Occupied Settlements

This is for my "what if Saruman won?" mega dungeon forest campaign. 

When the group visit a settlement I roll a random event to color their visit.  

Settlement Events (d10)

1. Occupation event
2. Occupation event
3. Occupation event
4. Scarcity event
5. Scarcity event
6. Scarcity event
7. Quiet times
8. Quiet times
9. Quiet times
10. Community event

Occupation Events (d10)

1. Unfair arrest, trial or execution.
2. Abuse of power. 
3. Inspection, looking for illegal goods, sign of divine magic or rebels.
4. Troops movements d6 (1. raise occupation level, 2-5 stay the same, 6 lower occupation level) 
5. Troublesome celebration, the troops celebrate and cause troubles.
6. Construction or fortifications or sanctioned buildings 
7. Extra taxation or conscripted labor 
8. Blackmailing, corruption or intimidations of allies 
9. Propaganda, glorious statues, indoctrination ceremonies, etc
10. Establish a NPC who is part of the occupation or profit from it. 

Scarcity Events (d10)

1. Lost of service, a shop or inn is closing, a specialist is leaving.  
2. Infighting and accusation, tension is high. 
3. Lost of resource, shortage of some basic resources, prices are high. 
4. Sickness, people are getting weak and sick.  
5. Raid, banditry, looting of goods or arrival of refugees.
6. Black market troubles, people have to pay for protection, etc 
7. Low morale, people are discouraged, -1 to reaction and morale tests. 
8. A populist movement or cult causing is growing or causing troubles. 
9. Scapegoating and intolerance, strangers, refugees and outcasts are blamed.  
10. Establish a opportunistic NPC who profit from the scarcity. 

Quiet times (d10)

1. Shop maintenance, people are cleaning or repairing.  
2. Gossip and rumors spread around. 
3. A travelling merchant, caravan or ship arrive. 
4. News from other settlements, roll a event for a random settlement. 
5. Business is low, merchants are more willing to bargain.  
6. People are resting and prefer not to be disturbed.  
7. Everything is calm, people are worried that things are too quiet. 
8. Routine, people work and labor. 
9. Nostalgia, bards sing about the older times, people tell stories or miss the past. 
10. Establish a NPC that try to remain neutral. 

Community Events (d10)

1. New service, a new shop open or a new specialist arrive. 
2. New alliance between local factions or NPCs.
3. New trade that bring goods from a nearby or distant settlement.
4. Local celebration, childbirth, marriage, small victory or local festivity. 
5. Vigil, people organize themselves to protect the community
6. Market fare, family visits, local goods, business is good.  
7. Political organizing, people try to cooperate together to better the settlement.
8. Community work, people come together to repair or build something.
9. A community or group of outcasts or refugees is helping, receiving help and doing better.
10. Establish a NPC who try to better or help the community. 

The Settlements

Each settlement start with it own Settlement Events table, some may have more occupation or scarcity results. 

For example Grey Port, a large city, have more occupation events and less scarcity events 

1. Occupation event
2. Occupation event
3. Occupation event
4. Occupation event
5. Scarcity event
6. Scarcity event
7. Quiet times
8. Quiet times
9. Quiet times
10. Community event

Each settlement also have a occupation level that range from 0 to 3

0: no occupation troops 

1: local troops lawful to the occupation force

2: occupation garrison 

3: legion

Supporting settlements

The group can spend gold to try to support settlements and spark revolutions. 

They can spend 2000 GP to roll on the Supporting Settlements Table, but be careful as this can also attract the attention of the occupation forces and backfire.

Roll 2d6 - the occupation level
For each extra 2000 GP spent add +1
Group action: +1 (if the group take personal risks to help the settlement) 

Supporting Settlements Table (2d6)

2-3:change an event entry into a occupation event

4-5: change an event entry into a scarcity event

6-8: nothing change 

9-10: change an event entry into a quiet event

11-12: change an event entry into a community event

13+: Reduce the occupation level by 1 

Depending of the result, modify the settlement's random events table. 

This way the group can spend GP to shape the types of events that appear on a settlement random table. For example after many good rolls they can turn all the occupation results into other types of events. The best outcome for a settlement would be to only have quiet and community results in it random events table.

Old School Roleplaying Guide: Principia Apocrypha

+David Perry recently published a Old School Roleplaying Guide that I illustrated. 

https://lithyscaphe.blogspot.com/p/principia-apocrypha.html

I am really happy with how David used my illustrations. People often have a hardtime to put them in valor in the layout but there the result is super nice. I was also careful to add a lot of contrast (I am learning from my commissioned work).

Also I think that the introduction about participating in online communities is important even if some people will take it personally and get defensive about it (as usual on the internet). 

Thanks to the little DIY/OSR communities I am interacting with, your creativity and support is always inspiring. <3

More about the doodles maps

Thinking back about how this little community project went.

Starting with a fun and inspiring artwork map really helped to trigger enthusiasm, 32 people contributed and we keyed the 41 areas in 24h. (I notice that we were only 3 women, this is only 9% of the of the contributors, a percentage common to OSR discussions threads).

The tone was overall whimsical but imaginative. I only edited out one element that was too pop culture reference gonzo. But thinking back about it, I could have turned this element into a silly rumor.

Some people contributed different descriptions for the same area, this was not a problem and I even encouraged it. I fused the multiple interpretations together or I turned them into rumors. Rumors are a good tool to keep descriptions that may contradict each others.

Once I compiled everything, I wrote a d6 encounters and a d6 treasures tables for each area. To write the tables I based myself on the description of the areas, sometime incorporating stuff from other areas, I also had to extrapolate and invent some stuff for some of the areas that had a very short description.
I really like this d6 encounters and d6 treasures tables formula. I think it help a lot to bring the areas to life and to make the map more gameable. Having more time I would maybe have added a d6 rumors table to each area. I think these three elements work well together: dangers, rewards and opportunities. The d6 tables are also a good tool to glue together the content of the contributions as you may create link between them.

Having one or two persons who add a other layer of content (the d6 tables) over the collective material make the content stick more together. Doing it alone was a lot of work (I wrote 82 tables) but it was also super fun to jam with what the community contributed.

I enjoy these community creations projects a lot, I especially love the cross pollinisation of ideas (including illustrations and text), it feel a bit like playing a game of How to Host a Dungeon or of Microscope.

...

Eventually I would like to draw more maps to have a full 3x3 grid. But that would be a lot of work as it would give us a total of 360 areas to key (and a lot of d6 tables to write!).

If we ever complete the grid, I would like that someone better than me work on the layout for the compilation to have a nice book. Maybe we can also print the maps on PoD cardboards.

Here are the North-South axis and the West-East axis b&w unkeyed maps: