Zero-to-One Intelligence

Early on in the game I began organizing monsters from the principal manual and other sources along biological categories, which with monsters usually meant trying to hammer a very odd beast into a particular category - which in turn would make the whole meaning of having categories a bit of a waste.  So I gave it up and moved on to other things.

But about a year ago I conceived of the tables which will follow, which represent only a small fraction of the whole ... but if I am going to wait until I have all of them, I'll be posting this sometime between 2014 and 2018.  Damn, I hope it doesn't take that long.

The tables are still based on a grouping principal, but one of behavior rather than biology.  They are presented here in the hopes that they will be helpful.  For the most part the intelligence, number appearing and dimensions correspond to the books - but not always.  I felt free to redefine something's intelligence or other characteristic as it fit my purposes, or as it seemed to more logically fit into the whole.

Diving straight into it, I'll write notes as we go along.  The first set of behavioral groups all have zero intelligence.

There is only one monster that fit this category, as anything else that bewitches things has a higher intelligence, and does so knowingly; the eye, I reason, does it without thinking at all.

'Density' would be a description of what pattern of inhabitation the creature has in a hex.  In this case, 'scattered' would mean that it would be unlikely to find more than one floating eye at a time.  The number appearing, as I've chosen to interpret it, would not be the number of eyes per encounter, but per hex - per incidence of that particular monster being rolled.  In other words, if you were to say that there were 30 types of monsters in a hex, and you rolled 30 times, each time you rolled up 'eye, floating' there would be 1-12 creatures in the hex.

The contact distance is a calculation based upon the number of creatures and the size of the creature.  Because floating eyes are so small, any distance greater than one hex (a distance of 5 feet) would be extraordinarily unlikely - particularly since they are only encountered under water.

While the 'encounter' column should be self explanatory, the 'gestation and growth' column will probably need a lot of notes.  In this case, the floating eye leaves an eggsack full of its young in an area of low shallows ... which itself could be found independently of the creature itself.  It could also be disturbed, causing many, many tiny floating eyes to emerge all at once - perhaps as many as 4-10 times the number normally appearing.  Remember that most young floating eyes would be eaten before reaching full growth.  but four dozen little ones (with a bonus to saving throw, perhaps, and each with 1 hp) would be an interesting disaster.

These would be hunters which would work together for their prey.  Groups are either loose, close or tight - which would be the difference between a group being within eyesight, or operating within six hexes of each other, or often touching each other while attacking.  In this case, the number appearing does refer to the number of creatures per encounter, since these creatures are always together.  But there might be multiple groups in a given hex.

The list gives a wide arrange of dimensions for various creatures that, in the real world, would collapse under their own weight: the 41 lb. fire beetle, for instance.  All weights were calculated exponentially from existing creatures, to the best of my ability.  Some creatures, such as the shark, actually are as large as indicated ... remembering that in all cases the maximum dimension is given.  Thus, a shark could easily be much smaller than 2 tons ... but as the shark in the monster manual has 3 to 8 hit dice, the gentle reader may assume that the largest dimension refers to 8 hit dice. (the giant shark, incidentally, has a higher intelligence and thus fits into a different behavioral category).

Note that in this case every creature's purpose in life (on this table) is to feed, and nothing else.

The progressive attack would mean that, once the melee was started, every set number of rounds another creature would join, then another, then another and so on, until the entire number is involved.  A 'swarm' means that every creature attacks at once, and at the same time.  A milling approach would mean that the creatures would move about the party without attacking for potentially forever, until provoked - like being in the room with a bee, which is aggressive but yet roams around before having a reason to sting.

Creatures may also be movement sensitive, and will strike from cover (such as the weed eel), or by simply moving at the party in a direct attack (the ochre jelly).

There are a number of eggsack types, pushed into mud, a dead carcass, or carried along with the body.  Ochre jellies obviously just split in two (fission) ... while manta rays produce live births from eggs they carry in their own bodies.

Swift growth or swift molting would mean the creature grows to full size within a season after birth, sometimes faster.

The only treasure here are the natural light glands that the fire beetles carry as part of their bodies.

(I note there is one forgotten note - a fire beetle can be seen at twice the contact distance if it is dark).

