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A Red & Pleasant Land, Part 6: Go Team Vampire!

Work on HexPop! is moving along. More of the UI clicky bits can be clicked. More and more of the necessary input can be inputted. Learning several new technologies at once -- Javascript, Electron, React, Redux, Semantic UI -- is quite a mind and time drain. But excited and hopeful to have a beta version in front of people soon. 

Anyway, events from last session.
Prep TimeAt the conclusion of the previous session, the players wanted to follow up on information about a magical artifact hidden in a sundial atop a tower in one of the nearby squares on their map. So I spent a little time with the tables in A Red & Pleasant Land and Vornheim and wrote up a short adventure to the top of the tower.

Any guesses where the players didn't go this session?
Players
Wolfram Veta - Cleric of Vorn, Grim Gaunt God of Iron, Rust and RainGor Orben - Amazon, "She is Gor"Zeera Hargen - Magician, master of the stab-them-with-my-knife spelland new player (co-worker visiting from a remote office …
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UI Mockup for Instant Notebook Generator

The instant hexcrawl notebook generator application project thingy now has a mockup for its user interface. 
It also has a (temporary?) name, so I can stop saying "instant hexcrawl notebook generator application project thingy". 
HexPop!Because it populates hexes. And it's very excited about that fact. Get it.

Just a mockup right now -- I still have to make the clicky bits actually do things -- but I now have a good idea of how I want the application to function. It also makes it easier to divide up coding tasks for me and the couple of friends who've offered to help.

Decided to follow the general look of the Google+ interface, since I figure most users of this app would be familiar with that.

So, how I imagine the basic workflow, from empty project to POD-ready PDF notebook:
1. Hex MapOn that screen above, input/import all of your hexes, their terrain type, and whose territory (e.g. goblin, dwarven, House of Hearts) the hex belongs to (if any). Input will be a list of com…
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My Campaign Notebook Has Arrived

So this finally came in the mail 
The auto-populated notebook for my AR&PL campaign. So excited to finally have the results of my work in my hands. So how does it look? 
Players in my campaign: Spoilers Ahead! 
Really happy with how this turned out. Entries are pretty easy to read. The lower-cost "B&W Standard" option I selected on Lulu Xpress turned out great for the black text. The gray text isn't as sharp as I'd like (probably the main trade-off for the cheaper option), but is legible. 

Plenty of white space on each page, which is exactly what I wanted. I intend to write lots of notes in this. 

The coil binding is excellent. Very flexible plastic coil, so it should hold up to heavy table use.


The section at the back for Named NPCs turned out nicely as well. 
What could be better?I'm all about Continual Improvement™, so what changes would I make for v2.0?

At 300 pages, this thing is thick! Rather than having a random chance of up to 3 landmarks per hex, might b…
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Quest for the ultimate auto-populating campaign notebook

I continue to think on my goal for the hex content auto-populating thingy I've been working on. My immediate, personal need has been met. I have a nicely laid-out notebook of 1200 randomly generated hex/square contents for my A Red & Pleasant Land campaign being printed and shipped to me. But what more can I do with this project that would make it useful to the D&D/OSR/RPG community?

Let's ask a different question: What would the structure of the ideal hexcrawl campaign notebook look like?
What information, when pre-written, pre-rolled, pre-generated, pre-populated and quickly accessible, improves a hexcrawl campaign? What sort of layout makes that information easiest to reference, expand upon, replace? What would make the referees job easier? The hex mapPrinted right on the front endpapers for convenience Hex contentsStructure similar to what I did for my AR&PL notebook. List the following for each hex: CoordinatesTerrain type (grasslands, forest, etc.)Territory type…
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A Red & Pleasant Land, Part 5: Leveling Up

Prep timeNot much. The campaign has gotten back to a low-prep, "I can run this on auto-pilot" place. One of the best things about A Red & Pleasant Land and many other OSR books is their at-the-table usability.

I sketched up a couple dungeons just-in-case and just-for-fun.

I also solved the problem with my too light dungeon blocks by painting some pennies black and gluing them to the bottom of the blocks. The blocks are a little less modular now, but much more stable at the table.
Players
Wolfram Veta - Cleric of Vorn, Grim Gaunt God of Iron, Rust and RainOrv Gaster - Alistair, wearer of the checkered pantsGor Orben - Amazon, "She is Gor"Zeera Hargen - Magician, master of the stab-them-with-my-knife spellJhovan the Wanderer - Alistair, seeker of cake recipes
Events
The players start where they left off -- in the treasure room of the Tower of the Stargazer.For the players that weren't there last session, did a roll on the "Where have you been?" table. The…
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Let's auto-populate Voivodja!

Problem I have a 40x30 map of Voivodja to populate for my A Red & Pleasant Land campaign. 1200 squares. I brainstormed a little over 100 ideas for locations. I have 1100 squares that still need something in them. At least a seed of an idea. 
Available Resources Copies of AR&PL, Vornheim, Frostbitten & Mutilated, lots of other OSR books, and a Bachelor's in Computer Science. 
Solution  The beginnings of an app for auto-populating the contents for all of the hexes in a world. On the backend, I've written a basic text templating and random table rolling engine. I've given it a huge data set of useful random tables from the various OSR books I own. Where appropriate, results in random tables recursively reference other tables, which reference other tables, which references other tables, etc.

Pass in a seed file of hex coordinates mapped to terrain types, an optional file of "Named NPCs", and it will spit out an A5-sized PDF ready to be printed as a coil-bound…
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A Red & Pleasant Land, Part 4: Treasures of the Stargazer

Prep TimeGot busy with life, so not much time to prep new materials. Reviewed The Tower of the Stargazer module again. And embedded the following in my mind:
Remember to Enhance attacks if players put themselves in an advantageous combat positionTry out the "roll all attacks against a target, keep the highest result" rule from Electric BastionlandIntroduce some new resource management ideas, in particular, the Luck Roll after creative use of expedition resourcesPlayersWolfram Veta - Cleric of Vorn, Grim Gaunt God of Iron, Rust and RainOrv Gaster - Alistair, wearer of the checkered pantsEventsMore spoilers for The Tower of the Stargazer. You have been warned. Also, this one gets long.
Picked up where we left off. Players had defeated the wizard of the Order of Diamonds. His body turned into a 10 of diamonds playing card, which the players decided to stick in a bottle and carry with them. They also pocketed an egg-shaped jewel off of a pedestal, and a book -- bound in human skin…
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