Two of these innovations involved settlements: capitals changed from the old red capital symbol, used regardless of the size of the settlement, to a new system in which the appropriate symbol was simply changed from black to red; and ruins underwent a similar process, now marked by their original symbol shaded in grey instead of black. Both these innovations are rather nice, because they allow existing symbols to convey more information than the old capital and ruins symbols.
I like the capital marking idea, but I don't like getting rid of the nice old capital symbol. One possible solution to this would be to revise the meaning of the symbols, from the current capital, city, town, village, to city, large town, small town, village. The latter set is actually how the original description in the Expert Set describes settlements. Of course, this would require a lot of work, and some of the necessary population statistics are probably not available. The other problem is that I think we are used to the old system...
As for the ruins, I prefer PC3's symbols to the idea of grey shading. PC3 included ruined symbols for villages, towns and cities for the underwater remains of Taymora, and I see no reason why these symbols couldn't be used for normal overland maps too.
My question about the ruins on the Red Steel maps, though is why so many of the settlements seem to be shaded grey! Look at any part of the map, and you will see grey settlements. Are these really all supposed to be ruins, or is it a mistake?
My question about the ruins on the Red Steel maps, though is why so many of the settlements seem to be shaded grey! Look at any part of the map, and you will see grey settlements. Are these really all supposed to be ruins, or is it a mistake?
That was because, in updating the RS setting to the post-WotI time period, TSR scripted a period of chaos for the region, in which the Red Curse spread over the whole region, many bloody wars were fought - resulting in the destruction of a large number of towns and villages.
Personally, I didn't like this approach at all, as the scripting of all those wars seemed to be a last-minute justification for changing the setting ("Okay guys, we need a new map, how do we make it different? I know! Let's have everyone go to war with each other, and plop down a whole bunch of ruins!"). There did not seem to be any rhyme or reason for what they did - random towns and villages were turned into ruins. If they had developed the backstory a bit more, maybe it would have made more sense. On second thought, it could be argued that the post-WotI changes for the Known World worked out in this way, too, but I digress. ;)
If I ran a campaign in the Savage Coast (even post-WotI), I would probably ignore all those changes. Anyhow, all of the above is my $0.02.
Geoff
I would tend to interpret the new ruins in the Red Steel maps as primarily areas in which there are a significant number of derlict and uninhabited buildings. In most cases, the local populace is still probably there, and they are in the process of rebuilding.
I think this is a problem that we will always run into on maps that show some villages, but not all. The adventure in Savage Baronies makes it pretty clear that there are plenty hamlets that did not make it onto the bigger maps. This seems like a reasonable interpretation, just as it is reasonable to assume that areas like Wendar, Karameikos, Thyatis, and Darokin are dotted with small villages that don't make it onto the national maps. When one of these small villages is abandoned, for whatever reason, we don't get ruins on the map unless they are particularly interesting. By placing a village on an 8-mile hex map, that is indicating that it is the most salient feature within the area. In most settled and borderland areas, I think it is reasonable to assume that there are probably a handful of hamlets, a manor house or two, perhaps a shrine, a mine, some small streams, etc. (cf. the roaming village of Kirkuk in GAZ2). I tend to think that most villages and most ruins should not be on maps... not unless there is something particularly notable about them.
As for Thorf's question about symbols: I like the idea of using red symbols for capitals, but I'm not sure whether it's necessarily worth bothering with. I agree with you that PC3's method of differentiating ruins is a fantastic one. I'd love to see ruins delineated this way on any map on which you feel comfortable doing so
I like the capital marking idea, but I don't like getting rid of the nice old capital symbol. One possible solution to this would be to revise the meaning of the symbols, from the current capital, city, town, village, to city, large town, small town, village. The latter set is actually how the original description in the Expert Set describes settlements. Of course, this would require a lot of work, and some of the necessary population statistics are probably not available. The other problem is that I think we are used to the old system...
I've actually started doing this for the symbols myself, for a lot of reasons. For one, the town and village symbols haven't always been consistent as far as their populations/placement (can't think of any specifics offhand, but IIRC, a couple of villages should actually be towns, and of course there is no wahy of differentiating small towns from large towns simply by the map symbol).
To expand the above, I think it would be helpful to be able to better differentiate population sizes from one another by the symbol, not to mention (from a 3rd Edition point of view), it would help to fit things better with that system, with its 7-fold settlement tier (thorp, hamlet, village, small town, large town, city, metropolis). Again, the latter view is probably not at all important to people not using 3E.
Personally, I didn't like this approach at all, as the scripting of all those wars seemed to be a last-minute justification for changing the setting ("Okay guys, we need a new map, how do we make it different? I know! Let's have everyone go to war with each other, and plop down a whole bunch of ruins!"). There did not seem to be any rhyme or reason for what they did - random towns and villages were turned into ruins. If they had developed the backstory a bit more, maybe it would have made more sense. On second thought, it could be argued that the post-WotI changes for the Known World worked out in this way, too, but I digress.
IIRC, at least some of the changes were noted in the entries for the City-States and baronies. They just weren't very easily noted or emphasized. It does sort of fit with the idea behind the Savage Coast- that there are wars fought back and forth all the time- but it seems more likely that the towns were simply attacked and recovering, rather than being completely ruined.