Creative Director
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Once Pathfinder #33 comes along, the distance between Oleg's and civilization will be obvious, since the top row of hexes in the map of #33 includes Restov and a couple of other edge of the map locations for Brevoy.
Restov's closer to 100 miles from Oleg's... but Oleg's is only about 60 miles from the next borderland fort, and about 80 miles from the next village (Nivakta's Crossing). Of course, this is only accounting for southeasterly direction (along the top row of hexes). I suspect Oleg's only about 60–80 miles away from other frontier forts and small villages to the east.
As for how many people live in the Greenbelt... not many. Most are hunters, trappers, explorers, pilgrims, and hermits. There's about 35 or so hunters & trappers and the like, probably a bit more when you get to explorers and the like, and only a handful of actual hermits (3, if I remember correctly). The hunters and trappers aren't really social folk; when they're working in the Greenbelt, they generally stay to themselves and live in tiny one-person camps, and never really in the same place twice since they go out into the woods to check traps and hunt for a week or so and then go back "home" in some sort of tiny village or home to the east (which, remember, is the top of the map).
Really, there's not much of a spot in the Greenbelt where you could put a small community of hunters, since the whole idea of the AP is that the Stolen Lands are wilderness and the PCs are going to be the first to colonize it. Up until that point, any attempt to colonize would have to contend with a lot of monsters and bandits. It's probably a better idea, if you want to put a small community in close distance to the region for PCs to go restock at (and if Oleg's isn't cutting it for this need) to place your small community of hunters and trappers and the like a hex or two east of the top edge of the map.
I thought of simply expanding the size of Oleg's post into very small community. Maybe just a couple more families that were Oleg's friends & feel the way he does about too much civilization.
I would say that, if you want to give a little more of an impression of the people who live in the Greenbelt, make Oleg's a touch livelier. Make sure they've got some ale available, and have them run it as a (very) small tavern when two or more hunters show up at the same time. Not everybody will gather up at the same time for these impromptu 'parties' but there'll probably be three or four in the place at the time and willing to swap rumors with the party.
My idea was to add the small tavern, but also have two small farms nearby that sold a lot of their produce to the trappers. Makes for a small community of people that are trying to get back to basics. That way Oleg's is even more like the Old West stagecoach stop in the middle of nowhere as well as a trappers trading post.
This is the idea that can make the moon radish side quest make more sense. Instead of making soup, the PCs are getting them for seed stock. THAT may actually be worth 250gp.