A Player-Facing Sandbox Part 1 - The Map

I had intended for a while to write a fairly dry, mechnical post about the gameplay implications of travel distance and hence on map building, but then a couple of things happened:

1. I read Prismatic Wasteland’s excellent hexcrawl checklist (Part 1 and Part 2)
2. I watched Map Crow’s video, which packs a lot of good map design (including some valuable points from open world videogames) into just 15 minutes.

And I thought “well, there’s probably enough theory out there… but perhaps I can create an example of how I build something”.

But this post is also meant to show how I iterate between mechanics and fiction. In my opinion each drives the other, and it’s by considering both that we achieve ludonarrative harmony, rather than dissonance.

Some Assumptions

We aren’t going to be building for a particular system here, but we should at least set our baseline mechanics and fiction. Let’s assume we’ve had our Session 0 or equivalent, and agreed that:

• We want to play a hexcrawl - players are expecting isolated settlements, overland travel and emergent gameplay.
• The players are going to be given a map of the area, along with some rumours and other general information.
• We’re using Gold-as-XP AND/OR that accumulating treasure is the default motivation of our PCs. Much of the advice below works without this, but remember this is baseline.
• We have some sort of mechanics (e.g. travel per terrain type, random encounter rolls etc) that help the GM adjudicate these expeditions into the wilderness. My own system is a bit like OSR Simulacrum’s one here. A typical terrain classification and mechanical impact.

In keeping with this idea of a common baseline, the theme of the example below does not see us stepping outside a typical lowish-magic, vanilla, vaguely European fantasy realm.

1. A Starting Point and Obvious Hook

The starting point is straightfoward - we need a settlement. This is an incredibly broad concept, because mechanically it just needs to serve the following purposes:

• Be a source of information
• Somewhere to sell treasure and restock on basic supplies (such as new party members)

For a longer campaign, you probably also want it to be part of the stakes for the characters - somewhere they can develop, that can be threatened, contains people they rely on etc… but we don’t need to prep that especially, as it will emerge through play. Basically, don’t make it an impregnable utopia - not least because the characters need to want to leave…

You will note that I specified an obvious hook. What makes a hook obvious?

1. The hook is presented clearly to the PCs. There can still be twists and mystery, but the information shouldn’t be vague. Go to this place. Perform this specific task. Obtain this exact object.
2. Broadly within the PCs capabilities. Or at least the first step towards it is.
3. Have a reward that the PCs desire. Bigger rewards are more obvious but so are rewards with fewer complications.

Thus: “Your beloved sister Isabel tells you that there is a drawer in the room next door that contains a diamond worth 1000GP” Is an obvious hook. “Your nemesis David the Liar says that over the hills and far away a gigantic dragon guards a magical piano that probably means you won’t ever catch a cold again” Is not.

But of course, the first example there contains no obstacle, no threat and no narrative payoff or sense of accomplishment. So before we detail what our hook is in the fiction, we should think mechanically about where we want to place it.

2. Populating the Map

At this point, I must reference Anne’s post over at DIY and Dragons. As Prismatic (“Please, Mr. Wasteland is my father”) notes in their list, it’s the gold standard for this sort of thing. The only thing extra I do in my interpretation is to tag certain hex contents as threats (on which more below).

A player-facing map is inherently landmark information - player characters can refer to it at any time and it does not cost them anything to do so. This means that any points of interest placed on the map (either in the initial handout or added later via player action) are also landmark information. Classic examples are:

• Terrain type and climate
• Routes such as rivers or public roads (trails and shortcuts may well be hidden. The Mines of Moria are risky)
• Names of settlements, forests, mountain ranges etc (on which more in Part 2)
• Visual landmarks (something visible from a distance: a volcano, a prominent statue, a huge tree)
• Commonly known information (a shrine behind a waterfall can still be famous if hundreds of pilgrims visit each year, a stretch of marsh with a particular hazard will produce warnings about the area)
• Political or cultural borders (although the precise demarcation is usually blurry on the ground, this can make for interesting gameplay when it comes to changes in laws/authority between different areas)

The first two points above are what interest us initially, as they allow players to determine the approximate time and risk for a particular route. We want our players to make interesting and informed choices, and we also want them to fully engage with the wilderness mechanics of the game. Therefore, the obvious hook should:

• Have a selection of viable routes leading to it.
• Require spending at least one night in the wilderness to explore and return.
• Expose the players to other distractions and/or dangers along the way.

