Mapping Food & Hammers

Our first step is to understand the mechanics of the image shown on the right. We have here an obscure 6-mile hex found in Rogaland, in an area of tundra (as indicated by the greenish-tan hex). The number indicates that this is a type-7 hex ... which means that while the hex has been settled, most of the hex is wilderness.

There are two other symbols beside the number: a single food and a single hammer.  The food originates with the settlement.  The hammer originates from the natural environment: because this is a tundra hex, there is a certain amount of raw material exploitation, most likely furs, timber or prospecting.  

Our agenda with this post is to get a firm handle on how much of this hex is settled and how much is wilderness; and to firmly understand how the symbols for food & hammers represent an amount of something being produced, and the number of people involved in producing it.  This will set a scale for more settled places with more elaborate results of production and the devising of a local economy.

First, as we've discussed before, let's expand the hex above into a 2-mile representation, that will provide us with more information.  This helps if we want to take a fairly empty part of our world and expand it rationally so that the players can relate the larger map to something that is more detailed.

I have had a fair amount of practice with this, but in truth it is a matter of copy/pasting a few hill icons, adjusting the colors and postulating some hex characteristics for interest's sake.  Here I've depicted the full 6-mile hex separated into its 2-mile components.  I rolled randomly using my generator 3.0 to determine the one settled hex would be in the east, the one lightly coloured hex among the other tundra hexes.  The low hills are put in for flavour, but in fact you may imagine the landscape being open, bare rock, small pockets of marshy pits and holes, with small stands of forest pine throughout.  Oh, and I added renditions of locale lakes based on their Rogaland counterparts, with a big one on the south edge of the settled hex, to give more interest.  I've named this small area of the world Kleivaland (an actual town that is quite close to the location of the hex).  A game version doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be something the players can relate to.


Continued on the blog, the Higher Path, available through my Patreon.  Please support me and gain the complete series of estate posts related to the post above, as these have all been written.