Responding to Feedback about the Giant Hex

Last week I wrote about my idea for a "giant hex." It is a single five-mile hex on the map, but it is filled with giant trees and animals, and it takes 60 miles to cross it. What's really happening is that the party is being shrunk down to 1/12th their normal size when they enter it, and returned to their normal size when they leave.

I got three comments to that post. One actual comment, and 2 messages. I wanted to explore those here.

Ministroni

The first commenter, Ministroni, said:

There would be some things that hint at the difference. Like morning dew drops being the size of basketballs

This is absolutely true! To be honest, though, I don't know if I would have thought about that during the natural flow of play. This is why, around my table, it's important for players to be upfront about what they're doing and why. If this is a player's line of thought, he should ask me outright. "I'm thinking that we might be shrunken, so I'm checking the dew drops in the morning to see if they're the size of basketballs."

I've played with so many players that are reluctant to do that. My only guess is that they've played with a jerk GM that would purposely try to mislead them if the GM knew why they were asking. I am not a jerk. I am my players' biggest fan.

Ministroni also said:

I hope you have a "giant ant" that lifts something far heavier than a scaled up ant could lift

That's the spirit!

Zomus Prime

This one was left as a comment on the page itself. I like it when readers do that!

I am curious though, say that they've travelled into the hex and fight a group of "giant" rats. After defeating them, one party member decides to skin them, figuring the (assumed) novelty will fetch a good price.

So, then the question becomes, what happens to the pelt? Do they instantly shrink to 1/12th size when the party picks it up? Or would it remain large, but be unaffected as the party leaves the hex such that the skinner finds a small, smelly, rat pelt sitting in their bag?

The player's assumption would be a good one. From my previous post, it should be obvious that I'm a fan of "natural treasures." A giant rat pelt would be worth maybe 300 gold! Even better would be a giant beaver pelt...

Anyway. The short answer is that the rat skin would remain at normal size (i.e., it would shrink from the player's perspective). Leaving the hex just removes the enchantment that's on the players. Because they rat didn't have any enchantment on it, there's nothing to remove.

This would be a powerful clue as to what's happening.

Big Shadow Dragon

Big Shadow Dragon is one of my players from days gone by. He says:

Why are you playing with the size of the PC's? I just don't see why you're doing it.

I'm doing it because it seems interesting. Players seem to like interesting puzzles.

If I'm ever stuck for something to do, I have the party discover a small, elongated pyramid about the size of a 3x5 index card at the base. Inside it is the corpse of a 4-inch tall humanoid, with a larger head in proportion to the rest of the body. If they look carefully there are teeny-tiny footprints leading away from it. A party will literally spend an hour of real-world time investigating it.

Why?

Because it's novel and interesting and they want to know more.

Why?

Because they're adventurers and adventurers seek out the different. Otherwise they would stay in the safety of the town like everyone else, and wait for the heroes to save the day.

Why?

Because hex after hex of "you enter a wooded hex. Which way to you go?" is dull. It's my job to make sure the sandbox contains toys for the players to play with.

That's why!

Thanks for all the comments! Keep them coming!

Honey, I Shrunk the Party

This is an idea for a hex or grid on the Crowfield map, somewhere in the Dreadwood.

The area was once the domain of a druid named Ælfride. She cast a spell of protection on her lands. Even though she is long gone, the effects of the spell remain.

The effect is quite simple. Any being (and all their gear, etc) entering the land after the spell was cast shrinks to 1/12th their size while in the region with no saving throw allowed. Thus a 6-foot tall fighter, will shrink down to 6 inches. The tricky part, though, is that the change happens gradually over the course of a quarter-mile or so. Because of this, the characters will be unaware that they're shrinking and instead think that they're entering an area filled with giant flora and fauna.

The spell reverses itself when the players leave the hex. The party suffers no ill effects, and is unaware that it happened to them.

