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Old 04-25-2016, 03:09 PM   #31
Landwalker
 
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Default Re: [Practicum] Procedural World-Building Test Run

Chapter 7

From now, I'm going to be determining Climate and Terrain first, and then determining size. This ordering just feels better for me, particularly when it comes to things like extending beaches, rivers, etc. Not that I have any beaches to extend yet.
  1. Climate and Terrain
    And on that note, I'm going to be extending my north-south river further south, which in this case is Downstream.

    Extending an Alpine River downstream gets a 1d6 (5), which produced a New Climate! Another 1d6 (3) reveals that this new climate is Coastal!

    Since we now have our new climate, another 1d6 (1) gets rolled, and this new region will be a Coastal Lake.

    So, here's the deal about Lake regions. I don't know if this means that the whole region is a lake, or if it merely prominently features a lake. Joe's own work on his blog suggests the latter, though, which I'm fine with.

    I also don't know whether or not the lake necessarily marks the terminus of this river system, or whether it has an outlet of its own. Perhaps that's simply a matter of whether I randomly generate another adjacent region with the River terrain?

    For now, we'll just assume that this is a region that has an inflowing river and a lake, the end.
  2. Determine Size
    (3d6 > 13 | 4d6,2d6 > 20,3) And it's going to be a funky one! I get a Large region, but one that is quite narrow.
  3. Civilization and Settlements
    Whew, setting that region up on the map was some work. So I now roll 3d6 (8) and find out that we have yet another Civilized (+1 civilization relative to neighbor) region.

    As a Large Civilized region, this one gets 1d3-1 cities and 1d3+1 towns, so this finger-shaped lake will host 1 city and a whopping 4 towns.
  4. Population Type
    1d6,1d6 (6,3), so this region is populated by a civilized group of... Merfolk? That's interesting...

    As an aside, in the current system, you can expect to average about 1/18 of your civilized, semi-civilized, and wilderness lakes being populated by merfolk, 1/18 by beast-folk, 1/18 by elves, and the rest (15/18) by humans. Merfolk also have about a 1/6 chance of occurring on any Monstrous lake regions (curiously, I have yet to generate a single Monstrous region, but have two regions with the Monsters! theme). I don't know about y'all, but man, that's a lot of merfolk for inland lakes.
  5. Theme
    So let's get these merfolk a theme... (4,1)... Militaristic! Very interesting indeed. Of course, if I shared a major body of water with aspiring inferalists, I might develop a pretty martial society as well. I decide to place the region's one city astride the "choke point" in the lake, and I'm imagining that it is very defensively-oriented in its construction. Of course, it's also in the middle of a lake, so nature will be helping out there, too.

Chapter 7a
  1. Climate and Terrain
    The next region is going to "derive" from the Mer-Lake, and the roll (3d6 > 9) indicates Same Climate, New Terrain. The terrain roll (1d6 > 1) reveals that we'll have a Coastal Beach!
  2. Determine Size
    (3d6 > 9) this is going to be a Small beach. Since beaches tend towards the narrow, I'll only make one dimensional roll (2d6 > 4), which reveals a pretty small beach indeed.

    Due to the small size and, hey, a beach, this is going to wind up to the south of Mer-Lake, and I'm going to have the river run out of the lake and through the beach, as well, to reach (what we assume will eventually be) the ocean. And what the hell, I'll even throw in a little delta.
  3. Civilization and Settlements
    The 3d6 (14) roll indicates -1 Civilization Level, which means a Semi-Civilized region with (1d3-2) zero towns.
  4. Population Type
    1d6,1d6 (3,4) makes this beach a Human-inhabited one.
  5. Theme
    And of course that theme... Militaristic again! I wonder if these men and women are allies or enemies of the merfolk who control the lake?

---------------

The World So Far
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Old 04-25-2016, 03:19 PM   #32
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Default Re: [Practicum] Procedural World-Building Test Run

At this point, I'll probably have a few more chapters and then wrap this up. I want to fill in the gaps in the bottom left and right of the map, the gap in the top left, and get one "layer" of ocean regions to the south.

