Level Up (A5E) Product Idea: Region Anthology

[Steampunkette]

So in the discord there was discussion of campaign settings and setting creation tools and an idea hit me that I think could be kinda great.

But I'd like to touch base with the community on what your feelings are toward it:

A Level Up Region Anthology.

We take the regions of the Journey System and make a Region with civilization, enemies, lore, history, etc... but no world map. The book would be filled with these regions, all of them utterly disconnected from each other, with it's own narrative history and populace and things of that nature.

Then you can take those locations and drop them into campaigns, use them to create campaign settings of your own, or use them as a cohesive episodic campaign setting of distant, disparate, lands like it's Star Trek D&D.

And then, over time, more anthologies could be released. Smaller and more targeted than the first.

What do you think? Useful product?

 

[WarDriveWorley]

I would use it so yes.. super useful

 

[xiphumor]

If this is a collaborative effort, I would love to contribute! If not, I’m excited to see what you come up with!

 

[Steampunkette]

It's not specifically a collab idea... but it's also not specifically NOT a collab idea. shrug!

 

[Pedantic]

Yes, absolutely! Making the Journey system just a little more plug and play, and ideally expanding the number/kind of regions (or doing more specific regional variants) would be a huge boon. I very much want to run some kind of traveling/exploratory campaign relying heavily on that system as a model.

 

[rules.mechanic]

So in the discord there was discussion of campaign settings and setting creation tools and an idea hit me that I think could be kinda great.

But I'd like to touch base with the community on what your feelings are toward it:

A Level Up Region Anthology.

We take the regions of the Journey System and make a Region with civilization, enemies, lore, history, etc... but no world map. The book would be filled with these regions, all of them utterly disconnected from each other, with it's own narrative history and populace and things of that nature.

Then you can take those locations and drop them into campaigns, use them to create campaign settings of your own, or use them as a cohesive episodic campaign setting of distant, disparate, lands like it's Star Trek D&D.

And then, over time, more anthologies could be released. Smaller and more targeted than the first.

What do you think? Useful product?

Maybe somebody might also like to develop a little mapping tool where you build little hexes of the Regions (and exploration challenges) into your own custom map? I can guarantee I would be building more maps than my players could ever realistically play - a bit like all the Dungeon Builder dungeons that I've got a little obsessed with...

 

[Faolyn]

So in the discord there was discussion of campaign settings and setting creation tools and an idea hit me that I think could be kinda great.

But I'd like to touch base with the community on what your feelings are toward it:

A Level Up Region Anthology.

We take the regions of the Journey System and make a Region with civilization, enemies, lore, history, etc... but no world map. The book would be filled with these regions, all of them utterly disconnected from each other, with it's own narrative history and populace and things of that nature.

Then you can take those locations and drop them into campaigns, use them to create campaign settings of your own, or use them as a cohesive episodic campaign setting of distant, disparate, lands like it's Star Trek D&D.

And then, over time, more anthologies could be released. Smaller and more targeted than the first.

What do you think? Useful product?

I've long felt that that would be a great idea. Although what I would do would be to create it as a few connected hexes, with the hexes surrounding the region "faded out" so they don't directly connect to any other region in the book--they can connect to them, of course, but they're not meant to be a puzzle to be put together.

 

[Steampunkette]

Yeah, very much "Here's the Valley of Wolde" with a hex-map of the region, each of the hexes ascribed it's own region type for Journey purposes. Here's the civilization, here. Here's an imaginative description of that civilization and it's dangers and history including notes about neighboring kingdoms and enemies/allies but then don't -do- the neighboring kingdom. Or other neighboring locales.

So you can plop the Valley of Wolde into any setting with a set of NPCs, laws, etc.

 

[Morrus]

Apropos of nothing, assigning region types to individual hexes isn’t how it works. A region would be something like “The Parched Desert of Agriol” or “The Snowbear Mountains” or “Mirkwood” or “The Shire”. Regions can be big and small, but they’re not regular hex pieces.

 

[Pedantic]

Apropos of nothing, assigning region types to individual hexes isn’t how it works. A region would be something like “The Parched Desert of Agriol” or “The Snowbear Mountains” or “Mirkwood” or “The Shire”. Regions can be big and small, but they’re not regular hex pieces.

That makes sense, given you resolve a journey across the entire region, regardless of size after figuring out distance, but I don't see any reason you couldn't build a map out of regionally themed hexes, calling 7 of them The Dark Desert and the 6 nearby hill tiles The Forsaken Mounds, ultimately creating two regions.