Why is this tricky? Because until the players figure it out, it will severely mess with their mapping. The main play map of the area will be 5 miles per hex (or grid, I haven't decided yet). That means it takes about 2 hours to travel from one hex to the next. But while shrunken, 5 miles of the Giant Land will feel link 60 miles to the characters. Instead of taking 2 hours to cross, it will take 24 hours. Assuming that a party only travels for 8 hours a day, they'll spend 3 days in that hex!

Maybe a picture will help:

The hex marked with the dotted triangle is the "giant hex." If the party starts at hex "A" and travels in a straight line to hex "D," the journey will start normal. As they move into the "giant hex" though, I'll say "you notice that the vegetation around you is larger than normal. After another hour it's huge... you are confronted with a dandelion as tell as a man!" As mentioned above, this one hex will take 24 hours of travel time, and I'll present every two hour block as them entering a new hex. In fact, I'll probably use a map like this to represent that one hex:

On the other hand, if the party travels from "A" to "B" to "C" to "D" then the whole trip would only take 6 hours, even though it was "longer."

From a map making perspective, this should really confuse them. "It takes 3 days to travel from A to D."

Of course, any encounters in the hex will be "giant" bees and "giant" rats, etc. From the player's point of view, they are in a weird "Land of the Giants" until they figure it out.

It's just an idea.

Follow up: The next post contains my responses to some comments that I've received about this post.

Creatures of Crowfield: Pseudo-Carrion

This week I thought I would do another creature of Crowfield. This time, though, I'm going to go through the process step by step.

Step 1: Animal Encounter Columns

"Encounter Columns" is what Traveller calls an encounter table. This is the table that the referee rolls on when a random animal encounter is needed. (By default, there is a 1:3 chance per day in the wilderness that an animal encounter will occur).

Referees have a choice of using a less detailed 1d6 table, or a more detailed 2d6 table. Because the Crowfield region is comprised of only 3 biomes (the Firelands, Dreadwood, and Tundra), I decided to go with the 2d6 encounter column format for each. We're still working on the Firelands. Here's what that looks like:

Roll	Result
2	Scavenger (this will probably be the Sh'hemu)
3	Omnivore
4	Scavenger
5	Omnivore
6	Herbivore
7	Herbivore
8	Herbivore
9	Carnivore
10	Event
11	Carnivore
12	Carnivore

This week, let's roll up one of the carnivore slots. I won't know which slot it is until I make them all, as I plan to put the strongest one in the #12 spot and the weakest one in the #9 spot. Likewise, I might end up moving the sh'hemu from #2 to #4 depending what other scavenger I roll up.

Step 2: Animal Type

We know that the creature is a carnivore. This is what the book tells us about carnivores:

Animals which prey on other animals by attacking and killing them in the face of resistance are classed as carnivores. Carnivores are of five basic types: pouncers, chasers, trappers, sirens, and killers.

So now we have to determine which of those 5 sub-types this creature will be. This is determined by a 2d6 roll on the "Animal Types" table. Because the Firelands are a desert, the Terrain Type table tells us that we apply -3 modifier to this roll. I roll a 3 - 3 = 0. The table tells me that a 0 on the carnivore column is a "siren", and that only 1 is encountered at a time.

Siren: Distinct from the trapper, which creates a trap for its prey, a siren also creates a lure to draw prey to the trap. The trap is treated in much the same manner as that of the trapper, but the lure entails additional consideration. In most cases, the lure will be specific to some animal, but will be unnoticed by humans. In rare cases (throw 11+), the lure will be universal, perhaps a smell or scent, or a mirage or beautiful configuration, which will attract characters into a vulnerable position. Very rarely, the lure will be psionic in nature. Typical terran sirens are the angler fish (its mouth is the trap) and the Venus fly trap.

Ok, so we're dealing with a creature like a venus fly trap? Interesting. Thinking about what the lure could be, I think that it could be made to attract sh'hemu and look like carrion or maybe it could look like a watering hole and end up being something like the sarlacc of Tatooine. I like both of these concepts. Let's make that 2D roll to see if the lure is universal. I rolled an 8, so the lure is specific to the sh'hemu--a fake dead thing is what we're dealing with!

