The Gold Coast of Averonne

This is Part 2 of a series of blog entires that attempts to complete the Gygax 75 Challenge based on the workbook published by Ray Otus from his Plundergrounds podcast. For more info on the challenge and to download his guide click HERE. For part one in this series click HERE.

My Campaign Journal—Week 2: The Surrounding Area

This weeks task revolved around creating the surrounding area for the campaign setting. Step one was to get a sheet of hexpaper and fill it with:

1. One settlement of significant size
2. Two other settlements
3. One major terrain feature
4. One mysterious site to explore
5. One main dungeon entrance

Just Say NO to Hexes

To start with I ditched the idea of the hex paper. Its old school, its written into the challenge. But I decided that I just didn't want to go that route. I see this challenge as more a set of guidelines than hard and fast rules. Maybe thats cheating. In the end I made a 20 x 20 square map in my Moleskin notebook. Each square is one mile.

Rough Draft of the Environs of Averonne in my Moleskin

The Gold Coast of Averonne

My surrounding area is known as the Gold Coast. I took inspiration from a few sources when creating it. Because my setting is based on Dumas and the Three Musketeers I Originally wanted to use a modified version of Paris and surrounding area as my starting area. But when I was thinking about what I wanted my main dungeon entrance to be like I thought of the The Count of Monte Cristo (Actually not apart of the Three Musketeers stories, but part of my inspiration material). In this story the main character Edmond Dantes is imprisoned on the Isle D’If of of Marseille, France. Further more another one of my inspirational sources are the Averoigne stories by Clark Ashton Smith. I decided in the end to combine elements of Paris, southern France and C. A. Smith’s Averoigne to create the Gold Coast.

Marcatia (settlement of significant size)

Marcatia is the home-base of the characters. It is also the gateway to the capital city of the Kingdom of Averrone via the river Rennes. As a major port city it has merchant ships that arrive from numerous ports of call all over the Gold Sea.

Dupont (One of two other settlements)

Dupont is a small farming village that is significant only in that it controls access to the Pont (bridge in french) the only way to cross the River Rennes via land for many miles around. 

Saint Albins (The second of two other settlements)

This is site is based on two sources. The first is real life Guerande inFrance and the second is C.A.Smith's short tale: The End of the Story. I wanted a small town that centred on an abby. It just feels like it has all sorts of adventuring possibilities.

The Ruined Chateau (One mysterious site to explore)

This mysterious site is based off of the ruins from the cursed chateau in the C.A.S the End of the Story. When I read the story as good as it was, it felt like a tease. I wanted to expand on this interesting location myself.

Major Terrain Features

The Ray’s guide states to create one major terrain feature covering at least three hexes. Because I was using a map of southern France and Averoigne as inspiration the terrain features came pretty easy and natural. They just felt like they belonged.

1. The River Rennes
2. The Candlefire Marsh (La Chandellemoor)
3. The Wolfwood (Bois de Loup)
4. Alpheus Mountains

Basilisk Island (Main dungeon entrance)

This is where the main dungeon is located. This will be the location of the dungeon I work on during Week 3. There were a few things that inspired this area. First of all I’ve long liked the idea of the players having to take a boat to get to a dungeon. So when I thought of the count of Monte Cristo I knew that this was the perfect time and place for this to happen.

Thoughts on Week 2

So far this has been a fun challenge. Oddly I have been able to finish most of the work for each step in a few days. This has lead me to sort of forget about the project since I don't want to skip ahead. I did do some of the extra credit steps but didn't really feel like they helped too much. For example, in week one I made a Pintrest board of images for inspiration. This week I created a random encounter table for my area, but in retrospect I don't really like it. I think I cheated in week one because I had been anticipating doing this challenge the week before and ideas had already started percolating in my mind, thus cutting out some of the actual work for week 1. That being said I think going forward on constructing the actual main dungeon will be time consuming and require dedicating the whole week to it.