The Village of Hommlet is Too Much: Minimalist Location Sketches for Sandbox Prep

Something I often struggle with when creating a sandbox is the level of detail to give to each location, and at what point in the process to do so. My sandboxes tend to be big - probably too big. The 100-hex sandbox was my attempt at codifying a procedure for creating a play area that felt big enough to contain the bare essentials that I would want for a campaign without going overboard. 

However, my sandboxes tend to be more than ten times larger than that (37 hexes x 37 hexes, or 1,369 hexes, is my usual, although I'm not stocking every single hex). I feel that a large sandbox is necessary to ensure that the play area contains a diverse array of regions to explore (farmland, wild plains, deep forest, highlands with snowcapped mountain peaks, stretches of desert, dense swamps, and shallow coastal waters as well as deep oceans), settlements of various sizes including multiple cities with distinct cultures and politics, strongholds that are either totally deserted or home to monsters, or ruled by bandits and brigands or character-types of different kinds, ruins of various location types, danger levels, and degrees of size/complexity, and monster lairs containing common to very rare monsters and everything in between.

Whether this is a good thing or the "correct" approach is hard to say. On the one hand, it's time-intensive and quite overwhelming to create a large sandbox. On the other hand, the larger the sandbox, the more play it can sustain - that includes not just long campaigns, but multiple campaigns in one region that changes over time, factoring in settlements and strongholds that have risen and fallen, ruins that have been reclaimed, and monster lairs that have cleared by past player characters.

When creating a sandbox of any size, it's easy to get bogged down in the details. I want to have a big picture of the world when play begins, but I only need a small detailed area to actually play the first several sessions:

• The starting settlement and its important locations (generally speaking, its "districts", if any) and NPCs (usually the highest-level ones so I know what services are available and who rules the place, and the lowest-level ones so I know what henchmen might be available to recruit)
• At least one fully-prepped dungeon or dungeon level (either a big tentpole dungeon near the starting town or a few smaller dungeons nearby - with smaller dungeons I'll usually prep enough so that each player can potentially start with a different "hook" and discuss which to pursue first, although this is probably overkill) 
• The nearest active strongholds so that the players have factions outside of the city to interact with (if there's a castle nearby, it's important to know if the ruler is benevolent and just or a psychopathic warlord)
• Any monster lairs in the immediate area which might populate local encounter tables or cause problems for the region (it's good to know whether the monster lair a day's travel from the starting settlement is home to a pack of wolves or an ancient red dragon)

For the rest of the play area, I need much less detail. I don't need to know every location and NPC in every city and town and what treasure is hidden in everyone's house. I don't need to know how many men-at-arms and henchmen are in each stronghold, what magic items all the character-types have, and how each of them feels about the Caves of Chaos. I don't need to know how many levels and rooms are in a dungeon, what's inside each room, and how the Air cultists feel about the Fire cultists. I don't need to know how many coat racks and benches are in the fire giants' barracks.

Instead, I find that most other locations require just a minimalist "sketch" in my key. These can be further developed over time once the player characters intend to travel to these locations, or I can systematically develop them in my free time while the players explore the locations I detailed prior to the start of the campaign. When I'm sufficiently motivated, I can usually stay a few steps ahead of the party.

Here is a breakdown of each type of location (settlement, stronghold, ruin, and monster lair) and what details I include in the brief "sketch" that goes into my initial key:

The Village of Hommlet is too much detail for your sandbox!

Settlement

• Type: Dwelling, thorp, hamlet, village, town, or city (often I just do village, town, city, and city-state). The settlement type is a useful shorthand which determines its population and, in turn, what services are usually available. This will also determine the value of goods the player characters can unload at once.
• Population: This determines what sort of militia the settlement has (if any - I usually rule that one tenth of the population can be called on to defend the settlement if needed), whether the settlement is home to character-types and how many (I usually rule that 1-in-100 citizens is a character-type), and whether lodging is available (I usually rule that there's an inn for every 2,000 citizens).
• Character-types: I won't flesh all of these out, but I like to know general numbers. A hamlet of 300 people has three character-types, so I like to know who they are. A city of 30,000 has 300 character-types, which I'm not going to detail. A hamlet might have a high-level cleric capable of casting raise dead, so it's important to know who exactly the character-types are. In a large enough settlement, I can assume that some NPC is capable of doing so, and it doesn't matter as much at the outset who exactly that is. What I do want to know is who are the most powerful character-types. This is probably only those character-types who are likely to have a stronghold, temple, thieves' guild, wizard's tower, or whatever in the settlement. In a big enough settlement, I only care about the warlords, archmages, archpriests, and the like - those figures which command factions and influence local politics.
• Ruler: Since the structure of D&D society is a levelocracy, this is usually the highest-level character (I will pick a random one if there are multiple character-types at the highest level, with the understanding that they are all likely competing with one another for power). If there are no character-types, I'll just determine an alignment for the settlement and say the ruler is an ordinary patriarch/matriarch/elder/reeve/etc. I'll determine the ruler's alignment, class, and level (if applicable) to get a general idea for what the settlement's "vibe" is.
• Reaction: I use the general alignment of the settlement or its primary ruler to make a reaction roll which determines how the ruler and their faction feels about the player characters upon first encountering them. In a small enough settlement, this might determine the disposition of the settlement's denizens as a whole.

The Keep on the Borderlands is too much detail for your sandbox!

Stronghold

• Type: Small (tower), medium (keep), or large (castle). Sometimes I add very large (fortress complex/palace). This isn't really that important. I might use it to determine the number of men-at-arms later. It's mostly just so I can plop an appropriate icon down on the map and so I know what kind of map to use once I need it.
• Ruler: I want the players to know if the tower is ruled by a fighter, a wizard, a cleric, or whatever. I usually roll on the AD&D DMG's Castle Sub-table II.B to determine this. This isn't a city, where the players can assume that they can find high-level characters of all types. If the players decide to visit a stronghold, they're likely looking for something from its ruler, so it's important to have a vague idea as to who that is.
• Reaction: Like settlements above, I want to know how the ruler and their retainers react to the player characters upon first meeting them, whether the players seek them out or not. Will they demand tribute/tithe? A joust? Will the player characters be feasted or thrown in the dungeons?

The Temple of Elemental Evil is too much detail for your sandbox!

Ruin

• Type: Using AD&D's stocking method, this could be a stronghold (tower, keep, or castle), village, city, shrine, or tomb. I may also use the 5e table, in which case the ruin could be a death trap, lair, maze, mine, planar gate, stronghold, temple or shrine, tomb, or treasure vault. I generally like the 5e table more, but the exclusion of ruined cities is a real dealbreaker. I should probably just make a combined table that includes all of the above!
• Builder: For strongholds, I determine the builder as with strongholds, above. In a human-centric setting, I usually assume villages and cities were human cities, but I might also roll on 5e's table which includes beholders, dwarves, elves, giants, hobgoblins, kuo-toa, liches, mind flayers, and yuan-ti as creators. Shrines are built by clerics, of course.
• Ruination: What caused the site to become ruined? 5e's table is good for this also. It could have been abandoned due to plague, conquered by invaders, destroyed by raiders, destroyed from within by internal conflict, destroyed by natural or magical disaster, cursed by the gods, or overrun with extraplanar creatures, for example.
• Current Occupants: I will usually just intuit this from the preceding information - plague-infested vermin and undead with blighted plants, bandits, squatters, elementals, living spells, cultists, planar creatures, undead, whatever. When in doubt I pick at least two different factions with lairs inside the ruin and three lair-less wandering monsters types that can be encountered inside. The Dungeon Checklist is a good tool to use here (i.e., I'm sure to include at least one monster that can be fought, one that can't/shouldn't be fought, and one that the player characters can talk to).

The Hall of the Fire Giant King is too much detail for your sandbox!

Monster Lair

• Type: What monster lives here? Humanoids? Beasts? Giants? Dragons? I will hone in on a specific type (for example, goblins rather than orcs), but I won't necessarily figure out how many there are.
• Leader: If the monsters are intelligent (and often even if they aren't, since players can still talk to beasts and plants if they want), I'll try to figure out who their "leader-types" are. The bandits always have a high-level fighter leading them, but do they also have a wizard or cleric? I consider that important information for my sketch.
• Reaction: I want to know how the monsters in general react to the player characters. When I eventually get down to the details, I might find that the fire giant hell hound master reacts differently than the cook, but I want to know what the occupants' general disposition is and what orders the leader might issue upon becoming aware of the player characters' intrusion.

