I do have a question about how the generator interacts with elements that you as the DM know to be there already. If the characters are entering a hex where I know there is a road or city, would certain results become less likely, or would we stop using the generator entirely?
Answer: Let's suppose you'd never seen a map of the place where you live, and you'd never actually been to any of the cities or places that surround you. You'd have heard of them, sure, and you'd know they were generally "out there" in a given direction, but without the map, you couldn't know exactly how far away they were.
Now suppose that you did travel, and found out from personal experience how long it took; you wouldn't be surprised to find the city, because you "knew" it was there. This can be sort of the same. The peasants can say, "oh, of course there's a village," and they can tell the party exactly how long it takes to get there ... but this isn't information that's absolutely necessary to the campaign until the players actually go, and doesn't need to be established until the players actually get there. So long as I build the random generation of village-level hexes, it shouldn't be too long. As such, the players know they'll encounter the village eventually. This is enough. We don't have to generate the map at this time for them.
Bob in Ohio writes,
I think I KNOW the answer but want re-assurance. Party is about to take a long (28 day?) journey along a trade road they've traversed before. They CAN revisit some of the interesting site's they "discovered" on previous trips. They can interact with residents and bandit gangs they've encountered before. But how to run it at the table to keep it interesting, not a railroad (even though it kinda IS) and playable? I'm thinking one "random" encounter per day pre-gen'd, but that can turn into a slog. And I HATE just waiving it away. Advice?Answer: The answer is how it is presented:
Wrong: a wagon full of people approach the party along the road and one jumps off, pulls a sword and threatens the party.
Not as wrong: a wagon full of people approach the party with the intention of giving the party a lot of exposition about the road and where they are, telling the party a long and dull story, and then try to hire or otherwise make the party feel they ought to invest themselves.
Good: a wagon full of people are seen at the side of the road, camping; they wave at the party, offering food or asking the party if they know the way to San Jose, or some such, and maybe the party asks a question, and maybe not.
Even better: The party sees one fellow trying to fix the wheel of a wagon, but as they approach, they see him try to fit the wheel on the axle three times without success; finally, on the third time, they see the fellow drop to the road, distraught, putting his face in his hands. Sympathetically, the party helps him get his wagon together and a conversation happens spontaneously.
It is this last word that's the goal. You need to give the residents or the bandits or whatever an agenda of their own, which the party observes them carrying out, so that it looks utterly spontaneous, a part of the world just doing what it does, without any sense that it's a staged event for the party's benefit. Once this is done successfully enough to convince the party that they're seeing a completely ordinary thing, not something directly intended to fuck over the party, they'll engage and find themselves enjoying it. And you'll have something better to talk about, because they NPCs will be engaged with their own lives. It's like the list I gave for the Borderland farms happenstance. It's all things that would be happening anyway, whether or not the party was there.
Lance in Louisiana answers:
Spot on advice from Alexis as always. Yet other things to consider are: the traffic on the road, you say it's a trade road, how major of a trade road is it? Those suggestions to make a random encounter once a day from the rules(whatever edition) are assuming wilderness travel, not travel through a populated area on a trade road. Again it depends on where the road is passing through, but I would assume there are many travelers on the road, probably more than one per day of travel. If you know exactly how far they will be traveling and where they will be each day it is much easier to generate those roadside encounters (random or not) ahead of time.
And as Alexis pointed out each individual on the road has their own story to tell independent of the PCs. From my experience the way to make a journey feel like a journey is to HAVE STUFF HAPPEN. Think of any road trips you've been on. How would it feel to be on the road for an entire month. That is an extremely long time to be traveling and lots of things will happen every day, sometimes small things, but they add up. For a journey that long it should be an adventure unto itself.
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