Last month, we started thinking about building a settlement to serve as the players' home base during the early portion of the Lost World campaign. After a bit of soul-searching, we settled upon an isolated, easily defensible valley that is home to a self-exiled Solaani (elven) sorceress named Janda, as well as her followers. Not only is Janda's Valley one of the few relatively civilized communities across the whole of the Lost World, it's also one of the few permanent settlements in which members of all the region's most important tribes live side-by-side.
Last month, we created a relatively sophisticated backstory for the Valley along with a few juicy secrets (as required by the Second Rule of Dungeoncraft). This month, let's begin detailing Janda's Valley. When we first crafted a home base (the Ironoak Stronghold for the Aris campaign, way back in Dragon 260 and 261), the result was rather sketchy, providing only as much information as we needed to give the players, with a few essential services and an overall impression of what their life was like between adventures. This time, let's create enough detail to run the occasional "town adventure" set in the base. The result should provide a solid example of a well-detailed home base that you can use as a blueprint for your campaign. This level of detail is usually not essential at this stage in a campaign's development, but it can prove useful. If you think you have the time and motivation to create a detailed base, the effort is probably worthwhile. If you're pressed for time or you're just anxious to start playing, though, you should stick with the less detailed approach we adopted in the earlier installment.
The Map
The first thing we need is a nice detailed map of the area. You've heard this advice before, but it's worth repeating: When drawing a map for use with a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, it's almost always a good idea to use graph paper. That way, you'll be able to quickly judge distances, ranges, movement rates, and all sorts of other rules-related quantities quickly and easily during play. It's especially important to use graph paper when sketching out Janda's Valley, since we hope to run adventures set here.
When drawing just about any map, the first thing to consider is scale -- just how big is the area you're trying to map? Once you decide upon an appropriate scale, you can quickly calculate the distance each square on the graph paper should represent. Janda's Valley should house a series of tents and structures spread out across a quarter mile or so, all neatly contained within a mountain pass. Since my graph paper sports five squares to the inch, a page is about 40 squares from top to bottom. A quarter mile is 1,320 feet, which translates into just about thirty feet per square to make the map stretch across the length of a single sheet of paper. This is a pretty good scale for mapping a town or village. It's small enough that your maps can feature individual buildings and landmarks, but large enough that the resulting village map is conveniently sized.
Try beginning with two sheets of blank paper when drawing your maps. On the first, make a rough sketch of the layout; this lets you gauge approximate shapes and distances. On the same sheet, make a list of all the locations the map should ultimately feature, then plot their general vicinities on the sketch. During this first phase, you'll probably experiment with the overall shape of the terrain and move lots of features all over the page until everything is placed to your satisfaction. Only after the preliminary sketch is complete should you try to draw the final map (on the second sheet), filling in all the necessary details. Basically, this method allows you to make nice clean maps without lots of messy erasing, letting you tweak the map as you compose it.
There are no special processes to arrive at such a list. Just freely brainstorm on two specific topics -- what sort of features Janda and her guests would logically need to survive, and what features might be interesting or "cool." We'll address the reasoning behind each location in their individual descriptions later, but for now, here are the results for Janda's Valley:
* Two well-defended gates
* Ruins
* Guard Barracks
* Guard Kennel
* Pterosaur Aerie
* Stream
* Manor dwellings
* A tangled mass of dwellings for less wealthy inhabitants
* A fishing area
* A primitive agriculture center
* A "moot circle"
* A tent bazaar
* A temple
* A large palace for Janda
Once the list of locations is complete and the map has been drawn, it's time to start writing detailed notes on each of the map's most important features. Although this takes a lot of work, resist the urge to wing it and trust your map and memory alone to get you through once play begins. Improvising on such a grand scale is a skill that only the very finest Dungeon Masters possess, and appropriate preparation vastly improves even their games.
As a general rule, the more prepared you are for your game sessions, the more fun they'll be.
Your notes on a detailed base might look like those below. Any "behind the scenes" comments appear beneath the notes in italicized text. Again, if you don't think you have the time or inclination to draw up notes that are this detailed, just shelve the whole project for now and create a less detailed base using the approach adopted last time.
As a general rule, you should use your location notes to capture three things:
1. Details you might forget. When you look back at your map later, you might not remember what you meant by "Merchant Quarter." (What merchants? What do they sell?) For this reason, it's generally a good idea to record as much info as you can. As you write, though, don't forget the First Rule of Dungeoncraft. Right now, you definitely don't need to know how those merchants came to this village, where they made their money or how their parents died.
2. Descriptive details that help bring the location to life. One of the main dividends you'll earn by developing your home base in detail is a whole host of descriptive tidbits that will help the setting come to life in the imaginations of your players. As a general rule, the more work you put into your creation, the more real it will seem and the more memorable your campaign will become. For this reason, you might try to come up with one or two distinctive features for each of the locations on your map. As you provide descriptions during play, you can consistently emphasize these features to make the location more vivid in the players' imaginations.
3. Notes that will help you resolve mechanical situations that might arise during play. If you plan on running the occasional town adventure set in your home base, you might need to know how often the guards patrol each part of town, the Difficulty Classes of various locks, and all sorts of other mechanical details. When you're creating your initial notes, it's a good idea to anticipate as many of these needs as possible and jot down some quick answers so you won't have to stop and think about some of these things once play begins.
Janda's Valley -- General Notes
Taxation: Everyone who enters the valley must pay a tax equivalent to 30% of all the coins and other valuables he is carrying. This tax applies to gems, jewels, and trade goods, but not to magic items or personal equipment (like weapons and adventuring gear). During the day, when both gates leading into the valley are open, one of Janda's minor bureaucrats is usually stationed at each entrance to appraise every visitor's valuables and collect the tax. Anyone caught entering the valley without paying the tax (or concealing items in order to pay a reduced amount) must instead pay a 50% tax and spend two weeks in the Pits (described later). If the guilty party is unable to pay the tax once apprehended, he must pay in the form of menial labor (usually maintenance work on the valley's structures).