Of course, there is always the option to take the Village of Hommlet, the Keep on the Borderlands, the Temple of Elemental Evil, and the Hall of the Fire Giant King and simply plop them down in your sandbox as fully ready-to-play adventure sites, but I have found that this is a suitable middle ground when stocking a large play area with many original locations at once. As a DM, I still experience the thrill of discovery and can get a general idea as to how locations interact with one another and what the player characters might do there, but I avoid the pitfalls of prepping too much material that might never see the light of play. I hope this is helpful for any aspiring world builders!

Discovering NPC personality traits, bonds, ideals, flaws, and secrets (TBIFS) in D&D 5e

Here's one that came to me when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. 

I've written before about my social interaction rules for 5e. My rules are an adaptation of Courtney Campbell's/Hack & Slash Publishing's On the Non-player Character. Basically, I wanted to create a synthesis of old school D&D's reaction roll-based social interaction mechanics and modern D&D's social skills. 

I somehow managed to create something complex enough to (probably) not be appealing to either old school or modern D&D players, but I like it a lot. It's entirely DM-facing, so I don't have to worry about players shouting "I take the Converse action!" Instead, players describe what their characters do, and I have a big list of "actions" that give me guidelines for adjudicating a very wide variety of approaches to social interaction. I've playtested it, and it works for me.

On the NPC also includes a system for tracking an NPC's bond level. Player characters can form bonds with recurring NPCs. The bond level is a measure of the strength of that bond. An NPC's bond level represents how familiar and friendly they are with the party - how likely they are to grant or refuse a favor, for example. The players can increase their bond level with an NPC by spending downtime with them, converting them to their player character's religion, giving them gifts, romancing them, or just hanging out.

I'm just saying, go read that original post if you haven't, for context.

Now I'm going to talk about NPC personality traits, bonds, ideals, flaws, and secrets (TBIFS). TBIFS were, along with backgrounds as a whole, one of 5e's more ingenious additions to D&D - little short-hands for how a character acts, who or what they're connected to, what they value, how they're deficient, and what they're hiding:

In the 2014 PHB, every player character background came with a handful of tables to randomly determine the character's TBIFS. I recommend using them as a starting point and then customizing them for the specific character. I would use them even in an old school game.

Of course, like many of 5e's better contributions to the game, TBIFS are a thing of the past in the 2024 version of the rules, replaced with one-word descriptors based on ability scores and alignment. Sigh.

But I still use TBIFS in my D&D games (5e or otherwise), and now I always will. I also use them for NPCs (including any intelligent monsters the player characters might talk to).

And so I thought, suddenly, in the middle of a sleepless night, that I should add a downtime activity that allows player characters to learn an NPC's TBIFS!

First, I made a slight change to the rules for calling on an NPC bond:

When a PC attempts to elicit a major favor from an NPC with which they have a bond, the PC makes a Charisma (Intimidation or Persuasion) check against the NPC’s social DC or a Strength (Intimidation) check against the NPC’s morale. The PC’s check has advantage if their request/threat resonates with the NPC’s ideals, bonds, flaws, or secrets.

This could probably be more broadly applied to social interaction in general, but I figure that in most social interaction scenarios, the players are unlikely to know any of this information about the NPC.

Next, I wrote up the rules for the new downtime activity:

Familiarize

The player character spends a week of downtime with the NPC in order to learn more about them. The player decides whether they would like to try to learn one of an NPC’s personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws, or secrets. 

Personality traits are learned at a rate of one trait per week of downtime spent with the NPC (no check required).

Ideals, bonds, flaws, and secrets are learned by making either a Wisdom (Insight) check (if the player wishes for their character to intuit the information) or a Charisma (Deception or Persuasion) check (if the player wishes for their character to trick the NPC into revealing/convince the NPC to reveal the information).

All checks are made against the NPC’s social DC. If the NPC is proficient in Deception, add their Deception bonus to the DC against Wisdom (Insight) checks. If the NPC is proficient in Insight, add their Insight bonus to the DC against Charisma (Deception) checks.

Successful Insight checks discover the information automatically and without the NPC necessarily knowing that the information has been discovered. Successful Deception or Persuasion checks result in a bond roll, which is modified by the bond level and degree of success or failure of the Charisma check:

Degree of Success/Failure Reaction Modifier
5-9                 +/-1
10-14         +/-2
15-19         +/-3
20                 +/-4

If the modified bond roll is greater than the current bond level, then the player character learns the desired information, and the bond improves by one.

If a Deception check fails, the bond level decreases by 1d4+1 levels, to a minimum of 2.

It's a work in progress (especially the name), but I had to get it out. I'm excited to test it out!

Dead Gods Waiting to be Reborn: Ruined Shrines and the Syncretist Cleric in AD&D

The AD&D wilderness inhabitation tables have infected my mind. They have wormed their way in, forcing me to make sandboxes I may never use. Now that they've burrowed deep beneath the surface, living (rent free!) in my brain, so too have I begun to dig beneath the surface. I'm increasingly interested in analyzing and rationalizing the implications of these tables, picking apart the little oddities that likely exist only because Gary Gygax simply wasn't thinking that much about it.

But I am thinking a lot about it. And what if Gygax was, too? What if every idiosyncrasy in Appendix B actually has some implicit logic to it that the Dungeon Master is meant to intuit? Surely this was the intention of Gygax, who famously never over-explained anything in lengthy prose in any of his writings.

(At this point, this might as well be an AD&D Appendix B blog. If this sort of thing is not interesting to you, I promise to write about other stuff eventually.)

All this is to say that I've been thinking about ruins. Specifically, ruined shrines. Allow me to share, once again, that table which has been the source of so much of my consternation as of late:

2-in-100 (or 1-in-50) hexes contain a ruin (not including deserted castles, which I interpret as ruins). That's a ruin every 50 miles if you're using the suggested scale of 1-mile hexes (as I've explained before, I use a 6-mile hex because I like things to be more spread out - it makes getting around more challenging by slowing the pace of travel between locations, makes the movement rate math a little easier, and gives the locations more room to breathe). Of those 1-in-50 ruins, 25% are shrines - that's one ruined shrine per 200 hexes.

What's stranger still is that while there are ruined villages and cities as well as non-ruined villages and cities, there are no non-ruined shrines (nor are there non-ruined tombs or ruined dwellings, thorps, hamlets, or towns, but those are topics for another time). So, what happened? Why is every shrine a ruin?

The short answer is that every shrine is not a ruin - there are probably intact shrines in many settlements and within clerics' strongholds - but that every shrine found in the wilderness is ruined. For whatever reason, every religious group that sets out to establish a place of worship beyond the realm of "civilization" or outside the protection of castle walls is doomed to destruction. An AD&D sandbox is littered with monuments to dead gods.

Who is building these shrines? Clerics, probably. From the PHB:

This section goes on to clarify that clerics can begin constructing a proper religious stronghold at 9th-level, which must be dedicated to the cleric's deity (or deities! put a pin in that for later), at which point they can clear the surrounding territory and begin collecting revenue from trade, taxation, and tithes:

Therefore, the purpose of the "place of worship" (which includes a shrine) is for slightly lower-level clerics to begin attracting followers and men-at-arms in preparation for eventually building a stronghold.

That's not the only reason to construct a shrine. From the DMG:

Here, we see that a shrine is necessary for a cleric to research and create new spells. This doesn't quite square with my understanding of clerics. Is it within a cleric's power to create new spells? Is it not the deity who should be "creating" spells and bestowing them upon their faithful vessels? I'll come back to this.

There is one more mention of shrines in the DMG outside of the Appendices, in the section on turning undead, which may not be particularly relevant to this post but is worth mentioning as it pertains to the inherent power of the shrine - and why a(n Evil) cleric might want to construct one:

(Note that the excerpt from the PHB describes a place of worship not less than 2,000 square feet in floor space, which includes a shrine, whereas this excerpt from the PHB describes a shrine as being an area roughly 10" by 10", which is 100' by 100' in a dungeon and 300' by 300' outdoors.)

