A Hex Map of Ancient Greece

This is Sparta!

I was tinkering and put together this hex map of the area we usually call Ancient Greece (download it; it's a lot better than the preview makes it look). Not everything - Crete is probably the biggest missing part, but also the northern area, including Thessalonika. And of course there's nothing of the Italian/Sicilian colonies to the west which everyone always forgets about.

The big hexes are 36miles and inside them are 6 mile hexes (don't forget: a 6 mile hex is still 20,000 acres).

The map itself is the size of a single index mapsheet in my Campaign Map Book by sheer luck rather than intent. But the 6:1 ratio is ideal for that if you fancy splashing some cash my way.

Here's a little index for the map which I'll try to update from time to time:

Place	Type	Hex
Argos	City	0607
Athens	City	0807
Corinth	City	0607
Delos	Island	1108
Delphi	Temple	0506
Elis	City	0307
Elusis	Temple	0806
Ephesus	City/Wonder	1606
Halicarnassus	City/Wonder	1609
Lindos	City	1811
Marathon	City	0806
Megalopolis	City	0408
Messene	City	0408
Mt Olympus	Mountain	0502
Mycenae	City	0607
Olympia	Temple/Wonder	0308
Plataea	Site	0706
Pylos	City	0409
Rhodes	City/Wonder	1810
Sparta	City	0509
Tegea	City	0508
Thebes	City	0706
Therea	Volcano	1210
Troy	City	1302

It's sometimes hard to decide when something is a city or a temple complex so take the "Type" column with a pinch of salt. Also, Corinth is very near the place where three hexes join so I might be wrong there.

Finally, the background map is of course a modern map from OpenStreetMap and while at this scale changes in coastlines are mostly invisible, I would point out that there was historically no bridge between the western Peloponnese and the mainland and it certainly would not have been called  the A5.

I say "mostly" invisible because there is some controversy over the location of Ithica - Odysseus' home. The modern island of Kephalonia has two clear regions - an east and western "lobe". It has been suggested that the western of these was the original Ithica and the channel between the islands was filled in by a combination of uplift and huge landslides caused by earthquakes. 

I actually went to the bother of going there and having a look myself and, especially from the air, it is clear that there has been very significant landslipping and there is plenty of evidence - and indeed modern records of - land uplift by really strong earthquakes. There is a major fault complex where three tectonic plates meet just to the west/southwest of the island.

So I'd say it's likely that these were two islands in the past, possibly even the historical past if Scrabo's text about a shallow channel is definitely referring to this location. But that of course does not mean that the western area (now called Paliki) was then called Ithica. However, the modern Ithica bears no resemblance to the low-lying island good for horses which Homer describes. Unless "good for horses" means that it's ideal for watching them fall over cliffs or roll down precipitous slopes into the sea.

Anyway, I mention all this mainly because it illustrates that the area is active enough that a detailed modern map can in fact be an inaccurate guide to the ancient landscape described in stories. We're sort of used to the idea that rivers move about over time. Not so much islands.

The Duty of Good

This excerpt from the Demon Slayer movie “Mugen Train” is a discussion between a demon-slayer in training and his mother. Mostly it is the mother talking except for the part in italics. Her explanation of her son’s duty is a neat encapsulation of what Good in AD&D is about:

Do you know why it is you were born with greater strength than so many others?

Uh… no, ma’am, I don’t.

It is so that you can protect the weak.

Those who are born blessed with more bountiful gifts than others are obligated to use those gifts for the sake of the world, for all of our fellow brothers and sisters.

You must never use that God-given strength to bring harm to mankind or for your own selfish desires.

It is the duty of those born strong to help those who may be less fortunate, a responsibility you must carry onward with due purpose.

Be sure you never forget that.

Good and Evil in AD&D is framed in the context of the strong and the weak. This can be missed but references to strength and weakness appear in the summaries for Chaotic Evil, Neutral Evil, and Lawful Evil. The Good alignments are not described in these terms but more by what the outcomes should be - “bringing life, happiness, and prosperity to all deserving creature” and similar. But the implications inherent in being the opposite of Evil are clear enough.

We could perhaps imagine a demon mother advising her child:

Do you know why it is you were born with greater strength than so many others?

Uh… no, ma’am, I don’t.

It is so that you can prevent the weak and undeserving from usurping what is rightfully yours.

Those who are born with fewer gifts than others are obligated to use what little they have for the sake of their betters, for the strong.

You must never believe that there is anything wrong with using your God-given strength to bring "harm" to weaklings or for your own desires.

It is the duty of those born strong to keep those who may be less fortunate in their places, a responsibility you must carry onward with due purpose.

Be sure you never forget that.

