Thread Recompilation - Places

[El Jefe]

Proposal - Alternate Companions - baby animals

This was a pure rules proposal with no geographical information. As far as I can tell, it was never voted up or down.

 

[Bront]

About the only other thing in Festival of Halina worth mentioning is Covington. It's not on the map, which implies that it is small. The population had obviously at least doubled or tripled during the festival, so it's hard to get a feel for how big the place is during the rest of the year from reading through the FoH thread. At any rate, the size of the town is not specified in the thread. Notably, it is big enough to have both a village square, which implies a certain minimum size, and a library, which argues that it's not that small at all. The oversized Temple of Halina seems out of place, too...maybe the village sprung up around the great harvest temple, or something like that.

Covington is probably around 500 people, but accomidates a few thousand during the festival, hense it's big/small feel. Ask most people, and the temple has always been there, so that doesn't help much, nor is there any particular reason the festival is held here over elsewhere besides tradition and Halina's Barrel of Plenty, which creates an infinate amount of whatever is made and/or placed in it once a year. I'm guessing next year, no beer.

 

[El Jefe]

Adventure:-- LPNN (Manzanita Judging)

This was a completed adventure, although the original DM dropped out and a judge finished it. There was a reasonable amount of geographical information, but some comments will follow in a discussion post.

• There is a town in EnWorld called Rangarata, 5 days from Orussus and halfway to Lathirn.
• There is a river in EnWorld called the Detikyll, within sight of Rangarata.
• On both sides of the road from Orussus to Allimon is a young forest, having been harvested maybe 150 years ago.
• Two miles west of Allimon is a clearing to the south of the road, caused by ground too rocky for trees to grow.
• Much of the land between Allimon and Rangarata can be described as light forest, reclaimed farmland, gently rolling hills, and occasional scrubland.
• A day south of Allimon in the direction of Rangarata is a rocky, defensible hill, some 50 feet tall and surrounded by forest.
• The only Inn proper in Allimon is "The Rovers", located roughly in the center of the town.
• Rangarata is not large enough for an inn.
• Hallidor’s farmhouse in Rangarata is painted yellow.
• Hallidor’s farmhouse in Rangarata has a barn.
• There is a market on a dirt road in Rangarata.
• Rangarata is a small town, and a simple foot chase could easily lead all the way from the market to outside of the town.
• There is a large, dark, forbidding wood about an hour’s walk from Rangarata.
• A faint trail through the dark woods near Rangarata leads to a cottage near a small brook.
• The cottage in the dark wood near Rangarata has two floors.
• The cottage in the dark wood near Rangarata measures 70 by 50 feet.

 

[rln]

Lpnn

Regarding LPNN, also see this post

 

[El Jefe]

Discussion - Adventure:-- LPNN (Manzanita Judging)

You'd think after posting rln's summary of LPNN that I'd remember doing so and forego several days of crawling through the thread...

Well, things were kinda crazy last May, that was a post that was moved due to the crash. I did a lot of cleanup work in this thread about then.

I had a couple of comments about the thread that I was going to post, anyway. The first rln already hit on, that the text description of Rangarata's location and the map location was quite different. The map location makes more sense, to the southwest of Lathirn. I don't see how you could possibly reach it after only 5 days of normal (non-magical) travel from Orussus, so I'm chalking that up to 5 days being in sync with the text and reality being in sync with the map.

It doesn't bother me that Rangarata didn't appear on the map prior to this adventure. I think we've established a precedent that really small villages aren't shown, and Rangarata is a really small village. Arguably, it's smaller than Covington, and Covington is a village of 500 that isn't shown on the map.

It troubles me more that the Detikyll, a river large enought for a trader to ply in a boat, doesn't appear on the map. I'm assuming that it isn't really a river but a glorified creek, and that the boats that travel up and down it aren't any larger than rowboats or canoes. If that's the case, then it wouldn't show on the map, just like the many streams that have to be forded on the road from Orussus to Allimon.

There's one other thing. The depiction of Allimon (there was even a 3D map!) in this thread didn't match that of any of the other adventures set in Allimon. I'll chalk that up to LPNN getting started before the Allimon info was published in the Recompilation thread. But for clarity, there are two large taverns which double as inns at one of the entrances to the city, and there are no inns in the center of the city, which seems to be a fifth "quarter". Perhaps "The Rovers" is at the extreme end of one of the quarters, adjacent to the central "quarter". That's the only way it makes sense to me.

Note: The first batch of Allimon material was posted in this thread on 7/4/05. At that time, the LPNN crew was in the middle of an epic battle with a trio of wererats that took several weeks of real-time to play out. two, the original LPNN DM, posted the "wrong" Allimon description on 7/25/05, shortly after the battle ended. His last post in the game was 7/27/05. So, I'm not shocked that between DMing a huge battle and getting overwhelmed with RL stuff that caused him to drop the game that he missed a post in this thread that pertained to his game.

