Mapping Procedure, take II

When I first set out to make my Prodigy map, I sketched out a rough topographical map, picked a starting point, and then used Alexis' procedure (outlined here) to randomly generate the elevation of all the hexes in the map.

Along the way, I ran into a couple of problems, which I outlined in my previous post.  I wrote it back in December, but forgot to post it until now.

As the map neared completion, I ran into my latest problem with the procedure: since each hex is created by a single generating hex from the previous iteration, terrain trends proceed in a mostly linear fashion, iteration to iteration.  So, my terrain features ended up being mostly straight lines (this is especially apparent with regard to the lakes that appeared in the bottom half and right side of the map).

My problem with this is that geologic features are shaped in zones, not radiating lines.  And my approach, while well-suited for a smaller scale endeavor, ended up not being quite good enough.

This brings me to the map you see above, which is the finished map overlaid with large (3 hex tall) hexes.  My thought was to apply a layer of obfuscation to the map, taking the information within each large hex to calculate 3 things: the mean hex elevation (taking into consideration, but weighting less, the hexes which are but partially contained within the larger hex), the minimum hex elevation, and the maximum hex elevation.

I've now recorded that data for each of the larger hexes and my next (and final effort for the base map) is to use this to populate all of the smaller hexes from their parent hex (the larger one).  The math is quite simple: the mean hex elevation for the hex remains unchanged.  Excel then rolls 6d6 and subtracts 21 for each of the internal hexes.  If the difference is positive, then that difference is multiplied by the difference between the mean hex elevation and the max hex elevation, divided by 16 (so that no hex will be exactly at the max height).  If the difference is negative, then that difference is multiplied by the difference between the mean hex elevation and the minimum hex elevation, divided by 15.

Now, any hex's elevation has been produced not by one hex but by all of the hexes surrounding it.  I think it will also lead to an exaggeration of geologic features - my relatively flat parent hexes will produce even flatter children, but my mountainous regions, where elevation changes wildly, will be even more varied.

When I finish, I will post the result and reflect on whether or not the procedure was worth the extra effort.

Mapping Procedure, take I

Making maps is probably one of the central activities we Dungeon Masters do.  As beings responsible for the presentation of a fantasy world to our players, maps are an incredibly useful tool.  There are abundant resources available on the interwebs for map-making of all kinds, and most of those resources refer to procedural or random map creation, from geomorph dungeon tiles jig-sawed together to create a dungeon quickly or for hex-by-hex surface map creation at whatever mileage scale you decide.  These approaches are quick, and require little input from the DM, simply a little random-rolling, maybe an aesthetic choice or two, and then it's done.  The map is made, and you are ready to play.

There is, however, a rather substantial flaw with this approach - it totally, completely kills any kind of logic or order to your game world, on both a large and small scale.  This, in turn, kills any kind of realism and precludes any kind of sensible, large-scale organization, at least not without a huge investment of work that could have been spent on making a quality map the first time around.

I have been crafting the Prodigy map for over 8 months now, and I’m nowhere near done.  But, I can already see as I work, hex-by-hex, the hierarchy of regions, how places will be structured, and likely areas of adventure.  The key, I have found, is two-fold.  The first step is to draw (no hexes or anything) what you want the land to look like.  This will likely go through several iterations, which is ok - this map will sustain years of play if you make it large enough (a couple million square miles will do).  Your last iteration should be a topological map, a map with contour lines showing the elevation of rough regions.  Ideally, this last contour map is on some kind of tracing paper, so that you can afterwards secure a sheet of graph paper underneath to see both the grid (of hexes or squares) and the contour map.

Then open up your favorite map software (Microsoft Publisher is the only one I can recommend, and I'll later get into why Hexographer and Campaign Cartographer, both of which I have and have used, are insufficient), create a hex grid with the appropriate number of hexes, and begin coloring in each hex according to your drawing, with a different color for each elevation range.  This goes by faster than you might expect.

