a quick note when I make a new one, just for verisimilitude's sake if they ever come back through an area. As the title of the post says though, don't get too bogged down in details. Tables like this are intended to help provide inspiration and gingerly sprinkle on some flavor here and there. Even just a single distinctive tree can serve as a useful waypoint/landmark (“Meet up by that old Rotcoat Willow”).
Some quick results from the table seem to pass the "sniff test" so to speak:
Might experiment with weighing results by Precipitation/Climate/Terrain somehow, or even placing more "common" trees lower on the table so that smaller die can be rolled to make them more prevalent. Ideally, I'd start by breaking out Broad-leaf and Conifer trees in some way, because that can go a long way to informing climate.
1. Save maybe Deserts (although one could remix this as Cacti/Succulents], Oceans [Weird Kelp/Coral?], and Polar environments.
A gracious and patient individual took the liberty of loading all the table entries from my Herbs & Plants document into an online tool that quickly generates results:
It is certainly more convenient to see them instantaneously. Here are a few that stuck out after a few clicks:
The benefit derived from generating the names alone is great, because it's always handy to have some semi-reasonable common plant names at the ready. It appears that they added a system that includes the frequency or rarity of the plants as well.
Eventually, I might try to add a 1d100 table or two for what a given plant's positive/intended uses might be. Right now I've just been roughly mapping them to the Rules Cyclopedia Cleric/Druid spells with a 1d8 for level (with an 8 re-rolling on the Magic User Spells), and then a 1d12 for the spell, but it might be more interesting to build word pairs using something similar to the old Magic Word system.
Work is gradually progressing on my ambitious Wilderness Hexes project. Attempting to get each Terrain up to one hundred entries apiece is proving to be a challenge, but the final product will hopefully be rewarding!
As a tantalizer of things to come, here are fifteen (15) additional Forest Hexes:
These are still in the early days/rough draft form, and I'll most certainly be revising them with an eye for more interrelationships and layout once I've settled on a full final list for the Terrain.
As always, I'm open to suggestions and ideas for other types of interesting landmarks/locations, especially at this early stage in the process. The demise of G+ has sadly scattered a lot of my previous sources of invaluable feedback to the winds. If you end up finding them useful, I'd love to hear about it, and how these end up working at the table with your group. If they help at least one flustered or prep-starved GM entertain their players for a session, then I consider them to be time well spent.
A bog-standard Sword +1 is a boring blade indeed. Here are a hundred extra features to make a magical weapon more magical than just the basic bonus.
These are largely system neutral, but feel free to season to taste. If anythings unclear, go with your gut or feel free to ask and I can try to explain my thinking in a less intentionally terse format :). Let me know how your players respond to these, and if you think it might be worth trying to put together separate tables for other types of weapons.
I've whipped up an updated version of the d100 Random Impedimenta Table. This one is a single page and arranged vertically for easy printing. It's a handy table to have behind the screen for character generation, dungeon dressing, “I search the body,” etc. See this prior post for more details.