Creation of Blackbird

An outline on how I randomly created Blackbird

All sources are first edition AD&D books.

 

The only major place I manually placed at the start was the main city of Blackbird, which shares its name with the setting, and 4-6km of quality farmlands around it (a big city needs to eat). Everything else you will see has been randomly generated: castles and settlements, terrain, owners of castles, their henchman, their equipment, alignment, and so forth.

 

I treated the generation as random wilderness exploration (DMG p173), as if there was an expedition mapping everything. Each hex initially equalled 4km, but this was just for determining initial major factions, the later map would be zoomed in at 1 hex = 2km.

 

Beginning at 6km north of Blackbird (BB), I went clockwise until a full circle was completed and I arrived at that starting hex again. I would then go one hex north and repeat the process. I did this 2-3 times and generated 5 castles, 3 village or smaller settlements, 1 city, and the terrain between it. This entire process took 3-4 hours but would probably take around 2 hours if you were familiar with it.

 

Procedure:

1.   Determine type of terrain from departed hex to new hex

a.    If there was only one terrain adjacent to the new hex, that would be the type of terrain considered when rolling on p173.

b.    If there was more than one type of terrain adjacent to the new hex, I would assign equal chances to come from each type. E.g. If an unexplored hex was bordered by 1 plain and 1 marsh hex, there would be a 50/50 chance of rolling on either the plain or marsh column of the table on p173.*

2.   Determine which subset of terrain types the new terrain would fall into. On p173 the plains terrain is broken down into tundra, steppe, savana, prairie, heath, moor, downs, meadow.**

a.    Because this is an agriculturally rich part of the world, I included a 1 in 6 chance of the plains hex being fertile farmlands (not a part of the DMG rules)

3.   Check for habitation (p173) and possibly population

a.    If castle indicated, go to p182, determining size & type, inhabitants, leader, henchmen (if character-types), alignment of leader (and therefore henchmen), equipment of leader and henchmen, type of followers (IF fighter, cleric, or ranger via DMG p16)

4.   Repeat

 

* I did this because it would remove bias of “coming” from a hex I’m not really travelling from, I’m just generating terrain.

** Because this part of the world is set in a Mediterranean climate, I did not use incompatible results like savanna or tundra.

 

Example of a randomly generated castle:

Ø  Castle Neocn (CN). Depression terrain. Medium size, small walled castle with keep. Inhabited by character-types. Fighter, level 10, LG. 4 henchmen: 3 x Fighter level 6, Paladin level 6. Since a paladin is a henchman, the lord of the castle is a noble (PHB p24). Leader of the Lord’s troops is a level 5 fighter with plate & shield, +2 battle axe. Followers are 80 heavy infantry. 20 with splint, 60 with leather. 20 with morning star and hand axe, 60 with pike and short sword. Castle has 2 scorpions, 2 catapults, 5 oil cauldrons. Castle garrison is 11 heavy horsemen, 9 light horsemen, 14 men-at-arms, 10 men-at-arms plus 1 leader per detachment. (DMG p183)

o   The Lord has: 1 x potion of fire resistance and 1 x of speed. 1 x scroll of Protection from Magic. 1 x crossbow of speed, +2 hammer. 1 x splint mail +4. 1 x robe of blending.

 

Now that I had a map of the area, I decided I wasn’t satisfied with it as it was and added more distance between BB and the castles and city nearby.

Unlike the castles, I didn’t purely randomly generate the inhabitants of the city. While I did get a result of a city in a marsh, I decided trolls would be an apt fit and christened their bombsite of a city as Mossmouth (M), a rickety place barely safer than Detroit. For fun, I decided they would coexist passably with other explicitly evil creatures like hobgoblins, orcs, a few ogres and ghouls (from Fritz Leiber’s Nehwon).

 

First draft:

 

Ignore the river.

 

Slightly curated version:

  

I intend for all blank spaces to be explored by players when they pass through the hex.

 

I only named inhabitations of towns or cities (>1500 people). Those with less are assigned numbers.

 

If anyone has any questions, comments, or corrections just send me a message on here or https://twitter.com/StrictTimeRcrds.