In summary, shrines are sources of power for clerics which are located within somewhat lesser versions of the strongholds they will eventually build. A shrine allows the cleric to research and "create" new spells, and bolsters the undead minions of Evil clerics against other clerics' attempts to turn them. A shrine is presumably built out into a place of worship to then attract followers, then eventually developed into a stronghold to control the surrounding lands and collect revenue. 

I think it is likely that the ruined "shrines" of AD&D's wilderness were in fact originally constructed as that middle classification - places of worship which once attracted followers and which house the shrine necessary for the research and "creation" of spells. Ruined castles are already accounted for in the inhabitation table and castle sub-tables, so we can rule that out as a possibility. I also imagine that "ruins" are intended to represent proper dungeons, which are otherwise unaccounted for in the inhabitation table. I do not feel that the 10" by 10" shrine described above fits that particular gameplay need, so I am ruling out that possibility as well.

Presupposing that the ruined "shrines" on the inhabitation table were in actuality once these places of worship lends them additional significance. The place of worship, after all, contains not just a shrine but also perhaps an altar and a chapel.

From the DMG's section on the manufacture of scrolls:

And the section on fabrication of other magic items:

Both the creation of scrolls and magic items is limited by the level of the character to varying degrees which I won't get into here. The point is that an 8th-level cleric would be capable of creating scrolls and magic items of some level of power, and that this is another reason why these ruined "shrines"/places of worship might exist.

5th-level clerics can also create holy water, which requires the use of a specially created basin:

We might presume that such a basin would also be housed in a place of worship, and thus, most likely would be present in our ruined "shrines".

Now that I've justified the existence of these ruins in the setting, let's talk implications.

Much like the deserted castles generated by the inhabitation table (both those totally deserted and those now home to monsters), these ruins present an opportunity for player character clerics. They are dungeons, yes, filled with monsters, tricks, traps, puzzles, and treasure like any other, but they aren't just another dungeon to be crawled and plundered.

If they can be secured against their dangers, these ruins can also be claimed and restored, likely for a fraction of the price of constructing them from scratch. They contain shrines, altars, basins, and maybe other features which are now dormant but which have the potential to be greatly useful to the cleric PC.

Only, these places of worship are (probably) not dedicated to the cleric's deity. You could have a monotheistic setting, sure, and even if you don't, likely some fraction of these ruins will be associated with the cleric's deity, but many more will not. The original inhabitants and their deity may have been Lawful, Chaotic, Good, or Evil, and that will inform the ruin's features and its utility to the cleric. A ruin once dedicated to the cleric's deity may need to be reclaimed. That of a rival deity may need to be consecrated (with some effort, as any undead present will be resistant to turning) or defiled (being Evil is fun too).

More interesting are those in the middle. The cleric could reclaim an allied deity's place of worship on behalf of the still-active church (a nice faction for your sandbox) and build bridges between faiths. The ruin could also be unfathomably ancient - that of a dead god waiting to be reawakened through piety. 

My last post described a cleric with a prayer book akin to the spellbook of a magic-user, a syncretist who incorporates the beliefs and rituals of adjacent faiths into their own practice, allowing them to engage in a precarious balancing act in which they are granted powers by multiple deities at once - but must simultaneously serve and please all of their patrons in order to continue to use and accumulate their divine magic.

The ruined places of worship in AD&D provide the cleric with another avenue by which to obtain such magic. I return once again to the power of shrines, and that bit about a shrine being needed to "create" new cleric spells. Within this framework, the shrine is necessary not to create but to discover new spells. The shrine is imbued with the deity's dormant power, and the library (assuming this is required of clerics and not just magic-users) are the dusty religious tomes, crumbling scrolls, and cracked tablets found within the ruin. 

The cleric can acquire new spells by forging relationships with living religions, learning their practices, and serving their cause, but they can also do so by restoring these sites of ancient worship, bringing dead gods back into the world. I think that's pretty neat!

Was this Gygax's intention? Probably not. He probably wasn't thinking that much about it. But, just because he wasn't, doesn't mean I can't! The AD&D DMG is loaded with detail. In the details there are plenty of answers for curious or confused DMs, but there are also questions. The tables in the appendices imply a setting, but not a clearly defined one. There is a lot of fun to be had in interpreting the vagaries into something more cohesive!

Clerics Need Spellbooks Too

This post is part of the papal conclave Blog Bandwagon/Blogclave. As the world turns its gaze towards the Vatican, the blogosphere turns its attention to the cleric. Subscribe to Prismatic Weekly for a roundup of all this post's siblings once the conclave has chosen a new pope!

Here's an interesting tidbit from original Dungeons & Dragons' Book I: Men and Magic:

It's accepted as a fundamental D&D-ism that magic-users/wizards have spellbooks, yet for some reason the need for clerics to keep spellbooks did not become ingrained in future editions in the same way. 

As early as AD&D 1st edition, clerics "have their spells bestowed upon them by their respective deities". Gygax elaborates that cleric spells are granted either by the cleric's "education, training, and experience" (1st and 2nd level spells), followed by intermediaries of their chosen deity (3rd through 5th level spells), then by the deity itself (6th and 7th level spells). 

Although clerics cast their spells the same way as magic-users and require the same amount of time to memorize them, the way in which they acquire new spells and what they must do to memorize them is very different. While magic-users must scribe their spells in a book and study the book to memorize them, clerics simply gain access to all spells of the next level when they gain a level, and memorizing them requires only time spent in prayer - no book necessary.

This is unfortunate. I quite like the idea of the adventurer cleric with a book of prayers bestowed upon them by their church. Such a book would contain the initiate spells typically learned during the cleric's background education. In keeping with AD&D, let's say that these are the 1st and 2nd level spells. This is convenient in that it maps neatly onto D&D 5e's "Tier 1", which covers character levels 1st through 4th and spell levels 1st and 2nd.

To acquire additional spells from their deity, the prayer book-wielding cleric must not only continue to serve the deity's cause, make contact with various divine intermediaries and, eventually, the god itself, but they must also write the prayers associated with these spells into their prayer book.

(As an aside, this same principle can also be applied to the paladin, who in many versions of D&D casts spells the same as the cleric. The druid - and by association the ranger, who is to the druid as the paladin is to the cleric - could also keep a more "nature-y" book of sorts. After all, the druid is often treated as something like a subclass of cleric. 

On the other hand, druids were not in OD&D, and so I can easily argue that the excerpt at the beginning of this post does not apply to them. Druids have also acquired their own unique identity over the years, so my inclination is for them to have an entirely different method of learning and/or preparing spells.)

Of course, I don't like how every cleric of every deity is able to cast more or less the exact same spells, so the prayer book of a cleric who worships but one deity would be somewhat limited, and the prayer books of any two clerics of differing faiths would be quite different from one another. 

However, much like the enterprising magic-user or wizard must delve into abandoned wizards' towers and lost libraries for new magic, this would incentivize the cleric to go forth and acquire additional prayers from other gods. After all, there is not usually one "true" god in a D&D setting - there are multiple, some in alignment with one another and others at odds. So long as the Lawful Good cleric remains in their principle deity's good graces and does not seek out the prayers of rival Chaotic and Evil deities, there isn't much reason why the prayers of multiple gods can't coexist in the same book.

This encourages the cleric to adventure in a slightly different way. No longer is the cleric the crusader or templar, spreading their deity's gospel, proselytizing to those who will listen and smiting those who won't. Instead, the cleric becomes a syncretist or polytheist, accumulating the diverse magics of a wide array of faiths and lesser and greater divine beings. 

The cleric must rely on their social acumen. Much like the magic-user must on occasion convince a learned wizard to tutor them in some new spell, the cleric must ingratiate themselves with people of different faiths so that they may become an initiate and incorporate their prayers into the cleric's personal belief system.

Unlike magic-users, whose spell repertoire is limited by their Intelligence and what magic they can find (and perhaps by their specialization), the cleric is limited by their piety - new spells are learned from a given deity by continuing to serve that deity's cause. It may be a simple matter of studying the proper rituals (their words, signs, and sacred components) to learn 1st- and 2nd-level spells, but more powerful magic requires direct intervention by the deity and its intermediaries, which is only earned by the accrual of favor (that is, the cleric's level of piety with each deity would need to be tracked - like experience points, for example - to determine when they can begin to cast the higher-level spells bestowed by the deity - even if the cleric "knows" the rituals and has them written in their prayer book).

