The lure of the old-school hex map proved irresistible after all, so I made one for the region around Irongrave. I’m using Hexographer for the maps, placing terrain according to the Welsh Piper’s hex-based campaign rules, and applying places of interest based both on what’s been established in the campaign so far, and the Houses of the Lost chapter in Red Tide.
I started with Greywulf’s advice for a sandbox campaign; place an adventure in the hex where the PCs start (Irongrave), then one in each hex around that, and then build out one hex at a time depending on where they go. I moved some of the adventures around, though, since one place of interest per hex made the map look too crowded.
The map (a work in progress) currently looks like this:
In the mediaeval Europe I’m using as inspiration, and indeed in present-day Western Europe, the average distance between villages is 2-4 kilometres; so each of the hexes marked as farmland (green with a pattern of brown stripes) actually has half-a-dozen villages in it. The only game setting I know that reflects this properly is Harn.
I’ve also advanced the timeline to 1111 AD, so that the campaign is now based on the 12th century in our world. This is mainly because Britain is more interesting to me after the Norman Conquest than in the run-up to it. It also makes it easier to adapt higher-level maps from the map at ADMC. This means the King of Logris is currently Henricus the Scholar (Henry Beauclerc), the Lion of Justice; a well-educated man known for legal and financial reform. His heir apparent is his eldest son, Wilmar (William Adelin).
Meanwhile, the leaders of the main orc tribes of Camber are borrowed from Welsh kings of the time, and so are called Cadwgan and Gruffyd. However, in this parallel universe, the Marcher Barons control less of Camber than they did historically.
I’ve been hankering to run the HeroQuest scenarios as a campaign again for a while, so I’ll use those, as previously advertised. I have a series of actual face-to-face sessions coming up over the next few months (Yay!); I’ll let you know how those go.
Halfway Station 
This is my first time using WordPress, so I don’t know if I’m doing this right. I’m also a fan of Savage Worlds, BTW. Still new at it and haven’t actually played/run it (no playing group at all for several months now). Anyway . . . I read your “The Chosen” quite a while back. At the end of it, you mention possible implications for your game’s pantheon. Did you ever had any more thoughts about that?
Hi! Looks OK from here… I have the blog set up so I need to approve new posters, to cut down on spam.
I did think more about the pantheon, but didn’t really flesh it out much before I got distracted by Beasts & Barbarians. I thought that there should be one deity for each player archetype – explorer, power gamer, killer and so on – plus one for the GM, which I called The Adversary. Interestingly, that suggests that there aren’t really any dark elder gods, since even the Adversary is intent on helping the PCs become heroes. 🙂
That’s certainly an interesting way of looking at the pantheon. But – following the same theme (out-of-game conceits existing in-game) – there could still be (have been?) at least one Elder god: The Killer. This insane god’s goal prefered entertainment was to create complex mazes into which to lure the Chosen and then kill them all, in the most gruesome manner possible. He was defeated and cast down – if not outright destroyed – when his own son (the Adversary) turned against him and united with the other lesser gods (the player archetypes). But one of The Killer’s former servitors still lurks in the fringes of the planes: the dreaded demon TPK. 🙂
Heh, I like that!
I thought you might. 🙂 Although I doubt your players will appreciate it . . . 😛