This table is probably a bit repetitive - these creatures have behaviors that are so alike.  I don't have much to say here except that the weights for humanoid-like monsters were calculated according to human size, and then multiplied by the material the creature was made of.

I should describe what I mean by 'durables'; this would be any item that could be expected to remain once a body dropped in its tracks and began to decompose.  So this would describe coins found in pouches (leather lasts a long time), weapons, armor, pieces of jewelry and so on ... because obviously the non-thinking creatures above would have no use for such things and would presumably leave the bodies where they lay.  Of course, some powerful cleric could be coming in monthly to turn back the zombies, collect the trinkets, and leave again.  (Has anyone given any thought to animating dead as a money making strategy?)

These creatures above, of course, have no interest in feeding on players, but only want to a nice warm food source for their future children.  All are so small they are encountered only at a very close distance.

And these are growing entities for which existence depends upon finding carbon-sources in order to expand - namely, the players.  They grow by killing, and then 'consuming' the victim through expanded growth.  The more they kill, the larger the growth becomes - so that a large violet fungi patch would represent many kills over a given period of time.

The 'fuzz stage' described under gestation refers to a point when the plant splits and releases great quantities of seeds into the environment, much like a cat-tail.  I once wrote about this when I redesigned my gas spore.  A detailed description of the yellow musk creeper (using zombies to spread its growth) is given in the Fiend Folio.

These would be monsters that had a very definite lair, which they defend by instinct.  Most attack progressively, though the spider uses its web as a trap.  Bats will generally ignore creatures until a first bat makes an attack, whereupon the others will swarm.

Those collecting food will hunt over a wide area, and may be encountered outside the lair.  They will not eat their victims, but will typically paralyze them or render them otherwise harmless, and carry them back to the lair.  Durables would then be found in the lair since the carried body is not stripped of its equipment before being carried away.

The distinction between 'widely scattered' from 'scattered' merely indicates that in the former case the creature is territorial, and does not cross into those regions occupied by its own kind.  When two of a kind encounter one another, they tend to combat one another (this is my world only, obviously, since I know how much many DMs love having dozens of gelatinous cubes attacking a party at one time).

Note that the weight of the gelatinous cube is slight compared with its dimension; this is because I reasoned that a transparent creature would have to have a very low specific gravity (low mass).

Not every creature is inherently violent.  The dragonfish is bothering no one when it is stepped upon and thus releases its poison; a stinkbug reacts equally defensively (whereas the bombadier beetle in the former table is aggressively meat-eating, the stinkbug is herbivorous).  The giant sea turtle is not destructive - it does make a great friend, however, if speak with animals is employed.

A very large section.  A great many monsters are designed to be party killers - that would be the primary reason for most of these.  A number of these attack by surprise, from beneath the water, by dropping from trees, from rock crevices or even from inside solid rock (thoqqua).  Beyond that, the table largely speaks for itself.

The monodron is the only non-intelligent creature that can be summoned (that I account for, anyway).  It is the first of a series, the higher examples being the duodron, the triodron and so on - the names coming from monsters presented in some book or other, I can't remember.  In my world they are bird-like creatures that become increasingly larger and more powerful with each designating number.  I would recommend that the gentle reader simply ignore any monster that they are unfamiliar with, or add their own, however they wish.

These, then, are the last group.  Each of these monsters acts as a sort of trap, waiting for their prey from a set location, rather than roaming for it, as the 'solitary hunter' does.  It is a minor distinction, but I felt worth mentioning.  The reason why there is no treasure would be that the trap-location is not kept, but changed from day to day.  The frog or crab make holes in the mud or sand; ankhkeg's do so in soft loam; plants such as witherweed, tentamorts and whipweed move very slowly from location to location if food becomes rare.

The tentamort reproduces not by fission but by duplicating itself ... thus it gains in mass first, developing four tentacles before subdividing; while a creature that gestates by fission divides, and then its multiple parts gain mass thereafter.  Again, a minor distinction, but interesting.

From this point after, I include monsters with 1 intelligence - animal intelligence.  Each monster is listed twice, as each provides two different kinds of encounter.  This is also part of the concept.  As intelligence increases, the number of possible encounters per monster also increases.  I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Again, this would be a large category.  The behavior of this group would be largely due to the size of these creatures, the smallest of which would be the ostrich at 290 lbs.  As they are not easily threatened, they will often treat others, such as the players, with indifference - thus the category.  Of course, if pushed, these creatures will push back.

