Wednesday 21 January 2015

Hexmapping in New Troy: Example (Hex 0101)

Each 1-mile hex on the New Troy map has a mirror-image in Faerie, yet the Faerie equivalent is 6 miles. What this chiefly means is that each hex in New Troy has one interesting location, whereas each Faerie hex has at least three - one or all of which are warped refractions of the New Troy counterpart. Let's produce an example.


Hex 0101, right up in the top left. A mixture of hills and meadow, some woodland. It contains the hill pond, an isolated pool nestled among hilltops with deep, dark water inhabited by murky green loaches. Long ago 33 bastard children were drowned in the pool by a Lord of Kinkernadon who was warned by a witch that a child of the devil would cause his death. These loaches have drawn up something of the sorrow and pain of those children, and they communicate the children's spirits' desire for revenge on the Lord of Kinkernadon's descendants. They will grant a limited wish in return for the body of such a descendant being delivered into the pool.

In Faerie, the pool is home to Mournful Nel, a Faerie resembling an old woman, who sits naked on the bank dangling her legs in the water and singing sad songs. She is forever unhappy, though she does not know why; anyone who can provide her with a brief moment or two of solace she will provide with three boons: remove curse, cure blindness, and cure disease, which she will bestow any time they are needed within a year and a day.

In Faerie, there are two other locations in the hex:

The rock doves' nest. Two pucks, a couple, who transformed themselves into rock doves but have forgotten how to turn themselves back again. They need a Faerie Noble to return them to their original forms, but are terrified of the consequences of this and need representatives to act as supplicants on their behalf.

The crack in the earth. A crevasse in woodland inhabited by a band of brocks, man-sized talking badgers. They are bad tempered but not necessarily aggressive; young ones may be tempted into adventuring, and make excellent tunnellers. They are fierce rivals of a pack of Hounds of Annwn living in another nearby hex. (Brock: 3 HD, AC 6, #ATT 1, DMG d6 (does double damage on a successful to hit roll of 18+), Move 150).

2 comments:

  1. Hey noisms, good stuff. I like that Faerie is connected to New Troy.

    I'm wondering what the logic is behind assigning the other two entries to this particular hex. Wouldn't it reduce the time spent worldbuilding if you put the entries on a random table of woodland hex entries, and let them turn up wherever? (Then crossing them off the random list when they are assigned to a hex)?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No logic, really. Just what I feel like. I'm not sure how it would reduce time spent worldbuilding if there was just a random list - because surely it would take the same amount of time to think up the list as it would to do it hex-by-hex? The number of locations I'd have to think up would be the same regardless.

      I also prefer to have locations all planned out in the first place, because that means you can then start feeding the players rumours and figuring out what's going on behind the scenes, wihch you can't really do it if's randomly generated.

      Delete