Constructing a Region
and getting back in the game (jam).
While planning some future projects, I’ve been thinking about building adventures bigger than just a single dungeon, so we’re going through some structured region building in this Ink & Dice.
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Inside
Region Building
New Game Jams
June Production Update
Region Building
I like writing adventures. Frequently, an adventure can be confined to a single physical location. This location is usually a dungeon.
dun·geon /ˈdənj(ə)n/ noun
A self-contained location within the world of a game composed of discrete but connected areas. These areas are populated with challenges and rewards for players, often including enemies, traps, puzzles, and treasure.
Examples:
An underground complex of rooms connected by stone corridors.
A forest with multiple clearings connected by footpaths.
An otherworldly spaceship containing multiple demiplanar bubbles connected by transplanar portals.
This definition is not so limited as to require the dungeon to be a labyrinthine, subterranean expanse of dark chambers, but it does generally limit the players to staying within the dungeon’s areas and their connections and limit the amount of interaction between the locations.
But what if we don’t want to restrict the players’ choices in this way? What if we want to make a dozen interesting locations, and then let the players travel between them however they see fit? What if we want to write those locations, but not set their coordinates ahead of time, but rather let the PCs find them as they explore? For this, we need more than a dungeon. We need a region.
Regions
In TTRPGs, regions are frequently shown on hex-maps. Below are two examples from classic TSR modules I2 Tomb of the Lizard King and I3-5 Desert of Desolation.
Looking at these maps, we can see that the hex-map allows players freedom as to how to move from one place to another while also including information on terrain types and landmarks that the players can interact with.
Any time we want to design an adventure to include an aspect of world exploration, region maps like these are a great way to structure that exploration. This can also be a set up for more of an old-school campaign style of play where towns and dungeons are scattered across a region, and players can travel freely between the dungeons and the towns in order to resupply and rest as they gradually clear dungeons, build their fortunes, and level up their characters.
Before we start drawing the map, we must decide what we need to build a (playable) region.
Locations
Distances
Terrain Types
Connections
TABLES!
1. Locations
The first thing that we need to define and add to our map are the main locations of the region, such as
Where do the PCs start? (probably a town)
What kinds of places will the PCs need to go during the campaign? (other towns, dungeons, wizards’ towers, witches’ huts, monsters’ lairs, etc.)
Once we have the list of important locations for our campaign, we can arrange them on the map. This can be random or deliberate. (I find I only ever do this semi-randomly, since I usually don’t want all the locations clumped up in one corner of the map).
For example, I included a campaign generator in my Pirate Borg solo system Captain & Crew: Hoist the Colors.
The generator works thusly:
Drop a set of dice onto the 8x8 hex-map. (alternatively: roll each die along with a d88 for its location)
The d4 is your ship.
Each other die is now a location (The d6 is a ship adrift. The d8, d10, and d12 are islands. The d20 is the quest giver.)
The result of each die’s roll tells you what is found on that island from the included tables.
The result of the d20 gives you your quest.
With this simple procedure, you have generated a region map that you can explore, completing quests and building up your character. Using some simple oracles to generate random encounters, the hexes of the map are now teeming with possibilities.
I created a similar region generator for my Vast Grimm solo system Grimm Solitude, except in space instead of on the sea, titled Zeta Sector. (If that sounds fun to you, the Kickstarter for that zine opens later this month. Follow the campaign here to be notified when it launches.)
2. Distances
Let’s say we’ve arranged our primary locations within the space of our map, but we have not added hexes yet. The next question to answer is: How big do we want our hexes to be (both on the paper and in the game)?
The two old D&D maps shown earlier each have HUNDREDS of hexes.
The map used in Hoist the Colors has exactly 64 hexes.
Which style do we choose? Well, that depends on what kind of game you are making (and what kind of fun you want the players to have — obligatory SCM link).
A game where overland travel and resource management are a main focus? You’re going to want a lot of hexes.
A game focused on dungeon-delving where movement between towns and dungeons is hand-waved or reduced to just a single encounter roll and maybe a general resource usage die roll (or maybe not)? I’d pack the primary locations into just a few hexes.
Then, we need to ask how big our hexes are in the story of the game. There is no consensus here, but I have seen examples that use anything from 1-mile hexes to 6-mile hexes (on land — Pirate Borg open sea hexes are 50 miles wide, and Vast Grimm outer space hexes are…vast). There is also no hard rules about what dimension of the hex the size refers to (though I am inclined to say from the center of one hex to the center of an adjacent hex).
In my mind, the size in miles of the hex does not matter as long as the rules of the game specify movement speeds in hexes (i.e. 3 hexes per day). Using hexes when movement is detailed in miles is hard. If I can move 4 miles, but hexes are 6-miles across, do I have to keep track of where in the hex I am? If there’s a town in the hex, do I need to know where in the hex it is? At this point, wouldn’t it be easier to ditch the hexes and use a ruler or compass and an inch-to-mile scale?
I don’t want to get in the weeds on this detail, as there are plenty of posts out there that already have. I will say that I prefer rules that work with the hex map as it is presented, which means travel speeds are given in hexes/day or hexes/watch.
