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

  

Another Wilderness Map

So I decided to get some new colored pencils to see if they'd show up better than the ones I used in my previous scan. Turns out, they do. This map was once again done with the article, "The Wilderness Architect" (Parts 1&2, Parts 3&4). 

Click to enlarge

Map Key


Green = Grassland/Farmland
Dark Green = Forest
Light Brown = Hills
Dark Drown = Forest
Blue = Water
Purple = Marsh/Swamp (of which there are none)

Dot = Village
Circle = Small Town
Solid Box = Castle/Stronghold

Solid Line = Coastline
Dashed Line = Road/Trail

--

By the look of the map and the placement of the villages surrounding it, this estate in located somewhere on the boarderlands, with civilization to the north east and north west. A great body of water lying to the east. The "True Wilderness" area lies to the south and west. Alternatively, I would always flip the map around, but  you get the general idea.

What I'm not quite satisfied with still, and why I haven't finished stocking the villages and castle, is the method in Underworld and Wilderness Adventures for actually populating civilized regions. First, I'm imagining civilization as a relatively mundane world, so chimera and basilisk guards are a bit much, and better saved for the wilderness. It also generates NPCs a little too high level for my liking, especially for more civilized regions. So basically, I need to write some new tables that will create a world more in-tune to the concept I'm imagining.

Overall, though, I'm quite pleased with how this map turned out and the terrain generation methods of "The Wilderness Architect." Next time, I'll fill in the rest of the area and share the new tables (once I get them written). Stay tuned for more

"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.

Vancian D&D

In my opinion, Jack Vance's Dying Earth is under-appreciated when it comes to inspiration for roleplaying games. While many know that Vance was the inspiration Gary's magic system in D&D, I find it to be one of the least useful aspects of the Dying Earth to replicate.

What's truly brilliant about Vance is his wilderness adventures. How one moment your trekking through the wilderness and the next you've found yourself in a nice little village that turn out to be unbelievably creepy or insane about halfway through the story. It's just awesome.

Not only that, but he has the most scheming cast of character I've ever seen in a fantasy novel. There's no Frodo going out to same the world from utter destruction. No. Instead, you've got Cudgel, the greedy womanizing bastard who somehow always seems to stay a step ahead of adversity. Just about every character knows what they want and will do just about any to reap the potential benefits. Actually, most of Vance's character act quite like the  PCs in most games I've ran or played in.

Now, that doesn't mean I don't sometimes think Vance is a bit of a sadist on paper. He is a little bit, but at least he's a great one. No really, I bet you could pick up a the Dying Earth, flip to a random page and come up with a great villain for that night's session; I've done it.

So, that turned into more of a rant than I originally planned. Guess I have to include a new rule, monster, magic item, NPC, or something now:

Worms Upon the Lier
MU 4
Duration: Permanent

This spell must be cast one a creature making an oath. Any time thereafter that the oath is broken, the oath-breaker will erupt in the horde of writhing blue worms. These worms will fuse into two monstrous strands, eating away at oath-breaker's body. If the oath was not to divulge information of a curtain kind, the wormy tendrils (4HD each) will seek out the confident or interrogator and mash him into a blood-bony soup.

Wilderness Evasion and Pursuit

Evasion is another one of those rules I always forget about but actually love in theory. Essentially, evasion is the chance that the PCs are able to get away unnoticed from NPCs and monsters in the wilderness. Essentially, stealth.

First off, while castle inhabitants are likely to make PCs lives difficult if they wish to enter their walls, only hostile castle are likely to pursue the PCs into the wilderness, and only a 3 in 6 at doing that. Neutral occupants, on the other hand, have only a 1 in 6 chance of pursuit. Pretty good odds comparatively.

The chance of success for evading monsters is based on the number of PCs and retainers compared to the number of monsters encountered. Well, not quite the number of monster encountered, but the general percentage compared to the number appearing entry in the monster's stat blocks. As the number of characters increases, so does the difficulty of evasion. Likewise, larger numbers of monsters are easier to evade than smaller groups.