Note: It turns out that I misread the Terrain Type table. The animal type roll was supposed have a +3 instead of a -3. That would make the encounter 1 "pouncer" instead of 1 siren, but I'm attached to siren idea, so I'm going to go forward with it. Maybe I'll save the pouncer for another of the carnivore slots.

Step 3: Animal Attributes

Pretty much this step determines if the creature is a fish or a bird. Because fish don't survive in the desert that well, that's not even a possibility on the table.

The table includes a lot of modifiers to use depending on the planet's size and atmosphere. Because this planet is earthlike, none of those apply. If I roll a 10 or better, this creature can fly, otherwise it's earthbound like the rest of us. I'm hoping for less than a 10, because I can't envision a flying corpse. I roll a 7. No wings here.

Step 4: Animal Size

The next step is to decide how big our fake corpse is. Size also determines its hits (hit dice in D&D terms) and how much damage it does when it attacks.

The terrain type table tells us that this roll has a -3. (Yes, it's really a -3 this time, and not a +3.)

I roll a 5 - 3 = 2. The table tells us that the fake corpse weighs 6 kilograms. That's about 13 pounds. Some googling tells me that's about the size of a large Virginia Opossum. I like that, because the "playing possum" thing works well for a fake corpse. But how is this going to be a threat to a pack of sh'hemu?

The table also tells me that, in Traveller terms, the creature can take 1D/2D hits. That's not a lot. The average man can take 4D/2D. In D&D terms, I think I'm going to call that ½ HD.

The Traveller wounds inflicted would be "-1D". I'm going to translate that as -1, and 1d6-1 is mathematically equivalent to 1d4, so that's the answer.

Step 5: Weaponry

The table says carnivores get a +8 to this roll. Rolling 10 + 8 = 18, "as pike." Hmm... Something stabby that can attack at a distance. Makes me think of a stinger, like a scorpion's tail. Technically speaking, "stinger" has its own entry on the table, and I didn't roll it. But these names really fit around Traveller's combat tables, where different armor has different effectiveness against different weapons, so we're just using this for inspiration anyway. In fact the book even says that "Weapon types should always be considered to be descriptive of result rather than of strict process."

Okay. I'm picturing something scorpion-like that burrows into the sand leaving something carrion-like on the surface. When a sh-hemu gets close, it attacks with a stinger. Maybe.

Step 6: Armor

Another 2d6 roll, this time with a -1 because it's a carnivore. I roll 11 - 1 = 10. The result is "jack", which is Traveller's equivalent of leather armor. That's Armor Class 12 in D&D terms. I'll give it another +1 due to its small size, so the final AC is 13.

Step 7: Animal Speed

In Traveller Animal speed is measured as a "multiplier times ordinary speed." So a speed of 2 means twice as fast as a normal person.

For a siren, we roll 1d6-4, treating any result less than 0 as a 0. I roll a 2 - 4 = -2, means 0.

That's fine and dandy for Traveller, but for D&D we're going to add a bit more fine tuning. A siren with a speed of 0 makes perfect sense (the Venus flytrap and the sarlacc from Star Wars, for example.) But in D&D it also makes sense to have a creature that moves slower than the normal person, and that's not possible interpreting the results according to the book. I'm going to use this table I just made up to determine speed:

Roll	Traveller Speed	D&D Speed	D&D Equivalent
1	1	12	Normal man
0	1	9	Lightly encumbered man
-1	1	6	Encumbered man
-2	1	3	Heavily encumbered man
-3	1	1	???
-4	1	0	a rock

Step 8: Animal Behavior

The next step determines how a creature will behave when the party encounters it. Will it attack, flee, or wait?

In normal Traveller play, when the encounter starts the GM would roll to see if it attacks. If it doesn't attack, the GM would then roll to see if it flees. If it doesn't flee, it just waits. In the case of herbivores, you would first check to see if it flees, then check to see if it attacks.