We discussed the tax and the reasoning behind it in last month's installment.
Janda's Soldiers: Janda's soldiers wear scale mail and are armed with stone glaives and shortswords. They have the following statistics:
Soldier, Elf Ftr1: CR 1; Medium Humanoid; HD 1d10+1; hp 11; Init +2; Spd 30 ft.; AC 16; Atk +2 melee (1d10+1/crit x3, glaive), or +2 melee (1d6+1/crit 19-20, short sword); SQ Elven racial traits; AL LN; SV Fort +3, Ref +4, Will +1; Str 13, Dex 14, Con 13, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 12.
Skills: Climb +4, Intimidate +4, Listen +7, Spot +7, Search +5.
Feats: Alertness, Lightning Reflexes.
Obviously, these statistics will come in handy in all sorts of situations once play begins. The fact that all of Janda's soldiers are 1st-level fighters is somewhat extraordinary (normally, they'd be warriors as described on page 39 of the Dungeon Master's Guide). The Lost World is a tough place, though, and Janda's crew is supposed to be special.
Note that we didn't go to the trouble of creating complete characters for each guard. We listed only the important abilities likely to arise during play -- remember that First Rule of Dungeoncraft.
Fire Towers: Scattered throughout the valley are a number of iron braziers sitting atop 10-foot tall stone towers. Just before dusk, a detachment of soldiers moves through the valley and lights large bonfires in all these braziers for illumination around the compound. The braziers are then extinguished each morning at sunup. Each fire tower illuminates everything within 90 feet (three squares on the map).
The fire towers make it a little bit trickier to sneak around key areas of the valley at night. Their existence is also justified logically. Janda's soldiers have to be on the lookout for predatory dinosaurs that might try to enter the camp at night.
Janda's Valley -- Keyed Locations
1. Main Gate: The largest mountain pass that leads into the valley is approximately 600 feet across. A large plateau (30 feet tall) divides the pass into two sections. Shortly after they moved in, Janda and her followers built solid stoneworks across both sections. Each of the stoneworks consists of two parallel walls (25 feet high and 3 feet thick) separated by about 20 feet. A couple of iron portcullises in the inner wall provide access to the hollow space between the walls. The whole structure is covered with a wooden catwalk and stone parapets, allowing Janda's troops to man the walls and fend off invaders. Ten soldiers man the larger stonework at all times. Four soldiers man the smaller. Atop the larger stonework is one of the soldiers' signal horns.
In the midst of the larger stonework is the massive main gate that was constructed from the ribs of a diplodocus (a huge dinosaur) and reinforced with iron. The gate is opened and closed by four of the soldiers atop the stonework turning a pair of huge cranks. Opening or closing the gate requires a Strength check (DC 28). The soldiers normally take 20 and use the Cooperation rules, allowing them to automatically open or close the gate in two minutes, or 20 combat rounds. Attempts to move the gate any faster or with fewer participants might fail. Under normal circumstances, the gate is opened every morning at dawn and closed each night at dusk. If the gate is open when the signal horn is blown, the soldiers immediately begin to close it.
Just inside the gate are the remains of two enormous statues of triceratops dinosaurs. The statues were built hundreds of years earlier by the lizardfolk civilization that once dominated the Lost World (see The Ruins entry next issue).
There are archways in both walls of the stonework that block the smaller portion of the mountain pass in order to allow a stream to flow through and into the valley. Both archways are covered, however, by a series of iron bars that run from the top of the arch down several feet into the bed of the stream. The bars allow water and small fish to pass through, but prevent larger creatures (like humans) from using the stream to enter the valley undetected. Most of the bars are severely rusted below the waterline, though, and can be broken (Strength check, DC 23).
This is the gate the adventurers will usually use to pass in and out of the valley. Most of these notes are intended to help resolve various mechanical situations that might arise during play. Because we know exactly how high the walls are, for instance, we can easily resolve any attempt to climb them. The notes on opening and closing the main gate might come in handy in a whole lot of situations. Suppose, for instance, that a fugitive is being chased by Janda's soldiers and attempts to run out through the gate. Can the soldiers atop the wall close the gate in time to block his exit if they only have a few rounds' notice?
The rusty bars under the stream are meant to provide clever players with a way they might slip into the valley without being noticed (and without paying their taxes).
The giant dinosaur statues are a descriptive detail that we hope to use to help the players form a mental image of the valley.
2. Curtain Walls: These structures are almost identical to the stoneworks that form the main gate. They are situated on the first rises on either end of the main valley entrance, making it even harder for invaders or predators to penetrate the complex. Four soldiers are stationed on each curtain wall at all times.
3. Oat Field and Mill: Wild oats grow over this part of the valley and a few enterprising souls have erected a primitive mill that they use to grind the grain into flour. They sell their output to Janda and her followers, various other residents of the valley, and the merchants who often pass through (see the Merchant's Entrance entry next month). For the most part, this is as close as it gets to organized agriculture on the Lost World. There isn't a more sophisticated agricultural operation for many miles around. In total, there are approximately twenty commoners (assume they are all 1st level) operating the mill. They all live in tents on the outskirts of the oat field.
Some primitive agriculture helps explain what the residents of the valley eat and makes food more plentiful here. Since food will be relatively scarce across most of the environment, the adventurers will need convenient food sources where they can stock up before venturing out into the cruel world.
Next month, let's pick up where we left off and continue to detail the keyed locations of Janda's Valley, deciding why each site is important for later adventures.
Dragon #286 - Janda's Valley: Part II
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