The Dreamlands - Designing a hex of hexes using OSE

So, life has been hectic and I haven't blogged a lot. I still commute to work though, using the train and walking some distances. As such I've started to dream up a fantasy world using mainly the wilderness encounter tables from Old School Essentials. It's both escapism and learning the GM side of the game and deepening my understanding of how these things work.

I had tried these things before, but always got way to ambitious in my scope, so the projects fell to the side, having learned from them, but not finishing them in the least. This might be another one of these, or it might be the one. I don't know. For now it's just an escapism thing that I'm willing to share with the world.

So, I made a hex of 19 hexes itself, since I think that's how it works in OSE. One big hex fits four small hexes (I think 24 miles is the big one, 6 is the small one). As such some of these hexes are actually hexes crossing the border into the next big hex (I think 1, 3, 8, 12, 17 & 19). But once again. Keeping it small, not worrying about that now.

Liking how the Black Hack (2e) did hex-map randomization, I took that as a start and set 1-3 on a d6 as grassland, 4-5 as another randomly rolled type of land (1d8 and each is a terrain type other than settled and city) and 6 as special, meaning that it would be out of the normal rules. If grassland was rolled on 4-5 with the second roll it would become special too. I think that was how I did it.

Then I rolled one encounter on the Random Wilderness Encounter Tables for each hex and started interpreting things. Asking myself questions, interpreting results, moving things around to where it seemed more reasonable. For example I rolled a small Roc for the grassland in 9, but wondered where it would nest. The only hills hex rolled is hex 6 so I ruled that the nest is there, but it's hunting grounds cover multiple hexes, up till 9, making it be a reasonable encounter in this place. Sometimes my imagination started to run on it's own and I added things here and there to fit to the inspiration goals/guides I set for myself.

Anyway. The main part is now done, so I am sharing it. Now the idea is to work on the different parts on it, detailing things slowly and dreaming things up a bit more. Who knows what will happen.