For Loviatar #8, I’m not going to talk much about the hex features this time. Instead, I would like to draw attention to an aspect of Christian’s maps which in my experience is quite unique. This aspect is the roads that connect the landmarks within all the hexes. Considering the four hexes, 001 has four roads leading out of it, 002 has two connecting roads, 003 has three roads, and 004 has three roads. Consider the kind of network that will develop if that continues.
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| Image from Loviatar Zine blog |
This is an interesting blend of a hexcrawl and a pointcrawl, and is an outgrowth of the rather radical bottom-up approach of the B/X hex articles in Loviatar. This network of relationships makes the setting feel far more locally detailed than most D&D settings I have seen (which tend to be more defined by nation/race borders). Hex 004 also continues the creative use of traditional monsters, with the otyugh, gnomes, and a giant serpent with a secret.
Thank you for helping me to articulate something that I have been asked to explain in next issue’s intro. In the past I have said that I am trying to approach the sand box as a World of Darkness GM as opposed to a D&D GM. I never noticed it (like my silly phrasing for random tables that you pointed out), but the roads between the hexes are very much a kind of relationship web like I’d used to help plan a chronicle.