That's too much dice rolling for me, so I use math to turn that into a single d20 roll.

Being a "siren," changes things up, though. A siren will automatically attack if it surprises its victim.

As for fleeing, the table says to roll 1d6+3. I roll 4 + 3 = 7.

So if the fake carrion has surprise, it attacks. If it doesn't, there's a 58% chance it will run away, otherwise it will lay in wait. "Never drop the con," I guess.

Step 9: Common Sense

The checklist actually says "Apply common sense as required." Nice. Let's do that.

Ok--we have this slow, small creature that preys on a larger, faster creature. It relies on surprise, but it doesn't do enough damage to kill the creature outright. How does that work? Well, the description listed the venus fly trap as an example. It also references the "trapper" class of carnivores, which lists the spider as an example. Spiders are venomous and cast webs to entrap their prey. The Albany pitcher plant allows its prey to fall into sticky digestive juices from which it cannot escape. That gives me some ideas.

I had originally given it a +1 bonus to armor class because of its size, but I'm going to say that its slow speed cancels that out.

Step 10: The Final Result

Pseudo-Carrion

Armor Class	12
Hit Dice	½
Move	90' (30')
Attacks	Tubule
Damage	1d4
Number Appearing	1
Save
Morale	8
Treasure	special
Intelligence	Animal (2)
Alignment	Neutral
Monster Type	Normal Animal
Terrain	Desert
% in Lair	n/a
Special Attacks	Glue Spray, Blood Drain
Special Defenses	Nil
Magic Resistance	Normal
Size	S (13 pounds)

Reaction (1d10):

Roll	Reaction
automatic	Attacks
1 - 6	Flees
7 - 10	Waits

The pseudo-carrion is a solitary creature that lives in the desert. It is about the size of an American Opossum, but resemble a large, mangy, red and white house cat, with a hairless tail.

The pseudo-carrion mainly feeds upon sh'hemu, but will gladly eat anything that falls into its trap. It "hunts" by playing dead, and emitting the stench of decaying flesh. The red blotches of fur on its body can easily be mistaken for blood. When a sh'hemu (or other prey) touches the seemingly lifeless body, the pseudo-carrion springs to life, spraying a glue-like mist in all directions. Anything within ten feet of the beast will be covered in the glue unless they make a Dex save at -2. The glue sticks instantly, rendering those affected effectively immobile.

The round after releasing the glue, the pseudo-carrion will leisurely walk to the nearest glued victim (it's immune to its own glue) and attack with its tail. The tail is a rigid tubule that will will do 1d4 hits on a successful attack. The tubule is then left in the victim, and automatically drains 1 hit of blood from the victim each round. The creature will withdraw the tubule after 2d4 rounds and waddle away, bloated.

Victims are allowed a STR save every round to free themselves from the glue. Friends can assist if they can lasso the victim with a rope or something.

There's a 10% chance that the pseudo-carrion will inject its victim with eggs during the attack. Victims with eggs will feel fine for a week, then start to suffer from weakness (-1 Str per day) for 3d6 days, at which time the baby pseudo-carrion will erupt from the victims flesh doing 3d6 damage. A Cure Disease spell will remove the eggs.

Treasure: As animals, pseudo-carrion care nothing for things that humans value. Alchemists and wizards, however, will pay 150 gold for a full glue-gland from a pseudo-carrion. A full gland is one that has not produced a glue mist in the last 24 hours. Given their skittish nature, the only way to obtain one is to kill the pseudo-carrion in a single blow before it has time to react. Skilled pseudo-carrion hunters use ranged weapons for this. Even then, there is a 30% chance that the blow will damage the gland.

Food value: Pseudo-carrion are edible, but not desirable due to their death-stench. A single pseudo-carrion produces about 2 pounds of raw, foul-smelling meat.

Conclusion

That's it. I like the process. If you like it, you can find it in Book 3: Worlds and Adventures of the original "LBB" edition of Traveller.