If the cleric fails to continue to satisfy the deity, those same spells can be taken away. Many masters means many obligations - the more deities the cleric courts, the more patrons they acquire and must satisfy, or else lose their powers. Each new deity that is petitioned makes the balancing act more precarious (this is also why you should let warlocks, in more recent editions of D&D, petition as many patrons as they can - but that is a topic for another time).

I'm sure there are some who will feel that this somehow "nerfs" the cleric. The cleric is meant to get automatic access to all their spells, and now I'm suggesting instead that they jump through a bunch of hoops to get them? I'm long past the point of caring about those sorts of things. 

On the other hand, this would give the cleric a great deal of flexibility on par with that of the wizard, if the player is enterprising enough to take advantage of the opportunity. It makes the cleric more dynamic, grounded in the fiction of the game world, and allows individual clerics to distinguish themselves from one another. That's worth it in my eyes.

Thoughts and prayers?

Review: Mörk Borg Miscellany (Bloat, Devil's Tomb, the Hexed Gauntlet of Kagel-Secht, and Nurse the Rot)

What follows is a collection of reviews of four short adventures for Mörk Borg. Spoilers abound beyond this point.

Bloat

Bloat is a "A gluttonous dungeon for Mörk Borg". It is written by Greg Saunders, with an original map design by Dyson Logos and editing and art by Johan Nohr. It is a one-page dungeon and looks like this:

In print this takes up a two-page spread. It is quite easy to use at the table, and I was able to run it for my players in just one roughly two-hour session (albeit with a somewhat rushed anticlimax due to time constraints).

The premise is that a vagabond, Silas, stumbled upon a dungeon which was once the lair of a cult of bacchanalian priests dedicated to a goddess of fat and plenty. There he found a cursed set of cutlery which allows the wielder to eat anything and makes everything taste delicious, but also compels the wielder to eat. The dungeon is filled with fleshy ceramic automatons that kidnap villagers to feed to Silas.

The scenario suggests a few hooks:

• The PCs are recruited by the missing villagers' families or lord to find and rescue them
• The PCs seek shelter in the dungeon while hiding from something else
• The PCs are looking for Silas

Of these, the first appeals to me most. Have a lord post a reward for the problem to be dealt with and that should be sufficient motivation. The second option doesn't actually encourage exploration of the dungeon, and the third doesn't quite work unless you come up with a reason why Silas must be found (he is just a vagabond, after all). One possibility I toyed with was to instead make Silas an infamous highwayman, wayfarer, or the like, and to put a bounty on his head. However, this doesn't necessarily point in the direction of the dungeon, which is where the adventure is.

Since I ran this as a one-shot, I used option one. Villagers have gone missing, and a local lord has posted a reward to find them and resolve the problem. I added in that the lord's men had recently routed a band of brigands and that their leader, a killer named Silas, had escaped. Also, just outside the village there was an old temple once used by the Bacchanalists in certain dark rituals. Perhaps one or both are somehow responsible for the recent troubles? 

That seemed like enough set up for me - not that it mattered, because I had the players start at the dungeon anyway. If I were to instead run a sandbox and wanted to include this adventure therein, I think this framing would work well enough to get things moving.

The dungeon consists of six keyed rooms with a few notes about features in the areas between (discarded bones, a falling block trap, and a fountain of sweet water). The keyed rooms include a ratbadger's den, a larder where the automatons prepare feasts for Silas, a sewage pit where the automatons dump Silas's waste (and where it comes to life), a chapel where villagers are forced by the automatons to pray to a statue of the goddess of fat and plenty, an assembly area where automatons are created and stored, and the court of Silas, the Fattened King, whose corpulent form occupies the entire room, where he devours whatever the automatons bring him.

This is a neat little dungeon, if not a bit crowded. Every room has some sort of creature in it. Most are not explicitly hostile, so it need not be a combat-packed slog. Many of the dungeon's occupants are not given a suggested course of action, so the GM must use common sense or reaction rolls to determine how they respond to the PCs snooping around. Mörk Borg's core rules do include reaction rolls, so I view this as a design choice rather than an oversight.

When I ran it, most of the creatures were indifferent to the PCs. The ratbadger was asleep, so the PCs snuck past it (actually, one of the PCs had a scroll which allowed them to cast a sleep spell, which they used on the ratbadger to ensure it did not wake up when they passed it). I played the automatons as diligently focused on their assigned tasks so that they did not notice the PCs peeking around corners and into rooms. The animated waste in the sewage pit did menace them, but the players fed it scraps and then lured one of the automatons to the pit and threw it to the waste to be consumed. I played Silas as hostile only because I figured the cursed cutlery would compel him to eat the PCs.

There are a few interesting enemies here. The automatons have medium armor, do a medium amount of damage, and have quite a few hit points, but they are neutralized entirely when knocked down. The players were delighted once they realized that a good shove was an instant win (I made it an opposed Strength test, but the party's Fanged Deserter with +5 Strength had no issue with that). I added that the automatons were filled with congealed fat or grease and so were exceptionally flammable, which the players also took great advantage of. The animated waste is not particularly dangerous, but cannot be killed, only dissipated with water. 

Silas has a ton of hit points but no armor, but when damaged, he farts, which can cause the PCs to wretch and gag for several rounds. He can also grab the PCs and shove them into his mouth for extra damage. They covered him with grease and set him on fire, then had to run out with the villagers as fast as they could before he exploded in a blast of flaming farts. The newest character with just 1 hit point had to use all of their omens to survive that one damage roll.

It's a gross dungeon with plenty of room for crude, juvenile humor, which is some of my favorite gaming material. Definitely give this one a try! 

Bloat is available in print by way of Mörk Borg Cult: Heretic. It is also free on the Mörk Borg website (direct link). If you're into Mörk Borg, I highly recommend Heretic. It includes Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch, which I reviewed previously, as well as two of the other dungeons I review later in this post. It and Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory provide lots of gameable content which have together sustained multiple Mörk Borg games of mine for several months now.

Devil's Tomb

Devil's Tomb is a dungeon by Johan Nohr, made using the Mörk Borg digital dungeon generator, DNGNGEN, and it shows. I don't care for this dungeon generator at all, and feel that the GM is better served by simply making a dungeon in the B/X fashion or something similar (admittedly, I haven't yet made a Mörk Borg dungeon of my own and probably never will because the system doesn't offer much support for doing so).

That being said, this dungeon is alright. When I say that the use of the dungeon generator shows, I mean that there are a good deal of disparate elements jammed together in a way that only sometimes makes sense. There's a giant plant that has filled the place with psychoactive spores, a room with three goblins bickering over a sword, a lair of fish people, and a pit to Hell, most of which don't interact with each other in any meaningful way.

Anyway, here's what the dungeon looks like:

I ran this in my more sandbox-y Mörk Borg campaign, so I was able to let the dungeon breathe a little and didn't feel the need to jam it into a single session, which was nice because the players ended up in a very messy situation in the depths. It took us about two and a half three-hour sessions to get through it.

The dungeon overview says that the Eyes of the Icon of St Largoth have been stolen and brought to Devil's Tomb. They are magical eyes that grant the power of true sight, and the PCs are here to retrieve them. That's a decent enough hook. To make it a bit more tantalizing, I had the Church of the Twin-Headed Basilisk post a reward for the Eyes' return. My group had quite a few heretical priests among them, so they decided instead to retrieve the Eyes so that they could be destroyed or else used to lure representatives from the Church into a trap, which I thought was a fun idea and exactly the kind of thing that sandbox-style play is good for.

The main attraction here is the Plant of Life, a giant plant which has filled the dungeon with its spores and cherub-faced flowering vines. There are a few areas filled with spores, which require a Toughness test when inhaled to resist a number of effects. The effects are "weird" in a way that is not actually very gameable. They make the PCs see visions of death, or become dizzy, or hear voices. The effects are at worst inconvenient and at best something to handwave. (I instead gave them a charm/rapport spores effect, which I felt was easier to use. If the players weren't careful, it could escalate to total domination by the Plant.)

