Let's Crawl! New Barrens, Part 2; Syncretization of Hexcrawl Methodologies

I remembered what I called this campaign two years ago! The New Moon Barrens, on account on of the new moon warping into existence over the land and the barren landscape it created its aftermath. 

It originally started as a challenge or experiment to take all the material I'd written and cram it all into a 50 by 50-mile map. I've written a lot more since then so that's a bit moot and so I'm going back to make something original again if my addled brain can still do that.

 This post was originally going to be about the regions of the map, but I realized I have so many different ideas for organizing a hex crawl, I'll have to standardize it first. We'll start by analyzing a few approaches I like, looking at how I've used them in the past and then looking at some other approaches to try to jazz things up. 

Two great posts for designing random encounter tables are here at Pencils and Paper and a tweaked version of here, from Necropraxis. 

I love Pencils and Paper's approach for its simplicity and regionality. A dragon should appear on every 2, it's in the damn name. If this were Blades in the Dark, I'd put a blade at every two and some dark on every 12. If I had a good dungeon generator, I put one on of those every 12 but alas I can't design them any way but bespoke, so wizards will more than do. Gives me and excuse to put a laughably evil wizard somewhere. 

Its regionality is also fantastic. Having a separate set of 4 for every region is fun and might bring an area to life more or reward players who think about that sort of thing. I think the results should be more deadly or dangerous in order to do that. Perhaps a three should the Fairy Wolf King of the southern forested region or at least one of his lieutenants. A four, five or six could be other important movers and shakers in that region, just less powerful of a faction/subfaction.  

7 and 8 will be "Global" threats e.g. types of creatures I want found everywhere. For this game it will probably be the dreadful eelmen and degenerate elves seeking to reclaim their home from an ancient past. 

9 and 10 will be Themes and Conflicts. I like a certain kind of gonzo in my games and paradoxically at the same time a certain kind of fairy tale vibe. Its a world where laser pistols and the power of True Love go hand in hand. Themes might be the sacred three traits magic cannot effect, True Love, Innocence and Justice. They might be simple memorials to such a time or NPCs who embody those traits. Knights on a quest might show up here for any of the three reasons. The gonzo might be Men Out of Time, with laser swords and pilot suits, seeking a crashed space plane or a dark priest fighting off some other worldly tentacled beast. Honestly knights can go there too. Knight is a concept not married to any one time or genre. 

Conflicts might be more like classic fables of old. Two wills in contest the PCs have the chance to effect. Great giants playing chess, but you cannot pass unless you help one of them. A talking oak and a field of wheat in argument about the wind. A tiger having crashed a delegation of deliberating prairie dogs, hungry. These will be the same as "Scenes" discussed later. 

Next, lets investigate the infamous engine of the OSR, the Overloaded Encounter Table. 

Despite having used it in a limited fashion in games for dungeons, which I think it lends itself quite well to, I have not had much success with it for hex crawling. I dislike fatigue as a random component (it calls to mind the infamous rest run you must take in a dungeon every 6 turns from 1974 D&D) due to the non-random nature of acquiring fatigue. It should be the result of player choice, such as a forced march or a desperate run. However, I think there are other ways to present players with choices that involve the loss of rations or hit points. Swarms of hungry insects, scavenging dinosaurs or one very fat persistent bear could result in this dichotomy (fight the bear for the sandwiches or just let him have his fill). Or perhaps the result of fatigue presents another choice, representing some thickening of terrain or increase in its difficulty. A briar patch gets added to the hex. Go through it (1 harm) or go around quickly to keep pace (+1 fatigue) or better yet, go around it at a normal pace and add +1 day to the hex (-1 Supply and a "win" for the DM and the use of the encounter table).

I think Locality and Expiration by themselves work quite well but together step on each other toes. Stretching my brain, I could come up with 5 or 6 changing localities such as tides, wind direction or the like. Maybe the song the singing rock plays? The mood the lone storm giant mentally projects with its giant mind? Which goblin tribe currently has the ire of the mad beholder who they play pranks on? With some prep I can make good use of this on a hex-by-hex basis but Expiration could simply be moved to the secondary table under Locality. For example: on 1 in 6 when you roll Locality, the locality expires.

Hex Kings

I know what I'll do to replace Expiration: add what are called Hex Kings. A Hex King is a big, bad nasty piece of work encounter. Usually, an apex predator like a dragon or the like, it's a creature or small faction that is the dominant force in the (usually) geographic region, and who makes their presence known clearly by leaving spoor everywhere. When you roll a 1 on the overloaded encounter die, you roll 1d6 again and consult the Spoor Table to see how close you are to bumping into King Kong or the equivalent.

The tracks and traces are inspired by this underappreciated post from The Retired Adventurer. I think I'll make a handout for the players to track the regional and global encounters this way. 

Hex Spoor Table 

1. The Hex King itself. Roll for disposition, distance and surprise if you like. 

2. A Lair. Determine however you like whether the monster(s) is here, there or anywhere. I like Classic D&Ds percent chance of finding a sleeping dragon in a lair. A d100 is also a good candidate here for something more granular. Increase or decrease the odds if the monsters is nocturnal, diurnal or crepuscular if you use six watches like I do (dawn, day x2. dusk, night x2). A big bad like this may have several lairs, some long since abandoned. 

3.  Fresh Spoor. The King is close. A classic example is a destroyed campsite, bodies torn apart in the manner of the monster's choosing. Could also be left over meals, nests or feces. 

4. Tracks. Can follow or avoid. 

5-6. Traces. Evidence the thing is nearby with elements unique to each encounter. 