I think when looked at in these terms, the question of whether Lawful Good is “more Good” than Chaotic Good is shown to be the non-sequeter that it is. The paladin and the CG thief are clear on what Good is trying to do. They differ, essentially, on political grounds about how to achieve that goal.

D&DG Worshippers 8: Finns

Finnish Worshippers

Men! Amiritegirls?

Another pantheon without gods for thieves, but plenty of support for bards so possibly best to use that column. Finnish monks probably just don't exist.

Encounter	Cleric	Druid	Fighter	Ranger	Paladin	Magic-user	Illusionist	Thief	Assassin	Monk	Bard
Ahto	1-6		1-20			1-9	1-10				1-10
Hiisi	7-15		21-44				11-19		1-38		11-26
Ilmatar	16-22	1-17			1-33	10-22					27-35
Kiputytto	23-30	18-35	45-51			23-31	20-29
Louhi	31-36	36-48				32-41	30-36
Loviatar	37-43	49-64	52-59			42-47	37-45		39-63		36-46
Mielikki	44-51	65-82		1-40		48-55	46-53				47-58
Surma	52-59	83-100		41-100		56-62	54-61		64-100
Tuonetar	60-68					63-75	62-74				59-64
Tuono	69-80		60-84			76-84	75-84				65-74
Ukko	81-91				34-100	85-100					75-90
Untamo	92-100		85-100				85-100				91-100

More IV

I still love method IV and the little webpage I mention in that other article has had some success/praise and quite a lot of usage from other people who like a bit of ivy. I thought I'd move the utility up to this site instead of running it at home. So here it is, complete with a new feature: you can ask for sets that qualify by race instead of class. Enjoy and let me know if there's any bugs

Update 2024: Geoffrey McKinney asked if I could add an option to not filter out scores which don't qualify for any class (or race if using that). So here it is. If you select "two 15s" it will still make sure the results have two 15s or better, but the character may still not qualify for anything due to a very low score or two.

Note that I still use the OD&D order for ability scores.

Qualify by:	Class Race
Two 15s:
Raw scores:

D&DG Worshippers 7: Egyptians

Art: Inonibird@tumblr

Egyptian Worshippers

The first of three biggies this week: The Egyptian pantheon, which will be followed by Finnish and then Greek. Between them they probably cover about two thirds of non-homespun pantheons in use by AD&D DMs, with Norse covering most of the remainder.

The table has some interesting aspects. If you meet an Egyptian paladin there is a surprising number of possible patron deities s/he may be following, but a ranger on the other hand is always a follower of Osiris. Thieves are all devoted to Bes. There's also a wide range of options for illusionists, although dominated by Set and Thoth, which is a very Conanesque rivalry.

The lack of clerics for certain deities is a little surprising too - Horus in particular. This is something we've seen before in other pantheons using this method, but in the case of Horus we can at least imagine that the paladins of Horus serve that purpose and perhaps the DM could make a slightly expanded paladin variant which has more extensive clerical spell casting abilities. Alternatively, multi-classing could be allowed even for humans providing one class is cleric for a deity not listed.

Encounter	Cleric	Druid	Fighter	Ranger	Paladin	Magic-user	Illusionist	Thief	Assassin	Monk	Bard
Ra	1-10		1-11			1-8
Anhur			12-24			9-11	1-6		1-40	1-100
Anubis	11-21				1-21	12-20
Apshai			25-34
Bast	22-29		35-41			21-26	7-18
Bes			42-47			27-32	19-29	1-100			1-35
Geb			48-59			33-38
Horus					22-53	39-45
Isis	30-39	1-43	60-65			46-53	30-45
Nephthys	40-47		66-71			54-60
Osiris	48-58	44-72		1-100							36-100
Ptah	59-68		72-80			61-71
Seker	69-75	73-100			54-79	72-76	46-54
Set	76-83		81-91				55-77		41-100
Shu	84-91				80-100	77-82
Tefnut	92-100		92-97			83-88
Thoth			98-100			89-100	78-100

A Lorry-Load of Sand

Filling the Sandbox

Hex-shaped sandbox:
the gag writes itself

Whether starting a new campaign or simply needing to expand the "known world" to reflect the players' expanding range of operations, or because you dropped them through a hatch to China, a decent wilderness map is a necessity which is sometimes needed quickly.

By "decent" I mean: gives the DM ideas and information which can be fed to the players as scenarios, plots, and NPC motivations, and is able to support play when the players decide to ignore everything and wander off into the wilds to see what they find.

Arneson recommended setting four "adventures" per 100 square miles (i.e., 10 x 10 miles; Arneson seems to have been a bit reluctant to use hexes in the early days, perhaps because of a lack of suppliers of hexpaper). Gygax, in the DMG (p47) modulates encounter frequency by population density and terrain. This post combines these two facets of wilderness into an interactive cavalcade of numbers to get your map off the ground quickly. The calculation assumes that Arneson's number is based on forest (6 checks per day in Gygax's table) and wilderness (1 in 10 chance in DMG). It also allows for 25% of encounters in non-wild areas being patrols, which are not lairs. The chance of a lair being a fortress is left to the encounter tables proper.