Does anyone else know of any "monster maker" systems? I'd love to look at more of them. I wonder if there was ever one in Dragon magazine or something.

Creatures of Crowfield: The Sh'hemu

Truth be known, the Crowfield campaign is an attempt to have a fantasy game that emulates the sci-fi classic Traveller RPG. That is why the focus is on sand-box exploration, mercantile trade, and human-centric play.

One of the neat things about original Traveller is that it had a method of generating alien animals that an explorer might encounter when visiting a new planet. This was a clever solution to a problem: if a player might visit a hundred worlds, how do you have unique encounters on each planet without having a "monster manual" that contains thousands of unique beasts? You have tables that generates the beats for each world.

I decided to try to translate that table for my use. Below is the first creature that I rolled up. Let me know what you think.

Sh'hemu

Armor Class	11
Hit Dice	2
Move	120' (40')
Attacks	Hooves
Damage	1d6
Number Appearing	1d6
Morale	7
Treasure Type	special
Intelligence	Animal (2)
Alignment	Neutral
Monster Type	Normal Animal
Terrain	Desert
% in Lair	n/a
Special Attacks	Nil
Special Defenses	25% chance of Fear Aura
Magic Resistance	Normal
Size	M (220 pounds)

Reaction (1d20):

Roll	Reaction
1 - 17	Attacks
18 - 19	Flees
20	Waits

Sh'hemu (singular & plural) vaguely resemble small, brown and tan zebras with sharp teeth for rending flesh off of carrion. They are smaller than a zebra, and are approximately the same size as a North American white-tail deer.

Sh'hemu are carnivores, but they only hunt when truly desperate. They prefer to come across recently killed animals (or humans!), and use their numbers to scare off the original predator.  When more than 1 is encountered, they always attack in groups of 2 or 3 against any given foe.

As indicated, Sh'hemu aren't hunters. While aggressive, they only attack to protect themselves and their meal. They will stop attacking when their opponents retreat. They will not pursue fleeing opponents.

There's a 20% chance that any given pack contains a sh'hemu that emits a fear aura. Any creature that comes within 60' of such a Sh'hemu must make a saving throw or flee in the opposite direction at its max speed for 1d10 rounds. Sh'hemu are immune to the fear aura of other sh'hemu.

Treasure: Sh'hemu don't have treasure in the traditional sense, but a pelt is worth 2d6 × 10 gold coins. If the party takes special precautions during the fight, then a pelt can fetch 3d6 × 10 gold coins instead.  Special precautions means that every character attacking a given sh'hemu must accept a -4 on their attack roll and a -1 on their damage roll. It takes 2d6 × 10 minutes to skin a sh'hemu, potentially exposing the party to further random encounters.

Food value: Sh'hemu meat is potentially toxic to humans. Eating cooked sh'hemu meat requires a saving throw vs Poison, or the character will suffer from delirium (-1d6 to Intelligence and Wisdom). Characters who fail the saving throw are allowed a new one each day to see if the toxins have run their course. Recovery doesn't begin until then. Lost stat points will recover at 1 point per day.

Warrior, Rogue & Mage Fails the Test

In my last post you can see that I'm trying to decide which game I'm going to use for my upcoming Crowfield campaign. I had set my sights on Warrior, Rogue & Mage (WR&M for short). Unlike the other systems on the list, I wasn't really all that familiar with this one. I had read the rules and was impressed, but sometimes the way a game reads and the way it plays are very different. I mentioned to James that I wanted to run a quick combat, and he volunteered. I told him he would be fighting a skeleton.

Making the Character

The first step was for James to make a quick character. Because this was just intended for a test and not for long term campaign, I told him not to think about it too hard. This is what he came up with:

Nameless Character

Warrior 6
Rogue 2
Mage 2

Hit Points: 12
Fate Points: 2
Mana Points: 4
Base Defense: 8

Skills: Athletics, Awareness, Sword
Talent: Tough As Nails

Every character starts out with 250 silver. I told James that I got the impression that armor was very important in the game. He took my advice and bought "heavy plate", which was the best armor he could afford. On top of that he added a large shield and a sword. Together they were 140 silver, meaning he would still have another 110 to spend on normal adventuring gear if we were playing a campaign.

