A Fantasy Sandbox in Detail Part V

Part IV

This is the fifth in a series detailing the 34 steps I recommended for making a Fantasy Sandbox Campaign. Today's post will cover the following steps.

14. Decide to place miscellaneous locales. (anything that doesn't fit a above.
15. Name your geography (don't forget islands)

Miscellaneous locales could be things like tribal ranges, political units etc anything that is tied to an area as opposed to a specific hex. In Wildlands (Points of Light I) I marked on the map the rough location of the various barbarian and humanoid tribes.

I am not going to have anything like that one this map.

Next I name the villages. Here I use the tried and true method of making up random fantasy gibberish for the human villages. The main difference between today and 30 years ago is that I make sure I can pronounce myself before inflicting them on my players. For the halfling village I pick some ye olde english village name. For the dwarven settlement I decide something that sounds like Old English of the Anglo Saxon era.



This map is small so I am just going to do a separate export for geography. Here I will display the natives stunning imaginative grasp of naming. Or not. I have a good reason for not naming the northern bay 'North Bay' as I am going to tie the Bay of the Dead to the ruins on Mt Devon.


If you been doing your own map while following along by now you have everything you need to create an outline for the next steps.

Geography
Amur Forest
Bay of the Dead
East Bay
Mount Devon
North Downs
South Bay
South Downs
Southpoint
The Midland Sea
The Sands
West Fen

Locales
0102 Lair
0105 Hawth (village) Dwarf
0201 Lair
0203 Lair
0204 Sandpoint (village) Halfling
0302 Ruins
0303 Ruins
0305 Ruins
0401 Lair
0402 Ruins
0403 Mikva (castle, town) Human
0403 Datha (hamlet) Human
0404 Carra (hamlet) Human
0503 Kathi (village) Human
0505 Lair

From your own make this list and put in your notebook, index cards, or word processor. Next post we will work on the regional background and start filling out some of this stuff.

That it for Part V, next is Part VI.