Gygaxian Democracy #9: On A Boat

More Gygaxian Democracy.

You have failed your sailing roll during a storm/in rough seas/in shallow water, etc. and something bad has happened to your boat. It is damaged in some way which, hopefully, will make future encounters during the rest of this wavecrawl more exotic and interesting. Roll below:

(Assume the ship is 3 masted and laid out approximately like the one in the picture.)
(Remember, these are results from a failed control roll, not just random things that could happen. They need to be things that could result from handling a ship poorly or at least unluckily.)

1-Something caught in the rudder--someone needs to climb down there and get it.

2-You hit a whale carcass or something--the ship trails blood and there will be a corona of sharks surrounding the boat for the next 3 days.

3-Minor sail torn due to high wind or sudden beam swing--replace it or make future checks at -2/-10%.

4-Stray wave has smacked you sidewise and flung a volley of stinging jellyfish onto the deck, roll dex or reflex save for everybody up there to avoid having a random body part swollen beyond usefulness for d4 days--1 mouth, 2 eyes, 3 right hand, 4 left hand, 5 right foot, 6 left foot.

5--(your turn)



_______
P.S. The girls are on a boat as of last night so this table will get used next session.

One of the Coolest things Anyone's Ever Sent Me

Check out this cutaway diagram of an apartment block in Kowloon...
(click twice to enlarge twice)


Closeup:

Gygaxian Democracy #8: Gygaxian Social Interaction

Preamble you are allowed to skip:

My favorite games work like this, when they are GMed in such a way as to be fun to me:

-there is a problem
-the PC attempts to solve the problem
-because both the problem and the attempt to solve it are couched in terms of action in an imaginary world (i.e. the problem is "get the ruby away from the gnome" rather than "get three O's in a row before your opponent gets three Xs") the tactic used to solve the problem (successful or otherwise) creates a new problem (or set of problems) (i.e. now everybody wants your ruby.)
-the process starts over
-when this happens many times in a row it creates a little neverending story about somebody who solves problems or dies trying

(You may not like this, or prioritize it. Great. That's ok. I accept your right to be interested in something I'm not.)

Point here being: As a DM, I sit around dreaming up interesting problems to solve. The mechanics help me define the parameters of the problems and the things PCs can use to solve them.

To me, just as the point of combat and action mechanics is to facilitate the creation and in-game use of interesting dungeon puzzles and similar tests of tactical wit, the point of interesting social mechanics would be to facilitate the creation and in-game use of interesting social puzzles.

Example:

Putting players in a position to figure out how to think outside the box to disembowel a fully-statted owlbear before a fully-statted lava trap kills them is, for me, fair and fun and (a major) part of the game. However, it takes up a huge chunk of game time and if the players are not into this sort of thing, they will not like the game.

In order to justify social mechanics being as complex as combat ones, putting players in a position to figure out how to think outside the box to outwit or charm an NPC should be the same kind of challenge, but I seriously can't be fucked to think about NPCs for as long as I can to think about monsters and traps. At least not in terms of their personalities.

Why?

1- I'm not that interested in my NPCs until and unless they get some track record in the game (after all, I can write fiction whenever I want, and do. What makes them interesting isn't what they did, it's that action by the dice or PCs made them do what they did.),

2-If I don't get to use a well-designed trap or monster in an adventure, I can always have a similar one (perhaps re-skinned) somewhere else, whereas an NPC implies a whole gameworld social situation and the PCs don't want to interact with that situation then moving it around so they have to do it anyway is difficult to do without railroading,

3-Designing really good NPC interactions means much of the time at the table will be given over to NPC interactions, which isn't mostly why I'm here. I get enough of that reading books and comics, watching movies and writing books and comics and being in movies. I can have a pretend conversation with my roommate in the living room any day of the week (and sometimes do) whereas I can only put my mind to the question of how to get a gelatinous cube to absorb a beholder so I can immobilize it long enough to drop a boulder on it when I play D&D.

YOUR MILEAGE WILL VARY.

I KNOW YOU ARE NOT ME AND LIKE DIFFERENT THINGS. OK? GOOD.

But...it's about the journey and not the destination 'cause D&D the way I play is picaresque and therefore anything that happens along the way that's fun for the players and me and doesn't sap the possibilities of future fun is acceptable--any mechanic, any detail, any goal, any npc interaction, any bet, etc.

Therefore although I wouldn't want a social mechanic to be part of the 'bones' of a system I was playing in, I like the idea of an (always) optional gravy-on-top social interaction mechanic, so that social interaction can be detailed if the situation makes that seem like a good idea at the time to the players.

