Project Overview

[hedgeknight]

Which hills, asks the guy who youthfully tromped around Covington, Hillsville, and a few other places...

More in the southwestern corner - Clinch Mountains and Rural Retreat region.

Stalking, still hunting, and drives are how I hunt. Can't sit still, I just go nuts. Probably explains how I can juggle so many games as relaxation, LOL.

I used to love to still hunt; I'm out of shape now.

Nice pics Dave!

[Rex]

I am out of shape too, but still get around well enough for still hunting. One of my goals for this spring and summer is to try to get in a little better shape. We will see.

[dmw71]

Update:
I have wasted spent many hours researching the legality of publishing content using the bullywug and/or froghemoth.

Because neither are included in the 'Systems Reference Document (SRD)' (neither the Creative Commons (CC-BY-4.0) or the OGL 1.0a version), the only way to do legally do it will be to publish the adventure on the Dungeon Masters Guild which operates under its own license:

Can I use creatures like the beholder and mind flayer, which the OGL lists as “product identity,” in my DMsGuild title?
Yes. Product identity exclusions apply only to publishing under the OGL. Product identity has no meaning under the DMsGuild program. Throw in a beholder, make it two!

A search on the Adventure Lookup website for "bullywug" and the AD&D ruleset returns seven results, with five being TSR-published modules and the remaining two appearing in Dungeon Magazine (Issues 22 and 69; both of which were published by TSR).

The same search updated for the 3.5 rule set returns two bullywug adventures; both also published in Dungeon Magazine.

It's not the search includes 5e titles that you begin to find any third party publishers

Yes, it is extremely unlikely that I would encounter any issues if I went ahead and published them anyway, my mind just does not allow me to assume that risk.

With that said, for this specific idea, I have no choice but to shift focus and publish it for 5e on the Dungeon Masters Guild website. (And, no, publishing a 1e variant won't be possible if/when I do commit to this route.)

So...

For now, I am going to table that particular idea, or work on it sparingly as inspiration strikes.



Instead, I've come up with a different plan.

---

Ultimately, I envision a product (or product line) that is a hybrid of:

1. The Dark of Hot Springs Island (and its extremely cool companion Field Guide).
   
   Here is the map of Hot Springs Island.

   ---

2. Hârn (which is just an island; a small part of a larger HârnWorld).
   
   Here is Hârn (upper left corner) against the larger backdrop of HârnWorld:
   

   Lythia.jpeg (328.16 KiB) Viewed 2 times

   I also really love the Atlas Hârnica maps that detail a region of Hârn, the island. The level of detail is just phenomenal!

---

So, an island.

Or a small continent.

Consisting of many, many hexes.

Each hex holding the potential of hosting a plethora of adventure!


I believe Todd (user thirdkingdom here on the forums) is doing something similar.


I may be wrong, but my understanding is he created a larger regional map of his campaign world -- Absalom -- and has a Populated Hexes Monthly product line where, each month he releases a separate individual products detailing a different hex within that world.

If so, that is a goldmine of an idea where there's nearly endless opportunities.


My focus will be the "limited" scope of a contained island, but a larger world (my version of Absalom) will exist beyond it should I ever exhaust all the space on the starting island.

Honestly, depending on its size, I may never escape the island as it could take literal years to detail each hex.


So, that is my plan.

With that, my first course of action is going to be to create the larger region map.

I'm undecided whether this initial map should be of the entire "world," or just the starting island?

Then, on the island, identify a region containing interesting geography.

Find a hex in that region.

Detail what exists in that hex.


Then repeat the process, detailing the neighboring hexes.



With the map being the first big step, I have spent the last few days exploring different hex mapping tools. While I haven't officially settled on one, I am strongly considering one of the following (both of which are confirmed to allow creations built using the tool to be included in commercial products):

• Worldographer (just purchased)
• Wonderdraft (owned for while, but never really used)

So, if I'm quiet on the updates here, it's almost certainly because I'm still dabbling with different mapping software tools and trying to figure out this first major step.


Then the fun begins!


However...


This forum was set up to playtest the adventure which, again, is being tabled for the foreseeable future (and will eventually be written and designed for a different rule set than advertised).

As a result, I am probably going to be removing this forum from the list of active games in the very near future.

Instead, as I begin populating hexes for this much larger project idea I've settled on, I will likely create a new forum where different adventures/scenarios can be playtested once they're ready (and not before).

I will figure all of that out at a later time.