Now, a lot of people would be done here - you have the map, so just add cities, roads, rivers, etc. and then you're done, right?  No, you are just beginning.

Elevation, specific elevation levels, are the core of cartography and world-building.  They will place your rivers and cities for you, determine your roads, help you anticipate weather conditions, determine crops, placement of wild animals, etc.  Having elevation ranges is a start, but is no substitute.  This is where a commitment to realism comes into play.  Alexis Smolensk has a fantastic procedural process to determine hex elevation based on a previous hex, producing realistic terrain with a degree of variability.  He explains it well, so go read it and then come back, because while his method is thorough, it is unfinished.

Welcome back.  Alexis' approach skips our first step - actually drawing the map and envisioning what it looks like before plotting it out.  You'll want to automate the dice-rolling and elevation determination procedure with a program like Excel, so that after you input a hex's elevation, you will get three elevation results for the neighboring hex - you are subtracting 21 from dice value and multiplying by 1/12th the base height to get the change in elevation.  So, produce the raw result, produce the result if the total elevation increases (absolute value of the difference between 21 and your roll), and produce the result where the elevation decreases (negative absolute value of the difference).  Then pick a starting point, pick an elevation for that location within the range suggested by the hex's color, write it in the hex, and apply our modified method.

Say I use the following scheme:

D. Green	Land	499
Green	500	999
Light Green	1000	1999
Yellow	2000	3499
Orange	3500	4999
Red	5000	6999
Dark Red	7000	8999
Purple	9000	11000

And I have a Dark Green hex bordering a Green hex, and the Dark Green hex currently has an elevation of 234'.  I run it through my Excel spreadsheet and get 3 results: 312', 312', and 156'.  I'll use the 312' result, since I'm going from a lower hex to a higher hex.  Now, this new hex doesn't have the elevation required for a Green hex.  This is ok - just change the color of the hex to Dark Green.  As you continue to move into higher and higher hex colors, your general elevation will increase, but at a variable rate.  You will end up with natural peaks and valleys, mountain passes, and mighty rivers.

The next way we need to modify Alexis' method is with regard to two things: negative elevation and lakes.  Alexis assumes, since he uses no pre-existing map, that whenever you reach negative elevation you have reached the sea.  Since you already know where the sea is, if you create a hex with negative elevation inland (probably due to a river continuing to slope downward but away from the ocean), you have 2 choices: either change the map and put in an ocean or sea there, or transform that hex into a lake hex, with the highest possible water level that doesn't change the generating hex into a lake as well.  Then, keep generating terrain, and every adjacent hex with an elevation lower than the water level is also a lake hex.

I'd recommend using a new color for lake hexes and for marsh hexes (lakes that touch the ocean will be brackish (i.e. a mix of salt and fresh-water) and will be above sea level but mostly covered with water), since those hexes will become incredibly important when populating your world.

The next step is to place towns and cities using Welshpiper for number and approximate distance between locations and using the conflux of rivers to place settlements as much as possible.  Remember that the rivers generated with this method are where there are currently rivers, or where there were rivers many years ago - deserts are often the remains of extensive water systems, so if building a desert, you can use the same process, but there won't be any water actually coursing down those river channels.  However, lakes provide great locations for oases or wells…

This map takes your original idea and runs it through a thorough randomization which can take a rough(ish) map and make it highly specific and quickly gameable.  It will be months of effort, but the end result is far superior to any cobbled-together cartographic contraption.

With regard to Hexographer and Campaign Cartographer, Hexographer is a wonderful tool for sketching purposes, but the difficulty in adding and editing text makes it impractical for this kind of use.  Campaign Cartographer is an excellent way to produce beautiful map products, but the difficulty in editing shapes once they have been laid out and the difficulties in adding or editing text makes using it for this purpose inadvisable.  Now, were I to sell this map, I'd release it in two versions - a beautiful Campaign Cartography one to communicate rough ideas about the map and for player consumption and then the Publisher one for actual DM use.

