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Michael Thayne · 09-05-2021, 07:45 PM

I'm thinking of running an old-fashioned wilderness sandbox with DFRPG. To save myself the trouble of having to worry about plausible world-building, I've decided to declare that the Third Wizard War recently concluded after having screwed up absolutely everything about the setting: settlement patterns, weather patterns, locations of mountain ranges... you name it. The PCs will start out in the one city (as far as they know) that escaped WWIII relatively unscathed. Their job is to explore the new world, with an eye towards finding places suited for being re-civilized.

This suggests making everything outside the PCs' home city (and the farming villages that support it) as unsuited for civilizing as possible. Here's my list of ideas so far:

Golem-armor swordsmen have orders from dead masters to guard strategically important bridges and mountain passes.
Electric jellies infest the seas, while angry water-elementals lurk in rivers.
Large and powerful dragons demand tribute from anyone attempting to settle within a half-day's flight of their lairs.
Rogue galdurnauts and siege beasts terrorize the country-side.
Goblin-kin, trolls, and werewolves conduct raids from hidden lairs at night.
Monsters with flight, tunneling, or other special movement abilities use them to pick off vulnerable individuals while avoiding large, well-armed groups. I think this premise works with a fairly large variety of monsters: from foul bats to gryphons to harpies to strix to tomb bugs.
Forests that might make good farmland if cleared turn out to be protected by trétrold.
Specters make entry into anywhere they haunt into a death sentence.
In some places, isolated villages have made pacts with demons, elder things, and sapient undead and try to chase off outsiders who risk exposing their secrets.

While this is a decently long list, it's only a start if I'm looking to fill even a 10x10 hex map. So I want to use this thread to brainstorm ideas: what do you put in your hexcrawl hexes to make your monster filled wilderness both genuinely scary yet potentially more "conquerable" than if it had an infinite supply of wandering monsters that magically appear whenever the random encounter table dictates?

09-05-2021, 07:45 PM	#1
Michael Thayne Join Date: May 2010	Campaign idea: the Shattered Lands I'm thinking of running an old-fashioned wilderness sandbox with DFRPG. To save myself the trouble of having to worry about plausible world-building, I've decided to declare that the Third Wizard War recently concluded after having screwed up absolutely everything about the setting: settlement patterns, weather patterns, locations of mountain ranges... you name it. The PCs will start out in the one city (as far as they know) that escaped WWIII relatively unscathed. Their job is to explore the new world, with an eye towards finding places suited for being re-civilized. This suggests making everything outside the PCs' home city (and the farming villages that support it) as unsuited for civilizing as possible. Here's my list of ideas so far: Golem-armor swordsmen have orders from dead masters to guard strategically important bridges and mountain passes. Electric jellies infest the seas, while angry water-elementals lurk in rivers. Large and powerful dragons demand tribute from anyone attempting to settle within a half-day's flight of their lairs. Rogue galdurnauts and siege beasts terrorize the country-side. Goblin-kin, trolls, and werewolves conduct raids from hidden lairs at night. Monsters with flight, tunneling, or other special movement abilities use them to pick off vulnerable individuals while avoiding large, well-armed groups. I think this premise works with a fairly large variety of monsters: from foul bats to gryphons to harpies to strix to tomb bugs. Forests that might make good farmland if cleared turn out to be protected by trétrold. Specters make entry into anywhere they haunt into a death sentence. In some places, isolated villages have made pacts with demons, elder things, and sapient undead and try to chase off outsiders who risk exposing their secrets. While this is a decently long list, it's only a start if I'm looking to fill even a 10x10 hex map. So I want to use this thread to brainstorm ideas: what do you put in your hexcrawl hexes to make your monster filled wilderness both genuinely scary yet potentially more "conquerable" than if it had an infinite supply of wandering monsters that magically appear whenever the random encounter table dictates?