To my mind a good sandbox campaign doesn’t just plop the PCs down and tell them to find some way to entertain themselves. A good sandbox is seeded with points of interest to give the PCs something to start with. The PCs can find their own trouble after that, but …
In discussing city wards in my last post, I said that each ward could have up to three qualities. This was partly to keep the total number of qualities in a multi-ward settlement to reasonable levels, but also to prepare for this step: applying the polyhedral process (introduced in Polyhedral …
So far, the city construction process has really only covered fairly homogeneous settlements. You might describe a bustling port as having lots of commerce (high Trade score and the Mercantile property) but highly-transient population that can get pretty rowdy (low Stability score). This isn’t a lot of detail, but until …
In my last post I talked about the basics of city construction. Settlements have settlement scores analogous to characters’ ability scores, though applied to different purpose; levels analogous to character levels, that influence the size and resources available; population analogous to experience points (which will come into play more in …
Deviating from plan (I’d said my next post would be about building a ‘local pantheon’ of small gods), I decided to write instead about alternate rules for developing a city or other settlement. It expands somewhat on the Polyhedral Pantheons Adaptations I wrote about a while ago. Settlement Basics Before diving …
A realization on the way home from work, combined with discussing it with a friend online, means I’ll be changing a few definitions I’ve used for a while. GreyKnight, I think this one qualifies as a ‘Revisit old post and completely change everything’ result on the Keith Davies Blog Post …
A few days ago I talked about Unusual Rewards in the Sandbox, and figured I’d respond to some of the comments I’d received. I agree that it is a good idea to assign nominal monetary value to the various rewards. Experience points in many old school games are primarily driven …
The other day I was working on The Keys of Heraka-at and realized that by and large ‘conventional treasure’ is not a major feature of this adventure. The primary reward of this adventure is the knowledge needed to become the new Donnerkonig — the items that are needed, where they …
The other day I described the Hall of the Faded Kings as — or rather, updated the description to — This great hall is lined with mosaics showing great acts of the Donnerkonig over the centuries they ruled, from the mighty acts that established their powers, through acts during their …
On Saturday I posted an overview of The Keys of Heraka-at, breaking out the various areas of the adventure. Now it’s time to start working toward more detailed development. I’m not ready yet, but considering that each of the areas of the adventure site could be small maps and are …