[Practicum] Procedural World-Building Test Run

[tshiggins]

Hrm. Let me offer a few thoughts.

1. Firstly, since the terrain is alpine, maybe your "arctic" terrain means simply an Alpine tundra, above the tree-line? Perhaps the region gets temperate, in a hurry, once you reach lower elevations?
We have some of this alpine tundra in Colorado, as does Switzerland, and the Himalayas have a lot of it.

2. Don't worry too much about the big chunk of mountains, since this system produces maps on such a granular scale. A human in decent physical condition can walk 20 miles a day, while carrying food and camping gear, as long as he or she can get water along the way. That means your large region is no more than 180 miles by 300.

For perspective, the distance from Denver to Grand Junction is 243 miles, along I-70, and that's across the mountains. The Rockies stretch for thousands of miles, north to south.

3. Given that perspective, your Region 1 and your Region 3 probably belong to the same mountain chain, it's just that the rivers have cut wide valleys through the chain, and most people (elves and humans) have settled in those. That's perfectly reasonable.

So, you've got high valleys filled with evergreen trees, carved out by two rivers, where most people live. The valleys lie in the midst of high mountains that quickly rise above the tree-line and feature alpine tundra and large swathes of glaciers.

4. Your elk-folk don't necessarily have to be humanoid, right? They could resemble the vesta, in the Riddle of Stars books, by Patricia A. McKillip -- magical, semi-intelligent reindeer mystically tied to the land. The elves might understand them, and the human herdsmen consider them sacred -- which makes 'em damn fine eatin', if you're an ice-demon.

[PTTG]

I wonder if that "days' travel" measure is supposed to vary depending on the terrain, so a mountain range that's 5 "days" wide is much narrower than an open prairie that's 5 "days" wide.

That implies that, physically, mountain regions are smaller than other regions, and oceans are much, much bigger (since boats travel farther). On the other hand, the system already multiplies oceans by 3, but doesn't mention other adjustments, so it's certainly simpler to treat "1 day" as ~8 leagues.

Augh I need to do homework but this system is crying out for optimization!

[Landwalker]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Hrm. Let me offer a few thoughts.

1. Firstly, since the terrain is alpine, maybe your "arctic" terrain means simply an Alpine tundra, above the tree-line? Perhaps the region gets temperate, in a hurry, once you reach lower elevations?
We have some of this alpine tundra in Colorado, as does Switzerland, and the Himalayas have a lot of it.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking for the most part as well. Switzerland, Colorado, and some similar locales were all examples I was contemplating as this has been coming together.

Originally Posted by tshiggins

4. Your elk-folk don't necessarily have to be humanoid, right? They could resemble the vesta, in the Riddle of Stars books, by Patricia A. McKillip -- magical, semi-intelligent reindeer mystically tied to the land. The elves might understand them, and the human herdsmen consider them sacred -- which makes 'em damn fine eatin', if you're an ice-demon.

Indeed! I don't know what elk-folk would be like, but it seems like there are a number of options: The elk version of a minotaur; the elk version of a centaur; or, as you point out, semi-intelligent actual reindeer-things, not unlike the halla from Dragon Age (to use an example I'm more familiar with than Riddle of Stars).

Originally Posted by PTTG

I wonder if that "days' travel" measure is supposed to vary depending on the terrain, so a mountain range that's 5 "days" wide is much narrower than an open prairie that's 5 "days" wide.

That implies that, physically, mountain regions are smaller than other regions, and oceans are much, much bigger (since boats travel farther). On the other hand, the system already multiplies oceans by 3, but doesn't mention other adjustments, so it's certainly simpler to treat "1 day" as ~8 leagues.

Augh I need to do homework but this system is crying out for optimization!

I've been wondering about that, too, especially with the mountainous region. I didn't see any evidence that Joe used in his blog posts that he was adjusting "days of travel" according to terrain type, but it would definitely be one way to go about it. I decided to go the simpler route, at least this time through, though—if nothing else, what I would consider "vast" on a map would probably not vary according to its terrain, so it made sense to keep things consistent for this exercise as well.

I think that, now that I know where some mountains are, I'll probably treat the northern river as being "East is upstream, west is downstream". It remains to be seen whether the branch at Snow Elf City is "eastern branch splits into two, traveling northwest and south" or "eastern branch merges with either the northwest or south branch and flows out in the remaining direction."

(Edit: Upon Bruno's post, I decided I cared just enough to actually bother googling on my own, and came up with River Bifurcation. So it still remains to be seen exactly what's going on at Snow Elf City.)

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Landwalker

A decadent, autocratic culture that studies demonology, and which does not paint demons with the traditional "automatic kill-on-sight" brush that most do. There's likely a fair amount of demon-binding and infernal contracts being employed in this region. But don't worry, they "have everything under control."

But that's heresy!

Deploy the battlenuns...

[kreios]

Originally Posted by Landwalker

I think that, now that I know where some mountains are, I'll probably treat the northern river as being "East is upstream, west is downstream". It remains to be seen whether the branch at Snow Elf City is "eastern branch splits into two, traveling northwest and south" or "eastern branch merges with either the northwest or south branch and flows out in the remaining direction."

A word of warning: Rivers don't split; they only merge. Some more information.

Other than this: Very interesting project!

[Landwalker]

Originally Posted by kreios

A word of warning: Rivers don't split; they only merge. Some more information.

Other than this: Very interesting project!

Good to know! Thank you for that information. I guess, then, one of the remaining two branches that converge at Snow Elf City will also be an "inflow" branch. We'll have to wait to find out which one. I have some time now, so it's time to start knocking through some more regions!

