Saturday, March 30, 2013

The Hexenbracken


What the inhabitants of the area known to the people of the north as the Hexenbracken call it is not known.

What is known is that it is characterized by shipwrecks, goblin raiders, and a very thin veil between this world and the next. There are rumors of hyperintelligent monkeys, Queen Jane suspects an insect cult in the south, and the central mountains are dominated by the ruins of an ancient black marble city.

Nearby kingdoms fear great power shifts in the wake of the wedding of 7 ogre magi.

Original terrain map by Brendan, place names added by some Random Wizard, and a few bits added by me

The Hexenbracken was created hex-by-hex over the last few days by a ton of people on Google + and despite a certain amount of democratic noise that you'd expect from anything like this, I can say with my hand on my heart that it has a smaller percentage of stupid things in it than any other hexcrawl product I can think of.

At 6 miles per hex, it is approximately the width of Kansas...



Zak SmithYesterday 2:11 AM (edited)
07 20 Dwarves hunting wereboars ( 06 19 ) through the ruins of a vast temple complex that used to be adjacent to Vyrvalis ( 01 17 )


Anders NordbergYesterday 2:32 AM (edited)
07 21 Camp of the Dwarven expedition searching for clues to the secrets of Vervalis ( 01 17 ) in the nearby Dwarf Skeleton Dungeon ( 06 20 ). Most are hunting boars in the nearby forest ( 07 20 ).


M NicksicYesterday 2:49 AM (edited)
07 22
At the junction of two major trade routes, a low, rambling inn does a brisk business selling barbecued pork to travelers. They will grillanything for the right price.


Wayne SnyderYesterday 3:58 AM
07 23 A shallow lake completely fills this grim valley. The water is murky, almost black with silt and infested with giant eels.


Mike EvansYesterday 4:32 AM (edited)
07 24- A group of twenty two statues of ugly haggard woman that face away from one another, circled around carving of full moon.  Babbling and nonsensical mutterings are heard passing between them.  When the moon is full the statues face each other and sing warnings of 4.16. 


Jeff RientsYesterday 4:42 AM
0725 Stankbog, muddy human village of 150 wretches that worship the Great Swamp Gas, a nearby Will-o-Wisp.

etc.

etc.

Random Wizard has kindly put the entire key in Google Doc format here.




To edit it, double click on a cell and you should be able to change it around.

To get rid of a hex you don't like, click "Edit" and then "Delete Row (whatever)"

The "find and replace" function can be used to change (for example, just saying) any "owlbear" to a  "flail snail" or any "bard" to a "corpse", turn snow leopards into leopards or jackals or whatever fits your setting etc etc.

Also, if you want to get a handle on the overall ecology or anthropology of the area, you can do a search for, say "witch" or "dwarf" or "frog" just to see what's going on. And if there is a particular contributor whose stuff you like (or don't) you can search for their ideas.

You should also be able to save it as a pdf no sweat.

If you notice any settlements or other major landmarks not noted on the map above, lemme know--when you're running a hexcrawl it's good to be able to see what's around the party at a glance.

So....have fun with that.
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6 comments:

Unknown said...

"Any bard to a corpse"

Heh

Trent_B said...

This is a triumph.

Melan said...

This is really something. Now I want it in booklet form.

Random Wizard said...

I would like to put together a clickable PDF version. I have been doing some preliminary work on that.
It would be cool to get some artwork to put in the PDF. That is one area I am not versatile in. Perhaps, with Zak's clout, we could get a thread going for people to donate some drawings for the PDF (I assume the art would have to be put in the public domain).

Random Wizard said...

Also. Ramanan Sivaranjan has been doing work to make the data more web friendly. I contributed a little code to make the map of the image clickable.
http://save.vs.totalpartykill.ca/grab-bag/hexenbracken/

The PDF would be similar.

Luka said...

Wow ... :)