Experience Rewards

When I started as a DM, I ignored experience rewards and handed out levels as rewards for accomplishing tasks in my railroads.  I then discovered the OSR and the whole world of online RPG blogging, and my perspective changed, especially after reading this post.  I use a variant of it for my LotFP games, and it has worked very well.

The crux of the rule is that it takes 10 experience to level up, and each encounter (which I define as in a situation in which the character might die) is worth 1, 2, or 3 experience correlating with the difficulty of the encounter (and I have given larger rewards for accomplishing larger goals in the world).

I had to add a caveat to this, however, as it seemed unfair that level 1 and level 5 characters would progress at the same rate.  And that is, at the beginning of each session, I calculate the average character level.  Characters at that level need 10 experience points to level up.  For every level a character is above this average, they require 2 additional experience points to level up, and for every level a character is below this average, they require 2 fewer experience points to level up.

The logic behind this is that the challenges a higher-level party will face is typically greater than that of a lower-level party, so low-level characters who survive such an encounter ought to receive more benefit from it.  Similarly, because they are mentoring and protecting the lower-level characters, higher leveled characters receive less benefit from an encounter, requiring them to get more experience to level up.

The rule has worked very well so far - as my game is often quite lethal, new characters are constantly being introduced and then rushed to a power level more in line with the rest of the group, while the longer-lived characters, who have more experience, don't outpace the rest of the group.

Demi-Monde Running

As per Alexis' recommendations, I created several pre-generated characters with the same ability scores rearranged as per the character's skillsets.  My players all chose characters and we finished up the last step - each character has a connection with the demi-monde.  I decided to have each character's relationship with someone else be the impetus for their exposure to the demi-monde, and so I used my relationship generator from Prodigy:

Roll	Connection	Current Relationship
1	Parent or Guardian	Amity
2	Sibling	Hatred
3	Rival	Love
4	Childhood Friend	Fear
5	Mentor	Disgust
6	Bully	Respect
7	Old Flame	Neutrality
8	Spouse	It’s Complicated: roll twice

As you might expect (since this table is very vague), I then improvised a horrific episode to introduce each character to the demi-monde and link them to Tashkent, the geographic location for the setting.  For example, for a result of 1, 1, the character had a phenomenal childhood with loving parents, but then one night awoke to see some being made entirely out of flame setting his house on fire.  He blacked out and was promptly arrested for the murder of his parents (who were discovered tied to chairs and then stabbed 18 times each) and arson (firestarting equipment was found in his room).  He was acquitted on a mistrial and enlisted to get away from his home.  While doing research, he discovered similar reports happening in Tashkent, and hopped on the plane to investigate.

A brief synopsis of the running follows.

All of the characters arrived on the same flight from the U.S. and were grouped together by a taxi driver who provided necessary exposition on the specific district in which the first session would be held - Sergeli district, which contains the airport and the Usman Nasyr Recreation Park.

The party quickly found accommodations for a prolonged stay, near the Sergeli Bazaar, found the black market, and received a quest to investigate and "take care of" an arena fighter who seemed impervious to damage.

Then, after some reconnoitering, the party stalled out and split up as they investigated their own objectives - part of the group wanted to recruit some cats to ward off beings of the demi-monde, while the rest of the group headed into another district to investigate one of the character's connections to the city, Teriuk Publishing House.

In broad daylight, they broke in, found that the place had been, mostly, cleared out by some authority, and set off an interior alarm connected to the exec's office.  The police came quickly and arrested one of the characters, while another stole their car (in front of them) and raced away while the third snuck away scot-free.  The car chase ended with a ball of fire, several dead Uzbek police officers, and a dead character.

The survivors reconvened that evening and, as they considered exploring an old Orthodox church retrofitted into Stalin's Reform School with some creepy rumors floating around about it, I ended the running - it was getting late and some of us had exams that evening.