Occasionally, however, certain individuals will be diseased, or driven out of their herd, and will become maddened killers.  Those individuals are then particularly dangerous.

Note that animal intelligence creatures are the first to be mated, or protective of one another, or of their offspring.  Typically, several mated pairs will exist in one group - which, to remind the reader, would mean that the number appearing here are found together, and not scattered over the hex.

As these creatures tend to be fast, these creatures do not fight when threatened, but will instead flee.  They all live as mated pairs within the group, except for those who have not 'won' mates during the breeding season.

A somewhat more threatening group of monsters, malicious hunters will often kill (or destroy) with no particular purpose, more than they can eat - such as a weasel that will kill every chicken in a coop but only eat one.  Thieving creatures will create a 'cache' of stolen goods, if given a chance to steal repeatedly, that a ranger might be able to find. 

Science Is Bad

"Luddite Rule (or, George Lucas Rule):" Speaking of which, technology is inherently evil and is the exclusive property of the Bad Guys.  They're the ones with the robots, factories, cyberpunk megalopolises and floating battle stations, while the Good Guys live in small villages in peaceful harmony with nature.  (Although somehow your guns and/or heavily armed airships are exempted from this.)

Ah, this.

Within my experience, this is far more a trope of film and video game than it is of D&D.  It was advanced for film as a thematic principle for a number of reasons - it creates conflict, first and foremost, and it was important in the 1920s and 30s to establish the main character as someone the audience could identify with ... at a time when audiences were less well off and were largely rural born and living in cities when their parents were not.  Thus, the viewer IS someone who came from a small village, and now found his or her self in a highly technological world (full of switchboards, tubes and typewriters), where the Bad Guys were bosses with the technology who forced farm boys and farm girls to work as operators and secretaries.  So it made sense that they'd go to the moviehouse to watch ordinary rural-derived heroes put down smarmy, know-it-all villains with their honesty, their home-spun good sense and their spunky insight.  This is called the George Lucas rule because he loved those old films and serials that devised those themes.

If the gentle reader will forgive me for not rushing straight into D&D, I'd like to also mention a similar theme, where a technologically dependent city-dweller is presented as a feckless boob when faced with the common sense of the ordinary clodhopper.  It was a favorite theme of O.Henry, and made it's way through successful franchises like Ma & Pa Kettle, right up to the Beverly Hillbillies of the 1960s, where the rich, connected banker wound up being made a fool in every single episode.

So it isn't so much that science is somehow something that only bad people like, it is that science is understood by one kind of person, which is then seen as bad by the sort of people who do not understand science.  And since group B is a lot bigger than group A, and films are dependent upon selling to the largest possible market share ... science is bad.

This has been carried forward into video games largely because many of the front line programmers working out there (and those with money) were born in the 60s and the 70s and are still influenced by those themes that were pounded into their heads at an early age.  That, and the writing for video games is atrociously awful, and hopelessly mired in themes that the writers themselves are plainly too ignorant to understand ... i.e., it was always done this way, this works, let's keep doing it.  As the TV tropes page says, "Writers are not scientists."

But of course video gamers aren't rural born, love technology, don't relate remotely with the whole "I was born in a small village" cliche and generally get mildly sick at all the sappy bullshit.

Which is why D&D seems exempt from this.  I know there are players out there who embrace the concept of happy peasants capable of doing anything a king can do (yes, still pissed about that).  Still, I think most players don't identify their characters as rural hayseeds, but rather fundamentally cosmopolitan and awfully streetwise.  This is because, well, we are, aren't we?  D&D has never been an overly popular game in small towns and villages (woe betide the poor bastard living in Jordan, Montana, population 364) and it is far easier to get a game going in a big city - anything with more than 200,000 is a safe bet there's a game going on somewhere.  As such, the busy ratrace of daily life is ordinary for us and we're tapped into the highest technology available ... there's a shop just down the road that sells it.  So it's a rare player that eschews an artifact of massive power potential on the basis of, 'my character is a simple soul and despises gadgets.'

