1. Random Encounter Tables for areas all over the Flanaess.
I can see these a general encounters for specific areas and regions and left to the DM to detail. Detailed encounters that add some character and specifics to each encounter. Connected encounters that happen in sequence. Branching encounters that happen as players make different choices.
Connected encounters might happen over a period of hours, days or even weeks. For example in the Night Below/TOEE encounters I have been working on the Players encounter a party of goblins or people or places attacked by goblins. As time goes by the goblin encounters increase in severity and this alters many future encounters as this invasion of goblins affects more and more of the area they are in. As another example the players encounter a thief in the city of Greyhawk. Hours later they see the same thief and react. The thief is killed, caught or escapes, hours after this a group of thieves attacks the players in revenge.
With a Branching Encounter the initial encounter will have different results. for example the Greyhawk thief is encountered. If they are killed it triggers one branch of encounters, if they are caught a different branch, if they escape, a third branch of encounters is triggered. This much as is done in a choose the path adventure book but from a random table of possibilities rather than a single flow of one encounter to another.
The more encounters created, the better.
2. A random building/shop generator table for a city. We create a list of possible shops or buildings. Then a list of detailed buildings. For exmaple.
a. Blacksmith
b. Tavern
c. General Goods
d. Brothel
e. Gambling Hall
f. Weaponsmith
etc...
b. Tavern
1. The Acorns
2. Ancient King
3. Bates Complex
etc...
3. A listing of goods and prices for regions, cities and areas with what is produced and traded. I can this as having great use as background detail for DMs and a way to generate potential adventures.
Those are 3 ideas. Happy to hear others and I will list more.
#3 is the most interesting to me!
ReplyDeleteAllan.
I collected the sparse info on regional products from the boxed set buty it needs a ton of expansion and is unpriced. Ive started a price list for animal and monster parts in Verbobonc which I can use as a basis for prices for those around the Flanaess. Medium sized project
ReplyDeleteRunning with #3, here is something I've been mulling for a while: goods, prices and trade routes would derive from the Regional Products map in p.45 to the Guide to the World of Greyhawk. But that map has one problem: it offers a static image of production and trade. The value of goods was not static: it depended on established trade routes and mobility. This invites fleshing out the nature of regional production systems: were they based on mineral extraction, on mobile pastoralism, on sedentary agriculture (cereals, irrigated terraces) or slash-and-burn seasonal cycles (tubers, agroforestry)? For example, following loosely from a European Medieval context, the 'cloth' in that map would have to refer primarily to lamb's wool, rather than cotton or silk (which would be a rarity, and only overtook wool well into the XVIIIth century). Wool derives from nomadic pastoralism, which in Western Europe gave rise to enormous networks of regional paths and trails that were exclusively set aside for shepherds to drive their flocks to and from Winter/Summer grounds. Parallel, and sometimes overlapping that network would be the well-traveled pilgrim's trails that criss-cross the Flanaess, and you begin to put serious detail into the roads and paths on maps like Anna Meyer's. Rather than just see them as 'royal' or imperial roads, they serve several functions and open up opportunities for encounters, detail and role-play. Wool (exports) and war (spoils) were the mainstays of the medieval French, Spanish and Italian economies, and became the primary vehicle for conquest in the New World, so not a secondary thing. Sheep and goats also deeply affected local ecologies, and there you have a subsidiary thread to further develop. I would be happy to contribute with this kind of thing to your listings of products and prices.
ReplyDeleteOne of the questions I asked myself in the past is how would flocks of sheep manage across the Flanaess. The areas would have to safe from the voluminous numbers of predators loose in the world of Greyhawk. It is one of the questions Ive had about Hommlet because the town isn't walled and yet it seems close to dangerous areas. Ive done some work on the regional products information but only to compile the information given and not to expand it or make sense of it. I know that grodog has developped listings about roads, trails an distances. You sound like you could establish a reasonable framework for a more consistent and rational regionale production and trade listing which I would gladly help with.
DeleteI really liked all of them, but found #1 the most interesting. What about creating weather tables for different regions of the Flanaess, including a roll modifier based on seasons/calendar?
ReplyDeleteRubens Duarte
Ive never done much with greyhawk weather. How would this compare with the existing weather material from the '83 boxed set?
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