Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [Practicum] Procedural World-Building Test Run

Landwalker · 04-23-2016, 05:52 PM

Well, it's been a long time since I've haunted these... haunts. But Joe's GURPS blog has managed to drag me back out of my cave. I find what he's doing over there fascinating, both in terms of procedural game-generation and in terms of GM-less gaming as a whole.

While Joe has an outstanding worked example of his procedural world generation over on his blog, I believe he would agree that his own familiarity with the method might grease the wheels when he's working through everything. So, naturally, I got to wondering how it might all look if it were being done by someone whose creative wheels are instead greased by coarse sand and rubber cement. As the poster child for the creatively-impaired, I am deciding to volunteer myself for this experiment.

So I'll be using this thread to organize my thoughts as a blindly grope my way through the process. Probably nobody will care, but hopefully the organization will combine with some well-deserved public shaming to produce something akin to understanding in my enfeebled right brain, or, if nothing else, perhaps it will serve as a useful cautionary tale ("Don't do what Walker does") to any who might follow in my footsteps.

A handful of points, observations, and intentions, all of questionable value:

I will be using the free version of Hexographer to map things out as I go. Because this is me we're talking about, it is likely to be ugly, but my goal is to at least make it marginally serviceable. Joe himself has been using AutoREALM, which I have some experience with but which is a little too highfalutin' for this particular project. I will be using a scale of roughly "Two hexes = one day's travel in good terrain".
While I hope to ultimately use this to create a world in which to run a game (maybe even a solo game!), this experiment is exactly that. While Joe's tables are intended for your basic Dungeon Fantasy-style world, my eventual goals tend more towards a grittier and even-less-fantastic vein, which should be easily accomplished by simply tinkering with certain racial-composition tables. But that won't be part of this project.
I have practically no idea what I'm doing! Oh God!

Table of Contents

04-23-2016, 05:52 PM	#1
Landwalker Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Cumberland, ME	[Practicum] Procedural World-Building Test Run Well, it's been a long time since I've haunted these... haunts. But Joe's GURPS blog has managed to drag me back out of my cave. I find what he's doing over there fascinating, both in terms of procedural game-generation and in terms of GM-less gaming as a whole. While Joe has an outstanding worked example of his procedural world generation over on his blog, I believe he would agree that his own familiarity with the method might grease the wheels when he's working through everything. So, naturally, I got to wondering how it might all look if it were being done by someone whose creative wheels are instead greased by coarse sand and rubber cement. As the poster child for the creatively-impaired, I am deciding to volunteer myself for this experiment. So I'll be using this thread to organize my thoughts as a blindly grope my way through the process. Probably nobody will care, but hopefully the organization will combine with some well-deserved public shaming to produce something akin to understanding in my enfeebled right brain, or, if nothing else, perhaps it will serve as a useful cautionary tale ("Don't do what Walker does") to any who might follow in my footsteps. A handful of points, observations, and intentions, all of questionable value: I will be using the free version of Hexographer to map things out as I go. Because this is me we're talking about, it is likely to be ugly, but my goal is to at least make it marginally serviceable. Joe himself has been using AutoREALM, which I have some experience with but which is a little too highfalutin' for this particular project. I will be using a scale of roughly "Two hexes = one day's travel in good terrain". While I hope to ultimately use this to create a world in which to run a game (maybe even a solo game!), this experiment is exactly that. While Joe's tables are intended for your basic Dungeon Fantasy-style world, my eventual goals tend more towards a grittier and even-less-fantastic vein, which should be easily accomplished by simply tinkering with certain racial-composition tables. But that won't be part of this project. I have practically no idea what I'm doing! Oh God! Table of Contents The First Region—Antlered Folk and Infernals The First Second Region—Gilded Snow Elves Infernals! Infernals Everywhere! The One With All The Dwarves My First Wilderness Fleshing Out some West Things Are Getting Fishy Last edited by Landwalker; 04-25-2016 at 03:11 PM.