Last year I was considering setting up a sci-fi webwork hexcrawl, like the Shrouded Lands. The idea fell by the wayside, but I thought I’d share what I came up with.
Sci-Fi Hexcrawl Setting (Kepler-22)
Hi folks,
Matt Slater has a communal project to create a hexcrawl setting for a pulpy sci-fi planet called Kepler-22. I thought it would be fun to claim one of the sector maps and throw it open for anyone on EN World to contribute to.
You can join in! All you need to do is read one or more of the existing contributions and then write an entry of your own that develops or builds on or refers to at least one existing entry. It only needs to be a paragraph; you can make it longer if you like.
By all means include statistics for any RPG you like, but they probably won’t make the final version.
I’d also like all contributions to this thread to be licensed CC BY-SA. That way, we can all use the shared sector we’ve created in our own blogs, settings, books and so on.
There are three types of entry that you can submit:
1. A hex entry
The hexes are huge, so you’ll probably only be describing a single person, place or thing that can be found in the hex (bt by all means describe more of the hex if you like). Please state which hex your entry is for - I’ll add a symbol to mark it on the map.
2. A random encounter
This is an encounter that could occur in any one of several hexes in the sector. It doesn’t have to be a person or monster - it could be a weather phenomenon or other evetn.
3. An image
This is an artwork (either your own or one that you’ve found that is in the public domain) that either depicts something already in the setting or that would fit well into the setting (in the latter case, other people can use the artwork as inspiration).
By all means describe the world in more detail in your hex and encounter entries. For example, if you have a yellow man village in hex XX.XX, you can give details about the yellow man religion, their distant capital city, the history of their race, etc. You can even submit an entry in the form of a story or legend, or a piece of in-character writing from the setting.
Because I’d like this to be Creative Commons licensed, please include the following text in your first submission to the thread:
XX
To kick it off, I’ve written one hex entry and one random encounter, and provided one image.
This is all you need to start contributing - if you’d like more information, or are looking for inspiration, please read the second post in this thread.
FAQ
- Why CC BY-SA?
- What’s a webwork hexcrawl?
- Is there a fantasy equivalent?
- What happened to the rest of the map?
- What will be the end result of this project?
- What’s a ‘hook’?
- What are some hex-related resources?
- Can we have multiple entries per hex?
- What if I want to add detail to the setting in another way?
Some images and phrases to put you in the mood (but any style of sci-fi is welcome):
- Jungle plants
- People of all the colours of the rainbow
- Psychic arts
- Sentient fungus
- Ruined advanced tech
- Space elevator
- Aberrations
- Oozes
- A shallow sea
- Statues of absurd size and scale
- Wizard Scouts
- Sentient dolphins
- Worms
- Crashed spaceships
- Fast travel
- Planetary romance
- Decadent races, primitive races
- Uplifted races (dogs, monkeys, racoons)
- Robots
- Zeppelins
- Victoriana
- Hologram ghosts
- Crazed AIs
The Ship Who Screamed
Occasional screeches issue at dawn along this chain of glassy cliffs, echoing through the caves and disturbing great flights of flits and bumbles.
The sounds continue for 5% of the day, and then stop. Their source is an arkship piloted by a sentient computer that miscalculated its landing because of the mirage created by the morning lights reflected through the translucent cliffs.
The passengers of the ship either escaped or perished (the ship is missing all but one of its escape pods; this last has the skeleton and communication device of a single person in it). However, its life support system continues to operate and its onboard farm thrives.
The pilot of this ship is an AI driven mad by damage to her circuitry. She is the source of the screams each morning - an encrypted distress signal - and will attempt to communicate with any intruders.
Hooks
- Where is the ship from?
- Did the crew survive? Where are they now?
- What are flits and bumbles?
- What sorts of animals and plants are still alive on the ship’s farm? Do they have the run of the ship?
- How do glass cliffs form?
Flit Mating Storm
- This builds on the hook ‘What are flits and bumbles?’.
Flits are hand-sized, bronze-coloured insects that gather in large swarms to mate. Each flit male releases brightly coloured, pollen-like sperm. The females present spongy patches on their backs - unfertilised eggs that gather and admix the sperm of multiple males for each egg.
The pollen has a number of strange effects on humans and similar lifeforms, depending on the blend of colours ingested. Hallucinations are the most common effect.
Unfertilised flit eggs are a luxury along the Shallow Sea.
Hooks
- What do flits eat and what eats them?
- What are some of the other effects of flit pollen?
- What is the Shallow Sea? What there eats flit eggs?
The Shore of the Shallow Sea
- This builds on the hook ‘What is the Shallow Sea?’.
Most of this vast ocean is a metre deep, or even shallower. Hundreds of luminous jellyfish swim in the currents. If observed from above, the schools of jellyfish seem to spell out words in an alien language.
The enormous grey trees by the shore drop seedpods twice the size of a man. If these fall on the giant clams along the beach they crack open and could be used as coracles.