So you want to make an island

If you run a game for long enough, eventually your party is going to buy a boat. It’s not even their fault—there is only so long that a person can hold off the allure of the sea. If your party starts sailing,  you are going to need an island. Here is a fun little generator you can use to jumpstart your own ideas and create a cool island of your own for a loosely swords-and-sails themed game.

1. Roll nine six-sided dice (three red, three yellow, and three blue) and three twenty-sided dice (one orange, one green, and one purple) on a blank sheet of paper. 

2. Draw a squiggly line around the mass of dice. This is your island's coastline.

3. Draw a circle around each six-sided die and a star around each twenty sided die. Connect all the dice with lines. Make sure there's some good interconnectivity with at least a few loops as well as a dead end or two. 

4. The twenty sided dice comprise the island's "theme." For example, I rolled a thirteen on the orange die, a five on the green die, and another five on the purple die, so my island's theme is “the mollusks make weapons out of talking snakes.” Before moving on, it's a good idea to jot down some adventure ideas for your island. Using the example from before, perhaps the people who live on this island have found a way to make a powerfully explosive pearl by inserting the fangs of the talking snakes into a special breed of mollusk. Perhaps the people of the island might want the party to go to the forbidden lagoon to find more of these mollusks? Perhaps the snakemen are not pleased by these islanders' interference and vow vengeance? Perhaps the secret of the explosive pearl is highly sought after by a local trading company?

Keep the theme in mind when populating your Island. More often than not the randomly generated theme will beg interpretation or explanation. Be creative and have fun with it!

	Orange	Green	Purple
1	The birds	eat	people
2	The shadows	are disguised as	purple goo
3	The native peoples	trade	dreams
4	The flowers	sail with	clamshells
5	The spiders	make weapons out of	talking snakes
6	The small mammals	cultivate	grass
7	The waves	secretly hoard	mushrooms
8	The goat people	play with	nuggets of gold
9	The fish	abhor	medicinal herbs
10	The trees	fuck	music
11	The fruit	ooze	rum
12	The insects	make	large carved rocks
13	The mollusks	worship	glass
14	The caves	control	the body of a dead god
15	The whales	attack	conch shells
16	The wild boars	harvest	a shipwreck
17	The ancient ones	make jewelry out of	buried treasure
18	The volcano	have rituals involving	the stars
19	The sharks	carefully mutilate	skulls
20	The merfolk	hide	an enchanted musket

5. Each of the six sided dice note a different kind of location. The number on the die represents what type of location it is, while the color of the die gives further refinement. For example, a blue die that rolled a 1 would represent simple grassland. Use the theme you obtained in step four to flavour each of your locations with an encounter wherever desired.

1	Easy travelling—it takes 1d6 hours to travel out of this location	red beach yellow lagoon blue grassland
2	Moderate travelling—it takes 1d12 hours to travel out of this location	red swamp yellow Moderate jungle blue Cliffs
3	Hard Travelling—it takes 1d30 hours to travel out of this location	red volcano yellow Tall hills blue Thick jungle
4	Settlement—it takes 1d12 hours to travel out of this location	red Native peoples yellow Settlers from your setting’s main continent blue Weird settlement (merfolk, aliens, people with stars for eyes, fringe religious group, etc.)
5	Landmark—it takes 1d12 hours to travel out of this location	red Natural (unusual rock/coral formation, massive tree, a particularly breathtaking view, etc.) yellow Man-made (a lighthouse, a wall, an orchard, etc) blue Weird (an ancient ring of stones, grove of trees bearing strange gem-like fruit, a gateway made of obsidian, etc.)
6	Challenge—it takes a minimum of 1d12 hours to travel out of this location, but the time can vary depending on the party’s ingenuity.	red Inconvenient (massive flock of birds, maze of coral, tollway guarded by a man gone a bit loopy with isolation) yellow Hazardous (erupting volcano, razor grass, puffs of noxious gas emitted by plantlife, etc.) blue Weird (tall rocks standing at an eerily regular distance that threaten to fall, malevolently intelligent crashing waves, illusory castle, etc.)

6. Each of the twenty sided dice also represent a dungeon location. Stick a dungeon you have handy on your island, make one of your own, or try my dungeon generator. The theme generated in step four may beg for some kind of explanation that you can answer with your dungeon. For example, if you rolled that the spiders abhor dreams, one of your dungeons could be in the webs of the eternally dreaming spider god, explaining why the spiders try to bite anyone who dreams on the island.

Here are some rough dungeon ideas for inspiration:

1	Massive stone head. Speak secret words to open it’s mouth, revealing a set of stairs that descend into the earth.
2	An anachronistic castle
3	The Verdant Palace. An immense mansion made of all organic materials grown seeming spontaneously out of the marshland.
4	A deep pit, feared and reviled by the residents of the island.
5	A lagoon. The very tops of a garden of statues peek out from eerily blue water
6	A cloud of goddam mosquitos surrounding an abandoned throne
7	A grove of strange trees. The stars here are in different positions
8	The caverns where they say old man Pete buried his fortune
9	A darkened valley soaked in permanent thunderstorm
10	A shipwreck left on the side of a tall hill for unknown reasons
11	Inactive volcano
12	A settlement mysteriously abandoned by its residents

7. Roll for how many hours it takes to leave a location and mark it near the location on your map. This represents how many hours travelling it takes for a party with normal encumbrance to move from that point on the map to any other connected point. This may mean that it could take significantly longer to travel in one direction than it does in the other location due to the differences in terrain or available paths. Don’t worry about it too much.

Congratulations! You’re done! You now have a cool little island to play on.

One final, very serious, note. I love pirate games. I love the idea of sword-and-sail. As a kid, Treasure Island was one of my favorite books, and as an adult I love naval adventure stories such as Typee, Moby-Dick, or Mutiny on the Bounty. If you’re lucky, you might even get me to admit that I secretly actually really like the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. As much as I love these things, the unfortunate reality is that the romance of the sword-and-sail adventure hides a dark past of colonialism, racism, and slavery. When you are running a sword-and-sail game, there is a fine line to walk. On one hand, even if you are an amazing GM and your group explicitly gave their consent to play in a game that explores these themes, you may find yourself dangerously close to crossing a line. On the other hand, completely ignoring it and whitewashing the problem is not the solution, either. I guess what I’m saying is be a sensitive, careful, and open GM. Be willing to listen, and game responsibly!