Seas Of Sand

Backed the Seas of Sand a long while ago, and it showed up a while ago. It is another setting type of book for a huge desert, but a bit unique as it makes the desert even more like a sea. Think this is the author in this reddit thread about the book. While not a complete review by any means, let's explore the book!

260+ pages with the following sections: Mapping, Ports, Sand, Travel, Sandcraft, Crew, Trade, Fauna, Flora, Phenomena, and a load of appendices, including a d100 list of tattoos for the crew of your sandcraft!

Obviously I love maps, so let us delve into how a random sea of sand map is created. All you need is paper, dice, and a few colored pencils. Step 1: drop two dice on the edges of your paper, then 1d4-1 to determine how many points are along that line. Here is my map so far, using 2 d20s as I figured they would roll (and they did!) and my rune d4. 

Then I need to draw my line connecting the two outside dice and the dice dropped in the middle (all of 1 sadly). This line represents the path the WORM travelled in ancient days, forming the first sands. 

Next, we roll 3d6 for the number of islands and I get 12 islands. Dropping 12 d6 on this map randomly and the results is both the location and the relative size of that island. My bone dice are the 3d6, then a scattering of other dice are the islands. Fortunately, I happen to have 12d6 :) Traveller dice! Though I actually prefer the original black dice with red pips I got way back in the Deluxe Box. Still have those dice!

For each die, roll on a d100 table for the shape, and try and keep the relative size in mind, from 1 to 6. While I don't think I did great with the relative sizes, good enough for a trial run!

Next, we determine the type of sand that is the main route along that path. I get salt sand, which is pale grey. So I grab a grey pen and draw that main stream of sand. Sands in this are liquid during the day, and solid at night. The sandcraft actually sail the sands during the day but get locked up at night. Salt sands can carry up to 100 pounds in the solid phase so a small person could cross during the day, and a 1000 pounds at night, so large things can move on the sand at night (but if caught in the day, will sink!)

And I feel bad: I bought a bunch of pens for this RocketBook and they are rapidly drying out! So the yellow pen barely works.

But we have our three sands put out. We can put out some additional rare sands, which can make travel a lot more dangerous. Adding 7 kiln sand (same process as the islands - drop some dice, note the size, and draw shapes from the random shape table). Rinse and repeat for other sands, though I'll just add the kiln sand, but there is also King's sand, Bone sand and Vulcan sand each with its own rules.

Then we add 1d6+2 cities (squares) and 1d6 villages. We have 4 cities and 1 village. The village is placed next to the kiln sands as there is a note that villages want kiln sand: apparently it acts as a barrier against pirates! Then connect the cities to have trade routes, I did not add Kings sand but apparently trade routes will go out of their way to this fabulous sand.

Next up are havens: 1 per trade route (4) + 1d4-1 (1) so 5 havens. And a random table for island names and done! Now that I have this map, I'll probably redraw this in some software to make things a bit more flexible and sharable (and cleaner!). And yes - colored pencils would actually be better to be able to color things in.

Think I'll do that when I get some time: last weekend I was at my niece's wedding (which was really nice, and I got to hold a baby goat!) and next weekend helping my child (okay, at 23 not really a child but hey, he will always be my child no matter how old!) so won't have a lot of time. And work is getting interesting: having to update our access to a few APIs we use to OAuth which is not particularly difficult, but apparently one of our customers was using one of our private keys to check on their orders at WalMart. As they phased out the private key thing a few months ago, I was asked to share the private key with them. I did mention it will no longer work, and I also don't share private keys. Apparently, the previous developers did. Of course, there are all sorts of security issues in the software, so what's a private key? Think I got into trouble as I asked the person asking me to share this info if I could borrow her SSN card as it is sort of similar. She probably did not take that well. We'll see how this plays out, but I am more concerned with proper security than making someone's life easier. And besides: what they want is available from us already using their key to our system! We may have to add more info, but there is no way we should be giving company credentials to 3rd parties!

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