This is my latest contribution to Team Pointcrawl.
Here’s a way to use Cairn’s Setting Seeds chapter to produce a Regional Sandbox that can have a Player-Facing map that really emphasizes the feeling of exploration.
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My notes:
- For what it’s worth: I did stop reading factions after the third—it felt like your own energy quailed a bit there, which I suspect is that your first three factions were excellent and didn’t need any additional factions to make a rich world, despite your desire for ‘a dense region with conflicting interests’… I’m skipping on
- did I dig the phrase ‘embiggen’?—I did
- I know this was just preliminary stuff, and I don’t know what the programs you’re using for maps but once I got to your ‘great owl’, those original boundaries for regions became synonymous with paths because of the lines. Dunno if you can do like, 10% opacity shading of regions or something to differentiate. Dont know if you even care about usability yet. But. A note.
General Notes
Excellent stuff, N. I think this sort of mental gymnastics is what I’ve loved reading since I was a kid. The act of piecing together against the randomness of rolls. The notion of trusting the dice to provide. (It also suggests that Cairn on the whole has been built in a lovely, synchronous way that allows that, enables that—as poorly made tables would’ve given you a much harder time).
I really dig the act of population followed by erasure that leaves you with something for characters to chew on. It’s that level of familiarity and ‘distant purpose’ that makes it possible for folks to not feel stranded in a new world, and instead tie into something tangible which can then be used as a consistent anchor. Group reference docs! Including the players and not being a fountain of mystery!
All good. Thanks for all the details.
Hey Hugh,
Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback.
- I definitely agree that the first three Factions are the bedrock of the Factional conflict in the region, but I am glad I generated the other three because it gave me groups to work with when generating later POI. The Trading Post became really interesting in my mind once I realized there would most likely not just be Agents for the main three Factions, but a completely secret Faction of Cultists that are working at cross purposes to the main three Factions is really interesting to me. The fact that I have a group of Nomads that can act as outsiders to the region in a different way to the PCs, giving hints about the larger setting, and essentially be a group that the PCs can save from the Cultists and effectively ally with is just rife with adventuring possibility in my mind. I probably could have gotten away without having the Pilgrims, but on the other hand a Faction that PCs can interact with to find out more about the Siren Stones, as well as giving them a Waypoint in an otherwise hostile subregion, seems sufficient justification for their inclusion. Factions don’t have to be universally fleshed out at the beginning, and if I end the process and have found that I’ve made to many they can always be left on the cutting room floor.
- I definitely stole embiggen from something, though I’d be hard-pressed to identify the source.
- That’s good feedback on the subregion boundaries. I tried to use a different style of line in Excalidraw to differentiate, but I understand that it is hard to make out unless zoomed in. I will play with it if I end up revisiting the map again (a high possibility).
Thanks for taking the time to give feedback, and I’m glad you enjoyed the post overall. I always like to hear from people, even if they want to argue with me about my positions. Anything is better than shouting into the void. 
Oh yes. Void shouting, while a familiar past-time, is a bit like booze; the longer it goes on..
Embiggen apparently dates back to the 1890a but was popularized by the Simpsons.
That doesn’t surprise me.
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