With the terrain mechanics assumed above, we generate this: We have four possible ways of reaching our obvious hook from the settlement. Routes 2, 3 and 4 will all take around the same travel time but each carries slightly less risk. Route 1 is much slower. We need to balance these out a little, so we add:

• An additional obvious hook to route 1, to make it more appealing
• Landmarks to routes 2 and 3
• Extra risk to route 4 This is better, and plus the map is starting to look more populated! But there’s still a little to be done in and around the obvious hook itself.
• Tagging the hook as a threat makes it more interesting and helps define the fiction in the next step
• Adding some nearby hidden features means more of a sense of discovery as the PCs venture further from the settlement Now we have our mechanical framework, we can generate some fiction to hang on it.

3. Defining the Points of Interest

In my opinion, a hex’s point of interest should provide at least one of the following, and preferably more:

• Loot and treasure to obtain (or some other reward e.g. a boon from a minor diety)
• An interesting choice or dilemma
• Something that is time-dependent
• A notable foe to defeat
• Lore and history about the world
• An obscure secret (see secrets in Landmark, Hidden, Secret)
• Information about another point of interest, rumour or hook
• A puzzle to solve
• An NPC to talk to or otherwise peacefully interact with (e.g. a merchant)
• A reason to return
• An entrance to a dungeon

(Readers will notice some intentional similarities here with Arnold K’s dungeon checklist)

The other important reason for variety within the points of the interest is it allows the GM to gauge what the players are interested in. By offering a menu, you can see their preferences and understand not merely the sort of thing to add as the campaign builds, but also where you should go light and heavy on your prep. For example, if your players are heavily invested in the history, then you can build a timeline of different eras/interactions to discover.

Note that we’re assuming for simplicity’s sake that each hex has one point of interest - I will sometimes have zero (especially close to a settlement, as seen in this example) and sometimes have two (so that players don’t assume they’ve found everything). For an actual campaign I would do this process a few times in various directions from the settlement (and add at least one additional settlement as well).

On Threats

I’ll talk about this more in Part 2, but with respect to tagging certain points of interest as ‘threats’. What this means in general terms is “Something that has the potential to grow in danger, either to the party and/or something they care about”. A threat might get fleshed out into a front, complete with goals and a faction clock… but it might not need to be. My most memorable threat from a previous campaign was simply an unnaturally fast-growing plant that was cutting off a settlement’s water supply the more it grew.

Illustrating the Map

I’m going to go with a very standard combo of grassland, hills and mountains to make it clear how I’ve matched it to the terrrain difficulties above. People ask me fairly often how I make these (especially those who are familiar with my C grades in both GCSE Art and Graphic Design). It’s actually fairly simple - I use Wonderdraft with the default assets, taking care to use a limited colour palette (greyscale for an example like this, but I used soft natural colours for this piece). I find taking note of the relative size of mountains/hills/trees/settlements is important. It doesn’t have to be to scale, but should imply that one is bigger than the other.

Names and hex codes (along with arrows and notes in this example) are then layered over the top using Affinity Designer. You can do the hex grid in Affinity as well if you want (set your grid to triangular) or indeed write labels in Wonderdraft (but Affinity has more power to layer, baseline etc plus a lot more fonts).

