Here’s an example area to steal for your game generated using my 100 Overland Descriptors Table article. Like the example in that article, I’ve rolled 5 results, and used the first two as general descriptors for the whole area, and the remaining three to apply to sub regions. My rolls are:

46 Cold: Iced — freezing rain coats everything in a layer of ice
24 Inhabitants: Lowlives — slimes, fungus monsters and insects

88 Food: Advanced — uses advanced ag technology like aqueduct irrigation, crop rotation etc…
62 Government: Democracy — government by a representative body
38 Dead: Haunted — spirits, ghosts or just strange feelings haunt the area

  • So for the overall area we have a frigid icy land with ice-encrusted trees and grasses and crawling with slimes fungus and insect monsters. An area like this isn’t likely to be very hospitable to people, so it’s probably populated mostly by semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, fishers or herds-people, whose insect livestock graze on what tough icy grasses are available. By the coastline, inhabitants grow an oily saltwater wort. Further inland there is less vegetation and the soil becomes rockier, making agriculture and gathering harder, but there are also flights of large grasshopper-like bugs for those willing to travel this far. Technology in this area is fairly primitive and because the light construction suits the nomadic nature of the inhabitants and its ready availability, tools, weapons and armor constructed of hardened chitin are in common use. We’ll set the whole thing on a large bay.
  • Well inland there is a skeletal forest home to a plague of shield sized beetles that range out during the day and strip the nearby countryside of vegetation then return to roost. Among the trees is a village of long low stone and log buildings. The locals gather the dung from the beetles in rope baskets, mix it into a slurry with sea water delivered via a miles long stone-lined channel from the ocean and grow a variety of fungus for food and alchemical purposes, including a few fungus beasts that are barded in chitin armor and used to defend the village from intruders and wildlife.
  • In the middle of the bay there is an island just large enough for the village perched on it. Slickrock village subsists mostly on fishing and wort fields on its coast, but it is also home to several large longhouses built of logs and packed with mud. The Island People have historically stayed out of the conflicts of the various fishing and farming villages and the many roaming tribes of the Rymereach and are equidistant  from most people. After a long history of arbitration and peacemaking, they set up these longhouses to serve as government buildings and house delegations and representatives. Now any major trade deals, territory arguments, and other issues are resolved at regular conclaves here.
  • Encircling the Rymereach is a long stretch of saltwater marsh. While this area would usually be a great resource for the people living in the area, choked with saltwort and rife with biomass, it is said to be cursed and few people will brave even it’s edges. Silence hangs over the marsh and it seems to be devoid of the wildlife that it should host. Those who have braved it’s frigid knee-to-waist-deep muck have reported feelings of being constantly watched, movement seen in the corner of the eye, and strange high-pitched calls, though they have returned with huge pieces of petrified chitin that belong to no known type of insect.

I’ve also drawn, scanned in, cleaned up, and labeled a rough map of the area.

I plan on making several more of these articles and would like to commission some simple maps like the one above. If you think you might be interested, send an email to mapcom.gnomestew@ gmail.com. Include the word Details in your subject line and hopefully my filters will respond to your email with more details immediately.