Rehashed Tables for Castle and Village Occupants

Here are the tables I've been using for stocking castles and villages around the wilderness in conjunction with "The Wilderness Architect." 

My intent with these tables was to make them a little less overtly magical, so fewer chimera or basilisk guardians, and more complete than the ones presented in Underworld and Wilderness Adventures.

Castle Occupant

Castle occupants are generally high level NPCs retired from adventuring, warfare, and other similar activities where experience may readily be gained.

Alignment should be rolled, not only for Lords, Wizards and the like, but for each classed NPC or group of like NPCs within a castle, town, or village. This creates a sort of factionalism that will lead to more interesting scenarios later on.

1	Lord		1, 2	Lawful
2	Superhero		3, 4	Neutral
3	Wizard		5, 6	Chaotic
4	Necromancer
5	Patriarch
6	Evil High Priest

Other Residents

In typical castle, 30-180 men will man the walls, half of whom will be crossbow armed light foot and the balance will be heavy foot. There is also a chance that there will be others in the castle’s party:

Castle Resident	% Chance of Having	Level
Fighting-Men	75% chance for 2-12 Knights	3-6
	25% chance for Magic-User	5-8
	50% chance for Cleric	3-6
	5% chance for Monsters
Magic-User	50% chance for Fighting-Man	5-8
	50% chance for Apprentice	4-7
	10% chance for Monsters
Cleric	50% chance for 1-6 Assistants	4-7
	50% chance for 3-18 Fighting-Men	2-5
	5% chance for Monsters	N/A

Fighting-Men will typically be formed into an order of Knights or Templars, who may be sent out on quests or crusades and act as commanders in the ruler’s army in war times.

Monsters should be rolled based on the type of hex terrain the castle is built on from a list of like-aligned monsters. Thus a Chaotic ruler will be served only by Chaotic monsters while a Lawful one by Lawful monsters.  

Town and City Residents

There is a chance that villages, small towns, large towns, and city will small percentage of local Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, Clerics, and Thieves. Residents of these classes will generally form themselves into companies, guilds, and churches if there is enough of a certain class or warrant such. Alternatively, Fighting-Men may be of lesser nobility lording over the village. Levels will be from 1-4.

	Fighting-Men	Magic-Users*	Clerics*	Thieves
Village	10%	5%	5%	-
Small Town	25%	10%	10%	10%
Large Town	50%	25%	25%	25%
City	85%	50%	50%	50%

* Use column for Fighting-Men if castle occupant is over this class.

Magic Items

Castle rules and other resident NPCs may possess magic items with a chance based on their level and type based on class.

Fighting-Men have 5% chance per level for…	Armor	Shield	Sword
Magic-Users have 5% chance per level for…	Wand/Staff	Ring	Misc. Magic	Potion (1d6)
Clerics have 5% chance per level for…	Misc. Weapon	Armor	Shield	Staff
Thieves have 5% chance per level for…	Ring	Sword	Misc. Weapon

  

"The Wilderness Architect", Parts 3 and 4

Contained in issues of two and three of Fight On! magazine "The Wilderness Architect" is something I've never really looked at before. That is until yesterday. Written by Victor Raymond and inspired by a series of articles of the same name published in White Dwarf #25-27, these two articles give instructions for randomly generating a robust and compelling wilderness map for use in the original Dungeons and Dragons game.

For those of your at home interested, but done have a copy of Fight On!, check out an earlier version at the OD&D 74 Discussion forum.

Parts 1 and 2 [link]
Scroll down for parts 3 and 4

Drawn and generated by Victor Raymond

Parts 3 and 4 of "The Wilderness Architect" described detailing the wilderness and civilized regions around the city and stronghold. These two are much denser than parts 1 and 2, and I will spending a little more time describing them and hopefully picking up on some of their interest.

Part 3: When creating a stronghold, the starting point is always the monetary investment, as such this is where Raymond begins part 3: with taxation. Based on an average annual venue of 10 gold coins per inhabitant from the town/stronghold and the surrounding villages, "The Wilderness Architect" instructs the referee to design the sites fortification as described in Underworld and Wilderness Adventures. Figuring out the costs of the walls, castle, etc. with 1 to 3 year's worth of taxation depending on the age and prosperity of the region.

After that, it's time to determine the presence of any other strongholds in each direction, typically between 1-5 and anywhere from 10 to 120 miles away. Raymond also discusses the placement of elven, dwarven, and halfling strongholds, but doesn't go into concerning their exact placement (as it would depend on the referee's particular map).