Design Notes

D3 is our obvious hook - the PCs can be clearly told that, whilst the captives/dead bodies might have treasure on them, the bulk of the goods and valuables are not of interest to the foes here. It’s all just sitting around for the taking! And since it’s created by the same civilization as the PCs it is easy to appraise its cash value! There are, of course, some further reasons:

• Presenting at least some members of the caravan as captured rather than slaughtered creates a moral dilemma, a potential dungeon nearby and the prospect of an additional reward/favour.

• There is a classic OSR encumbrance puzzle (How do we get these trade goods back when all the horses are dead? If we bring horses along, will we get attacked ourselves?).

• The scared merchant’s apprentice is fun to roleplay with.

• The threat here is obvious: If the party don’t defeat the jackalfolk, they will grow bolder and stronger. Making it more of a magical ritual distinguishes it from the goblins in D1.

• Jackalfolk (this world’s take on Gnolls) allow for some truly alien motivations (like the classic demon worship) but also lets the players make deductions/assumptions based on real world animal behaviour. Terrifying bipedal canines

• B3 leaves Peggy’s fate ambiguous, so she might not be too happy if she finds out she’s been robbed. It’s also deliberately not too challenging - a party should have lots of options to get past the bear rather than engaging it directly. It’s intended to be an obvious hook, but not as obvious as the caravan above. A more mystery-focused party has plenty of intrigue here along with C4 and B2.

• C4 is an attempt to add mystery and treasure but is hazardous and hard to find. A reward for those scouring the mountains or intrigued by the contents of B3.

• B2 is deliberately variable with time. It rewards further investigation and repeated visits. Potentially the start of a big scheme by the PCs, especially if they can rope in some allies from Geptis. Equally not worth fleshing out in much more detail yet because they might just write it off as too risky from the start!

• C3 was originally going to be something to fight, but I decided that a curse was more entertaining and had more interesting consequences. You could add something here about a creature (either sentient or not) investigating the holes dug by the party.

• C2 is the classic ‘that thing on the horizon looks interesting’. Could be the start of a whole plot line or just be used to underline how old and mysterious this land is. Implies a breakdown of law and order relative to the past, which is a thematic link to our obvious hook.

• D1 features everyone’s favourite: drunken goblins. Lots of options for information to leak out in advance of them being encountered, since they’re not exactly stealthy. A threat nonetheless, and if I was to expand the map further they would be a whole civilization in a forest further South. Deliberately left ambiguous as to whether they want to rob, ransom, enslave or eat the hunters.

  4. What comes next

  You will note that we don’t yet have the following:

• Names on the map other than the starting settlement

• A rumour table

• A random encounter table

• Weather

• Factions or faction clocks

• Any drawings of creatures on the map

These will be covered in part 2. That’s mostly because I see them as filling in the gaps between the defined points of interest already established - partly because I don’t want them to contradict anything we’ve already prepped, but mostly because I consider them a key part of the information flow from GM to players.

Until next time!

December 28, 2022

Minimum Viable Worldbuilding - The Rule of 5

This is a technique for a ‘history-forward’ method of worldbuilding. One where you first construct the history of a location and use that to inform that day-to-day world that your players will encounter. It works for pretty much any size of area, from an individual structure (such as a dungeon) to an entire planet or solar system. I generally use it for towns, villages and any ruin or similar where the party are likely to spend more than a couple of sessions.

The term ‘minimum viable worldbuilding’ refers to the overarching goal behind this. You want to give your players enough material to make a location feel like it has both a past and a present, with multiple threads (and possible interactions between them) to explore. Locations that are entirely ‘past’ feel static - implausible in the way that some unlooted places in open world videogames are. Locations that are entirely ‘present’ feel generic, as there is no context or contrast with whatever the current crisis or rumour is. However, no GM has the time to prepare a fictional history that even comes close to that of the real world, and to do so would fix it too rigidly, incapable of further evolution).