The Plant of Life is inside a hidden room partway down the Pit to Hell. The entrance can be seen through the Eyes of St Largoth which are, in turn, hidden in the Drowned's treasure hoard. I'm not sure how the PCs are meant to reach the entrance to the Plant's lair, which is on the opposite side of the Pit from the goblins' cave. Perhaps the gap is jumpable? Perhaps it is not so far down that it can't be climbed down via rope from the bridge above? Some rough approximations of distance would help!

I changed the Pit to Hell to a regular bottomless pit (which could still lead to Hell - the PCs didn't find out because none of them jumped in, even though I kept suggesting that there was only one way to know for sure how deep it went). I had the Plant's vines growing up and down the pit so that the PCs could climb up and down them as another means of vertically exploring the dungeon (all three levels connect to the Pit somewhere).

The Plant of Life is worshipped by the Drowned, amphibious humanoids who dwell in the dungeon's flooded lower levels (don't worry - the flooded area empties out into the Pit to Hell, so it's not flooded in any meaningful or interesting way, although the Drowned do freeze the water around them when they die, which causes some damage to those nearby). Belpheduk, a traitor to the Drowned, is locked in a cave at the top of the dungeon as punishment for killing another Drowned (it is not clear why she did this, but she wants to destroy the Plant of Life, and can provide information about its location).

There are 10 Drowned at the bottom of the dungeon, with 4 more arriving "soon" (when?), which is a lot of potential enemies for Mörk Borg, in my experience. Again, the dungeon does not describe their behavior, so I imagine that reaction rolls are meant to be used. My Drowned ended up being indifferent, so I split them up between the altar and lair chambers - those in the altar chamber were in silent prayer over their dead comrade, and those in the lair were sleeping in their "fleshy cocoons". This allowed the players to run around the dungeon scoping out the situation before deciding what to do. They could have easily snuck into the treasure room, stolen the Eyes, and snuck out again without fighting anyone.

Unfortunately for them, they still took an agonizingly long time making their choices, and ended up caught in the Drowned lair when the hunting party returned. They decided to ambush the hunting party (who were in the way of their escape), but ended up alerting all the rest of the Drowned in the process. They got caught between all three groups, with the hunting party in front, the Drowned from the altar at their flank, and those from the lair at their rear. A very long combat ensued, in which the players used all their omens, many of the Drowned fled, the rest died, and just one character was slain in the final round of combat due to consecutive critical failures.

The summary makes it sound thrilling, but it was quite a slog. Mörk Borg's combat simply isn't interesting enough to sustain a prolonged skirmish, so 10 to 14 enemies in a single area seems to me like bad design. That being said, my players definitely should not have started a fight here, so perhaps they are more to blame. Again, there is nothing to indicate that the Drowned are hostile to the PCs.

The PCs already had the Eyes, so they hurried out of there. They deliberated for a while about finding the Plant and destroying it, but decided to count themselves lucky instead. The Plant has a lot of hit points (but is too big to miss with an attack), and only has one interesting mechanic which is a tendril attack that must be escaped or else the target is restrained inside the Plant's mouth while being digested. The Plant can attack everyone nearby at once, so it has the potential to be very deadly. It's nice that the scenario does not require that the players defeat it.

Overall, this dungeon is fine, but it requires the GM to put in some work to tie the disparate elements together. The GM should also exercise some caution to prevent the adventure from grinding to a halt due to a combat slog in the lower levels, though there's no accounting for players doing player things.

You can download Devil's Tomb for free on the Mörk Borg website (direct link). It is not available in print.

The Hexed Gauntlet of Kagel-Secht

The Hexed Gauntlet of Kagel-Secht is a Mörk Borg "obituary dungeon" with art and story by Lukasz Kowalczuk, graphic design and text by Johan Nohr, and proofreading by Walton Wood. What is an "obituary dungeon"? I don't really know. It looks like this:

Basically, it's a comic strip/poster equivalent to roughly four letter-sized pages. It depicts a trio of characters going through a dungeon and dying to its various hazards. (Maybe that's what makes it an "obituary dungeon"?) The margins contain game information on monsters and traps, plus a mini map of the dungeon which clarifies how all of the areas connect. In other words, this is poster, comic strip, and dungeon all in one.

I love this thing! You just know there are people who hate this, who think it's everything wrong with Mörk Borg or art punk or indie RPGs or whatever sort of axe it is they have to grind. Admittedly, it's difficult to determine what exactly you're seeing at first, but once you figure out what it is and how the information is meant to flow, it's really cool. I for one can't wait to unfold this thing at the table and run it for my players.

The format leaves a few things to be desired. The mechanical marginalia does not address everything that happens in the comic. Is the giant statue that grabs the one character's head supposed to be an instant death trap? A monster? Can it be defeated without the power of the gauntlet? How am I meant to use the table of subterranean monsters? Why does the character who falls into the subterranean area transform into a raving mutant? What is the nature of Kagel-Secht the lich?

It's certainly not the greatest dungeon I've ever seen, but the unique presentation is enough for it to really sing to me.

The Hexed Gauntlet of Kagel-Secht is available in print by way of Mörk Borg Cult: Heretic. From what I can tell, no digital version is available (it is not included in the PDF version of Heretic). And really, this one is worth having a physical copy of.

Nurse the Rot

Nurse the Rot is a dungeon offered in the final pages of Mörk Borg Cult: Heretic. It is meant to showcase the two new monsters described in the preceding pages: the Borg Bitor (a giant centipede which lays its single black egg inside of a human infant, the infant in turn eventually transforms into an adult Bitor to perpetuate the grotesque cycle) and the Rotten Nurse (an invincible undead nurse guilty of horrendous crimes who traps her victims inside a "mental torture prison" until they either die or break free).

The two monsters and accompanying dungeon are written by Pelle Nilsson. The art and graphic design are by Johan Nohr. Nohr's art is, as always, evocative, simultaneous dark yet splashed with tactical neon color in his signature style:

The dungeon itself folds out from the description of the Rotten Nurse into a two-page spread:

This does not translate well to the PDF version of the book, but looks very cool in physical form.

The adventure takes place in Chapel Olundan, in which the PCs must find the Staff of Awful Light, or else the village of Tünstal will forever fall into darkness. Why do the cynical, nihilistic, rat bastard PCs typical created by Mörk Borg's random character creation care? Well, it was one of the PC's aunt's dying wish.

Yeah...it's not a great hook. Well the Staff of Awful Light is probably pretty cool. Maybe the PCs want to retrieve it for their own nefarious ends? Well, maybe. But for some reason, the scenario doesn't describe what the Staff actually is or does. You'll have to come up with your own hook for this one. Either figure out a compelling use for the Staff and send the PCs after it or tie a monetary reward to clearing out the place. 

The scenario details roughly six areas as well as a handful of corridors connecting them. Each room's description points to the room it describes. The descriptions of the north, east, and south corridors are fittingly at the top, right hand side, and bottom of the spread, respectively. 

It's a bit daunting to try to read the descriptions in any sort of "order" like one might a more traditional layout, but it seems it would be easy to follow along as the PCs move from one area to the next in an actual game. One issue is that connections between rooms are only detailed in one of the two rooms' descriptions, so to find out that a particular door is locked, you will need to read the description of the "correct" room. Otherwise that information is easily missed.

As the stars of the show here are the Borg Bitor and the Rotten Nurse, I'll focus on their roles in the scenario. 

The Borg Bitor is in its nest in area 6. For some reason, the PCs get better (Mörk Borg's version of leveling up) when they enter the room, which is not something I've seen in any other Mörk Borg scenario to date. It's not like the Bitor is particularly deadly - it has a medium amount of hit points, medium armor, a sticky glue which is DR 18 ("should not be possible", according to the core rulebook) to escape, and a save or die venom which is just DR 6 ("so simple people laugh at you for failing") to resist. It seems like an odd choice, is all.