[SRoach]

It might be worth getting familiar with the Koppen climate classification system.
If you have a map of climates, you can, or should be able to, at least, look up a state or nation that predominantly shares the climate with the region you're building, and see what their agriculture looks like.

Something else you might consider is to build your map, and then, once you have the "big picture" laid out, decide what it means pertaining to population. If you keep hitting evil, maybe the elves are the bastion of good in a sea of terror.
Or, maybe you're about to hit "good", and this area is in the middle of a long, drawn out, conflict.

Of course, this doesn't work so well if you're using such a system to extend an existing playfield.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by kreios

A word of warning: Rivers don't split; they only merge. Some more information.

That's... not correct. They split in our region, and that page shows multiple graphics with rivers splitting, including some examples of the Mississippi.

[Landwalker]

Chapter 4

The chapter in which I cross my fingers and hope things start warming up in the non-diabolic sense.

1. Determine Size
   

   Another Small region! (3d6 > 12) But a rather large Small region, at 11 days at its broadest point and 7 days at its narrowest.

2. Climate and Terrain
   

   My initial plan is to place this west of the Infernal Human region, so no river extension. And praise be to RNGesus, I get New Climate, New Terrain!
   
   A 1d6 (2) roll to determine the climate and another 1d6 (3) roll to determine terrain reveal that this new region will be Temperate Hills.

3. Civilization and Settlements
   

   A 3d6 (13) roll indicates one lower step of civilization than it's Civilized Humans "origin neighbor", so these hills are Semi-Civilized.
   
   1d3-2 (0) yields no towns in this region. Because it is semi-civilized, it has no cities by default.

4. Population Type
   

   1d6,1d6 (5,3) shows that these hills are populated (such as they are) by Dwarves.

5. Theme
   

   Well, cross my fingers and hope it's not more Infernals... 1d6,1d6 (4,5) indicates that this is a Religious-themed region! That doesn't necessarily mean that these dwarves are crusaders, of course—there may just be some noteworthy holy sites or ancient temples here. But who knows... maybe the dwarves are crusaders, using these lands as a defensive position or launching point in an ongoing conflict with infernal forces.

Chapter 4a: Rollin' Up a River

1. Determine Size
   

   My first Tiny region! (3d6 > 8) Taking a page out of PTTG's book, I'm going to use 1d6-2 (minimum 1 day across) as the roll for "Tiny Days" instead of the default "About a day, period". 1d6-2,1d6-2 yields 1 day by 1 day, so we have a proper tiny region here.

2. Climate and Terrain
   

   Rather than a 3d6 roll, extending a river requires a simple 1d6 roll and is compared to a table based on the climate in question (the new region keeps the original climate, unless the 1d6 roll dictates otherwise). Since we're going upstream, my 1d6 (1) for an Alpine climate produces Mountains!. This meshes perfectly with the large mountainous region already just south of where I'm operating right now.
   
   One observation about Joe's system: There's no way to get "hybrid" terrain. No "forested hills" or "forested mountains", for example, which are probably the most salient examples. Since this is a river, though, I make the executive decision to throw a few trees in here as well. I also make the region a bit large (about a day and a half by two days) just to squeeze in everything I want to.

3. Civilization and Settlements
   

   We're extending a river from a Civilized region, but we're going into the Mountains, so this is a 3d6+2 (8) roll for civilization: Civilized again! Normally, an 8 would mean +1 civilization, but you can't get more civilized than Civilized in this system.
   
   A Tiny Civilized region gets 1d6-5 cities and 1d3-2 towns, so I wind up with zero of each—although this is a civilized region, it lacks much in the way of urbanization, which suggests it's just heavily-villaged.

4. Population Type
   

   A roll of (5,6) on 1d6,1d6 for a Civilized Mountain yields more Dwarves! I wonder what their relationship is to the dwarves further west...

5. Theme
   

   Whatever that relationship is, they better hope it's one that involves receiving a lot of reinforcements, because a (3,3) roll here reveals that this region's theme is Monsters!. The system says "A particular type of monster (choose one)"—surprisingly, there are no tables for this. But that choice isn't something that needs to be decided now, and would probably work better with the not-yet-available Monster Ecology information.

What the heck, let's do one more. Go for a three-fer.

Chapter 4b: What Lies South?

1. Determine Size
   

   Another (3d6 > 12) Small region, this one measuring roughly 7 × 3 days.

2. Climate and Terrain
   

   I'm going to plan to put this region south-southeast of the Dwarven Holy Hills, so our "starting point" is "Semi-Civilized Temperate Hills". A 3d6 (12) roll shows that this will be Same Climate, Same Terrain, which means more Temperate Hills.

3. Civilization and Settlements
   

   3d6 (12) for Civilization means we're looking at another Semi-Civilized hills region. It'll be receiving (1d3-2) one town, but no cities by default.

4. Population Type
   

   A roll of (2,5) on 1d6,1d6 for a Semi-Civilized Hills yields two possible options: Halflings or Dwarves. Frankly, I'm not especially fond of Halflings, and there already seems like an interesting situation developing in this area as far as dwarves are concerned, so I decide that these hills are also home to Dwarves.

5. Theme
   

   *Hits side of dice roller* Is this thing broken?
   
   Anyway, another (4,3) roll on theme, and another Monsters! result. The dwarves in these lands are quite the besieged lot, as if all the infernal themes weren't enough already...

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The World So Far

[patchwork]

Given the tiny outpost of Civilized dwarves and the larger areas of semi-civilized dwarves cut off from them, the prevalence of monsters and infernalism...the civilized dwarves could be the original dwarf home and capital under siege, with the other dwarf regions being now-isolated colonies and outlying provinces; a dwarf empire in a state of collapse. Just a thought.