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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 6944151" data-attributes="member: 32740">There is a difference between random generation of terrain and deciding what that result LOOKS like, so to speak.  You can randomly determine the appearance of seacoast, lakeshore, rivers, swamps, forest, mountains, sandy deserts, prairie, and windswept and frozen arctic tundra - but random tables can't make that appearance fit sensibly with everything you've already generated or will generate next.  That's all that Gygax is saying.Example:  PC's are exploring.  Random generation says that when entering the next hex they come upon a sea coast.  Well, logic says that to the left and right is more sea coast.  That sea coast MUST continue in either direction until it has circumscribed a body of water large enough to be an actual sea.  You can't then roll dice and accept a result of lake.  You either have a sea coast or a LAKE shore.  You, the GM, must disregard the random roll at that point if favor of actually creating a sea.Example: PC's start in a hex.  They know only that hex.  It's their starting point for the whole game world that is going to be randomly generated.  They have 6 directions to explore in.  They go in direction 1 and your random result is... seacoast.  Great. You plop down a sea.  They go back to the start and go in direction 2.  You randomly generate... a seacoast.  Fine.  You create another sea right next to the first in such a way that the two seas are still separate.  They go back to the center and go in direction 3.  ANOTHER sea...   See where this is going?  The random table CANNOT account for what you already generated or what you will generate in the future.  YOU have to do that.  That is all that Gygax is saying there.And as for roads, you can have them appear as a random table result, but roads ARE NOT random.  Roads lead somewhere - or at least USED to at one point.  They go from A to B, either as a planned, deliberately constructed road to make getting through certain terrain easier (or to allow it at all...), or it was a course of travel that was so frequently used that it became a road.  Roads are not natural occurrences.  They exist for a reason.  Yes, it's a fantasy world so you can have any reason you like - including being deposited randomly by the road fairy.  But if you're using random generation to build a world you need to have roads lead from a source to a destination.  From place A to place B.  THAT is what causes roads to make sense and is something that random tables cannot do.  YOU have to do that.Don't get me wrong.  I think random generation is fun and I've used it in the past, but it has SEVERE limitations regarding what it can do.  It REQUIRES someone to understand when to stop randomly generating and actually make sense of the existing results; to follow the logical inference of the results rather than generate more randomness.</blockquote>

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