Moreover, there's a natural reason not to give the enemy too many specialized items; unlike the movies, where everything gets conveniently blown up, many items - after being used by the Bad Guys - fall into the hands of the Good Guys.  A smart DM knows not to load up the villains with too many nice toys, since those toys will have a drama-destroying impact on future obstacles the DM cares to invent.

Going one step further, my players will generally speak of the days when they will have the resources to make their own golems, raise their own remorhaz beasts, build their own underwater submersibles and so on ... so clearly, they're ready to embrace the power.  I don't know one of them who talks of the day when they'll retire their character to some small village somewhere.

I guess they all want to be Bad Guys.

Vegetation Classification

Here is Kuchler's classification, reprinted without permission (they may come hunt me down later).  Sorry, I did not get to choose the classification letters - if I could have, I would have picked other ones.  But it's Kuchler's system, so they are his letters:

The various formulas are used to designate types of vegetation. Each formula constitutes a short description of the chief characteristics of a vegetation. The classification is based on whether plants are woody or herbaceous, and if woody, whether they are broadleaf or needleleaf, or if they are evergreen or deciduous. The small letters are added to give more detail to the description.

All capital letters other than G and L imply trees, unless accompanied by s or z.  The small letters refer to the capital letter immediately preceding them.  Thus, DsG means that the vegetation consists of broadleaf deciduous shrubs (Ds) and of grass (G); GBp represents grass (G) with patches of braodleaf evergreen trees (Bp).  Modifiers include:

b - Vegetation largely or entirely absent
i - Plants sufficiently far apart that they frequently do not touch

p - Growth singly or in groups or patches

s - Shrubform, minimum height 3 feet
z - Dwarf shrubform, maximum height 3 feet

The predominant vegetation forms include (image below descriptions):

B - Broadleaf evergreen trees (Amazon, Congo, Sumutra-Borneo, Southeast Asia)

Bs - Broadleaf evergreen shrubform, minimum height 3 feet (Mediterranean scrubland)

Bsp - Broadleaf evergreen, shrubform, minimum height 3 feet, growth singly or in groups and patches (chaparral, Baja, Sonora Desert)

Bzi, Bz - Broadleaf evergreen, dwarf shrubform, maximum height 3 feet, plants sufficiently far apart that they do not touch (sagebrush  - Nevada Desert, scattered areas of the Western U.S.)

D - Broadleaf deciduous trees (Ohio-Indiana, Western Europe, Zambezi Basin, Southeast Asia highlands, Deccan Plateau)

Di - Broadleaf decidous trees, plants sufficiently far apart that they frequently do not touch (caatinga - Northeastern Brazil)

Ds - Broadleaf deciduous, shrubform, minimum height 3 feet (Yucatan Peninsula, Haiti)

Dsi - Broadleaf deciduous, shrubform, minimum height 3 feet, plants sufficiently far enoguh that they frequently do not touch (Mexican Plateau)

Dsp - Broadleaf deciduous, shrubform, minimum height 3 feet, growth singly or in groups or patches (desert regions worldwide, Sahara, Kara Kum, Arabian Peninsula)

Dzp - Broadleaf deciduous, dwarf shrubform, maximum height 3 feet, growth singly or in groups or patches (Sind, Indus Valley)

DsG - Broadleaf deciduous, shrubform, minimum height 3 feet, with grass and other herbaceous plants (outer pampas of Argentina, Ecuador)

DG - Broadleaf deciduous trees with grass and other herbaceous plants (Serengeti, Russian wooded steppe)

DBs - Broadleaf deciduous trees with broadleaf evergreen, shrubform, minimum height 3 feet (Bihar-Orissa in India)

E - Needleleaf evergreen trees (Northern Canada, Pacific Northwest, Russia & Western Siberia)

Ep - Needleleaf evergreen trees, growth singly or in groups or patches (New Mexico)

G - Grass and other herbaceous plants (Great Plains, Russian Steppe, Pampas, Veldt, Manchuria)

Gp - Grass and other herbaceous plants, growth singly or in groups or patches (Gobi Desert, eastern Iran & Afghanistan, central Australia)

GBp - Grass and other herbaceous plants with broadleaf evergreen trees, growth singly or in groups or patches (southern Spain, Australian Outback)