In case anyone is curious, since I deliberately turn off the grid when I'm generating the "World to Date" image, the map is currently about 60-some-odd hexes east-west, and around 45-50 hexes north-south (due to the dimensions of hexes). In Collaborative Gamer terms, that means about 30 days across and 25 days tall, so take whatever you think is a reasonable average foot-distance-per-day and you'll get a rough idea of how large this area is. Think you can walk 30 miles in a day? Then it's about 900 miles across and 750 miles tall—once it's all filled in, that would make it about the size of Libya, Iran, or Texas.
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Old 04-25-2016, 08:42 PM   #33
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Default Re: [Practicum] Procedural World-Building Test Run

I'm really enjoying this, landwalker. Now you have me thinking about trying this generator out myself. Thanks for making me aware of this (so many "post about my blog" threads have started, I've sadly begun ignoring them and am missing out apparently.)
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Old 04-25-2016, 10:58 PM   #34
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Default Re: [Practicum] Procedural World-Building Test Run

The militarised, semi-civilised human beach region probably makes for a good campaign starting point; first adventure is going upriver.
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Old 04-26-2016, 03:00 PM   #35
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Default Re: [Practicum] Procedural World-Building Test Run

Chapter 8
  1. Climate and Terrain
    This is going to be an extension of the Semi-Civilized (Humans) [Historical] hills region to the west of our poor dwarves.

    3d6 (10) shows that this will be Same Climate, Same Terrain, which means Temperate Hills.
  2. Determine Size
    (3d6 > 11 | 2d6,1d6 > 8,6) A pretty run of the mill Small region. I think I'm going to place this south-southwest of its "origin" region, and leave a gap between this and the Merfolk Lake.
  3. Civilization and Settlements
    Another 3d6 (14) indicates -1 Civilization Level. Since I'm 'starting' from a semi-civilized region, that meanas this one becomes Wilderness!

    Small Wilderness gets 1d6-5 towns, so not surprisingly this particular wilderness gets zero towns.
  4. Population Type
    1d6,1d6 (3,6) results in a population of Halflings. I feel like I've already re-rolled Halflings several times in this process, so what the hell, I'll stick with them this time.
  5. Theme
    Unfortunately for these halflings, the Theme roll (1d6,1d6 > 3,4) wants this region to be Poor. Bummer for them, but that's what they get for living in the wilderness amid a crumbling land.

Chapter 8a
  1. Climate and Terrain
    Another! This time I get (3d6 > 9) Same Climate, New Terrain.

    I'm going to use the Merfolk Lake as the "base point" for this region, so let's see what I end up with... (1d6 > 5)... Temperate River!
  2. Determine Size
    (3d6 > 6) What's more, this new region is Tiny, only 2 x 1 days in breadth.
  3. Civilization and Settlements
    The 3d6 (7) declares this shall have +1 Civilization Level, but we're starting from an already-civilized region, so this new region is also Civilized. It will have no cities, one town.

    Since I've got a Tiny Temperate River region, I'm going to stick this on the northeastern border of Merfolk Lake, and have the river running out of the Infernal Human Mountains.
  4. Population Type
    A (4,1) roll, and this river is settled by Humans.
  5. Theme
    Well, we got our Poor region out of the way already, so naturally this one turns up a Theme roll of Rich.

Chapter 8b
  1. Climate and Terrain
    Another!

    I think I'm going to extend the new Rich Human River downstream, so the 1d6 (5) gives me... another Lake.
  2. Determine Size
    (3d6 > 8) At least this lake will be Tiny, I guess. (In case you're curious, "Tiny" comes up on a 3-8 roll.) And this is a really tiny one, coming in a (0,1)... I won't even be able to label this thing.
  3. Civilization and Settlements
    So what does the Civilization-o-Meter read for this lake? (3d6 > 8) Another +1 Civilization Level, and once again, another Civilized region as the base, so (again) a Civilized result. ILike it's river neighbor to the north, it will have no cities, one town.