Woods add 25% to evasion chances and give a 10% chance of evasion even if surprised. Likewise, faster parties add 25% to their evasion chances, while slower parties subtract 25%. How that for a decent benefit of not wearing plate mail?

Unlike evasion, pursuit is done on a hex by hex basis with a relative chance based on the relative speed of the two groups:

Pursuit will take place whenever it is so indicated with regard to castle inhabitants or when a party is unable to evade monsters. A die is rolled, and the pursuit then goes in that random direction. If the monster is faster than the party involved there is a 50% chance it will catch the party. The party now moves another hex in a random direction, and a die is rolled to determine if pursuit will continue. If pursuit continues the chances for being caught by a faster monster are exactly the same, and the same procedure is repeated if the party is not caught. This procedure continues until pursuit is ended or melee occurs. Woods or swamp will reduce the chance of being caught by 25% (Underworld and Wilderness Adventures pg.20).

Overall, evasion and pursuit are rules for wilderness stealth just like surprise. Who says non-thieves in D&D can't hide or sneak of?

Wilderness Sightings, Surprise, and Getting Lost

Continuing my investigation of the highlights from Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, I'll next be dealing with surprise and monster sightings as well as getting lost in the wilderness.

Monster Sightings: "Players will see monsters at from 40-240 yards...unless the monster has surprised the characters involved" (pg 17). I guess this is where the range of missile weapons actually matters. if you want to make that crossbow a decent weapon, here you go: determine the distance of the monsters from the players and suddenly the advantages of a crossbow become clear.

Surprise: "This is the same as in the underworld, except that the distance is from 10-30 yards, and if there are three or more monsters involved they will have moved into a circle around the adventurers. Monsters at 10 yards distance will be able to attack" (pg 17). So not only do monsters close quickly with the players, but they also circle them, if possible. If you find that fighting-men are dying much more often than the magic-users in your campaign, this rule isn't being use enough (or that there are enough fighting-men to completely encircle the other members of the adventuring party).

Lost Parties: It's easiest (3 in 6 chance) to get lost in the a swamp and the desert where everything looks the same. 2 in 6 chance for mountains and woods. Those are some pretty high chances, in my opinion. Luckily (if I'm reading the text correctly), you won't veer too far in the wrong direction after only a single day of travel.

What confuses me is that there character have a 1 in 6 chance to get lost along a river. If anyone had an explanation or reading on this one, I'd love to hear it.

Wandering Monsters: In mountains and swamps, there is a 3 in 6 chance of encountering monsters and a 2 in 6 chance while adventuring in woods, near rivers, or in the desert.

So remember, adventurers, stay in the plains or near rivers and avoid deserts, mountains, and (especially) swamps.

Castles in OD&D

Of the three little brown books, often refereed to as OD&D, there is one sections I have always found myself glancing over: Volume 3 Underworld and Wilderness Adventures. While I often read over the reference the dungeon portion of the booklet, I seem to gloss over or forget everything past page 14.

Determined to look it over, I'm going to starting writing about a few of the more interesting sections in some detail on this blog. Call is "Selective Underworld and Wilderness Adventures Page 14 to Cover," if you will (although that's a bit of an ungrammatical mouth full even for me).

Castles: According to page 15, castle inhabitants other than Patriarchs are either hostile or neutral towards adventurers. Thus there's a 1 in 6 chance of a castle being friendly to outsiders, a 2 in 6 chance of being neutral, and a 3 in 6 chance of being hostile (I'm counting Evil High Priests in this category, as well). Not very good odds for the survival of low level adventurers, in my opinion.

Castles ruled by Fighting-Men can be made more friendly by defeating the castle's champion in a jousting match. Otherwise, the party much pay a 100 to 600 gp toll to enter the city at all--quite a steep fee in my opinion, but the payoff of one month's room and board, two week's additional rations, and the use of the castle's heavy warhorses is quite a nice reward for a successful tilt.