GD - Grass and other herbaceous plants with broadleaf deciduous trees (savanna, from Kenya to Senegal, central Zaire)

GDp - Grass and other herbaceous plants with broadleaf deciduous trees, growth singly or in groups or patches (Uruguay)

GDsp - Grass and other herbaceous plants with broadleaf deciduous, shrubform, minimum height 3 feet, growth singly or in groups or patches (Sahel, south Texas, Somalia, Peruvian Puna, Thar Desert)

GSp - Grass and other herbaceous plants with broadleaf evergreen and deciduous trees (semideciduous), growth singly or in groups or patches (Gran Chaco, Central Brazil, Northern Territory, Queensland)

L - Herbaceous plants other than grass (tundra, moors, heath, highlands above the treeline, worldwide)

M - Mixed: broadleaf deciduous and needleleaf evergreen trees (Central Europe, Virginia-Tennessee, Szechwan China, North Island NZ)

N - Needleleaf deciduous trees (taiga, northern & eastern Siberia)

ND - Needleleaf deciduous and broadleaf deciduous trees (Khintan Mountains China, Amur Basin)

S - Semideciduous: broadleaf evergreen and broadleaf deciduous trees (Yangtze Basin, Brazilian Rainforest, Bali)

Ss - Semideciduous: broadleaf evergreen and broadleaf deciduous, shrubform, minimum height 3 feet (high Pampas western Argentina)

SsG - Semideciduous: broadleaf evergreen and broadleaf deciduous, shrubform, minimum height 3 feet, with grass and other herbaceous plants (Swanland Australia)

Szp - Semideciduous: broadleaf evergreen and broadleaf deciduous, dwarf shrubform, maximum height 3 feet, growth singly or in groups or patches (Patagonia)

SE - Semideciduous: broadleaf evergreen and broadleaf deciduous trees, with needleleaf evergreen
trees (Yunnan China)

b - Vegetation largely or entirely absent (includes both snowfields such as Greenland or Antarctica, or desert ergs such as parts of the Sahara, the Takla Makan in China, the Empty Quarter in Arabia or large areas of central Australia)

Biomass

Just for those who cannot get enough, here's some reading I've been doing this morning upon determining biomass - this is data pertaining principally for Botswana, but the database development is interesting.

Now compare that with these figures here.

I can hear the casual gamers groaning.

Engineering II

I am posting this second version of my Civilization Posts, because for me this is what I'm thinking on.  I have been giving a lot of thought to the one I ought to be writing, "Theology," but it will have to wait for awhile.  I run the blog, it does not run me.

Here's the thing.  I was raised the son of an engineer who became very disappointed when he son decided not to go into engineering, but instead into writing and other Bohemian pursuits, such as acting and journalism.  But as it happened he did manage to instill into me certain characteristics that, clearly, continue to define the manner in which I approach a problem ... such as, how does one establish a trade system, or how does one define the qualities of an NPC.

There is an old joke, that goes as follows:

A mathematician, a philosopher and an engineer were asked, what is the sum of 2+2? 

The mathematician replied that the answer was '4', but specifically it could be defined as '4.000' or however many zeros you wished to add to establish the accuracy of the reply.

The philosopher answered that we could not be certain of any particular definition, since reality is defined by perception, but we could reasonably judge within a common framework that the answer might be given as more than three and less than five.

The engineer answered, "What do you want it to be?"

When I told this joke to my father, he did not laugh.  Instead he answered, "Damn straight."  I remember we had a discussion afterwards in which he explained that when he was in university (he went to the Colorado School of Mines), those who were flunking out of engineering courses were not those who 'couldn't handle the math,' but rather those who just didn't get the fundamental principle that engineering is not about assessing, it is about doing.

With regards to the disaster in the Gulf, I have spoken to a few engineers who assure me that a) the technology in existence operates like it does because it is what the money wanted built; and b) the solution is straight forward and practical - but it does involve a second hole and it will take months.  And finally, that the second hole could be drilled beforehand, as a precaution, for every deep water platform in existence, but that no one wants to spend that kind of money.

Money is the universal limitation on engineering.  I am told that everyone in the field knows this.

