I spent part of the morning stocking my numbered hexmap of the Midrealm, the portion of my world of Cinder where adventurers are supposed to start play. I grabbed my collection of the Dungeoneer, the magazine Paul Jacquays edited back in the day. (He wrote big chunks of it, too.) Most issues have at least one D&D dungeon. I then placed each dungeon somewhere on the map, putting a small 'D' on the map itself and putting in my key something like 1234 - Simpleton's Tomb (Dungeoneer Journal #23). It took maybe 30 minutes to flip through the mags and find spots on the map, and now the Midrealm already has 8 crazy dungeons without me putting pencil to graph paper. I also noted 6 hexes containing Frontier Forts of Kelnore, but I'll have to go back and dice those up with the fabulous Frontier Fort stocking charts.
I'm still trying to figure out how many of my old TSR modules I want to drop onto the map. Some of them I strongly associate with past Greyhawk or Mystara outings. On the other hand, I think I would drop the Keep on the Borderlands and In Search of the Unknown into any campaign if I was starting with a group of newbies. And I've got all the adventures from the pre-Dungeon issues of Dragon magazine on the CD-ROM set. When I was a kid I never used the Dragon adventures because all my players read the magazine as avidly as I did. "The Temple of Poseidon" immediately springs to mind as on Dragon adventure that would be fun to import to Cinder.
Of course, I plan on adding my own dungeons and lairs to the mix. This is just an easy way to get a leg up on stocking a big wilderness map.
Mince Pie Fest 2024: Non-Cornish Cornish Pasty Lemon Mince Pie
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Special #MincePieFest2024 special feature special day four! I've had the
lemon flavour before and it's been a firm favourite, but how will it fare
in 2024?...
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Posts
kDuring play will your character typically keep a good record of where they have travelled and what they have done? Is the map made available to the players to track progress or points of interest? It seems to me that part of the fun as a player would be getting to explore the world piece by piece, and I'm curious to k now how people typically go about recording it.
ReplyDeleteMy plan is to hand out a player map that is largely blank, to be filled in as the players go. Whether they keep accurate records of their travels and travails will be up to them.
ReplyDeleteYou might also find the pre-90ish issues of White Dwarf handy, as there are some good dungeons and scenarios in there, which may be more unfamiliar to you and your players.
ReplyDeleteTemple of Poseidon was one of the few Dragon modules I actually ever DM'ed. Terrific little adventure, that.
ReplyDeleteAre you going to be going the full "West Marches" route with your sandbox? Have a bunch of different players who may or may not show up for any given adventure? Or will there be a single main party playing in the sandbox?