Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="aboyd" data-source="post: 5031303" data-attributes="member: 44797">...Continued from above...So I already showed you my main map for the game.  Now I'll show you three variations I used, which address your question.  First is simply the same map but with a few new areas (Foretown to the north of Rel Astra, plus the druids & temple as listed in the legend on the right), used by the players at levels 7 & 8:<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=42322&stc=1&d=1261035543" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The point is that you can see how I'm fleshing it out as they play.  I do not need to obsessively map out everything before the campaign even starts.  In fact, if you look closely at the forest near Rel Astra & the druids, you'll note that the forest has actually been redrawn to be closer to Rel Astra (I just used the clone tool in the Gimp, which is why the forest seems to fit in so seamlessly).  I am shameless about retconning things if it works for the plot.  I wanted the druids within 15 miles of Rel Astra, so they were.Next map shows a zoomed-in view of the coast from Seawell to the lighthouse -- that tiny little dot on the big map is this huge thing that they played on:<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=42323&stc=1&d=1261036104" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />I made that map using the free <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/autorealm/files/" target="_blank">AutoRealm</a> (<a href="http://autorealm.interface1.net/" target="_blank">tutorials here</a>).  It only took about 30 minutes.  The Pooters, Piranha, and Peccary are territories of monsters from the Tome of Horrors.  This zoomed-in view was useful for about 3 game sessions.  That's how long it took my players to solve the <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20040430a" target="_blank">lighthouse module</a>.Finally, here is an even more zoomed in map.  This was used for 2 game sessions, and is actually drawn on a battlemat.  I had the players use 1 mini to represent the whole party.  They could move 5 hexes per turn, which amounted to a half-mile.  On the lower left is Foretown, almost off the edge of the photo.  The short black marks are 1-mile markers.  The green weedy stuff is the Lone Heath marshland.  The top right corner is a pyramid & blob (a lake) from the Sunken Ziggurat module.  Halfway down the right edge is a building (the <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20021206a" target="_blank">Treasure of the Black Veils</a> module).<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=42324&stc=1&d=1261038095" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Most of the marshland was covered with sheets of paper at the start of the game session.  I revealed things only as they got near.  I put that extra lake between the two modules just to throw them off.  It isn't significant at all.  It's just water.So they moved around, found some stuff, and generally had fun.  Once they actually stumbled into a module area, I had a 2nd battlemat with the module floorplan.  At that point they all broke out their minis and we had at it.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />(By the way, that pyramid in the top right corner is the module that has now <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-3rd-edition-rules/268974-what-happens-if-you-ignore-plague-spirits.html" target="_blank">turned into the apocalypse</a> in my game.)How far away can the creature move and still get back to its lair for sleep?  That's how far.  In other words, not very far for most land-bound creatures.  However, note that this assumes we're talking about creatures with a lair.  A young bear leaving home can search hundreds of miles before finding a place to settle.If you're trying to base this off of our world hundreds/thousands of years ago, then the answer is that historically people didn't know much at all.  There will be exceptions -- adventurers, sailors, cartographers, and the nobles who underwrite them -- but most normal folk will live their whole lives and die within a 15 mile area.  Their knowledge of other things will be minimal.  D&D 3.5 actually does an OK job here with mechanics to back that up.  The knowledge skills (which would apply to what people know of the area) cannot be used untrained, or at least not well.  The PHB says that without points in a knowledge skill, people cannot know more than common knowledge (DC 10 stuff -- the easy obvious things).  Since most farmers will be investing skill points into Profession (farming) or the like, the odds that any would have enough points to know anything about outlying areas is pretty minuscule.Anyway, I hope all this helped you to have an idea about how I run my sandbox.  Maybe there is an idea or two that you can build upon?  Have fun.</blockquote>

Verification