Well, okay.  I make a D&D world, so I don't have to worry about money, and I don't want this to devolve into a long discussion about social political and technological recent events - so please make the comments relevant to D&D, at least obliquely.  What I want to talk about is the inaccuracy of my world, and why it doesn't matter.

I did touch upon this with my last post about peasants and so on ... but reading through the link on the last post, about the sociology of political divisions, I am struck by my approach vis a vis towards producing a solution to a world-design problem.

Let's take something not so simple, that I have not yet solved: given a hex size of 20 miles across, with an approximate area of 309 sq.m., how many monsters of a given type ought to exist in the hex?  This is to say, IF the party is going to 'clear out a hex,' as suggested in several places in the original DMG and Player's Handbook, how many creatures will the party have to fight until they are a) mostly eliminated; or b) completely eliminated?

Now give me an answer that applies to all types of hexes, from tundra to jungle, that takes into account the increase in animal size with regards to open-vegetation environments, as well as animals which are not large enough to be considered 'monsters.'  At what point is the hex 'clear'?  When there are no dangerous creatures larger than a dog?  Are giant centipedes, throat leeches, ear seekers or rot grub to be cleared, or not?  Can you answer?  I mean, without pulling the number from your ass?

Fact is, you can't.  No one can ... not that I've seen so far.  The answer ought to lie in the biomass of a zone - for which I can find total tonnage/hectare - but how precisely is this biomass deconstructed so as to give numbers for elephants, sphinx, dopplegangers, ochre jellies, ixitxachitl and dragons?  Ideas, anyone?

The general point of this post is to emphasize that a portrayal that accurately gives answers to any of the questions above is a matter of entirely no relevance whatsoever.  An correct number for dragons?  Huh?  Define correct.

It is exactly that which justifies the rectally derived numbers that virtually no DM, anywhere, ever bothers to write down for any part of their world.  Why bother?  Why not just say, when the party has to clear the hex, "Uh, sure, there's a dragon and a keep that has six ogres, two roving bands of brigands and a few hundred giant rats."  There, done, problem solved, please go away now.

And yes, this is engineering, by definition.  Problem solved.  It is rather piss-poor engineering, something like dropping two boards over a chasm and telling the driver that as long as he keeps his car wheels on the boards, no problem.  My father tells of how he did exactly this over a Colorado gorge back in the 1950s, and it obviously worked, he lived long enough to make much of my life unpleasant.  But even he wouldn't recommend it as a standard.  It would be better to build a bridge.

Where it comes to building bridges to solve problems in your D&D world, it helps to remember that there are a wide range of solutions, ranging from the two boards to complicated archways designed to handle all manner of traffic.  The principle to be followed is this: what does it do, and what does it allow?

The above example of what is in a hex, dragons and ogres and what not, answers the question, and lets the DM get on to other things.  I personally don't see the benefit of that.  I'm not anxious to 'get it over with' and move on.  Instead, I want to make THIS the interesting thing, the thing that draws the party in and compels them to burrow around and find every last fucking thing until they KNOW the hex is clear.  I want them to feel like they have accomplished something outlandishly difficult, so that when they are sitting by their hearth in their home, they FEEL like they've goddamn owned their land.

So I want the structure of my full hex to be better thought out ... hell, I want it to be randomized to the point where there are things in that hex that I, as DM, don't want to be there!  I want to roll up a lich and shudder to myself, thinking, uh oh.  Be damned if the party is ready for it.  Or if I'm ready for it, for that matter.  And when I find out that the lich has a vampire buddy, I want to be thinking, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit ...

Obviously, I also want a table that spits out the result that the only relevant thing in the hex is a set of caves populated by only kobalds.  I don't want the table to be necessarily brutal.  But I want the possibility of brutality, and when the dice comes up that way, I want to point at the table and say, "Guys, I hate to tell you this, but the Gods don't like you."

Okay, that's what I want a system to do.  What do I want it to allow?