The function below takes various parameters which you can manipulate to suit. The output is a long list of hexes and the number of lairs in each hex generated with a random poisson distribution based on the average number of encounters based on the above factors. I've amalgamated Gygax's population levels so that each hex shows the number of lairs if it is wilderness, sparsely populated, or densely populated. Similarly, each hex is listed for each terrain type since clearly I don't know what the terrain is on your individual map.

You can also choose between a simple list of "give me 100 hexes" or an area coverage with hexes numbered in the classic Judges Guild method of 3212 being the 32nd column of the map, and hex 12 of that column. The defaults for the area option are set to match the Judges Guild Wilderness maps's layout of 52 columns and 34 hexes per column (you need to set 5-mile hex size manually if actually using the JG mapping system). If you are a freak that has hexes oriented with the points up the page, you'll have to adjust to fit.

So, as an example, if I'm looking at CISO Map 1 at the Plain of Cairns, I could generate 15 hexes, selecting only "plain" and "hills" but, since the village of Dorn in in there, keeping all three levels of civilisation active. If, for example, I get this result:

	# Encounters by Terrain
Hex	Plain	Hills
1	0/1/0	2/1/1
2		0/3/0
3	0/1/0	0/0/1
4	2/0/1
5	0/1/0	2/0/0
6	0/1/1
7	2/0/0
8	1/0/1
9
10	1/1/0
11
12		1/0/0
13		1/0/1
14	2/0/0
15		1/0/1

Starting in hex 3629 (wild, hills) I have two lairs (I rolled hobgoblins and werewolves on DMG tables). South one hex (wild and split between hills and plain, so I would usually take the higher number), we have nothing rolled for wild. Since each civilisation level is diced for independently it is possible for a hex to be, like this, free of monsters on wilderness but populated on sparse or dense. Beware of fudging the result to be "more interesting" as the tendency is to over-egg the pudding.

Then, going now to the hex southwest of Dorn (plain, patrolled) I have a lair (merchants are rolled but they don't lair, so a re-roll gives wild boar). The hex south of that (plain, wild), is clear, and the final hex in that column (3730 on the map) is again empty (the 1 indicated being for patrolled, not wilderness). 

Hex #6 equates to Dorn itself and we have a lair in the same hex - a halfling village.

And so on. Alternatively, I could have generated the lairs for the entire map and walked down the columns in a similar way, making notes as I go.

Here's the tool:

[Update: I've added a seed option. Basically, if you supply the same (numerical) seed the results will be the same for the same other options (number and size of hexes), so you can effectively bookmark a result and come back to it later].

Hex width (miles):
Base rate (encounters per 100sqm):
Output:	LinearArea
Population levels:	Wild Sparse/patrolled Dense
Terrains:
# Hexes:
Seed:
Columns:	Height:

D&DG Worshippers 6: Cultists

Cthulhu Mythos Worshippers

This is a tricky one. Deities and Demigods treats the various beings of the Mythos as monsters. Very few of them have specific class levels, which means that the method of using those levels to assign a probability that someone of that class worships a specific deity is a little questionable. However, the classes which are not represented are: Rangers, Paladins, Thieves, Monks, and Bards. Of these the only two that seem problematic are Monk and Thief; no one was expecting a Paladin to worship any of thise lot anyway!

Thieves can be rationalised, I think, in that they simply do not see anything very positive for themselves in the long-term goals of Cthulhu and Co. The end of all things is not very appealing to the person who loves shiney stuff.

Monks are harder. I personally absolutely can see Evil monk cultists but AD&D's decicision that monks must be Lawful rules out this most Chaotic of pantheons. One way around this might be Nyarlathotep masquerading as the head of some LE order who are unaware of the true nature of their "Master". Anyway, here's the table:

Encounter	Cleric	Druid	Fighter	Magic-user	Illusionist	Assassin
Cthulhu			1-13	1-20
Azathoth			14-27
Cthuga	1-55	1-71	28-40	21-50	1-38
Hastur			41-53	51-72	39-68
Ithaqua	56-78		54-63		69-83
Nyarlathotep	79-100	72-100	64-73	73-85	84-100	1-100
Shub-Niggurath			74-87
Yog-Sothoth			88-100	86-100

I thought I'd also throw in the pivoted table for Nyarlathotep showing the chance that a worshiper of that being is any given class, since he is the being most likely to be incountered in a non-combat situation:

Class	d%
Cleric	1-15
Druid	16-30
Fighter	31-49
Magic-user	50-65
Illusionist	66-81
Assassin	82-100