Using the social interaction mechanic instead of just talking to a guy would be like a PC deciding to play a bar game in a pub--they don't have to do it, but its effects are still binding on the fiction of the game if they decide to go that way and can have major effects.

Also, I think it would have to emphasize player skill over PC skill, and not in some way that just says "the player has to role-play his PC convincingly and skillfully", since if they just wanna do that then they don't need the mechanic, plus, like I said: we get enough of that at work.

Extremely important: the mechanic will require rolling on some ridiculous d100 table. The goal of the results would not be, for the most part, to simulate the statistical realities or storytelling possibilities of human interaction so much as to force the PC to roleplay in entertaining ways which exaggerate the monopoly-with-squatters effect.

Gygaxian Social Interaction Table

(roll below one time+once per point of charisma over 15 and pick the one the player likes best, if PC charisma is under under 6, roll one time + once per point of charisma under 6 and the DM picks)
(in most cases, these 'challenges' won't be secret, the player will know this is whats/he has to do...)

1-NPC talks fast and interrupts people. If the player can say what s/he wants in less than d12+6 words s/he gets it.

2-NPC talks fast and interrupts people. If the player can say what s/he wants in less than 2d4 seconds s/he gets it.

3-Conversation reveals NPC is obsessed with (conquest/unity/weasels, etc.). If player can work the word "weasel" (or "conquest" or "unity", or etc.) into every sentence of his/her request, s/he gets it.

4...

(now I have to go take a shower, and I am turning the remaining results over to Gygaxian Democracy...)
(IMPORTANT: Remember the challenges must be things that a player could conceivably fail to do properly, not just things it'll be fun to see them do.)

Drawing Maps Is Fun

(click to enlarge)(click twice to enlarge twice)
Theoretically, I suppose I could stick this in the Kit, but that wasn't the plan and I'm not sure there's room, anyway, it was fun to draw and might be useful to have lying around during the campaign.

A Lot Of Monsters

Click to enlarge. Click twice to enlarge bigger.

Totally Reposting This.

So, Wait, You Play D&D? Like, '80's D&D?

So you're eating a sandwich?

Yes.

Wouldn't you rather be eating a vegan tuna-melt wrap on a gluten-free buckwheat tortilla?

No.

But don't you find that the texture of the salami on that sandwich inevitably leads to indigestion, fatigue, nervousness and decay of the fine motor functions?

No.

Well I've been eating food for 35 years now and I can tell you that it did in my case, that's why I switched to vegan tuna-melt wrap on gluten-free buckwheat tortillas and now I never have that problem!

Ok. I'll keep that in mind if I'm ever you.

It's because the gluten-free buckwheat tortillas are made with genuine unprocessed tapioca! Do you see the innovativeness of it?

Sure.

Do you not feel that if you wanted to be a better, smarter, more mature person, you, too, would suffer a great many ill-effects from that sandwich and prefer my spectacular wrap?

No.

You know that the guy who invented sandwiches is dead right?

Yes.

Don't you think that continuing to eat that sandwich indicates you are less mature, evolved, avant-garde, intelligent, and forward-thinking in your lunch choices than I?

No.

Why must you look upon my wrap with contempt?

I don't, go ahead and eat your wrap.

Do you think the fact that you despise my wrap proves your innate superiority? Because let me tell you now, buster, it most certainly does not!

Uh...

Why do you let your girlfriend eat sandwiches? Does she not know any better?

"Let"?

Why must you molest me with your atavism? Do you not see that my wrap is a wrap finely-honed and forged through decades of lunch-design-evolution and therefore is, ipso facto, the finest possible of finger foods?

You seem very happy together.

IT'S TRUE! WE ARE!

Yeah, champ, good going there. Enjoy that lunch you got.

Would you like to try my wrap?

Sorry, I don't like tuna.

Oh, but this is not just ANY tuna, it is tuna in a WRAP!!!!! Do you not see the glorious, all-applicability, all-lunches-to-all-people appeal of placing the tuna in a wrap? Never will you have to deal with the inconveniences caused by, say, the squeezing-the-protein-out-the-backside-of-your-lunch-effect, or STPOTBOYLE as it is known on the Internet!

Ummmm...

Do you not yearn for the worlds of lunchtime pleasure you are denying yourself?

Actually, I really like this sandwich...

Why won't you grow up, spread your wings, fly to new heights?!!!