Inside the Bitor's nest is the Staff of Awful Light, so the PCs will need to get past the Bitor to complete their objective. There should be three ways to access this area, but one way is through an "impossible to pass" blazing bone fire (unclear if the bones can be passed if the fire is extinguished) and the other is through an "impenetrable" sheet of skin. That leaves just the third path, which is a locked door. The key is in a murky canal guarded by a "starving Sludger" (whatever that is - the scenario isn't specific, but it has a lot of hit points, medium armor, and can destroy armor with its attacks). Why one would create a room with three means of ingress and make two of them impassible is beyond me. I would change that.

The Rotten Nurses are hidden in a secret room, which is undetectable unless the Nurses leave it. There are a few conditions which will cause the Nurses to leave the room, one of which is if the PCs touch the stairs leading to the locked door behind which is the Borg Bitor's nest. As I mentioned, as written, this is the only way to get to the Bitor, which guards the Staff, so the PCs will have to alert the Nurses if they hope to complete their objective.

If alerted, the Nurses move to a random room to investigate. Every 10 minutes, they move to another random room, presumably until they locate the PCs or the PCs escape. I like this dynamic element of the Nurses' behavior. What I don't like is that the scenario doesn't specify how many of them there are (the description of the room they hide in only says "a group of Rotten Nurses"). The description of the Rotten Nurses on the prior page says that there were originally two dozen of them, so maybe that's how many. That seems like a lot. You could maybe roll 6d4, 4d6, 3d8, or 2d12 to determine it.

Overall, this is an okay dungeon. It needs a good hook. I wish the Borg Bitor was a bit more fearsome (as is, it is overshadowed in its own spotlight scenario by the Sludger, which is much scarier), and I wish the "mental torture prison" power of the Rotten Nurse was a bit more interesting from a gameplay perspective than simply "roll ability tests until you succeed on one or die". Overall I think this would make a decent one-shot, although not as good of one as Bloat or the Hexed Gauntlet.

Nurse the Rot is available in print or PDF by way of Mörk Borg Cult: Heretic.

The 100-Hex Sandbox

As you've probably noticed, I've been spending some time using the tables found in Appendix B of the AD&D 1e DMG to populate my sandboxes, which I will definitely use in a real game at some point...

See also d66 Reasons Why the Castle is Totally Deserted, which is my attempt to answer a question that arose as a result of using the tables in the DMG, and Using Reaction Rolls to Determine Faction Relationships in the Sandbox, which is a nice companion to any of my posts about creating a sandbox.

Here is yet another take on using the AD&D 1e DMG to create a sandbox. First, allow me to remind you of this table:

I was looking at this table and thought about what it would be like to extrapolate the percentage chances of inhabitation per hex instead into a general rule. That is, instead of there being a 16% chance per hex of a settlement, castle, or ruin being present, maybe 16 in 100 hexes are populated with such locations. If you create a play area consisting of 100 hexes, you simply stock 16 of them with such locations, rather than rolling to determine their contents. 

Obviously this is statistically likely anyway, but this spares you a lot of rolling and creates a more standardized area of play. (Rolling is fun, of course, and standardization can be boring, but bear with me.)

You could of course instead prepare a play area of 50 or 25 hexes and stock 8 or 4 of them respectively for a more manageable map. This has a slight downside, however, as towns and cities are each 1-in-100. With a 100-hex play area, I feel comfortable saying yes, a town and a city both definitely exist in this space.

I present to you my 100 hexes:

You can generate the terrain however you see fit. As usual, I'm using some variation of Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design. In this case, I rolled d3 to determine the climate and got 2 (temperate), then rolled d6 to determine the predominant terrain and got 6 (water). This area is a freshwater lake or sound or something. 

Using 100 hexes and the Welsh Piper method, I can also easily standardize the terrain as follows:

• 50 water hexes
• 25 plains hexes
• 16 to 17 forest hexes
• 2 to 3 each of desert, hill, and swamp hexes

(That part is optional and not super important, but it will make a later step easier.)

Now here is the list of inhabited hexes to add:

• 3 single dwellings
• 2 thorps
• 2 hamlets
• 2 villages
• 1 town
• 1 city
• 3 castles
• 2 ruins

There are four types of ruins, so you have to roll to determine which kind they are. I got a village and a shrine. If you instead want to have one of each type using this method, you will need to make a 200-hex sandbox!

Castles, of course, have their own subtables on another page:

There are technically 36 types of castles! There are 9 types on Castle Table I, but each of those types can in turn be totally deserted, deserted but inhabited by a monster, inhabited by humans, or inhabited by character-types. If you factor in the four types of humans on Castle Sub-Table II-A, the 11 character-types on Castle Sub-Table II-B, and all the monsters listed on the various outdoor random monster encounter tables, the possibilities explode beyond the scope of my comprehension. It is not worth it to try to make a play area that includes all of these!

Instead, we will have three castles. You could roll for all of them or, since 35% will be small, 45% will be medium, and 20% will be large, you could instead decide that one is small, one is medium, and the third is either small (5%), medium (35%), or large (60%). I roll and get a 5, so I have two small castles. 

The exact type of "castle" doesn't matter much to me, so I decide that small castles are towers, medium castles are keeps, and large castles are proper castles. I roll for the state of each and get a tower inhabited by brigands, a totally deserted keep, and a castle inhabited by a fighter.

Returning to my map, I start placing locations:

I place the city in the middle, because why not. I place the town and villages each a day's travel from the city, and randomly place everything else. I then draw in "roads" (although in this case they are merely a visual representation of how people get from one place to another, mostly by boat) connecting the town and city and going off the map, presumably to other towns and cities. Then I connect the other settlements by the shortest possible path to that main route. I draw in the "roads" at this stage because hexes through which they pass will count as inhabited, meaning they won't contain monsters' lairs.

Finally, I then place the monsters. Remember when I said that standardizing the terrain would come in handy? Well, since I know that my 100 hexes include 50 water hexes, 25 plains hexes, 17 forest hexes, 2 desert hexes, 3 hill hexes, and 3 swamp hexes, I can now subtract those which are inhabited and end up with the following uninhabited hexes:

• 23 water
• 18 plains
• 15 forest
• 1 desert
• 3 hill
• 3 swamp

Why does that matter? Because each type of terrain has a percentage chance of containing a monster lair:

• Water, plains, and desert: 10%
• Forest and hill: 20%
• Swamp: 40%

(I'm pulling these numbers from 2e, not 1e, and so am straying a bit from the spirit of this exercise. 1e instead uses population density to determine the chance of encountering a monster. However I'm also not using the 1e method of random terrain generation, so we are already beyond the glow of Gygax's light.)

Based on the percentages, the 23 water hexes will contain two monster lairs, with a 30% chance of a third. The plains hexes will contain 1 monster lair with an 80% chance of a third, the forest hexes will contain 3 monster lairs, and so on. I roll dice when necessary and get:

• Water: 2 monster lairs
• Plains: 2 monster lairs
• Forest: 3 monster lairs
• Desert: 0 monster lairs
• Hills: 1 monster lair
• Swamp: 1 monster lair

I tuck these in little pockets of wilderness, not too close to the city or the stronghold, but close enough to civilization to interact with it:

Voila! I think this is a pretty decent place from which to start a campaign, and it's much smaller than the other sandbox I've been posting about on this blog. There's a town, a city, plenty of smaller settlements and dwellings, a minor stronghold, a major stronghold, three ruins to explore (including a stronghold which can eventually be reclaimed by the player characters), and nine monster lairs to cause complications for the region.

The point of this exercise is to demonstrate that, rather than rolling on tables, you could instead pick a size for your sandbox and use the tables to extrapolate what all should be included in the region. Or, pick the things from the tables you want to be sure are included (in my case, at least one city) and determine the size of the sandbox from there. 

I won't go so far as to say this is the right way to do it, but it's another option in the toolbox. It presupposes that you care at all about what's written in the 1e DMG, which many don't. And that's totally valid! It describes a very particular type of game.

I am curious to about one other matter - how big would a sandbox need to be to "guarantee" the presence of a dragon? They are exceptionally rare in AD&D's encounter tables, such that in a hex containing a monster lair, there is only a 2% chance of it being the lair of a dragon in plains, desert, hills, and mountains, and only a 1% chance in forest and swamp.