A nice thing about an overall system is the continuity it provides.  Many DMs don't think it's true, but a party can tell when they're being jerked around by an irrationally constructed world, and it gets exhausting.  Oh, look, we thought we would be safe here in this peasant village where we came to rest, but there's five wraiths feeding off the peasants.  Oh, look, I've spent months building up my fortress, and now its being attacked on the day its finished by a huge army that has conveniently appeared on the horizon.  Oh, look, we thought we cleared out that dungeon but a whole group of demons and devils have popped out of the ether and made it their new home.  Oh, look, it doesn't matter what we do, everything we've created is being torn down for the sake of story.  Oh, yay.

It is comforting to the party to know that if they cut down or burn down or blast away everything that lives or moves in the adjacent hex to their own that the number of attacking creatures would actually go down and stay down, and not ramp up on the whim of the DM.  It is comforting to the party to know that if they deviate from their route to avoid the dark woods, that they won't be attacked anyway - you know, because this hex was presumably cleaned out by someone, at some point in the past.  It would be nice to think that since every civilized hex is occupied by various lords of the manor, that the lords of the manor would do something to kill the nasty horrible creatures living in their own domain, so they couldn't attack random travellers on their way through.  You'd think that would be something the local lords would want, you know, to facilitate trade and such.

I want my parties to have the reassurance of that.  That going from wilderness to civilization is the sort of thing that makes them feel safer - that falling prey to a nasty creature living in the sewers of a city is something that doesn't happen every time they drop into town to buy supplies.

So I'm thinking that an engineered system that took account of these things would help provide a stronger structure to my world, and create a balance for the players so that they knew that if they did this, or went there, they could expect such-and-such.  As opposed to a DM who's bored or whimsical or prejudiced in favor of one kind of monster (Another otyugh? For shit's sake!), who forever plays with the results to satisfy their constant need for self-importance.

(What am I saying?  I create systems to satisfy my constant need for self-importance.  Bad Alexis!  Bad!)

In any event, the long and the short of it is engineering some kind of system that works and provides a valuable result.  Engineering as a technology is more than the sum of the mathematics that goes into the construction of a bridge or the development of a methodology for the removal of oil, or what have you.  It is a mindset, wherein the end result is the issue, and not necessarily the minor details.  This has occasionally had some disastrous effects where it comes to building things that one would hope to remain standing, or applying efforts to extract things that one would hope not to leak out all over the environment.  Such considerations are necessary for the engineer who doesn't want to kill people and such.  But engineering itself is not defined by competancy.  It is defined by adequacy.  A bridge that remains standing without falling down is the minimum degree of adequacy desired; just as an effort to model something in order to determine how much money the project will need is, equally, not made inadequate by its degree of inaccuracy.  It is accurate enough.  It serves the purpose for which it was designed.

That is the only measure.

The Division of Territory in Society

Now and then, it pays to simply sit at the feet of some other genius and learn.  I found this thesis very intriguing some years ago, and recently chanced to stumble across it again.  I would strongly recommend that any budding creative geographers read it through, as it will help identify the structure of your invented territorial divisions.

Cross-country Cutting

In writing about filling hexes on Sunday, I recalled an incident that happened to me some years ago when I used to hunt upland game.  I was carrying a 12-guage shotgun, and making my way along the edge of a coolie - which is a sort of sloped ravine, typically 10 to 15 metres deep and 40-60 metres wide.  The slope was covered in buffalo brush - a sort of tight scrub that grows where there's a lot of water, nine feet high and so thick that even when there are no leaves on the branches you can't see past a couple of metres.  But the branches are very thin and you can push through it if you're willing to work hard.

I was.  I had decided for some reason that I would walk along the bottom of the coolie for a half mile or so, and see if I couldn't scare up game down there.  So pointing the shotgun into the air, with the safety on (naturally), I plunged into the buffalo brush and fought my way to the bottom.

There I found a little brook, not moving very fast, with a hardened cattle run on either side, where the clay had been pounded down to the hardness of concrete.  I also found myself about five metres from a bull, whose set of horns was about, say, that wide (picture me holding my hands apart wider than my shoulders).  And it was looking right at me.

I want to say at this point that I did not feel at all comforted that I had in my hand a fully loaded shotgun.  I did not think it would be much help.

I have had, in my years as a Canadian, the opportunity of walking cross-country through the western prairie, the Canadian shield and through parts of the Rocky Mountains, and there are certain truths to be considered.  Now when I say 'cross-country,' I mean up to and including areas where there are no fireroads, no trails, no paths of any kind.  I mean taking a trajectory through the bush at a given point and striking out for whatever might be on the other side.

