Been trying to organize my random hexcrawl setting notes into some kind of repeatable format so I can easily flip to what I need for any given Region.
First I needed a “World Map” with Region and Major Cities keyed, I’m making hexes big, regions simple, and Major Cities relatively scarce in my small sandbox here.
Next I needed a “Region” map showing he general distance of things, general info about the Region, the probability of discovering a Landmark or Creature while traveling, and a quick description of the “Major Sites” within the Region. A Major Site is something pretty well known vs a Landmark which could be stumbled on in any hex.
Next I needed a “Major Site” map, I chose to tackle one of the Major Cities (not a true urban city like Waterdeep, more like Barbarian Bartertown or something). This one had a lot of info I needed. I split each of these Major Cities into 4 “Areas” or Zones or neighborhoods. Within each Area there are 3 prewritten random encounters to choose from or random NPCs can be (kind of) made on the fly by using the Appearance and Attitude tables. A list of unique Items and a small list of Rumors, along with a pretty abstract keyed map of the place.
I still think I’ll need to have anything with a statblock on a separate page or something yo have a bit more focused crunch if it comes to it…
For the Wilderness Travel portion I’m rolling for random encounters and fleshing out a Creature encounter or Landmark, each of these types of encounters got a layout with a few random tables to add variety to the limited Creatures and Landmarks. My intent is to have the Regions not be populated by a huge assortment of random things, but rather a focused set of Creatures and Landmarks that will be encountered multiple times but in different combinations and with different variables.
