Hexfill update: the Hermits
My friend and often-GM Modality kindly made a hex fill tool for me which let me mess around a bit. That gave me a perspective on the odds as they vibe out compared to on paper and my issue is: too many Hermits.
As it stands a Hermit appears about 7% of the time - that is, 1-in-12 times 11-in-12 twice (the odds of rolling a hermit and not another settlement). That meant the wilderness winds up feeling stuffed full of hermits, which won't do at all. Instead, I'm adding another exception to the rule: a Hermit will only live by a natural feature (4-in-12 chance on the L1 dice) but never by a Weird natural feature (7-in-12 on the L2 dice, as t results on that die means a Hermit will not live there).
A Hermit enjoys having something scenic to look at but won't live in the same hex as some obvious weird supernatural bullshit. That's a magnet for trouble.
This changes the odds of encountering a Hermit in a hex to something like 1.6%. In the planned hex map, this means there should be about 10 hermits down from about 50, which feels much nicer. Vibes matter for this kind of thing and for me it's always important to play the game a lot "in my head" so to speak to anticipate problems; Past Me is an untrustworthy bastard and I have to stay a step ahead of her.