This seems like a reasonable starting character.

As we said before, his base defense was 8. The armor adds +7 to his effective defense, and the shield adds another +2 . This means his effective defense was 8 + 7 + 2 = 17. Yowza!

The armor also gives an armor penalty of 9, but that only applies to spell casters. We can ignore that.

I pulled the stats for the skeleton straight from the book. I used the variant with rusted armor, just to add to the challenge.

The Combatants

Stat	Character	Skeleton
Warrior	6	3
Rogue	2	3
Mage	2	0
Hit Points	12	9
Fate Points	2	0
Mana Points	4	0
Defense	17	8
Skills	Athletics, Awareness, Sword	None
Talent	Tough As Nails	Half damage except from blunt weapons or axes

The Fight

Step 1: Initiative

There was no roleplay to lead up to this, so initiative would be determined by a die roll.

The skeleton rolled a 6! WR&M uses exploding dice, so it gets to roll again. The second roll was a 3. 6 + 3 = 9.

James has the Awareness skill, so he gets a +2. Still, he needs the dice to explode to beat the skeleton. He rolled a 3. 3 + 2 = 5.

The skeleton gets the jump on the character and gets to go first.

Round 1 (Skeleton)

The skeleton goes first. Right away I see that there's going to be an issue. The character's effective defense is 17. That means the skeleton needs to roll 17 or better to hit the character.

Let me repeat that: The skeleton needs to roll 17 or better on a d6 to hit the character.

I'm exaggerating a little. The skeleton has a Warrior rank of 3. That means +3 to the roll. So the actual d6 roll only needs to be a 14 or better. The only way for that to happen is if the skeleton rolls a 6, then rolls a 6 for the second roll, then rolls 2 or better on the third roll. Anydice.com tells me that there is an approximate 2.3% chance of this happening. This means that the skeleton will hit the character about once every 43 rounds.

Anyway, I roll the dice. It's a 4 (rolled) + 3 (warrior) = 7. It missed. No surprise.

Round 1 (Character)

The skeleton's defense is 8. Which means that the character needs to roll a 8 or better on a d6. But the character has a Warrior of 6, plus he's using his sword and has the sword skill, so he gets another +2.

Another problem.

The character needs to roll 1d6 + 8 and get an 8 or better. I don't need anydice.com to figure this one out: the character will never miss. WR&M doesn't even have a "automatically miss on a '1'" rule.

James gets a 5 (rolled) + 6 (Warrior) + 2 (sword skill) = 13. He hits. No surprise.

He rolled another 5 for damage, but it's reduced to 2 because of the skeleton's talent. The skeleton now has 7 hit points remaining.

Conclusion

We didn't finish the fight.

We didn't see the point. The character will never miss, and the skeleton will almost never hit. Dealing an average of 2 hp per round, the character will finish off the skeleton in about 4 rounds. I guess that means that there's a 10% or so chance that the character might have been hit at some point in the combat, but it wasn't enough risk to make things interesting.

The exercise wasn't a waste of time. It showed me that Warrior, Rogue & Mage will not be the game I use for the next campaign. I will look over the rules some more in case I made a mistake somewhere, in which case I'll give it another try.

If you're familiar with WR&M, leave a comment or drop me a line to let me know what I could have done to make it better. For now, though, I think I'm going to go with a D&D retroclone of some sort.

Help Me with My Next Campaign (Part 4): The Rules

First of all, thanks for all the feedback from last week's post. Even though there was only one message posted, I received several other responses. Universally (except for James), everyone thinks we should go with the "all three terrains" option, so that's what I'll do!

This week's quandary is the rules. Games needs rules, so I need to start deciding the game system that I'm going to use for this campaign.