Reactions to the setting were mixed - the players spent most of the game trying to adjust to the world of Tashkent, having no experience with the city or that part of the world.  This meant that they were very focused upon the more mundane aspects and didn't really investigate the weirder stuff available to them.  The other major issue was that the players felt that their characters had little or no reason to be together, other than convenience and a shared American nationality - their links to the demi-monde were all very different, and (because of how they were generated) very intimate and shameful, so they felt very little impetus to open up and work with the other characters.

On the other hand, they all felt like there was a city to explore, and a whole dark universe to ponder - they were aware of three distinct areas of interest and wanted to pursue all of them.  They developed relationships with several different NPCs, and focused (most of them) on securing a base of operations to prepare for an extended foray into the city.

The first structural problem with the running were its status as a one-shot: players were inclined to rush to do things without preparation and also to make poor but thrilling decisions (like stealing the police car in front of the officers).  Some of my players really bought into their characters, while others kept their distance from them.  There is a great deal more impetus to buy into characters when it will be a longer campaign.

The second structural problem was the interrelation of the characters - in the absence of an external cohesive agent, several of my players chose not to act like part of a group.  For beginning a campaign, I think generating character relationships and creating an external cohesive relationship for the players will give them the impetus they need to open up and share.

The third structural issue, that didn't impact today's game particularly but absolutely would have if this was the beginning of a campaign, was in the players not really understanding what they would need to establish a long-term presence in a foreign country - principally housing and a source of income.  The fault there is mine - I didn't explain it until my players and I reflected on the running.

All in all, I've learned a lot from this running which will undoubtedly transfer over to the next three sessions.

Demi-Monde Structures, Part II

Last time I talked about then new structures I'm grafting onto the LotFP chassis.  This time I'll talk about how I tweak the chassis to make it more suitable for a game set in modern times.

Skills
One of the largest differences between functioning in a modern society today as compared with living in a medieval one is the distribution of knowledge.  Thinking about the usual conception of RPG skills, this means that characters will have a lot more, and since the world today is a great deal more technical, this would normally require a great many more skill categories.

From my experience with modern RPG literature, solutions to this typically come in two ways: the first is to create an incredibly expansive skill list (like GURPS or Shadowrun) that endeavors to cover every single possible skill that could be learned, and then give people a point buy to cap how much they are able to know.

The second is to have each player choose a profession from which their character hails, and then let the players draw from what those professions entail for their skills.

There are sizeable problems with each strategy.  The first lies in its complexity and, paradoxically, in that there will always be situations that lie between the cracks in its rules.  There is no way to actually delineate every possible skillset without using vague skill categories that run against the specialization ideology of the approach, and the complexity of the attempt makes it all but impervious to new players (bringing us into the unpleasantness of 'system mastery').  The second is that, well, some professions are better-suited to adventuring than others.  And some people's skillsets lie far outside of  their jobs - I am a student, but I've also been practicing martial arts for many years, and I've been an actor for many years, and I am a circus performer and a teacher, and so on.  Calling me by any one of those labels ignores the rest of my skillset, and then giving me the option of taking many jobs for a short period of time now introduces the complication of how long one has been practicing a given profession, and so on.

My answer, and we'll see how it works, is to combine the two approaches, somewhat.  I have a list of professions that is not complete but is extensive.  Players will roll on the list and find a job.  They will then have some number of unrelated skills - Specialists have 4 (as per the LotFP rules), everyone else will have 2, modified by their Intelligence modifier.  These skills can be anything the player can concoct.

The way I run skills in LotFP is they contribute to the attribute-test mechanic - if someone is trained in tracking, then when they are tracking something, they make a Wisdom test and treat their Wisdom as 1 higher than normal.  Say  the character is a Specialist and levels up.  If they spend one of their skill points on tracking, then whenever they are tracking, they count their Wisdom as 2 higher than usual.  Skills cannot increase a character's ability scores above 19.  One last comment is that many tasks require some amount of training to accomplish them - lockpicking, for example.  Without an appropriate skill, characters cannot attempt such a task.