Well, actually, I was gonna go make some money at my job and then drink with my friends and then have sex with ladies, I just figured, y'know, I'd have lunch first and I like salami so...

You are hopeless! I mock you! I will find a like-minded group of people who appreciates vegan tuna-melt wrap on gluten-free buckwheat tortillas! We will conquer you! You will see! Soon your outmoded neanderthal lunch-eating will be exposed for the fraudulent decadence it is! Lotta Continua!

Uh, ok.

____________
2011 addendum:

In order to have a full-scale analysis of this never-ending debate I would have to include a bit where the sandwich guy steals bits off the wrap yet still is not interested in eating the whole thing and where he goes home and makes gigantic sandwiches he's invented from scratch with far more stuff in them than any commercially available lunch product of any kind but since they're still between two pieces of bread the wrap guy just keeps giving him shit about it and saying how hidebound and tyrannical his approach to sandwichmaking is.

Dungeon Mistress Mandy

Z: So Mandy, you ran your first game over the holiday, how'd you like it?

M: It was lots of fun. It was very refreshing after playing that cleric for so long.

Z:How so?

M: Well, when I started that cleric I was just learning to play D&D, but after 2 years now, some of that excitement of learning that you have new powers and abilities and--on a personal level, learning there were things I could do and things I could say and it gave me a certain amount of confidence...it changes--but then you DM and you're again learning new things, it gave me a different kind of confidence.

Z: I liked the adventure. Ever since you told me the idea you had--a year ago or whatever--I've been trying to resist writing my own Creepy Magic Forest Fairy Tale Adventure so that you could eventually run it.

M: Well good. We had talked about sort of the "Catholic" version of D&D vs. the more cleaned up "Protestant"/"Disney" kind--sort of the physical kind of fantasy with snakes and eye of newt and stuff vs. the sort of "spiritual" hands-off simple-good vs simple-evil stuff. We were on the same page about that.

Z: The creepiest thing was the bushbabies, I'd never heard of that.

M: My grandfather used to say that if we walked around at night then "the bushbabies" would get you, and in the suburb we grew up in there were all these hedges. The mental image that me and my sister came up with was nothing like the cute furry little animal that you get if you Google it.

Z: Yeah, they were sort of spiny babies that paralyzed you if you touched them, but also you kept saying they were crying, like every time we did anything "Oh, that makes the bushbabies cry." And then when you killed them they turned back into regular babies.

I remember this article from the official D&D site where they were working on concepts for new monsters and one person had come up with a demon that looked like a little kid and they were like "Ok, we can't have that, this is a family game." They used to have, in the official game, Lava Children, but they got rid of those too. They don't want us killing children I guess.

M: The thing I like about fairy tales is that in most of the original stories children are being abducted and butchered or transformed or in some way fucked with* and so I wanted to have an adventure that was kind of arcane and occult in that way, with witches using children for their own purposes. Like a really traditional witch--what she wants is to eat babies. That's why they were frightening to begin with--they were like "abnormal females"--it gets into gender stuff too...but this is just a game.

*Z: So you liked reading about children being butchered?

M: I liked that it was honest. Like the moral of those fairy tales, the point of a lot of them was to make scary realities of the world understandable to children. It wasn't condescending like so much stuff produced for children nowadays is.

Z: How did you feel about having stats and a map and stuff?

M: Well the map was easy 'cause I printed one out from some random video game and just put stuff on it. The stats, however, were a little confusing because when we made up some of these in 3.5 and we were running an AD&D game. Also I'm used to only having to keep track of one character to hit and saves and stuff and I had to keep track of...4 witches, plus however many bushbabies I threw at you at once plus the other monsters, plus the items, and...remember all the players stuff...and the dogs. And I have, y'know math anxiety.

Z: Yeah, the dogs are a bitch, aren't they? It's cute when you're a player, but when you're the DM and the player's like "Hey does my dog get a turn?" you're like "'Jeezus, seriously?"

M: It wasn't just whether it got a turn but it was which dog and which one was paralyzed or asleep or whatever. Oh and then I completely screwed up which spells the dog got--which really helped you guys out.

Z: For the people at home I have to explain that Mandy's brother traded a magic mushroom to some of the witches in exchange for them imbuing the dogs with some spell powers which we used against the boss witch.

M: Baba Yaga, with her chicken house.

Z: I can't help but think it's a little unfair for us 2 2nd level PCs to fight Baba Yaga and we could still take her out--isn't she supposed to be tougher than that?

M: I wasn't sure at all about the power balances...