Considering that roughly 60% of my hexes were uninhabited, and that there is roughly a 19% chance of any uninhabited hex containing a monster lair averaged across the different terrain types (again, using the 2e values), we can expect an average of 11 or 12 monster lairs per 100 hexes. Since there is either a 1 or 2% chance of such a lair belonging to a dragon, let's call it a 1.5% chance. That means that 1 in 66 or 67 monster lairs will be a dragon lair. 

That's roughly one dragon per 600 hexes, or one dragon per 6 cities! So if you want to "guarantee" a dragon in your sandbox, take the above map and multiply it by 6. Or, you know, just make however big of a map you want and plunk a dragon down somewhere. It doesn't matter. But I had fun with it as a thought exercise. Maybe you did too.

Using Reaction Rolls to Determine Faction Relationships in the Sandbox

I wanted to do a quick demonstration of how I use reaction rolls to determine the nature of relationships between factions in a sandbox campaign.

Reaction rolls are most often used in the context of encounters. That is, the player characters run into a group of 10 orcs in the dungeon (or 100 orcs in the wilderness) and the Dungeon Master rolls some dice to determine if the orcs are hostile, neutral, or friendly. If negotiations take place, the DM can make additional reaction rolls to determine if the orcs are offended, unmoved, or pleased by any given approach or offer.

The exact method of determining a monster or nonplayer character's reaction to the PCs varies by edition, but I have settled on my own take on the common 2d6 table:

2d6       Reaction

2-3        Hostile

4-5        Unfriendly

6-8        Neutral

9-10      Friendly

11-12    Helpful

Hostile creatures usually attack on sight (the point is that their intention to attack is made clear - the PCs can often attempt to dissuade them from doing so if they're quick enough). Unfriendly creatures threaten, mess with, or seek to impede the PCs in some nonviolent way. Neutral creatures are uncertain and will often seek more information before reacting either way. Friendly creatures are interested in the PCs, often want something from them, and are willing to amicably negotiate to get it. Helpful creatures are sycophantically friendly and will aid the PCs with little question, sometimes even joining them in their current endeavor.

I modify the 2d6 roll by the alignment of the reacting creature: -2 if Evil, -1 if Chaotic, +1 if Lawful, and +2 if Good. The modifiers stack, so a Chaotic Evil creature reacts at -3 (and so never starts out helpful) and a Lawful Good creature reacts at +3 (and so never starts out hostile). Once negotiations begin, I modify additional reaction rolls by the creature's present disposition and by the negotiating PC's reaction roll adjustment from Charisma or the result of their ability check, depending on the edition (read more about how I adjudicate social interactions in D&D 5e here).

But there's a lot more you can do with the reaction roll. Here, I'm interested in using this mechanic to determine the social dynamics of a sandbox setting. I started thinking about this after reading this post over at dungeon doll. The post supposes that settlements have a somewhat wary attitude towards adventurers, and that depending on what the PCs say upon arriving there, they may be turned away or welcomed as friends.

I have a slightly different take. Rather than all settlements being uniformly wary, I like the idea that some settlements might be more or less (un)friendly towards outsiders than others - the PCs are more likely to receive a warm welcome in the town ruled by a gregarious mayor who loves feting heroes than the one ruled by a wicked sorcerer who sees enemies everywhere. Thus, I favor making a reaction roll for each settlement before the PCs ever interact with it - this determines their disposition towards adventurer types in general.

This also got me thinking about the way in which stronghold rulers respond to the PC's incursions in original D&D:

The text then goes on to explain that fighting-men will demand a joust or toll (unclear if this is for hostile or neutral fighting-men or both), non-hostile magic-users will send passersby after treasure by way of a geas spell, hostile magic-users will demand a toll of magical items or gold, and non-hostile clerics will demand a tithe or use a quest spell to send the PCs to complete a task.

The specifics aren't what interest me - rather, I'm interested in the idea that stronghold rulers have standard reactions to adventurers passing through their realm. However, implied setting be damned, I'm not crazy about the prescriptiveness of it (i.e., each ruler will either do this or that depending on their type). I'd rather the individual ruler's reaction be determined by their own personality or alignment - the Lawful Good magic-user might invite the PCs in for tea and a fireside chat while the Chaotic Evil warlord charges out on horseback with twenty men to run them off or worse.

This can apply to monsters as well. Just because there's a dragon lair on the mountain's peak doesn't mean the dragon is flying about wreaking havoc on the countryside - the dragon might regularly travel into the village in human form to socialize with its people, play harmless pranks for its own amusement on those who wander too close to its lair, demand tribute from surrounding settlements, or simply be in a deep slumber. Just because it's there doesn't mean it's flying around daring adventurers to come slay it (although there's nothing to stop them from trying to do so anyway, once when they know there's a dragon about, or to stop some other NPC in the sandbox from steering them in that direction).

Here is an example using a small area I created using the AD&D 1e DMG's stocking procedures (because I can't help myself):

In this case, I'm mainly concerned with the inhabitants/factions of each location, so I've labeled them as such (i.e., "Brigands" instead of "Brigands' Castle").

First, I make a reaction roll for each group to determine their disposition should they encounter the PCs (each group's alignment and corresponding reaction roll are listed in parentheses):

• Tribe (N, 2d6): 7 (neutral)
• Brigands (CE, 2d6-3): 5 (unfriendly)
• Ghouls (CE, 2d6-3): 2 (hostile)
• Will-o'-wisp (CE, 2d6-3): 5 (unfriendly)
• Berserkers (N, 2d6): 6 (neutral)
• CN Homesteaders (2d6-1): 6 (neutral)
• NG Fighter (2d6+2): 6 (neutral)
• CN Cleric (2d6-1): 4 (unfriendly)
• LE Homesteaders (2d6-1): 8 (neutral)
• Wolves (N, 2d6): 7 (neutral)

As you can see, none of the factions in the region are so much as friendly towards the PCs, let alone helpful. If the players want allies, they will have to earn them! Fortunately, none but the ghouls deep within their swamp will attack the PCs on sight. The brigands will likely bully and extort them for treasure. The will-o'-wisp may attempt to lead them into some deadly trap or hazard, but won't go so far as to start zapping them with lightning unless provoked. The cleric will likely send out riders to round them up, collect a tithe, and question them sharply about their business. The rest will be willing to talk with the party, and may become friends or foes depending on how the players treat them.

How these factions react to the PCs is only half the story. I also want to know how they relate to each other. Are there alliances? Obligations? Uneasy truces? Simmering tensions? Violent conflicts? These are the fine details that turn a boring-at-first-glance neutral reaction into gameable material.

The simple approach is to say the reactions listed above apply to all of the faction's interactions with its neighbors. That is, the Neutral Good fighter who is neutral towards the PCs is also neutral towards everyone else in the region. But that's a bit dull, isn't it? It makes more sense to me that the fighter might sit back in their castle, waiting to see what moves the party makes, while simultaneously having an uneasy truce with the cleric and open hostilities with the brigands.

Another option is to simply use a common sense approach. I can assume that no one likes the brigands, who are violent predators without moral scruples. Likewise, everyone probably views the ghouls and will-o'-wisp as undead affronts to nature and life. The fighter is Good and probably protects the homesteaders, who are vulnerable. The homesteaders probably hate the wolves, who steal their chickens or whatever. Those dynamics sound perfectly serviceable for a single campaign, but over the course of multiple campaigns in different regions, those same assumptions would start to get boring.

Instead, as is often the case, I like to let the dice decide, and I interpret their results to the best of my ability. I take a look at my map and determine which factions are likely to interact with one another. Then, I make reaction rolls for each faction to determine how they relate to each other faction they cross paths with.

In order to determine which relationships I must consider, I first have to determine which groups are likely to interact. I am using 6-mile hexes and assuming that a person can travel 8 hours and 24 miles per day (3 miles per hour). Here are the movement costs of each type of terrain: 

Grassland: x1

Forest: x2   

Hills: x3   

Swamp: x8 

This means that a normal person can travel from the center to the edge (and vice versa) of a grassland hex in one hour, a forest hex in two hours, a hills hex in three hours, and a swamp hex in eight hours. I am assuming that each of these groups typically venture only half a day's (four hours') travel from their home so as to be able to return before nightfall (or the end of whatever their activity cycle is, keeping in mind there are undead and wolves involved). That means that most creatures (excepting the ghouls in the swamp) can venture partially into the hexes immediately surrounding their own.