Combat Skills
The last sizeable change is in reconceiving combat as an application of skill use.  In modern times, people are not trained to fight, but are trained to fight in different fighting styles - the skillset one uses for a sword is different than the one used for a pistol.  So I break out several different fighting style categories, based upon what weapons are generally available and similarity of use.

Wrestling - grappling and unarmed
Bludgeons
Knives - knives and contact Tasers
Thrown Objects - knives, darts, grenades, etc.
Specialty - pick any specific weapon
Pistols (and stun guns), which deal 2d4 damage
Rifles, which deal 2d6 damage
Sniper rifles, which deal 2d10 damage
Automatic Weapons, which deal 2d4 damage but attack areas, not individuals (AC 12 always), forcing those in the attacked area to save v. Breath Weapon for half damage.

Everyone begins with a +1 to attack rolls, like usual.  But Fighters start out with 2 different combat skills, and gain 2 more each level (with the obvious limitation that no combat skill's level can exceed their own).

Armor
The last tweak I make is with regards to armor - Ranged AC becomes Ballistic AC, which is only increased by Kevlar or similar equipment.

That's it for now.  After the trial session this weekend, I will talk about the particular world functions and discuss how they were used.

Structures of the Demi-Monde

To evoke the feeling that I want and to begin designing for my game specs, I have a fair number of game structures that I want to employ, at least to begin.

The first is a series of changes to the player characters themselves.  The easy thing to do is remove the Magic-User and Cleric from LotFP - they do not belong within the modern world (just as the Halfling, Elf, and Dwarf don't belong either, but I've never used them anyway).  But two classes is too few, so I'll add in replacements.

The Witch (or Warlock) replaces the Magic-User.  Witches have an innate talent to gain mastery over other people and may create a Charm Person effect 1/day/HD by making prolonged eye contact with their target.  They can only try to beguile another once per day.  They also gain other abilities as they level, in line with some of the things Vanessa Ives and the other witches from the show can do.

The Luminary is a religious leader of any tradition (although it is more in line with an Abrahamic spiritual guide such as a priest, rabbi, or imam).  The Luminary uses their faith to inspire other humans to hold strong in the face of such deep darkness, granting them the ability to reroll failed saving throws 1/day/HD.  They, too, gain other abilities as they level, in a similar vein.

Sanity
The next structure to employ was a way to evaluate a character's Sanity - I wanted horror to matter, to be trackable right there on the character sheet, for my players to have a number for just how bad the situation has become.  Sanity functions just like HD, but each class has a different SD than their HD, and characters gain bonus Sanity depending upon their Wisdom modifier.
Fighters have a d8 HD but a d4 SD.
Specialists and Luminaries have a d6 for both.
Witches have a d4 HD but a d8 SD.

When your character hits 0 Sanity, they become catatonic, and if they hit -3 they become incurably insane (and likely psychotic).

Now, the loss of Sanity can also be traumatic.  If a character loses half of their SD in a single assault, they gain a phobia related to the trigger - so if a 1st level Fighter with 3 Sanity is ensnared in an illusion that makes it seem like the room is slowly filling up with spiders and the Fighter lost 2 or more Sanity as a consequence, then (assuming the character survives) the Fighter would gain a phobia of spiders.  If confronted with spiders in the future, the Fighter would lose 1d4 Sanity in the first round, 1d6 in the second, and so on until the spider issue was remedied.  Phobias are not permanent - time and a good therapist can cure them.

Unlike health, Sanity is restored not through rest but through recreation - drinking, playing football (the good kind, not the American one), visiting a museum or watching a film all replenish Sanity.  Depending upon how the game goes, the creatures of the yellow wallpaper might make an appearance to plague those who sit and recover for too long.