Z: Well, the adventure itself was perfectly balanced--I mean, if everyone's like "Man I'm tired but I want to see what happens" and then it goes on for a few more minutes and then the players are like "holy fuck, we're going to die," but then they don't and team up to kill the last monster by the skin of their teeth, that's exactly how hard an adventure should be. You couldn't have planned it better. What I'm saying is just that the head witch was BABA YAGA--which seems like maybe it should've just been some assistant to Baba Yaga or something if she was able to be taken out by us.

M:But in the fairy tales it always is some famous witch and they manage to take her out by the skin of their teeth by a clever trick.

Z: Well here was my clever trick: I cast sleep while she was on her broom and she fell 60 feet then your brother shot her. However, I feel as though if she had been statted up the way I'd do Baba Yaga I would've made her strong enough to resist a 1st level spell cast by a 2nd level guy.

M: Gretel pushes the witch in the oven--you would've thought the witch would've been able to avoid being pushed in an oven by an 8-year-old girl.

Z: Fair enough, I just wouldn't like to think my awesome wizard got to level 3 by taking shortcuts.

M: Well that's your problem, not mine. Your wizard has a sensitive ego.

Z: He is the WIZARD!!!!!! He can surmount any challenge! He fears no man!

M: He certainly fears women.

Z: Well so far no men have tried to kill him, only women, gnolls, a pseudodragon, some babies, ummm....a hippo...uhhhh...birds? Did the birds try to kill him?

M: No they were more pecking to hinder and obstruct.

Z: Oh my god the fucking birds. Like, mechanically: a witch turns into a bird hidden in a swarm of birds of, like, hundreds and we're stuck in the forest so we can't buy a net and...

M: That witch wasn't trying to kill you and so you didn't have to kill her, she was just there to annoy you and then you talk to her and the plot advances. But you were afraid to kill her...

Z: I wasn't afraid.

M: You were like "let's go the other way."

Z: I was acting in character. Like "You wake up in a creepy forest, to the north you hear evil cackling, to the south you hear nothing" I know which way I'd go.

M: You and my brother, when you finally saw her up there were like "Oh shit, a witch!" and making big eye faces and talking all fast.

Z: Satisfying, isn't it?

M: (laughs) Yes.

Z: See, you didn't expect that, did you? You thought we'd be like "Oh this is a monster, this is D&D, this is what we do" right?

M: Yeah, I guess. I mean, that's what I meant, it's fun to learn that you have new kinds of power.

Z: Witches are scary, man.

M: My grampa used to call my sister and I the wicked witch of the East and West. I was the East one.

Z: You didn't have any traps. Unless you count that fungus.

M: Yeah, the fungus was kind of a trap, it wasn't gonna kill you but...

Z: It could've if you had just sent something in after it, like the bushbabies. Ok--people at home--we see a glowing fungus in the path. My 16 dex wizard climbs up a tree to go around it. Mandy's brother walks right into it anyway. I spend the next 10 minutes dropping branches out of the tree onto the fungus (hitting him and the dogs) hoping to slowwwly kill this fungus.

M: Yeah, that was funny. And you did eventually get the attention of the bushbabies. And my brother got to have a dream.

Z: Did the bushbabies just show up whenever you wanted or were they randomized on a die roll?

M: They were marked on the map.

Z: Ok, but when they showed up after the fungus?

M: That was just because you were making noise. You have to be very quiet around the bushbabies because, y'know, they're babies.

Z: Your brother was much more cooperative than usual.

M: Well he's matured a lot in the last year. And this time he was just up against feminine wiles instead of having to work with them.

Z: So you think if your sister had been playing with us he would've been all goofy again and tried to marry the witch?

M: Maybe he has more experience dating now, too. Well he definitely does.

Z: Women are such a civilizing force.

M: Hell hath no fury.

Z: You seemed really frustrated that we didn't see the whole forest.

M: Well there was fun stuff around. And you were responding so well I was excited to see your reactions to the rest of it.

Z: Yeah, but that's how it goes, tell your players there's someone fucking with them and your players will just want to find them and kill them as soon as possible. Screw tourism, I want that witch dead.

M: Yeah but you were the same way when you were DMing us at first, you really wanted us to see.

Z: Yeah but I realize that sooner or later you'll see it. Maybe somewhere else, but it'll be there. It's nice to have something left for the next adventure.

M: Well the other thing was a lot of it was improv and I wanted you to see it as soon as I thought of it. And I'm not a good liar, I'm very candid.

Z: Yeah, you sucked at that--really the only thing you did wrong is you kept telling us stuff.