We will soon find that these locations are vastly interconnected for a few reasons. For now, I will keep things simple by focusing on those locations which are adjacent to each other.

For example, neither the tribesmen nor the brigands are able to reach each others' lairs in half a day's travel on foot (it would take five hours), but there is a good chance they meet somewhere in the middle now and then. Because of their respective alignments, I roll 2d6 for the tribesmen and 2d6-3 for the brigands. For the tribesmen I get 8 (neutral), and for the brigands I get 1 (hostile). I interpret this to mean that the tribesmen were happy to mind their own business, but the brigands have initiated a violent conflict and are attempting to eradicate them, enslave them, or whatever. 

The point is that the brigands are attacking the tribesmen, and the tribesmen want to be left alone. The players can get involved on either side - the brigands will want them to help eliminate the tribesmen, whereas the tribesmen will want them to get the brigands to simply stop, whether by defeating them in battle, negotiating a peace, enchanting their ruler, or supplanting them.

Looking to the south, the berserkers are able to reach the CN homesteaders' dwelling, and vice versa. I roll 2d6 for the berserkers and 2d6-1 for the homesteaders. Somewhat bafflingly, I roll 12 (helpful) for the berserkers and 2 (hostile) for the homesteaders. There are 60 berserkers and just 9 homesteaders. I don't interpret this as violent conflict because the homesteaders would obviously be wiped out if they initiated hostilities.

I'm imagining the homesteaders as rugged individualists, not particularly concerned with right nor wrong. Perhaps the berserkers are a little too friendly, helping themselves to food and drink, having loud parties, asking to marry the homesteaders' daughters, and the like. There is a cultural divide, and the berserkers do not see that they've offended the homesteaders in any way. The homesteaders are trying to carve out a domain for themselves, and want the berserkers off their land. They won't resort to violence themselves, but they may seek out help from outside in getting rid of the problem without regard for how it's done. 

Next, I look to the NG fighter and LE homesteaders. For the fighter I roll 2d6+2 and get 9 (friendly), and for the homesteaders I roll 2d6-1 and get 6 (neutral). In this case, the fighter is favorable towards the homesteaders, but not necessarily altruistic. It is likely that the fighter protects them and that they supply the castle with food or whatever, but the two parties have no great love for each other.

But there are more relationships then just those. Going solely based on the movement rates of normal people, these are the other groups that likely interact with one another, with their attitudes towards each other in parentheses, and a short description of the relationship:

• Ghouls (hostile)/Berserkers (friendly): This is an odd one! The berserkers have tried to seek out the ghouls for some reason, but the ghouls attack them on sight. Perhaps the ghouls are some forsaken fellow tribe with which the berserkers wish to reestablish contact and help redeem?
• Will-o'-wisp (unfriendly)/Berserkers (neutral): The will-o'-wisp attempts to lure the berserkers off into deadly hazards or scare them away from its ruin, and the berserkers want nothing to do with it. They probably have taboos about the strange light in the old ruin, but they aren't interested in proactively recruiting adventurers to deal with it.
• Berserkers (neutral)/NG Fighter (friendly): The fighter is trying to establish a positive relationship with the berserkers, but the berserkers are on the fence and need additional incentive to come to the table.
• CN Homesteaders (unfriendly)/NG Fighter (neutral): The fighter is indifferent to the homesteaders, but they are secretly undermining or subverting the fighter in some way. Perhaps they are withholding protection money from the fighter or otherwise resisting the fighter's lordship.
• NG Fighter (neutral)/Wolves (neutral): The wolves aren't bothering anybody and the fighter is letting them be.
• LE Homesteaders (unfriendly)/Wolves (neutral): The wolves aren't bothering anybody, but the homesteaders want them out because you know, farmers don't usually want wolves hanging around!

But there's more to consider, because not all of these creatures have the same movement rates. Both the will-o'-wisp and the wolves move 50% faster than a normal person (meaning they can cover 36 miles per day, or 18 miles in half a day), and the will-o'-wisp flies (meaning it ignores additional terrain movement cost from forests, hills, and swamps). Furthermore, the brigands, the fighter, and the cleric have light horses, which move twice as fast as a normal person (48 miles per day, or 24 miles in half a day).

Considering all that, we have the following additional relationships:

• Tribe (unfriendly)/Will-o'-wisp (neutral): The will-o'-wisp doesn't bother the tribe (perhaps they have some magical protections against it), but the tribe is superstitious and would prefer if someone dealt with it.
• Brigands (neutral)/Will-o'-wisp (unfriendly): The will-o'-wisp tries to lure the brigands into its haunted wood. They avoid it, and they aren't interested in doing anything about it.
• Ghouls (hostile)/Will-o'-wisp (unfriendly): This is another odd one because the ghouls are very isolated in their swamp. They can't actually do anything to the will-o'-wisp, which would need to come to them. Perhaps the will-o'-wisp, being a more powerful undead, shows up occasionally to lord its superiority over the ghouls?
• Will-o'-wisp (neutral)/CN Homesteaders (hostile): The homesteaders are actively trying to remove the will-o'-wisp, which isn't actually bothering them. I wouldn't be surprised if they are seeking to claim its ruin or the treasure therein. 
• Will-o'-wisp (hostile)/NG Fighter (neutral): Similar to the brigands/tribe dynamic, this indicates that the will-o'-wisp has initiated the conflict and that the fighter simply wishes for it to end. Perhaps men-at-arms have been turning up dead after the night's watch, and the lord isn't sure yet what is responsible? Perhaps the deaths look like accidents or predations by other factions? Perhaps there is just too much else to deal with, and this is on the backburner, with guards instructed to be extra cautious on patrol?
• Will-o'-wisp (neutral)/CN Cleric (friendly): For whatever reason, the cleric (a class that originally existed primarily to combat undead), it friendly towards this undead. I would have to know more about the individual cleric, but perhaps they have insight into the spirit's true nature. Perhaps they know how to put it to rest, and have some degree of empathy for it?
• Will-o'-wisp (hostile)/Wolves (friendly): Another odd one. I'm not sure what to make of it! If I am really unable to come up with something, I might reroll this one.
• NG Fighter (friendly)/CN Cleric (unfriendly): These two are not on good terms, but the fighter wants to be. The cleric has some sort of problem with them. Again, I would need to know more about the individuals.
• CN Cleric (hostile)/LE homesteaders (neutral): The cleric has attempted to run off the homesteaders (they probably object to the homesteaders' Lawfulness), but the homesteaders - for good reason - want to be left alone. The fighter is probably protecting them from further predations, which is likely the source of conflict between the two stronghold rulers.
• CN Cleric (unfriendly)/Wolves (neutral): The wolves sometimes slip past the homesteaders into the cleric's lands and are promptly run off.

So, that's a lot! There are 10 factions in this relatively small region, which results in 19 relationships to keep track of. If that seems overkill, it's probably because it is! Keep in mind that if I doubled the size of this map, I would not only potentially end up with 10 more factions and 19 more relationships within that area, but that those new factions would also have relationships with many of those in this area. 

On my hex key, in the entry for each location, I include a very brief summary of the local faction's relationships towards its neighbors. For example:

NG Fighter's Castle

Relationships:

• Will-o'-wisp (neutral): Will-o'-wisp sometimes attacks guards at night (hostile). Looks like bizarre accidents. Stretched too thin to deal with.

• Berserkers (friendly): Attempting to court/recruit. Berserkers on the fence (neutral).

• CN Homesteaders (neutral): Not offering protection yet. Homesteaders refuse lordship (unfriendly).

• CN Cleric (friendly): Wants an alliance, but tensions over protection of LE homesteaders (unfriendly).

• LE Homesteaders (friendly): Provides protection. Collects food/taxes (neutral).

• Wolves (neutral): Unbothered. Wolves haven't harmed anyone (neutral).

If this method is too much for your game, you might prefer one of the simplified methods I mentioned earlier (one reaction roll per faction which applies to all others, or determining relationships using common sense and tropes). I personally enjoy the challenge of interpreting these rolls, and appreciate the nuance they provide. It may adversely impact the quantity of locations I can detail in a region, but I find it yields a better quality sandbox. Hopefully you agree!