Even neutral a magic-user will send the party on a quest via a Geas spell "with the magic-user taking at least half of all treasure so gained" or demand a 1000 to 4000 gp toll or a magic item. I guess players need to have a good reason to deal with a magic-user in order for that deal to be worth it. Actually, I quite like this set up, as it keeps high level magic-user from becoming too frequent or friendly.

Clerics, on the other hand, only demand at 10% tithe--which is a manageable feat for character of any level. Although the cleric could also send the players on a Quest (as per the spell) if they do not want to pay the toll. Not as bad as the magic-user if the players are low level, but much worse for higher level characters (unless they accept the quest).

In addition to a magic-user, fighting-man, or cleric ruler, there will also be a number of guards and retainers in the primary occupant's service. Each type of occupant will have a different type of head guard, which can be rolled for. For example, a Superhero may have 8 Myrmidons, 4 Roc being ridden 4 heroes, 4 Ogres, or 10 Swashbucklers. A Wizard, on the other hand may have 4 Dragons, 4 Balrogs, 4 Wyverns, or 4 Basilisks.

The walls will also be manned by 30 to 180 (3d6x10) men, half light footmen with crossbows and half heavy footmen. Likewise, A Fighting-Man has of chance of having a mid- to high-level magic-user or cleric in his service; a magic-user for a Fighting-Man or Apprentice; and a cleric for 1-6 assistants.



Overall, I think the use of these rules could make for a very fun campaign, albeit a difficult one for lower-level adventurers. The only real problem I have is that these rules don't make for very inviting home bases for characters. They are much better suited for castles in distant lands or small kingdoms previously unknown to the players.

6 Jungle Hexes

Brainstorming some ideas for my jungle hex map has lead to creation of a new random table off you readers to plunder, pluck, transmute, and use in your own games.

1. Ancient monolith car a thousand screaming faces. Each face in the shape of a thousand screaming faces. In a bygone age, the each of the visage’s eyes beheld a tiny shining sapphire. Now only 1d8 remain—claimed by the hands of gluttonous thieves. Each sapphire is worth 500 gold pieces, but cursed. After 2-12 days the pilferer will awake that morning covered in a sticky, aqua colored mold. Unless burnt to ash, the mold will, after another 1-6 days, form into a fungal mummy, and will stop at nothing to being about the thief’s demise.

2. An ancient pit, tunneling deep into the earth--much further than torch-light will shine. The pit is a remnant tunnel of a purple worm that roams the surrounding region in search of its mate--who was long ago imprisoned below the earth.

3. A bramble of thick vines that conceals the entrance to a mad-wizard's lair. If the vines are disturbed, they will come to life and assemble into a abomination of swamp muck and thorns: AC 4; HD 7; #AT 3; D 1-8/1-8/1 + poison (save vs poison or die), MV 90' (30'), Save F1, ML 12). Within the mad-wizard's lair is a well stocked library, comfortable living quarters, a summoning circle filled with skeletons of four sets of conjoined twins, and slime filled vats (also used as a kitchen).

4. A skeleton with a gold signet ring. If closely examined, a thief or any character with at least 9 intelligence will notice that the spine has been delicately severed--likely the cause of death. The ring is the symbol of a lost royal line. Whomever possesses the ring can, by "birthright," claim control of a nearby kingdom, but doing so may have dire consequences if the right precautions are not taken.

5. A group of cultists have constructed a giant stone statue in the shape of a kneeling man in the middle of a small clearing. The statue is hollow, but can only be accessed via the statue's mouth. If encountered at night, 3d10 cultists will be gathering for a sacrificial rite. An albino priest in purple and gold robes will be performing a act of human sacrifice from within the mouth of the statue. The cultists are normal, but their leader is a level 7 magic-user.

6. A gold citadel built into the jungle itself. If detect evil is used, the whole site will radiate evil so strongly that the user is blinded for 1-4 hours afterwards. The citadel is barren except for a blind hermit of a lawful alignment - the last guardian of an imprisoned demon. He fights as a level 5 cleric with but 5 hit points, and will defend the citadel against any intruder. If the hermit is killed, a Carcosian beast will be released once again into the world above.