Basically, you’re aiming for somewhere between a Rothko (wherein the absence of detail leads to divergence between what different players project onto it) and a Bosch (time-consuming and leaves you a prisoner of your own detail if you wish to adjust something during play).

Note that I cannot help but look for Wally (Waldo to the Americans) in Bosch paintings. Look, there he is, getting eaten by a half-beetle, half-sparrow.

So what is it?

The basic principle is to answer the question “What happened here five _________ ago?” Where the blank can be any unit of time from seconds to millions of years. We choose five different units of time, thus asking five slightly different questions. From these we creatre a timeline with intervals that get exponentially longer the further back you go. The different units will also impact the nature of answers, and how they are expressed in the world.

Aim for your answers to be unique to that area. For example, if something is an answer for two adjacent towns, then it’s actually an answer to the same list of questions for the region, not an individual town.

You can also add one or more pieces of implied information that player characters would encounter in the present. Some of the examples below have had this added. This then leads onto the following section, in which we derive interactions and situations.

Millions of Years
Geographic features. Key steps or divergences in the evolution of plants and animals. Deposits of geological resources. Creation myths and similar works of great, fundamental magic.

• An asteroid rich in mithril impacted from above, creating Silverwave lake.
• The warm bloods’ thick fur meant they survived The Time of Ice.
• Dinosaurs that died in the thick river mud were fossilised, creating a seam of well-preserved remains.

Millenia
Events described in holy books, philosophical tomes or oral traditions. Extinct civilizations with dead languages. Ruins where the purpose of them and/or their method of construction is unclear.

• The great tablets covered in runes were raised on the clifftop, still undeciphered even now.
• The journey of Salid, Son of Mur, brought back the treasures that were sealed in the Vault of Kings.
• The Karakhim ruled this land as despots, practicing a bloody but even-handed system of justice.

Centuries
Things recalled by longer-lived species. Building of a structure where the architecture and use is still clear today, even if ruined. A notable battle or other victory (legal, magical, political) with wide ramifications.

• Malcolm the Great was victorious, and his lineage still rules to this day.
• The construction of the huge amphitheatre which most of the town now lies within.
• With the translation of the apocrypha complete, a schism developed in the followers of T’Gren.

Decades
Within the living memory of the oldest humans. The establishment of current borders/jurisdiction. A natural disaster that is hoped never to be repeated. The last time a now abandoned structure was used.

• The day of three rainbows, seen as a sign that the land was fertile and blessed.
  
• An assassin’s blade found the heart of Merther Tywit, recently canonized as Saint Tywit.
• The supposed day of judgement for The Chosen of Datch, which did not come to pass.

Years
Changes of ruler/government. An unsolved crime still lurking in local memories. The war responsible for the ongoing insurgency. A decision or event that is still being argued about by older people.

• Phinneas the mage built their tower one bend along the river.
• A fire tore through the Heartwood. The new saplings are still small and fragile.
• The gates of Murin’s Wall were closed due to the plague, and still are today.

Months
The happenings of the previous season. An ongoing legal dispute. A scandal fresh in local memories.

• Every sow on the Winthrop Farm became pregnant overnight. The piglets are due any day now.
• The East guard tower collapsed. Work has not yet started on a replacement, despite much discussion.
• Lord Northwood imposed punitive taxes, causing much resentment.

Weeks
The most recent news from a distant place (in a pre-telegraph world). The latest crisis for local government.

• The Queen is dead. Long live the King.
• A supply ship foundered on Devil’s Reef. Prices are much higher already.
• The new road to the capitol was completed. The first pilgrims have just arrived.

Days
Gossip and rumour that is the current ‘talk of the town’. Events that are likely unknown to those outside this local area.

• There was a fight at the funeral of old Tim. Black eyes remain visible on the combatants.
• Strangely coloured lights were seen at the windows of the long-empty Gavelack Hall.
• A group ventured into Spiderweb Forest to hunt the Speckled Stag.

