First, sorry if the last post was a bit scattered (I did spend several hours composing it). Second, a close read of Chris Kutalik's pointcrawling posts is in order because much of my thoughts on connections and such, he'd already covered 2 years ago. Third, check out these links Talysman shared in the comments of our discussion:
A method of terrain generation from Central Casting Dungeons product.
And his own Last Minute Hex Crawl Tables
Fourth, while this wouldn't be of help to the sightless, check out this post as a method of generating pointcrawls using routes.
Fifth, I think the biggest issue for a blind person with generating a pointcrawl is not going to be the generation but keeping track of what they generate, which is basically what a map is, an efficient way to store positional data in 2-d. The method that might work is to treat points like the locations in a choose-your-own-adventure book. Number all of them, and number the exits from each location with the number of the location that route is leading to. Then you could store these numbered points anyway that was convenient to you, text file list, database.
Sixth, some fresh thoughts:
All that jazz about biomes is probably not very important in randomly generating terrain for a pointcrawl. Minecraft is an infinite flat plain, so gradients of temperature and moisture matter more. In fantasy worlds even slightly like our own, terrain will be relatively similar unless the distance between the points is huge. What I mean is, temperature is mostly tied to latitude, so the farther north you go the colder it will be. But that takes miles and miles of travel to really manifest itself.
It seems like most terrain generated will be like that you just left, maybe the only variation is in the surface features. Is there a lake here? Is there a forest?
So, elevation might matter much more as the variation you would see in local features. Is there a hill here? A canyon, a pass through these mountains?
Another thought, the problem with randomly generated anything is that information about the generated place is very local, it's difficult to make more big picture patterns or connections until you've already finished generating a big area, look at it and then do so. What I mean is, if there's a pass through the mountains, is it the only pass? If it is it might be very important and have different encounters. Is this bit of forest a small grove or just a point hidden in a vast swath of forest? Most random generating systems are not going to help with that.
With that in mind, the best bet for blind players or DMs, would probably be to take something like Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms and convert it into a point crawl and record the points in the numbered location method I mentioned above. That way all the "big picture" knowledge could be captured for the points. Then point 54 can let you know that it is a small grove far from civilization but near trade route heavily used in summer.
Of course, that requires someone to make a whole world which is the creative work a random system is trying to replace. But maybe someone could use a random system as a work aid, generate a ton of points, look over them and apply logical, big-feature information to the points, and then share them with folks.
"In fantasy worlds even slightly like our own, terrain will be relatively similar unless the distance between the points is huge. What I mean is, temperature is mostly tied to latitude, so the farther north you go the colder it will be. But that takes miles and miles of travel to really manifest itself."
ReplyDeleteTotally agree. The Appendix B generator is a good start but too variable in changes. Most of the entries give similar results only 15-25% of the time. It seems both elegant and more realistic to flip in say something like the "underlying terrain will remain the same 75% of the time when entering a new point." Also agree that surface features, landmarks, habitations, bodies of water should be providing the elements that make each point more interesting.
"In fantasy worlds even slightly like our own, terrain will be relatively similar unless the distance between the points is huge. What I mean is, temperature is mostly tied to latitude, so the farther north you go the colder it will be. But that takes miles and miles of travel to really manifest itself. "
ReplyDeleteYes... and no. Definitely temperature will mostly stay the same unless you travel very far north or south, but it also drops as elevation increases; the biome of high alpinne areas will resemble the biomes of sub-arctic and arctic areas. I see climate zones as mostly being there for reference, and for randomly generating your inititial area, if you don't have a terrain in mind. Terrain and wetness will vary +/- 1 or 2 steps from the starting point.
Since the discussion started, I've been working on and off to revamp the tables for a more stripped-down hexless world generation system, but it kind of spirals in complexity and I start over. The basic idea, though, is to just roll a d6 to select an entire line on the climate/elevation/biome table and use that as your starting point, then only roll on the terrain features and landmarks table from then on for each new point of interest add, with higher/lower ground altering elevation and biome by one step and wetness altering just the biome by one step (but crossing a mountain range while moving inland also makes the biome one step drier.) When using a d10, that only gives a 30% chance of the biome changing at all, and even then, it will be pretty close to what you start with... just a little way to keep the geography slightly consistent.
Thanks for the comments, you two. It feels great to be part of a blog discussion again.
ReplyDelete@Talysman: That sounds good, sort of mashing a bunch of little tables into one.
I've posted the modified tables and stripped-down process:
DeleteRandom Hexless Terrain Tables
There's one correction I haven't made to the post: Climate should be rolled or selected separately. Otherwise, you get all your Temperate and Cool locales up in the mountains.
I plan on doing a follow-up walkthrough post, with a few options, and possibly another post with other tweaks and variants.
Thanks!
Deletein regards to converting an existing 'hex-mapped' world, the hexes are or can be easily numbered. each hex becomes a 'point' with a number. just list everything in that number like terrain, points of interest,etc. assuming one started with a 'true-column' hex map, from point 54, one can travel to points 53, 55, 43, 44, 63, and 64. because the '5' in 54 is odd, your neighbors to either side will be (X - 11), (X - 10), (X + 9), and (X + 10). in an even column (even ten's digit), your neighbors are (X -10), (X - 9), (X + 10), and (X + 11). all points have (X - 1) and (X + 1) as neighboring points.
ReplyDeleteoops, meant to add that X is your current hex/point number
Delete