This is sorta where we hit out first road bump. Dragons, should they be allowed to show up as both encounters and as hex kings? With a little math, dragons are showing up 1/216 + 1/36 times or a little over 3% of the time. This seems about correct. Besides some Hex Kings will not be dragons. 

Second road bump, and our first opportunity to syncretize, is do non-hex king random encounters not have traces, tracks or spore? Obviously in a real world they must, so it seems like the answer is: when you roll a 1 on the Overloaded Encounter Die, determine the encounter (a la Papers and Pencils) and then roll on the Hex Spoor Table to add the spice. It will require some interesting considerations (what does a Reoccurring NPC's lair look like?) but I live for the improv and hopefully it will encourage some exploration and hex filling as well, especially when we consider some other interesting sources. 

Other Interesting Sources 

Arnold K did indeed fix hex crawls. 

I loved the granularity of The Alexandrian's Hexcrawl essay and it was my primary source for the better part of two years while I ran Ghost Town Gunfight, my 5e western-medieval mashup. But it (or perhaps I) left something to be desired as I fumbled though each hex, hiding the route from players and fiddling around deciding distances based on overland move speed. Perhaps with more practice and speed I could get it down but I think its granularity is a strike against it.  

I loved being able to roll a fist full of d12s and know the future of their next day of travel. I loved checking for a second encounter after the first was experienced and couple with the old school disposition rules, one of the coolest fights I ever had, organically appeared. Goblins (neutral to the party) meeting them players at the same time I rolled rainy weather and then triggered a second encounter in the form of a mated pair of thunderbirds (hostile) led to an awesome fight of watching how the native goblins fought off the birds and the players emulating and later befriending them. They were even gifted a thunderbird feather after the fight as a kind of magic wand. It was totally and unplanned and the oracular nature of the dice was fruitful. 

But the tracking of their adventure mile by mile was tedious and distracting for me. 

The Goblin Punch hex crawling rules track the days in the hex rather than the miles in the party so to speak. Rather than seeing how many hexes players could blow though in a single day, hexes take a number of days to enter. It also encourages hirelings, my favorite aspect of the game in order to any serious kind of off the trail exploration. His hex synthesis also encourages the kind of kismet you get from my earlier example.

However, it's not clear to me when the hex synthesis is supposed to be done, seeing as its to compliment already known keyed hexes, what he calls Hex Content. If random encounters are determined at the table and key hexes are already finished prep, I intend to use them as soft prep first and to determine them at the table second. While the map should theoretically already be completely keyed (it is not lol) these synthesized compliments can be done in chunks around where the players are exploring as they go there. Its more economical prep. 

In the same way 1974 D&D encourages you to fill your dungeons with what you want in them first and then randomly determine them second, I'll do the same with the map. First a la The Alexandrian, I'll try to fill in as many hexes as I can, drawing on sci-fi and fantasy for inspiration. From there we can fill and supplement hexes with the Goblin Punch rules. 

Final Notes 

I have two final changes to the Overloaded Encounter Die: Percept and Advantage. 

Percept has been subsumed by the Spoor Table, where encounters get some kind of clue already, save for 1 in 6 where the creature bumps into them. So here instead I think I'll put something like Scene or Denizen. A humble encounter akin to a fable or folk tale, it gives chatty charismatic character an excuse to talk to locals, collect rumors and go on "mini-quests". These encounters might include talking trees or animals, cantankerous goblins, grumpy trolls and mischievous sprites. Anything to make the woods and plains they'll be travelling a bit more fantastic, not unlike Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions or something from The Hobbit. These would be more akin to Goblin Punch's Dynamic Sites, soft encounters.

<Tangent. Sometimes I fear my players loves these scenes more than they do dungeons or adventuring. My favorite use of this was a taking crow, thirsty and trying to fill up a water filled vase with stones from the Aesop fable the Crow and the Pitcher. Should the players help him out, he'll give them news with a bird's eye view. Should they spurn him, he'll do the same, for the bandits up the road. A fun little thing.>

Finally, Advantage. This one has always eluded me. In a dungeon it makes sense. Empty rooms are important to the ecology of any dungeon expedition (I always aim for about 50% monster and treasure free rooms per dungeon). But in the wilderness? The abstraction is that you move quickly from encounter to encounter, skipping the empty in between, for what?  Just to be given more nothing? Players already rest at night. However, I still vibe with a "nothing happens" result. Like Miyazaki's Ma, silence in between adventuring is ok. Instead, I think this time will be for NPCs to prompt the PCs for conversation, question or story or make an extended morale check. If it comes up during a rest watch, then perhaps it'll be an opportunity to increase morale, especially if libations are poured. Maybe something out of Dolmenwood's campfire mechanic. Or a good time for a fight to break out, something to be stolen or fingers to be pointed. I do love conflict. 

In conclusion I think our Procedure is going to look roughly like this:

Hex Crawl Procedure

1. Encounter. Roll 2d6 for the encounter at the same time as 1d6 for the Spoor. 

2. Setback. Terrain determines a setback that forces choice between harm or hunger. Should be linked to a dynamic or "soft" site

3. Hex King. Roll on the Spoor Table. 

4. Locality. Bespoke per region. Expires on a 1 in 6. 

5. Scene or Dynamic Site. A harmless excuse to talk to locals, bother fey or gather rumors. 

6. Ma. Time between claps. Or NPC interaction, questions or conflicts. Check hireling morale

Encounter Table

2. Dragon

3. Regional, Powerful Faction

4. Regional, Faction 1

5. Regional, Faction 2

6. Regional, Faction 3

7. [Recurring NPC]

8. Global 

9. Global 

10. Theme or Conflict 

11. Story or Aftermath

12. Wizard