...for the title of this post.
Anyway, I'm looking at a lot of hexes to stock and the best hex stocking procedure I have found so far is probably Luke Gearing's Hexfill one, although I also like a lot about Welsh Piper's Hex-based Campaign Design. But, I'm also constitutionally incapable of using something unmodified, so here's my spin on it.
My priorities are to have a procedure that takes into account the geography of the area being keyed, and also produces a more settled map than the procedures linked above.
Begin with a map of atlas (18mi) hexes subdivided into travel (6mi) hexes with terrain and roads marked.
For each travel hex, determine its difficulty (= hours of travel): open country (3), hills or woods (4), wooded hills (5), broken country (6). A road reduces difficulty by 1. Then, roll 1d6:
- If the roll is a 1, there's something weird (see below).
- If the roll more than 1 and less than the difficulty of the hex, it's empty.
- Roll a d20. If it is less than the d6 roll, there is a ruin of some prior settlement or structure.
- If the roll is at least equal to the difficulty of the hex, it contains: (2) a city, (3) a town, (4) 3d2 villages, (5) 2d2 villages, (6) a camp, fastness or inn.
- Camps and inns are abandoned 2-in-6, fastnesses 1-in-6
If something weird is indicated, roll 2d6 for its nature. If a Power is indicated, roll 2d6 again for that:
| Roll | Nature | Power |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Old Ones yet dwells here | Nothing remains |
| 3 | Holds a vivid memory of the distant past | No more than a hum or a few sparks |
| 4 | A student of Power dwells here | Red (energy, heat and strength) |
| 5 | Strong medicines may be found here | Orange (industry and motion) |
| 6 | A place of attractive Power | Yellow (communication, illusion) |
| 7 | Works of the Old Ones, purposes now unknown | Green (growth and healing) |
| 8 | A place of repulsive Power | Blue (air and water) |
| 9 | Intelligible lore of the Old Ones | Indigo (protection, force) |
| 10 | Roll twice | Violet (domination, transformation) |
| 11 | Roll twice | Forces poisonous to draw upon |
| 12 | Roll twice | A malign intelligence possesses the seeker |
Replace 'Old Ones' with whatever fantastical civilization dwelt here before the current peoples if you like.
Now, for each atlas hex, count 1 for every village, 2 for every town and 4 for every city. If a roll of 2d6 plus the number of weird hexes is greater than this sum, a monster lairs somewhere within it.