M: Stuff that helped you.

Z: So what? We don't wanna know.

M: I know, I learned. I was better the next time.

Z: Yes, you were, my point is just if I had to pick a thing about DMing you didn't immediately do right it was you kept trying to tell us stuff "She has 24 hit...""SHUT UP!!!" But, yeah, you got it. Ok, so let's talk about the second adventure, the one with your sister...

M: That one was really different. And I had absolutely nothing prepared beforehand.

Z: You agreed to do it anyway--that's a lot of confidence.

M: I learn fast. And get bored quick.

Z: Did you have idea one? Like "Ok, they'll meet harpies and then....anything?"

M: No, not even the harpies, they were just the first monster that I knew I liked when I was looking at the monster manual and you sat down to play.

Z: Thank fuck you weren't in the Ds.

M: I wasn't gonna sic a dragon on you, you're second level.

Z: I liked the harpy eggs. I liked how when you picked them up you could hear "hissing" then "fluttering" then "clicking" and I liked how they had disasters inside. And I liked how you handled us trying to figure out what they were. I think that was some Call of Cthulhu experience at work there.

M: Yeah, and my natural cleric tendencies: I want to go to the library, I want books! Which everyone else hates--like what Craig would say "Fuck that Harry Potter shit", but my sister is totally into that.

Z: She was hilarious that thing she said when she was like--she was trying to negotiate the sale of the eggs for the gold and the xp and then, y'know it all went awry and ended in disasters and monsters as these things do and she was like "That always surprises me! I always think 'Oh, I'll just buy this and re-sell it to this person and invest in this and get experience points and it's interrupted by fighting and monsters and I'm like-Damn! I didn't expect that!"

M: She's very excitable.

Z: So am I, I notice. When I DM I'm like I know what's going on, but when I play I just get...I just do everything you guys do. Like OooH OooH what is it? What do I get How many experience points did I get? OOOh is it my turn? Can my owl have a turn? I can't believe I rolled a goddamn owl for a familiar.

M: You really resented that owl. I like how immediately you guys were creeped out by the first semi-possible villain in the city.

Z: You gotta realize that the players only have what you give them to go on. If you say "There's a carrot" the players are going to start going "Ok, what's up with this carrot? Does it house an ancient lich? Is it friendly?" You say there's an NPC, we got nothing better to think about.

M: She wasn't even necessarily bad, you were just immediately suspicious of her.

Z: I generally feel that nice people in games--even if they're actually nice--are wasting my time.

M: I guess I was the same way.

Z: Oh for sure. You hated that sweet old innkeeper telling you about his wavy windows.

M: Well...my character did.

Z: Ok, what happened in that second one...we fought some harpies which came out alright because web and phantasmal force are kick ass spells...

M: And it says in the monster manual that harpies are stupid.

Z: Technical note for the grognards: I always give wizards more spells than the PH does in AD&D when I DM, so my 2nd level wizard actually had a 2nd level spell, bizarre as that may seem.

M: You and my sister were very good at planning your attacks. I suppose you'd have to be being a wizard and an illusionist.

Z: Plus we made our saves, that could've easily gone south, but as-is that bit was ridiculously easy. But that's D&D, it can go either way. So anyway we got their eggs and then figured we sell them and there was a big thing about where to go since the presumed setting is around Vornheim and you hadn't really figured out where this forest was yet...

M: Yup. And I'm really glad you guys didn't go to Vornheim.

Z: Why not?

M: Because Vornheim is like really your city, and I wouldn't want to go in there and be like "this is happening and this is happening".

Z: Ok. but now I know that Osc Lithicum (the city we did go to) is a pretty fucked up place.

M: Because of you.

Z: Oh like there even would have been an adventure if the harpy eggs hadn't gotten opened. Seriously what should we have done?

M: You could have done lots of things. My sister kept wanting to boil them. You could have taken them...

Z: No matter what it would've led to some terrible witch problem.

M: Yes. That's true, but maybe not for a whole innocent city.

Z: Well now at least Osc Lithicum is interesting.

M: That's true. Though I'm not sure I want the responsibility of having a whole city that's like my creation.

Z: Why not? It's not like you have to negotiate with the unions or else the aqueduct won't get built on time.

M: You're right but something's gotta be going on when you guys show up and it has to be consistent with whatever happened the last time.

Z: If only there were the complete manuscript of some sort of publication which provided a guide to running cities for distracted DMs on the hard drive of the very computer that we are typing this on.

