Summary
Each hex is 30 miles across. That’s roughly the size of the island of Mauritius.
The Tower is visible from each starting location. Yes, it’s that tall. Yes, that is intentional.
The Hills Hex is where the Gnomes start. They are joined by the Hairfeet (baseline) Halfings.
The Mountains Hex is where the Dwarves start. They are joined by the Stout Halflings.
The Deep Forest Hex is where the Elves start. They are joined by the Tallfellow Halflings.
The center hex is where the Tower is. It rises out of a massive inland sea (because what else do you call 30 miles square of nothing but water) and goes into the sky like the Burj Khalifa. This is where the Guardian starts.
The other three end-point hexes will be used for Standard Starting Hex areas, one of which will be used by me (and randomly determined on a 1d6 roll). These are to be Mannish settlements, but will not be revealed until either a Faction goes there or a Referee takes up that hex to run.
There is no traversable space outside the map.
The map is large, with all sides operating under geveral fog of war. There is no infrastructure until someone builds it, which restricts travel initially to a slower pace.
High-level abilities will be rare until a critical mass of adventurers get out of the early levels, making things like raising the dead a scarce resource.
Each Faction Player get a specific briefing for (a) what their reason for being here is, (b) what they seek from the Tower (i.e. their Win Condition), and finally what they get to start with in terms of intelligence and resources.
You’ll note that the Halflings are split three ways. That means that there is some asymmetry in the scenario, and that is (a) implicit in the game’s setting and thus (b) intentional.
The invitations will go out soon, and we’ll see who’s game for what.
What Is Not Specified
Who the Faction Leaders are (i.e. the specific individual(s)), what gods they worship, naming conventions, names of locations, and (for one Faction) they have no idea what in particular they’re running unless and until they decide to take up that Faction.
This is in addition to the lack of specification for everything outside their starting location, including what is in that starting hex. That, reader, is the wild card that can make the entire thing go pear-shaped fast if the random encounters spit out results that create a runaway scenario.
Those starting hexes are not pacified. Players get checked for encounters at the most hostile rate unless and until they spend the time and the resources to pacify them. We are talking about some serious potential for utter chaos to hit.
If so, this will become a very different campaign fast.
Will it immediately blow up into a massive brawl? No.
Like a game of Starcraft, this will start with players scouting and seeking things to loot or resources to secure while they encounter hostiles that come at them.
Those reading this with any sense of “balanced encounters” can take that and throw it out the window. The same goes for “coherence”. This is fantastic adventure campaign play, in a fantastic milieu, where no one—including me, the (head) Referee—knows who or what is in the unfilled parts of the map until the dice get rolled to find out.
It could end with a massive undead apocalypse due to a level-drain encounter that goes wrong and snowballs. It could end because a randomly-rolled magic item gets used in a manner no one else considered, yet is entirely within the rules. It could end because some 1st level Assassin got the luckiest run of rolls and assassinated a target just as they were attempting some potentially world-ending stunt.
That, believe it or not, excites me about running this scenario more than anything else. I don’t know how it could end, and I don’t want to. That uncertainty, that standing in the liminal space between Is and Is Not, is where the magic happens and no two playthroughs will ever be the same.
I will send out invites over the weekend, and once I have enough folks to get started I’ll decide on how I want to handle the Session Reports (i.e. paywall or no, and if so where is the cutoff). For you paid subscribers, Saturday will be another game design post. For the rest of you, come back on Monday.