Examples of Adapted Polyhedral Pantheons

I’m calling ‘Examples’ close enough for ‘X Day’ of the A-Z Blog Challenge.

The last couple of posts have been about ways the Polyhedral Pantheons mechanism can be adapted to other purposes. In this post I’ll start applying the adaptations.

Adaptations of Polyhedral Pantheons

I’m going to start with just the initial work, assigning some attributes and seeing what comes out. I don’t plan to do much detailed interpretation at this point, but I will make some notes and some idea of what the results might mean.

I’m going to work with the icosahedron, the d20, for all examples below.

Physical Geography

Point	Primary
A	Forest
B	Dwarves
C	Aberrations
D	Goblins
E	Ruined
F	Hills
G	Purposed
H	Mountains
I	Plains
J	Resource
K	Cities
L	Magic

I’ve applied four terrains (Forest, Hills, Mountains, Plains), three creature types (Goblins, Dwarves, and Aberrations), three modifiers (Ruined, Resource, Magic), and two civilization (Cities, Purposed) attributes. Altogether I get the following faces.

Face	Attribute	Attribute	Attribute	Notes
1	Forest	Dwarves	Aberrations
2	Mountains	Resource	Magic
3	Forest	Ruined	Hills
4	Purposed	Plains	Magic
5	Dwarves	Purposed	Mountains	Power centre? Moving to engage goblins?
6	Ruined	Plains	Cities	Also destroyed during aberration arrival? Invaded and abandoned?
7	Forest	Dwarves	Goblins	Counteralliance against dwarves+aberrations?
8	Hills	Resource	Cities
9	Aberrations	Ruined	Plains	Initial catastrophic arrival location? Invaded and pillaged?
10	Goblins	Hills	Resource
11	Aberrations	Purposed	Plains	Power centre
12	Goblins	Mountains	Resource
13	Dwarves	Aberrations	Purposed	Shared power centre?
14	Plains	Cities	Magic
15	Dwarves	Goblins	Mountains	Counteralliance against dwarves+aberrations?
16	Ruined	Hills	Cities
17	Forest	Goblins	Hills
18	Purposed	Mountains	Magic
19	Forest	Aberrations	Ruined
20	Resource	Cities	Magic

Every pairing above appears twice, each with a different third attribute. I’m going to look at the populations first.

• Goblins are matched to (Forest, Dwarves), (Hills, Resource), (Mountains, Resource), (Dwarves, Mountains), (Forest, Hills).
• Dwarves are matched to (Forest, Aberrations), (Purposed, Mountains), (Forest, Goblins), (Aberrations, Purposed), (Goblins, Mountains)
• Aberrations are matched to (Forest, Dwarves), (Ruined, Plains), (Purposed, Plains), (Dwarves, Purposed), (Forest, Ruined)

The faces provide elements relevant to the geography, not necessarily those who live there. The inhabitants of the region are attributes of the region, not the other way around.

Just on writing out the relationships above, I see a struggle happening. I’m going to say that because the aberrations are associated with regions that are mostly ruined and/or purposed, they have somehow ‘arrived’ (from below ground, over the sea, or outer space, doesn’t matter yet). I’m going to give in to temptation here: they are allied somehow with the dwarves (or possibly have infiltrated or subverted them). I think I’m going to say the dwarves have since made overtures to the goblins, looking for peace, and possibly an alliance against the aberrations.

I don’t know yet what all of the above means, but I’m guessing someone is going to get screwed pretty bad.

This accounts for thirteen of the twenty regions. I’m going to assume they’re fairly contiguous. I’m guessing the three factions are arranged in a more or less triangular arrangement, with the goblins and aberrations aware of each other and the dwarves heavily interfaced with both. The remaining regions are probably fairly closely linked to those sharing attributes. A ‘forested hills’ region is likely adjacent to another ‘forested hills’ region, or at least one that has forest or hills.

Because I decided some of the relationships and inferred an arrangement of the regions, I’m not going to randomize the placement or relationships.

I don’t know everything yet, but I think I’d be prepared to take this as a start.

City Wards

Point	Primary
A	Craft
B	Large
C	Academic
D	Commercial
E	Magical
F	Prosperous
G	Transients
H	Impoverished
I	Religious
J	Industrial
K	Minority
L	Military

This doesn’t tell me much so far. I’ve got seven ward types (Craft, Academic, Commercial, Magical, Religious, Industrial, Military), then a mix of other attributes: size (Large), wealth (Prosperous, Impoverished), and population (Transients, Minority). This gives me the faces below.

Face	Attribute	Attribute	Attribute	Notes
1	Craft	Large	Academic
2	Impoverished	Industrial	Military	Road builders?
3	Craft	Magic	Prosperous
4	Transients	Religious	Military	Paladins on quest, crusaders?
5	Large	Transients	Impoverished
6	Magic	Religious	Minority
7	Craft	Large	Commercial
8	Prosperous	Industrial	Minority
9	Academic	Magic	Religious	Temple quarter?
10	Commercial	Prosperous	Industrial
11	Academic	Transients	Religious
12	Commercial	Impoverished	Industrial	Dockyards?
13	Large	Academic	Transients	‘Academic pilgrims’? University?
14	Religious	Minority	Military
15	Large	Commercial	Impoverished	Thieves’ Market?
16	Magic	Prosperous	Minority	Elven quarter?
17	Craft	Commercial	Prosperous	High-end markets?
18	Transients	Impoverished	Military	Recruitment and levies? Training grounds?
19	Craft	Academic	Magic
20	Industrial	Minority	Military

I suspect some of the attributes need clarification. The ‘Craft’ attribute indicates artisans and other skilled workers, while ‘Industrial’ tends to be ‘more work’. You might expect smiths would gravitate to Craft wards and docks are more likely to be found in Industrial wards. Dockyards, on the other hand, where they actually build ships, might have one or both of the Craft and Industrial attributes.

‘Academic transients’ suggests temporary training schools, where students attend for a time before moving on (training complete or to other training). ‘Religious transients’ might be pilgrims or those on quest.

I’m not going to arrange these in any particular order. I think I can find explanations and descriptions for most of these, and then apply Last Gasp Grimoire‘s In Cörpathium dice drop mechanism to determine placement within any particular city.

Closing Comments

I think I’ll stop there for tonight. I skipped the Planar Geography adaptation for now because I want to consider further how it differs from Physical Geography. The Megadungeon and Campaign adaptations have attributes that are too abstract at this point. I’ll want to spend more time fleshing them out.