This also suggests a rule for physical injuries, but LotFP is lethal enough that I'll let it alone for now.

Alignment
Sanity brings us to the next game structure: Alignment.  I have not used alignment as it has been presented in any D&D book (or Pathfinder or whatever) in years.  However, here I think some version of it makes sense: humanity or demi-monde.  All classes, except the witch, begin with the humanity alignment - they still have it.  Those who are touched by the darkness of the demi-monde, who lose that humanity, gain the demi-monde alignment, which has a benefit and a penalty.  The benefit is that once your soul is shattered, losing little pieces of it matters less.  This manifests as a resistance to Sanity loss of 2.  However, regular humans can tell that not all is right with someone of the demi-monde, making it very difficult to make connections and form relationships.
Losing a character's humanity and gaining the demi-monde alignment should be a big deal - again, going back to Penny Dreadful, **spoilers** all of the protagonists have the demi-monde alignment - they can function in the outside world, but only cursorily, and those whom they do get along with end up being part of the demi-monde as well.

These are the main ways in which I am augmenting the LotFP machine.  There are a couple smaller structures to discuss later, and then I'll move into talking about game functions, i.e. the ways in which I expect my players to interact with the world.

Starting Anew

I'm running two different games right now, a Saturday game using Lamentations of the Flame Princess but set within the world of Prodigy, and a Sunday game using an admixture of Numenera and LotFP.  My Sunday players and I had a heart to heart and agreed that the world of Numenera has a lot of things at its core that are good, but the setting is riddled with problems of such a scale that to fix them would require redoing much of the world.  Beyond establishing and then abandoning a fascinating geopolitical conflict, Monte Cook simply never investigated how regular people survive in the world.  The answer to that question, however you answer it, profoundly change how the game world responds to the players.  If the world is a set-piece upon which I create dramas for my players, this is not a problem.  If I want the setting to be a source of drama, however, it is a glaring issue.

So, we have decided to begin anew.  Since I recently acquired Alexis' How to Run, I thought I'd experiment with making a setting along his guidelines.  I certainly know that while I have a good handle on how the world of Prodigy runs, I did not take anything near the most efficient path to get there.  So, we'll begin at the beginning.

I first laid out, and then brainstormed with my players, a list of core goals for the setting, preliminary design specifications.

Sandbox world - no rails anywhere
Fair and reasonable consequences for player actions
Deep rabbit holes at the heart of every venture
Impressive host of enemies arrayed against the players
Players always have several ways out
Players care about their characters
Players may align with one of (or multiple) factions and engage in interfactional conflict to advance their chosen group
Players may build something that will last - a location, an ideology, a faction, etc.
LotFP - brutal combat: combat as a last resort, not as an opening move
High degree of planning and preparation before engaging in a venture
Multiple ways to go at every juncture
Many adventure hooks
Choices the players make will affect the world - party reputation, the actions of NPCs
Emphasis on roleplay, interaction with NPCs
Making connections/allies/enemies


With that in mind, and hearing from my players that they wanted a modern-ish setting, I set out to create three different worlds to explore.  The first of which is the Demi-Monde.

The idea for the setting is stolen directly from the television series Penny Dreadful - there exists a demi-monde (half-world or shadow world) that overlaps the regular one.  There are creatures that dwell within the demi-monde that will encounter humans and change them.  The intersection between real and fantastic is strange and not understood, and little is known about the beings of the demi-monde, other than that they are creatures to be feared.

The players, then, will have characters that have somehow been made aware of the demi-monde's existence, and some dark need of theirs draws them towards it and the perils that lurk in its midst.

However, unlike the world of Penny Dreadful, I want this game to feel contemporary yet still evoke the same sense of wonder and mystery as 19th century London.  To do that, I turn to the lesser-known corners of the world: Tashkent, capital city of Uzbekistan, a large, mostly succeeding city after the collapse of the Soviet Union with a long and colorful history.