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Old 04-23-2016, 05:54 PM   #2
Landwalker
 
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Cumberland, ME
Default Chapter 1: The First Region

Chapter 1: The First Region

Joe's recommendation for starting the first region, if you want a "standard Western Europe-style fantasy world", is to simply declare that region's climate to be either Temperate or Coastal and then move on to the other attributes as normal. So naturally I will be starting off this experiment by disregarding the advice of the system's designer and creating the first region entirely randomly.
  1. Determine Size
    Well, not entirely randomly. Normally, this would be a 3d6 roll. However, since this is the first region I will have ever created, I'm going to simply declare the first region to be Small in size.

    Now, the Collaborative Gamer's table lists Small regions as 1d6×2 days along their longest axis, but since that seems a little too "swingy" to me, I'm going to roll 2d6 instead. I roll [1,2] for a total of 3 days across—a small region indeed!
  2. Determine Climate and Terrain
    A 3d6 (8) roll for Climate yields an Alpine starting climate. Very interesting! To make matters even stranger, I roll 1d6 (6) for Terrain, and wind up with Arctic. It looks like this starting region is certainly not going to be in the center of my map (or it's going to be a very, very cold map). That's tantamount to rolling up part of Siberia as one's initial location...

    But hey, a roll is a roll. Time to get this thing on e-paper.
  3. Civilization
    Alright, let's see what civilization we're looking at here. Because this is the first region, the Arctic terrain type means a roll of 3d6+4 (12). I end up with a Semi-Civilized region!
  4. Settlements
    A Small, Semi-Civilized region gets no cities at all and 1d3-2 towns. My roll (-1) means that this region will have no significant towns at all—not that surprising for a small, frigid area. Remember, of course, that it may have plenty of villages, but those are not part of the world creation.
  5. Population Type
    To determine the region's primary population, I'm rolling 1d6, 1d6 (5,6) — Beast-Folk! That means a second roll on the Alpine Beastfolk table: 1d6, 1d6 (6,5). Very appropriately, this means the beast-folk are of the "Moose, Elk, Deer, Stag" type. So our first region is a small, thinly-populated one hosting some sort of nomadic elk-folk.
  6. Theme
    Last but not least, the prevailing theme of the region, which requires another 1d6, 1d6 roll (2,5) — Infernal! These do not seem to be very friendly elk-folk if they're consorting with hellspawn up there in the frozen tundra. Or, perhaps, the region is simply cursed by a weakened veil to the infernal planes, allowing demons to more easily roam the region regardless of the activities of the elk-folk. I find both possibilities pretty interesting, so we'll see what happens later and maybe circle back to this.
  7. Monster Ecology
    Ordinarily, determining the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary monster types for the region would be the last piece. However, those tables aren't "released" yet, so for now, the region's monster types are unknown. Perhaps they would help answer the question of the relationship between the elk-folk and the infernal realm...

And that's our (my) first region! It's certainly an odd-ball one—I've never even heard of elk-folk before. But it's a start, and we'll see where things from here!

While it's not much to look at yet, here is the world map to date.

Last edited by Landwalker; 04-23-2016 at 07:25 PM.
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