Amethyst Isles of Rimecroft [Discussion Thread]

[Elemental_Elf]

It has been a few months.

In that time I finished one campaign, advanced the timeline and started a second campaign. Much has changed for Songwillow Isle but my current focus is fixed on the Cloudheart region of Warblade Isle.

I created a new hex-based map for the campaign setting. It is infinitely preferable to the old map when actually playing in the world (hexes make calculating distances a breeze).

Map: [spoiler][/spoiler]

[LordVreeg]

What kind of play in the new campaign?  What kind of plotlines?

[Steerpike]

That map is sweet.

I've been experimenting with hex-crawling in my own game (Planescape setting).  It's a very cool and somewhat undervalued style of play.

How much do you prep for each hex?  Do you use random encounters?  Pre-planned?  Do you mostly improvise?

[Elemental_Elf]

What kind of play in the new campaign?  What kind of plotlines?

The new campaign has just started. It started off on the last day of the Festival of Rainbows and Radishes, which is quite the joyous celebration where people feast of foods made from radishes and paint their skin with the colors of the rainbow. As night descended on the land and the celebration was coming to an end, a shriek rang out through the labyrinthine streets of Blackrock. Everyone in town rushes to the scene of the crime and discovers the body of an undine woman laying on a back alley street, her two children weeping for their mother to wake up. A quick investigation reveals the mother was killed by another undine woman who whispered, "This is for sleeping with my husband, you cow," before plunging the blade into the mother's heart.

Commander Sovald of the Rangers gathers up all of the married undine women in town but finds four of them are missing. The Commander interrogates the husbands but none of them speak out against their wives or reveal where they have gone. Sivald thus gathers up all the able bodied men and women in town, splits them into groups of four or five and assigns a Ranger of a member of the Starless Knights to each group then sends the posses out into the wilderness surrounding Blackrock to scour the countryside for the murderer.

The PCs stumble across a cave where a Hill Giant is sleeping. After scoping the area out, they find orc and dire wolf tracks. They send word to Blackrock (who sends a cadre of five knights) and get the attention of another group that happened to be close by. Now with 9 people in their company, the party sends a scout into the cave to get a count on the number of enemies. Lo and behold, an undine woman sits on a throne at the far end (along with the giant, 8 orcs and 4 wolves).

Large combat ensues. Looks dicey for several PCs as the Giant and the leader of the orcs hit like freight trains and the undine woman is a powerful enchantress. In the end the PCs prove troublesome enough that the sorceress decides discretion is the better part of valor, and so disappears. The good guys steam roll over the remaining enemies and claim victory. 

Little did the PCs know but... [spoiler]The Sorceress did not teleport, rather just turned herself invisible. She used the combat as a gigantic distraction, allowing her to escape.I plan on having the Sorceress use her powers of illusion to disguise herself as an old man and charmbefriend a particularly haughty noble the PCs encountered prior to the giant cave.  [/spoiler]

As time moves on, I am going to emphasize the tenuous peace between Redwillow/cloud and Blackvale by having the Baron of Wesgem send raiding parties into Blackvale as far north-east as Darkpoint; especially as Blackvale and Whitewillow become politically entwined via the marriage of the child King Derek Hopeskin and the young Princess Elipeth Blackroy. Rueserond, the Red Dragon who rules Foulbone, will also make a play to conquer Micklewaif for reason yet unknown. Beyond that, there will be a lot of inner turmoil within Blackvale as it struggles to rebuild after the war, conflict focusing on different nobles vying with one another for land, resettlement rights and prestige.

As with all sandbox games, the world moves around the PCs as they do what they want :)

That map is sweet.

I've been experimenting with hex-crawling in my own game (Planescape setting).  It's a very cool and somewhat undervalued style of play.

How much do you prep for each hex?  Do you use random encounters?  Pre-planned?  Do you mostly improvise?

Thanks!

Hexcrawling has really fallen out of favor what with the focus on more linear narratives that have become all the rage these days.

I seeded the map using a system pioneered by the Welsh Piper. Basically your break the map up into larger 25 mile hexes, then seed each atlas hex with a number of encounters determined by the terrain type of the center hex. It is surprising how randomly determining a handful of encounters can really lead to a ton of story ideas.  :grin: