Putting a Pointcrawl in the Hexcrawl

And a way to randomise anything

This Week’s post zooms in on the special parts of a Mythic realm.

Sites read like a bit of a side-dish in Mythic Bastionland. I wanted to include a simple little system to create more zoomed-in locations, but the game is generally more focused on the larger scale of hex crawling.

Landmarks are a key part of that, so you could always pick a few in your realm to turn into sites in their own right.

I’d like to do one of each, but let’s start with the first.

Dwellings are described as “humble homes amid the wilds”, representing the people who choose to live outside of a holding. I typically place them at least a few hexes away from the nearest holding to make them feel a bit more isolated.

Beyond that, it’s left pretty open. The intent is that these are places that, at the very least, contain a person you can probably convince to provide you with hospitality and a little local knowledge. It’s easy to imagine an isolated hut where the resident can live off the land, but the prompts in the book show that you can also make them a small settlement. Anything short of the walled towns or fortifications that typically define a holding.

Let’s take one of the 72 prompts in the book and work from there. I landed on “Guard’s Outpost”, which I think could be interesting to expand up to a proper site. I’ll use the other prompts from that spread “The Barbed Knight & The Wurm” and spark tables to flesh it out as needed.

Remember that hexes are pretty large, so even with larger landmarks they're still just a small portion of the hex, so don't take the map as being to scale relative to the whole hex.

I'll be taking liberties with what counts as a hazard, treasure etc. to fit the landmark type.

Limeweed Tor Dwelling Site

Key Circle: Feature Triangle: Danger Diamond: Treasure Line: Open path Crossed Line: Closed path Dotted Line: Hidden path

Overview A jagged hill juts out from the surrounding forest, the brown rock laced in bright green creeping foliage. A sturdy wooden tower sits atop, surrounded by a small village. Make a note of the nearest holding, as it sits under their domain. All in all there are around 20 inhabitants, half of which are out hunting or gathering in the day.

Locations

1: Smokehall - A long hall filled with smoke, preserving poultry for winter. Four older villagers sit inside gossiping, pretending the smoke doesn’t bother them. Chider, the head smoker, wants outside news from any travellers.

2: Rampart - An abandoned wooden fortification, boarded off. Locals know it’s the only part of an old attempt to properly wall the village, abandoned by the holding. You could climb around here to get to the barracks, but it’s dangerous. There are a few vegetable patches growing here too.

3: Medicine hut - A middle-aged man believes he knows everything and loves to correct people. He mostly offers leeches and other animal-based remedies, but will at least offer a place to rest if injured. The sage knows not to let anybody up to the watchtower, and is entrusted with a key to its door. He also has a small chicken pen.

4: Watchtower - A sturdy tower manned by two guards taking shifts, a brother and sister, the latter’s face mangled by service in war. The view from here is impressive, seeing up to two hexes away in broad strokes. The guards know the surrounding area well and are sworn to send a rider to the nearest Holding to warn of any incoming threats. They expect a Knight from the holding to visit every few weeks.

5: Barracks: A simple wooden hut built onto the side of the watchtower. There are a few shields and spears and a small stable for a scruffy grey horse.

6: Crypt: A spiral staircase leads down from the base of the tower into a sprawling crypt. This was dug out in anticipation of the village growing, but it only houses a few bodies at the moment.

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Elsewhere

• Goodberry Monthly has a cool twist on temples, big corporate ivory towers.

• Whose Measure God Could Not Take made a cool Traveller world generator that adds just a little extra interest.

• Rando.brine is an incredible all-purpose spark generator for your game. I don’t know how I missed this one until now!

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Coming Soon

Over on Patreon I follow up my dwelling site with the next landmark type.

Each sanctum is a sacred home to a seer. They are typically mysterious by nature, so by expanding this sanctum into a site we can make it difficult for the knights to find the seer, or perhaps not even realise that this is a sanctum at all.

Let’s roll a seer and take the sanctum prompt for a different page.

Expect the full post here and on the blog next week.

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