    This region will stand in rather stark contrast to the much more massive Merfolk Lake to its immediate west.
  4. Population Type
    A (1,2) roll, so another Human region... probably related to the river region just to its north.
  5. Theme
    Oh-hoh, here's an interesting one. (5,2) means that this lake has an Underworld theme—plenty of nefarious activity going on here!

Chapter 8c
  1. Climate and Terrain
    Alright, I'm on a good run, so I'll knock out one more this go.

    I want to fill in that gap between the halflings and the merfolk, so this is going to be another "departure" from the semi-civilized human hills.

    (3d6 > 3) shows Same Climate, New Terrain, and 1d6 (6) for terrain shows (everybody put on their shocked faces) a Temperate Lake! Yeesh.
  2. Determine Size
    (3d6 > 12) means that this lake will reside in a Small region, about half the size (7,3) of the Halfling region. Which is actually just about the perfect size to squeeze in here.
  3. Civilization and Settlements
    For this lake, I get (3d6 > 10) "same civilization level," which means a Semi-Civilized region. This lake will be home to (1d3-2 > -1) no noteworthy towns.

    For the hell of things, I decide to run a short stream connecting this lake to the larger Merfolk Lake.
  4. Population Type
    (4,6), so here there be Humans
  5. Theme
    (2,3) means that this lake is Haunted! Perhaps the lakeshore was the site of a great battle of antiquity? Maybe the lake bed is home to an aquatically-inclined lich?

---------------

The World So Far
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Old 04-26-2016, 10:48 PM   #36
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Default Re: [Practicum] Procedural World-Building Test Run

Looks like a really interesting place to explore. The great thing about this system is definitely that the world is unknown beyond the next horizion... I think it suggests adding a reason, such as a great dark age or some other phenomenon that resulted in a scrambling of terrain or just everyone forgetting what's past the next hill.
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Old 04-27-2016, 07:21 AM   #37
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Default Re: [Practicum] Procedural World-Building Test Run

Quote:
Originally Posted by PTTG View Post
Looks like a really interesting place to explore. The great thing about this system is definitely that the world is unknown beyond the next horizion... I think it suggests adding a reason, such as a great dark age or some other phenomenon that resulted in a scrambling of terrain or just everyone forgetting what's past the next hill.
Yes, the system is definitely geared towards a world in which the lands beyond the horizon are either entirely unknown (not yet generated), or partially unknown (you can only generate part of the process, like size/climate/terrain, or even just size, and fill in the rest when the party learns about it).

For your basic Dungeon Fantasy game, that's usually perfectly fine! DF worlds are adventurer-centric, and for all practical purposes don't exist when their existence isn't serving the PCs.

It would also work well for, as you suggest, a sort of great dark age. Of course, even historically, very few people ever set foot further than 20-30 miles from where they were born, so in such a world, almost all knowledge of lands beyond the horizon is hearsay at best.

Which all is basically summed up as "The system is naturally predisposed towards "just-in-time" world generation, where it makes sense for characters to have (or need) minimal foreknowledge of distant lands."

It would probably be more work (at least, more initial work) to use the system to create an entire world before the campaign starts, in situations where it does matter what's beyond the horizon even when the PCs aren't there. But in such a campaign, the GM (assuming there is a GM) probably already knows roughly what he wants things to look like anyway, and if there is no GM, it probably wouldn't be impossible for the players to simply come to an agreement about the broad situation and make declarative (rather than RNG) decisions about what characteristics to apply to particular regions.

If you were actually going to generate a whole world, it could take a rather long time. Remember, once this is done, it'll be roughly 675,000 square miles, or about the size of Texas or Iran. It'll be a little more than 1/6 the size of Europe, or slightly bigger than the combined land area of (Portugal + Spain + France + German + Belgium + Netherlands).

If you're familiar with the D&D world of Eberron, the Kingdom of Aundair by itself is approximately 560,000 square miles, and it isn't exactly the largest piece of its continent, either. (Of course, Khorvaire is a huge continent, probably comparable in size to Africa.)

In fact, the argument could be made that this system actually produces climates and terrains that change too quickly.

Last edited by Landwalker; 04-27-2016 at 07:35 AM.
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