Returning to fantasy Northumbria + quick dungeon generator

this hexmap is a WIP, in fact it has already changed

So, this is my newest brainchild. A 10 Km (or 6 miles) hexes map, somewhat in scale, of the western part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, the semi-historical setting in which I like to set my Cairn adventures. I made this because I'm really about to start a new hexcrawl solo campaign, with new travel rules, new characters and a focus on regional events, be them politics, catastrophies, war, dark magic and so on.

Last year I developed a set of hexcrawl rules but I've mostly scrapped them, because I'll use the rules on the Cairn website, which as I understand are also in the 2nd edition of the game. I did already use the dungeon crawl rules, although they were the playtest version so maybe something has changed. I remember I wanted to customize them a bit, I'll probably do it. For treasures I'll use the tables in the Rules Cyclopedia of D&D, mostly as they are, integrating with prices from the Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue (a very useful book).

This is a treasure trove for mundane objects and their prices

This time the main drive will be randomly generated quests, more than just exploration and dungeon crawling. There is a ton of resources for quest generation available online, one of which is the godsent donjon. For starters I think I'll meddle with just four tables, straight out of the reviled 5e Dungeon Master's Guide (the least read 5e book, after the PHB obviously). Sometimes we dig for obscure stuff, while what we have is already enough. Maybe a tweak here and there, but all in all, a good start.

 ©Wizards of the Coast

But what about the setting? Well, I have news. Since my last post on the subject, things have changed a bit. First of all, the Northumbrian pantheon is now syncretic, between ancient roman, anglo-saxon and celtic-britonic.

• Araunn - god of the underworld

• Balder - god of sun

• Cibelis - goddess of animals

• Coventina - goddess of wells and springs

• Flora - goddess of forests

• Gobannus - god of smiths

• Hecata- goddes of magic and crossings

• Martýr - god of war

• Niorder - god of sea

• Tunor - god of thunder

• Vesta - goddess of the hearth

• Vulcanus - god of fire

• Urde - goddess of destiny

The raiding norsemen (mostly dwarves and humans) venerate the norse pantheon and the elves of Èire the irish-celtic one. Because yes, there are raiding dwarves norsemen (norsedwarves?) and irish elves this time. For this campaign, I've decided a date: the year 851 d.C., two years after the foundation of the norse Kingdom of the Isles (apparently also called Sodor), comprised of the Isle of Man and the peninsula of Kintyre. So that's where they hail from for their raids in the region. Northumbria and Èire start in good relationships with each other. I'm currently reworking the encounter tables I made, changing them to percentile instead of "roll a d6+d8", which was too much fixed to accomodate all monsters. I have  also developed a quick system to generate simple dungeons.

Roll 2d6. That's how many rooms there are in the dungeon (note that you can alter the number or size of dice rolled to enlarge or reduce it). You start in one room, then roll a d6 and halve the outcome: that's how many rooms are connected to the first one, via corridor or directly adjacent. Begin exploring and repeat the roll to determine the connections. But there is a quirk: since you halve the results of a d6, you may well have results of 0.5, 1.5 and 2.5. Whenever you have a .5 result, it means that another passageway exists, but it is either concealed or caved in (always a concealed passage if not all the rooms have been deployed). Let's give it a go.

I roll 2d6 and obtain 7. That is the total of rooms in this dungeon. I then proceed to draw an abstract sketch of the dungeon, starting with just a room.

Now I roll for the number of passages. Since I rolled a 2, there is only one connection. I draw it, followed by a landing room.

The second room has three connections, since I've rolled a 6; so I draw three more rooms. Now, we only have two rooms left to adjudicate. The party chooses to go into the rooms on the left.

Apparently, there are no passages through this room. That's because I rolled a 1, which halved is 0.5, which means that there is a secret passage. I draw one room at the end of the secret passage. The party investigates and finds the secret passage: now they can go through to the next room, or they can retreat. Let's say they go through.

Ok, time to wrap the dungeon generation up. I rolled for three passages, but there is only one room left to adjudicate. So, I use one passage to connect to the room on the right and decide that the passage on the left is caved in. Maybe this dungeon was bigger some time ago. The third passage brings me to the last room.

Pair this engine with your favorite dungeon crawl procedures and you should be dungeon-delving very fast. Or at least, faster than many, more detailed methods, especially if you are solo-playing.