It is never as convenient as it appears in film.  The back country is loaded with fallen trees, overgrown vegetation, sloppy bogs, soggy bottomlands, roots, stones and boulders, creeks and rivers.  A traveller in this environment is going to get scratched up, is going to get wet, and will from time to time find themselves in a compromising position at exactly the moment when one does not want to be - such as, with both legs straddling a mossy, soaking dead tree and one foot caught between other dead trees in the same pile.  Very often the river courses will not have convenient stepping stones, or will be six to eight feet deep immediately next to the bank without any means across except to swim.  The countryside will be full of blind corners, or wide open exposed places where there is nowhere to hide, where a party would need to either scurry across in plain sight or blunder through the area in blindness, the way I did with that bull.

Of course, one can be 'prissy' when walking through the wilderness.  They can refuse to climb over fallen trees, or cross rivers except where there are fords, or cut down the brush as they move through, or circumvent the thickest growths.  They can argue that they won't be 'caught' with their pants down defecating next to some tree, and are prepared to wait for a 'proper' facility - such are the principles of many people that I have unfortunately been hiking with.

But something that needs to be understood is that, in some of the wilder places that we know about, 'going around' is a fruitless option if any sort of travel is to be managed.  Depending on the thickness of the brush, the general terrain and the recent weather, yes, it can take four hours or more to travel only one mile through a given area.  And this includes getting one's feet wet and a load of other discomforts.  The action of candy-stepping through the wilderness only increases the time variable by 'n' to the point of zero gain.  Worse, going around obstacles with fervent insistence virtually ensures that one will become disoriented and lost, and in very little time.

The reason why I bring any of this up is to suggest to the DM that the party will be caught with its pants down on occasion after occasion, because the terrain makes it so.  It is all well and good to argue that they are a couple of feet from one another while travelling along a road, but rough terrain will break up a party into fragments, easily hundreds of metres apart, as one member of the party (the tallest and strongest) forages ahead, while others drag along after.  Arguments that the party would 'stick together' again reduces the overall travel speed immensely, and ignores the reality that the fastest moving and most agile members of a party can save the straggling members much time by striking out ahead and finding what routes are most practical.  Human beings are not made to walk through such country as though they were tethered together ... they naturally become impatient with slower companions, who in turn tend to select their actual routes through the wild according to their own tastes.  This is to say, simply because the ranger will leap over that four foot trunk with the greatest of ease will not mean that the dwarf won't notice an easier place to cross ten or twelve metres to the left.  It is natural for each person to think for themselves in just such a matter - for the ranger to not think about the dwarf when his or her eye is upon the crest of the mountain two miles away and not measuring the height of the obstacle he or she has just crossed.

So I sometimes find myself in an argument with a party when I patiently try to explain that, no, they can't all strike at the owlbear this round - in fact, it will take six or ten rounds for some of the party to get within striking distance.  Yes, sometimes when it comes to killing that giant centipede, the illusionist is on their own.  Too bad, so sad, that's life in the wild.

Oh, yes, I did sort of leave the gentle reader hanging with regards to the bull.  I would like to report with a very glad heart that the bull was, initially, completely disinterested in me.  Moving very slowly, I lightfooted it across the brook - it was less than a metre wide - and decided that as long as the bull wasn't going to bother me, I wasn't going to bother it.  So I began making as wide a circle around it as the bottom of the coolie allowed, not taking my eyes off it for a second.

At this point, apparently, my father - who was on the top of the coolie on the side opposite to where I had been - could see me making my little route around the bull ... who stood there bored and chewing its cud as though a man with a shotgun was the most natural thing in the world.  My father could see everything, as the buffalo brush only covered the one slope of the coolie - which is typical.

I got on the other side of the bull and had reached to base of my father's slope, when the bull dropped its head and took a step in my direction.  I can remember to this moment the thud the bull's hoof made as it fell on the ground.  That one step was enough - at once I was five meters up the slope, bounding my way up rather than running.  I heard my father explode with laughter, and in chagrin I stopped, and looked back.  That bull hadn't moved at all.

It sure scared the shit out of me.