Hours
Occurences of the previous day or night. Things that people are still learning about and reacting to.

• Hilary and Benedict have gotten engaged. They are from two rival families.
• Famed bandit leader Karl the Crimson has pitched his camp across the river.
• Ursula the Miller is missing. Her wife swears they went to bed as normal last night.

Minutes
The immediate aftermath is experienced by the player characters. The event could still be ongoing or have people instinctively reacting to it.

• The town hall is ablaze. Smoke and flames are visible.
• An elderly stranger laid his hand upon the plague victim. They are already awake and smiling.
• Loud trumpets signalled the start of Prince Rupert’s procession.

Seconds
Inciting incidents. Things that the player characters can observe directly and react to.

• The actor playing Ser Winthrop staggers backward, covered in blood. That wasn’t a prop knife!
• Lightning slams into the sign at the crossroads, sending fragments everywhere.
• The foreman of the jury pronounces the defendant as guilty while the crowd watches.

Deriving the Current Situation

As an example of putting this into practice, let’s consider the town of Ambridge as an example. We aren’t trying to draw connections at this stage - just throw some interesting and varied answers down on a piece of paper.

“What happened here five centuries ago?”
A group of desperate travellers chanced upon a large, abandoned orchard. Who planted it remains unclear.

“What happened here five decades ago?”
A power struggle as the last of the Hanley family passed away without issue.

“What happened here five years ago?”
The murder of popular blacksmith Earl Connely. It remains unsolved.

“What happened here five weeks ago?”
Reports emerged of merchants being attacked on the West road. The attackers work at night, are humanoid, cover their faces and mostly take valuable cloth or thread.

“What happened here five minutes ago?”
A cryptic symbol appeared on the wall of the Goose & Gander. It is green, luminous and slimy. It resembles an octopus caught in a spiderweb.

We then take these answers and look first at what is immediately obvious - what would the characters notice or be told about as soon as they enter? Then we move onto deeper reasons behind what is happening, and the connections between them. Finally, we ask what is hidden and secret, and what motivations are behind the events that have happened or are unfolding?

As the characters enter the town:

• Everyone is talking about the symbol. People are running over to look at it whilst others back away. The owner of the Goose & Gander has started to wonder how to profit from it.
• The mysterious robbers are less discussed, unless someone invents a rumour that connects them with the symbol.
• Theories fly around as a few brave souls touch the symbol and discussion continues over some glasses of the wine the town is famous for (possibly all the party knew before coming here).

As they learn more and spend more time here:

• The tensions of the earlier power struggle have not entirely vanished. There are still rivalries between the families that have been here the longest and they seldom inter-marry.
• Earl Connely was known for the elaborate carvings he could create in metal. The were often based around the number eight and there are probably still some examples dotted around the place.
• The town’s prosperity rests on the orchard. A belief has developed that its fertility is waning.

And if they themselves investigate:

• A friendly slime spirit has taken pity on Earl’s weak and feeble ghost, and is attempting to lead people to the truth (despite not speaking any languages) - he was killed to prevent his popularity from challenging the current ruling family.
• A secret fertility cult is constructing a cloth effigy to burn as part of a restoration ritual. Certain extreme elements believe there should be a human sacrifice inside, and propose capturing a suitable victim…
• The plan of the orchard matches with a constellation familiar to one of the characters. More evidence that the prophecy is accurate.

But why 5?

Even in 2022, tabletop RPG blogs are required by law to feature at least one still from this film. I have chosen to get mine out of the way early, but write to your local representative today to spur change.

Measuring both time increments and the number of questions as the same number makes it easy to remember. Moreover, the rule of three is already a thing, and also three doesn’t feel like quite enough. The idea here is to imply greater depth - by creating just enough material that the details and ramifications of it can’t be summarised in just a single conversation. Five things gives you ten possible interactions between them all - more if you have three or more things all interact simultaneously!

October 23, 2022