M: Shut up. I'm not supposed to be paying that much attention to your secret DM conniving things.

Z: It's a book, I wrote it...

M: I was gonna read it when it was in book form. And it's a Vornheim book.

Z: FIRST LINE OF THE PRESS RELEASE:
The Vornheim City Kit will be a guide to the city that my campaign is based around, but way more than that, it'll be a tool for running open-ended city adventures anywhere.

M: I knew you were going to say that, I guess I have no excuse now.

Z: WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME??????

M: You really don't like DMing that much?

Z: I love it, I just figured, y'know if even my girlfriend won't use the book why would anyone else?

M: Good point. Well...seeing as how I started DMing, I'm probably gonna end up using your book.

Z: I will put that on the jacket "Well...seeing as how I started DMing, I'm probably gonna end up using your book." -Mandy Morbid.

M: What did you think of my NPCs? The witches and the city people? Those were all totally improvved.

Z: I thought they were really good.

M: How so? Good in what way?

Z: Well, they were ambiguous without being boring. Like you didn't know if you could trust them but not because they were totally blank but because they were as suspicious of us as we were of them. Which makes sense. And you kinda did voices, which isn't something you really do in real life.

M: Everyone always thought I was going to be an actress.

Z: Well...you kind of are. A method actress.

M: Yeah. Maybe.

Z: See when I do NPCs I always either have some very specific thing I want to do with them (usually very quickly) and get it over with or I'm like "Holy fuck, you're doing things which are making me make up an NPC" and so I just play them however it comes out of my head.

M: It was definitely the second one.

Z: Yeah, but we couldn't tell that these were just random speedbumps we were creating by trying to find out about the harpy eggs. And that's good. And not easy. Like, you had that little girl follow us. We're looking around for the next thing that we fight, so everything is loaded with potential scariness.

M: Apparently you were scared of a curious 12 year old girl who knew how to sneak.

Z: You would be too if you'd just almost been killed by 7 spiny babies.

M: Hey, it was your wizard who showed her the spellbook, whatever she becomes now is on you. You're only creating more witches.

Z: Good title for this post.

M: I can think on my feet. That's what I learned.

Z: I learned that it's good to have a web spell if your nemesis is a witch who turns into a bird and hides inside a flock of thousands of other birds.

M: Ok, so let's talk about the disasters that were in the eggs that you unleashed on the city.

Z: Well the first one was a cyclone, and...it was. And then a plague of locusts and then something else which you didn't tell us.

M: Yep. They corresponded to spells from the original 3 witches had that you let out of the forest by defeating Baba Yaga.

Z: Well there was no way out of that adventure without defeating Baba Yaga or dying, so really, the witches were gonna get freed.

M: Or killed.

Z: Mayyybe. Me and your brother had as many hit points between us as one of them.

M: But they were so weak on the ground.

Z: How would you have dealt with the witch hiding in the flock of birds?

M: Start a fire.

Z: She had wind powers

M: She could only send in the birds once.

Z: Well I didn't know that. So she was scary.

M: It's nice to have them out of the forest to use in other adventures.

Z: You need a 'zone' to develop. Geographically. Obviously the forest is all yours.

M: I want to do the Middle East thing. The desert.

Z: Ok, but that's a whole other thing. You'd have to get sick of Europe and witches first

M: I can do both.

Z: We need more stuff on the map so we have more choices about what goes on where.

M: I feel like that won't be problem.

Z: But how do you let the players know how each place is different? Each location needs to have an idea attached to it so the PCs have a reason to go there.

M: But a lot of the places you made we didn't know anything.

Z: No, look: Vornheim is home, Nornrik is north and elves, Bellet Osc is full of lunatics, Osc Lithicum is the city of stone and the Isle of Oth is an island. That's all you need, but there has to be something.

M: Ok, well I have ideas for a desert setting--City of Brass, chapter 2 in Diablo 2, 1001 nights, harems and stuff.

Z: You still want a piece of the northern continent, or is it all Ali Baba?

M: I still want my forest.

Z: Well is it all the same or does it have parts? Does every adventure start with "You're lost in the forest again..."

M: You mean like something to draw people there?

Z: Maybe, or just things to give people an idea of...how it's intriguing beyond just 'there's a monster every mile or two'.

M: I think that still won't be difficult.

Z: No?

M: Not with the girls, no.

Z: I see evil princesses in my future.

M: And she-demons.

Z: To be fair, I get a lot of evil princesses and she-demons at work.

M: Lucky you.

Z: I'm not complaining.