Sandbox Preparation: Adventure Material, Basic Details...

Good Morning, All:

Continuing on with Adventure Material development, I have to take a look at the amount of material I will need to begin the campaign. In order to keep this a small project (this is, after all, about Minimal Sandbox Preparation), I elected to pursue a smaller area for development. Being a fan of Traveller, my first reaction was to go with a subsector map, a hex map that measures 8 columns across by 10 rows down. By putting Ashaba in the middle of the map, that basically gives me an area to play that covers about two-three days travel from the center (depending on direction). That should give me plenty of room for the initial explorations of the characters, and if this method turns out to be faster for me, I can easily develop adjacent subsector-sized regions as they are needed.

Despite the fact that we really only need to develop a few areas around the players' home base city of Ashaba, I used NBOS Software's free Inspiration Pad Pro to develop the contents for the hexes for the entire region. I did this to demonstrate the range and frequency of results that I got from the process, mostly as a way of field-testing the random chart I'd created. Here's my result set, replacing an Empty result in hex 0505 with Ashaba:

Hex	Contents
0101	Empty
0102	Lair: Common Animal
0103	Lair: Humanoid
0104	Empty
0105	Color
0106	Empty
0107	Site: Dungeon (1 level)
0108	Settlement: Homestead or Plantation
0109	Empty
0110	Lair: Common Animal
0201	Empty
0202	Lair: Supernatural Creature
0203	Empty
0204	Empty
0205	Settlement: Homestead or Plantation
0206	Empty
0207	Empty
0208	Empty
0209	Terrain Effect: Arcane
0210	Empty
0301	Empty
0302	Empty
0303	Empty
0304	Color
0305	Empty
0306	Empty
0307	Lair: Humanoid
0308	Empty
0309	Empty
0310	Empty
0401	Settlement: Homestead or Plantation
0402	Lair: Supernatural Creature
0403	Empty
0404	Empty
0405	Empty
0406	Site: Dungeon (4 levels)
0407	Empty
0408	Empty
0409	Empty
0410	Terrain Effect: Divine
0501	Empty
0502	Empty
0503	Lair: Supernatural Creature
0504	Empty
0505	Ashaba (Home Base)
0506	Empty
0507	Empty
0508	Lair: Common Animal
0509	Empty
0510	Empty
0601	Empty
0602	Empty
0603	Empty
0604	Empty
0605	Lair: Humanoid
0606	Terrain Effect: Man-made
0607	Empty
0608	Color
0609	Empty
0610	Empty
0701	Empty
0702	Lair: Supernatural Creature
0703	Empty
0704	Empty
0705	Settlement: Monastery or Shrine or Temple
0706	Empty
0707	Site: Tower (3 levels)
0708	Color
0709	Lair: Humanoid
0710	Empty
0801	Lair: Supernatural Creature
0802	Empty
0803	Lair: Common Animal
0804	Site: Dungeon (5 levels)
0805	Color
0806	Color
0807	Empty
0808	Terrain Effect: Natural and Arcane
0809	Site: Dungeon (1 level)
0810	Empty

This gives me a short list of 33 entries that will need to be developed over the course of the campaign, assuming characters hit all of them.

Important Regional Locations
0102 Lair: Common Animal
0103 Lair: Humanoid
0105 Color
0107 Site: Dungeon (1 level)
0108 Settlement: Homestead or Plantation
0110 Lair: Common Animal
0202 Lair: Supernatural Creature
0205 Settlement: Homestead or Plantation
0209 Terrain Effect: Arcane
0304 Color
0307 Lair: Humanoid
0401 Settlement: Homestead or Plantation
0402 Lair: Supernatural Creature
0406 Site: Dungeon (4 levels)
0410 Terrain Effect: Divine
0503 Lair: Supernatural Creature
0505 Ashaba (Home Base)
0508 Lair: Common Animal
0605 Lair: Humanoid
0606 Terrain Effect: Man-made
0608 Color
0702 Lair: Supernatural Creature
0705 Settlement: Monastery or Shrine or Temple
0707 Site: Tower (3 levels)
0708 Color
0709 Lair: Humanoid
0801 Lair: Supernatural Creature
0803 Lair: Common Animal
0804 Site: Dungeon (5 levels)
0805 Color
0806 Color
0808 Terrain Effect: Natural and Arcane
0809 Site: Dungeon (1 level)

However, the locations that require Adventure Material before we can begin playing are those within a day's travel of Ashaba. That cuts the list down significantly:

Important Starting Locations
0304 Color
0406 Site: Dungeon (4 levels)
0503 Lair: Supernatural Creature
0505 Ashaba (Home Base)
0605 Lair: Humanoid
0606 Terrain Effect: Man-made
0705 Settlement: Monastery or Shrine or Temple

Not bad. It's not quite the distribution that we designed for, but such is the nature of random generation. The nice part is that we were fortunate to a sample of every category type in this selection. (Okay, truth be told, I swapped two of them out from just outside the two hex range around 0505 with hexes within the range, so that I could include an example of each hex category in the final results, but it was only a matter of shifting the content up or down one hex.) At a minimum, these are the hex locations that we'll need to develop. I will tackle these in my next post.

With Regards,
Flynn