The first step is to identify what I want in a game:

• Free-ish: I want this campaign to be accessible to new players, and I don't want them to go out and spend money on a game. They should be able to freely and legally download enough of the rules to play. It doesn't have to be the full ruleset, just enough for them to have access to the information that they would need during play. That means, for example, that GURPS would be acceptable because it has a free version (GURPS Lite) that players can download for free.
• Fantasy: This is a fantasy game, so I want the rules to have baked-in support for things like magic.
• Resource Management: In my mind, resource management is a huge part of a game about exploration. The players get to make meaningful choices about how much food and other supplies to take with them, and how many hirelings to hire.
• Familiarity: I want to know the rules. It's so much easier to run a game when you're not trying to learn it at the same time.
• Short: I don't want to wade through 400 pages of rules.
• Fast character creation: Because I'm encouraging new players, and the open table, and I expect character mortality, I want the process of making a new character to be quick and easy.
• Simple game play: I don't want a tabletop miniatures tactical battle game.

So I considered a lot of rules, and these are the ones that made it to the "short list."

Game	Notes
Basic Fantasy	Kind of a clone of basic D&D but with some more modern sensibilities. Doesn't have alignment, and uses the stupid saving throw categories from the original game. At least it does ascending armor class.
Legends of the Ancient World	This is a sharp little game. It's kind of like a very stripped down version of The Fantasy Trip. One down side is that it's actually written for solo "choose you own adventure" type books, and not tabletop role-playing, but I think it could work. It also doesn't include travels rules, but I think those will be easy enough to write.
Tunnels & Trolls	While it's not a free game, there is a stripped down free version, and the PDF of the earlier versions are pretty cheap (1st Edition, 4th, and 5th).
TunnelQuest	Another sharp little game. This was my introduction to "only the players roll in combat." The magic system is a little wonky, but other than that, I like it.
Warrior, Rogue & Mage	A nice little rules light game that runs with a concept that I've been thinking about (though it did it years before I thought about it).
White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game	Another clone of OD&D. Nice and simple.

How about it? Do any of these make sense? Should I use my own game instead? Is there another one that I haven't thought of?

Help Me with My Next Campaign (Part 3): The Setting

For dramatic purposes, I want settlements to be few and far between. This forces the player characters to travel through "untamed wilderness" between towns. On Earth, this is a very unrealistic situation as people tend to clump together and spread out, but not too far from the nearest settlement. I came up with one obvious solution, with three different variations:

1. The Firelands: The world is a great barren desert, and settlements can only occur at oases. Most oases will have only a little water and thus only be able to support a small village. A few might be large enough to to support cities. In this world, players would be able to put together a caravan of camels to carry goods from one oasis to the next.
2. Tundra: Just like #1, but the world is a frozen wasteland. Frost and snow replace sand and dust. Instead of desert oases, we would have "geotherms"--spots where hot springs warm up the ground enough to grow crops and raise livestock. The camels would be replaced with reindeer or horses.
3. The Dreadwood: Just like #1, except the desert is replaced by a wild untamed forest. The forest itself is alive, and actively seeks to destroy settlements. Some say that just standing in place too long will cause the forest to entrap and envelop you in fast growing vines. The oases are replaced by glades. Instead of caravans of camels, the players would have a mule train.
4. Okeanos: Just like #1, except the desert is replaced by the sea, and oases are replaced by islands. Instead of caravans of camels, they players would have a ship. One downfall about this is that I would need some sort of ship combat rules, and I've never really seen any that I love.

I spoke to James about this and he really liked the Firelands better than any of the other options. As I was writing this, though, it occurred to me that There's really no need to just pick one. In fact if we look at the map of my gaming world, we can see that there's spots where these different areas meet:

(The green is the Dreadwood, the white is the Tundra, the tan/yellow is the Firelands, while the green dots in the Great Sea make up the archipelago of Okeanos.)

If I put it in the area with the red circle, players can cross between Firelands, Tundra and Dreadwood depending which way they go.

So what do you think? All three? Just one? If so, which one?