 

[rln]

I had a couple of comments about the thread that I was going to post, anyway. The first rln already hit on, that the text description of Rangarata's location and the map location was quite different. The map location makes more sense, to the southwest of Lathirn. I don't see how you could possibly reach it after only 5 days of normal (non-magical) travel from Orussus, so I'm chalking that up to 5 days being in sync with the text and reality being in sync with the map.

Suggestion: 5 days was probably what it took for our employer to get to Orussus - and he was in a hurry and likely pushed himself. Our travel there was a bit hazy (as we switched DM midways) and could easily have taken more.

It troubles me more that the Detikyll, a river large enought for a trader to ply in a boat, doesn't appear on the map. I'm assuming that it isn't really a river but a glorified creek, and that the boats that travel up and down it aren't any larger than rowboats or canoes. If that's the case, then it wouldn't show on the map, just like the many streams that have to be forded on the road from Orussus to Allimon.

The trader we met (also the villain in the adventure) was the single merchant on his ship, so a canoe or larger rowboat is certainly likely. I don't remember if the river had a bridge or a ford (or if this was never established).

There's one other thing. The depiction of Allimon (there was even a 3D map!) in this thread didn't match that of any of the other adventures set in Allimon. I'll chalk that up to LPNN getting started before the Allimon info was published in the Recompilation thread. But for clarity, there are two large taverns which double as inns at one of the entrances to the city, and there are no inns in the center of the city, which seems to be a fifth "quarter". Perhaps "The Rovers" is at the extreme end of one of the quarters, adjacent to the central "quarter". That's the only way it makes sense to me.

My assumption, though not specifically said out loud, was that we found what we needed in a small, unnamed village just outside Allimon, and thus we didn't enter the town proper.

I had planned to reuse the Rangarata location and some NPCs for another story, but time ran short, and the ideas waned...

 

[El Jefe]

Adventure - (Adventure) Immortality Awakens (Knight Otu Judging)

Like Festival of Halina, this consists of 1200-odd posts that constitute the first part of a multipart adventure. Reading through the thread, one gets the impression that it is very vague with regard to location. However, there are more geographical details than there would seem at first glance.

We start at the house of Zarindas in Orussus, a man with a magically-ill daughter who needs saving:

• The inside of Zarindas’s house in Orussus looks nicer than the outside, and is decorated in a floral motif.
• Somewhere in EnWorld is a sealed land with a Sealed Cavern that contains an Orb that can cure the disease caused by a specific demon.
• The Sealed Cavern is "hundreds of miles to the southeast" of Orussus and can only be found with the aid of magic.
• The stairs to the second floor of Zarindas’s house in Orussus are narrow and creaky.
• The Sealed Cavern several hundred miles to the southeast of Orussus is in a desert.

And after all that, our intrepid party journeyed to the vicinity of a small town named Briaton, less than a week from Orussus.

• The town of Briarton lies perhaps 3 or 4 days south-southeast of Orussus at the confluence of two small streams, one to the north of the other.
• Half of Briarton has been razed within a year or two, mostly near the southern stream. By the northern stream, a town hall, a small temple, an inn, and a mill still stand. To the south, another temple and mill have been razed.
• Clover grows in the vicinity of Briarton.
• There is a small hill immediately to the east of Briarton
• There is a comfy sitting room in the town hall at Briarton
• Beyond the sitting room in the town hall in Briarton is the Mayor’s office, with a desk.
• There is a stable in Briarton.
• Roughly 2 days ride east of Briarton is an abandoned hobgoblin stronghold.
• The town hall in Briarton has spare rooms for nobility to stay in while visiting.
• 6 days southeast of Briarton lies a small town with an inn marked by a cornucopia. The town is near the Stonepike Mountains.

Obviously, there's more in the next part of the adventure, which is ongoing at the time of this writing.

 

[Rystil Arden]

At least one fact in the above is not correct, but not because you didn't read the adventure or transcribe it perfectly

 

[El Jefe]

I was going to do a "discussion" post on this one to address some of that. Obviously, there's some speculation in there since the adventure is not concluded and since some of the information is hearsay from NPCs (who can be either dishonest or misinformed).

In general, I report NPC hearsay verbatim (or close to it), unless there is some discrepancy, either within the adventure or with previously posted LEW information. For example, in one adventure, the party camped at the intersection of the Orussus-Fallon road and the Lathirn road, and their camp was described as a simple clearing with a well-used firepit, apparently well-used because many travellers stopped for the night there. However, in Ashin's Commission, the intersection was described as the location of Fenton, a palisaded village that was literally being built as the PC's watched (a nobleman's project, who wished to become a trade baron through tolls levied on and concessions provided for passers-by).

I've tried to come up with creative resolutions to such discrepancies, but it isn't always possible. So, a "fact" that appears on page 1 of an adventure that turns out on page 20 to be false is relatively small potatoes.

 

[Rystil Arden]

That's pretty much right--since we're still going, I won't mention anything on this yet.