Part 3 continues with a table of encounters in civilized areas, where dangers are less, but opportunities to rob wealthy merchants and random nobles are never far off. While humans reside in towns and castles, various barbaric humanoids (including bandits, berserkers, and the like) may dwell in caves or even have strongholds, towns, and villages of their own out in the 'true' wilderness areas. While only a dozen or so monster are listed, it should be easy incorporate further monsters with the basis of detailes already laid out.

Then we come to actually placing things of interest and monsters in the wilderness. The gist of this section is to take every 20 by 20 mile area and roll for it like it's a dungeon room. Monsters would indicate some sort of lair, treasure indicating ruins (in which the treasure is stored and guarded), etc.

Finally, part 3 gives some information on a more top down, intelligence design sort of view on wilderness creation. I'm not terribly interested in that now, so I'll allow you to peruse it in your own time (because there's some good stuff in it, too.)

Part 4: The final section of "The Wilderness Architect" is all about making your wilderness come to life. The key here that Raymond expresses is not to let anything be ordinary. You haven't just entered into another plain, old forest, but one where roots are knotted and winds howl menacingly, swooping enough the brambles. Give specific places names, but not too many places. You don't need to name every mountain, but name a few. Don't have too many gorges, one is enough. Very terrain details and keep them unique (if possible).

Another way is to think about whose come before. Was there an ancient civilization once residing in these parts, or it is part of a loose confederacy of brigands? Have there been settlers sent this way? Adventurers? What information have they brought back - surely something must be know of what lies in each direction.

Raymond also suggests the use of weather and metaphor to create certain feelings. Types of weather for different seasons should be written up in generalities, while simple expressions of theme should be detailed as well.

"The Wilderness Architect" ends with the notion that, like in a dungeon, the players won't find everything: that's normal. That and it doesn't help to have everything happening at once, a few ongoing is enough - don't overdo it (certainly one of my personal difficulties).

--

And so ends my summary and thoughts on "The Wilderness Architect." I highly recommend checking it out, even if briefly. It's a wonderful piece of work that deserves recognition, but is hardly mentioned in discussion.

"The Wilderness Architect", Parts 1 and 2

Contained in issues of two and three of Fight On! magazine "The Wilderness Architect" is something I've never really looked at before. That is until yesterday. Written by Victor Raymond and inspired by a series of articles of the same name published in White Dwarf #25-27, these two articles give instructions for randomly generating a robust and compelling wilderness map for use in the original Dungeons and Dragons game.

For those of your at home interested, but done have a copy of Fight On!, check out an earlier version at the OD&D 74 Discussion forum.

Drawn and generated by Victor Raymond

First, an interlude. Wilderness mapping (and mapping in general) is something I've been quite poor at. Overly critical of my work, any hint of a problem in intelligence deign has always been a nag in the back of my head.  While not always a major problem, I have given up many of project for this very reason.

Over the last couple of years, since discovering the plethora of Old School blogs and other resources on the net, I have found a decent solution to this problem: random generation. Yet when it comes to mapping, I have been dissatisfied with any methods I have designed previously. Victor's article manages to correct these mistakes, however, and breathe new life into any wilderness region.

--

What's most intriguing about "The Wilderness Architect" is that the terrain generation of individual hexes is based on the hex before it. On the d6 table, five of the six results are related to the last, such as (3) "Terrain stays the same as the previous hex", and (4) "Even chance of adjacent terrain types" (Fight On! #2, page 56) This makes mapping more unified, with groupings of forests and grasslands that resemble designed maps, but are much more organic and inspiring.

My one issue with terrain generation is that large bodies of standing water are much to prevalent when creating a large map and tends to create too many inland seas for my liking. One or two is fine, but in my test run of the "The Wilderness Architect" I find myself 'cheat' and rerolling a fair number of water hexes.

After generating terrain, comes the town or stronghold. Using and combining with the Dungeons and Dragons rules from Men &Magic and Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, Victory creates a series of tables and guidelines for creating areas of civilization within the generated wilderness, including number of inhabitants, surrounding villages, as well as the location of the local (mega) dungeon.

High and mid level characters will control only castes and strongholds as per OD&D, but towns and cities as well. Instead of rolling for just one high level character in cities and towns, Raymond suggests generating a greater number of mid-level characters. If the town or city also contains a castle, roll for the castles inhabitants as well. Finally, civilized areas may also contain a mid to high level thief, depending on the size of the area: 10% in a small town, 25% in a large town, and 50% in a city.

--

Through these tables and excellent advice, the world is given a real sense of character. There are large forests, sweeping grasslands, areas of massive deserts, etc., but with a good amount of rhyme and just enough reason. While I will be modifying these tables slightly for my Elsys campaign setting, they are an excellent basis for any aspiring referee.

Parts two and three form the third issue Fight On! tackle the more intimate details of the civilized lands, relationships within the kingdom, and the areas of vast wilderness beyond.