3. Terrain Types
For the above example campaign generators (for Pirate Borg and Vast Grimm), the hexes in between the locations of interest are not terribly interesting: they are either open sea or outer space. But if we are creating a region on land, we might want to do something more interesting with those in between spaces: terrain types.
Terrain types are going to be influenced by the setting of your game, however, when using them, think about the reason for adding them.
Are they purely narrative, with no mechanical effect? (There’s no shame in this: maybe you just want to make the map look nicer than a bunch of empty hexes between your landmarks.)
Do different terrains have effects on the movement speed of the party?
Do different terrains have different random encounters?
4. Connections
Along with terrain types altering movements speeds, are there any features of your map connecting landmarks? These could be roads, railroad tracks, zip lines, or monorail transporters. They could also be natural features, such as rivers for boats or slipstreams for zeppelins.
As with our terrains, we must decide if we are assigning mechanical effects to these connections. Rivers might be hard to cross, but easy to travel down. Do we need to add bridges? Do roads offer a benefit only when traveled by vehicle? How detailed you get (as always) will be determined by the type of fun you are creating for the players.
5. TABLES
Arguably, the most important part of creating a region is building out tables of events and encounters that occur during exploration. These could include:
NPC interactions — chances to advance the plot of the game.
Monster attacks — chances to test the characters’ abilities.
Weather changes/environmental shifts — chances to strain the characters’ resources.
Important location discoveries — chances to share lore about the region/story/game.
Tables can be as simple or complicated as you like.
They can vary by terrain, weather, or time of day.
They can include subtables of events (sometimes called an “overloaded” table).
They can include a “depth” element where new results are unlocked by the advancement of a tracker of time or progress through the story.
Delve into the Details
With your region laid out and your tables written, it’s time to go back to those locations and start fleshing them out. Draw the dungeons. Describe the towns. Establish NPC motivations and connections. Create factions and their goals. There’s still a lot of work left, but hopefully, with your region already mapped and described, you’ll have plenty of inspiration for these details to complete the adventure.
Game Jams
I talk about game jams all the time. I’ve even dedicated a post or two to them over the last year and a half. While I very much enjoy game jams, I have not done one in several months on account of some of the bigger projects I’ve been working on.
But no longer!
Get Razed
I’m jumping back into the itch.io jam scene with an entry to the Dirtbags! Get Razed Jam. (I wrote a pamphlet adventure called Incursion on Synteck Station for this system that was included with the original Kickstarter rewards, and can be found at The Dungeon’s Key website.)
My entry is called Another Missing VIP, and it is a stealth-heavy extraction mission.
Writing this has been a balancing act between how much stuff I want to cram into an adventure and how I can keep the scope reasonable so that the adventure is easy to get to the table. The jam also has a page limit for adventures that I need to keep in mind.
Why you should consider participating in this jam
If you are looking for inspiration for a small project, this is a great jam to check out because:
The d6-only system is easy to learn and easy to onboard new players with.
“Sci-Fi Shooter” is a terrific and under-represented genre in TTRPGs, so if you have a sci-fi idea that just doesn’t fit with Death in Space or Mothership or any of the other Sci-Fi Horror games, this could be the place to use it.
This is a judged jam with prizes for best content in a variety of areas, similar to the Cabin Fever Jam that Limithron hosted for Pirate Borg content last year.
One-Page RPG
I submitted games to this jam in 2023 and 2024, and it has become one of the highlights of the year for small game writers like myself. The 2025 jam page has not been posted on itch.io yet, but I will definitely be working on something for this jam.
Why you should consider participating in this jam
This is one of the busiest TTRPG jams of the year, which means you stand to get a lot of eyes on your project.
A one-page game should not take months to put together. Sure, you can go all-out on art and production, but it’s still just one piece of paper. Once you have your idea, you could probably have a one-page game playable within a month (or much less).
One-Page games are a great way to test out an idea before launching into developing a book-sized game. Just see what
has done Exclusion Zone Botanist and Caveat Emptor or what Deep Dark Games did with A Perfect Rock.It’s the perfect time to dive into Exeunt Press’s Make Your Own One-Page RPG tutorials over at Skeleton Code Machine. Roll up an idea on the Theme-O-Matic and get to work!
June Production Update
Things are moving right along for most of my projects. April-May was a huge couple of months for crowdfunding campaigns.
Liminal Grimoire funded successfully, and I am working with the manufacturer now to finalize all of the print files. We should be ready to start production in the next week or two!
Midnight Muscadines funded, for which I have written 2 starter adventures and a mountain of setting information.
I Don’t Belong Here funded, for which I wrote a solo adventure, Down Is the New Up, as well as tables with loads of Liminal Horror gaming content.
The next campaign that I am involved in includes the Vast Grimm solo supplement Grimm Solitude, along with some other Vast Grimm content from the game’s creator, Brian Colin! Follow the Kickstarter page here.
I still haven’t completely decided what my next big project is going to be, but I’ll certainly be posting about it here soon.
Thank you!
I know it was a long break between posts, but getting the files for Liminal Grimoire ready for printing has been my top priority. I’ll be back in July, hopefully with info about a 1-page jam entry.
—MAH