Class: Pine Eaters & Skill Trees

   

Pine Eaters

When the Monarch waged war on the Old Gods, the people of the forest sided with the Old Gods over humanity. The Monarch won victory after victory, and the people of the forest fled deeper into the woods, gnashing their teeth and wailing as the world’s caretakers were slain. The last of the Old Gods fell, and where steel parted divine flesh, corruption and poison flourished. The wood turned rotten and the people of the forest starved. Their descendants’ descendants are the Pine Eaters.

In cities, Pine Eaters carry a bad reputation, due to their stench and affinity for affliction. Their homeland, on the wastes outside the Rot Wood, has an odious decay ground into its fetid soil. The Red Wood is cursed, and those infected with this curse experience symptoms similar to leprosy before their death. Pine Eaters wrap themselves in bandages and carry everything they own on their person, as “grave goods” they frequently joke.

Despite their ill repute, Pine Eaters are highly sought after as mercenaries, trackers, and naturalists. Their harsh up bringing and seeming lack of ethics makes them effective, if undesirable, to keep as company. Groups outside of the Rot Wood seemingly have one master: gold.  

Wood grouse, sketch for “Hunting for wood grouses” (circa 1890) Jozef Chelmonski

Starting Skill: Nature, and 1) Military 2) Tracking 3) Religion 4) Jewelry

A - Resistance, Skill Tree I

B – Skill Tree II

C – Skill Tree III

D – Skill Tree IV, Plague

 

Resistance: The forest’s decay is seeped into your skin. You have resistance to poison, disease, rot, and decay.

 

Plague: Wherever you linger, pestilence follows. Every week you spend in a town or city has a 1-in-6 chance of starting a plague from little seedling that pop out of your sores. Victims’ limbs turn to wood and fall off, leaving villages into sickly forests.

 

Skill Tree: At each template, you gain an advancement on the skill tree. You must have the previous skill on a path to take a new skill. You can take Slug Keeper, Mercenary, or Naturalist to start (you can take these later too). 

From the Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind manga

A.     Slug Keeper. You carry a great slug in a basket (1 slot). It’s like a bloodhound that can digest anything. You would be ostracized if others found out how many you’ve bred in your room.

a.     Combat Training. You can command (free action) your slug to either bite (1d3) or spit sticky goo (DEX save or be stuck in place, melee distance).

                                               i.     Slug Spit. Your slugs can spit at a short range (as sling).

b.     As One. You can store your slug in your stomach (no slots) and vomit it up. If your slug is killed, another will form in your body after 1d6 days.

                                               i.     Gastropodification. Your skin now sweats a thick mucus, and your eyes bulge out of your head slightly. You can eat anything and know what it’s composed of. You can also psychically communicate with your slug.

1.     Grand Slug. You have transformed into a human-sized slug with pseudo-pod like appendages that approximate limbs. You cannot speak but can psychically communicate with any creature. You can spit acid (1d6 & DEX save or be stuck), crawl up walls, and squeeze through narrow passages, but salt burns you like fire.

c.     Two’s company. You can carry around two slugs with you (normally slugs are incredibly jealous of your attention and will cannibalize each other to be the sole recipient).

                                               i.     Three’s a crowd. You can carry around three slugs.

d.     Wurm Whistle. The hole in your cheek makes a noise that is oddly soothing to most insects; they are pacified by its song.

B.    Mercenary. You are skilled with firearms and gain an arquebus (2d6 damage, ranged). Melting lead makes simple bullets.

a.     Steady Aim. You have perfect aim if not under pressure.

                                               i.     Bullseye. Whenever you aim perfectly or Crit, you can maim part of your foes body (e.g. shot out their eye, blow off their sword hand).

b.     Smoke Screen. The pores in your skin can release a dense green smoke cloud. You can do this [template] times per day.

                                               i.     Acid Cloud. While in your smoke, breathing creatures must STR save or begin to choke, taking 1d6 damage. Rudimentary gas masks (e.g. a tightly wrapped scarf) prevent this.

c.     Gold for Blood. For each piece of jewelry you wear worth at least 200 gp, you gain +1 to any roll against your job’s target. If you’re not on a job (i.e. there is no offered reward) or you are doing something tangential to the job, this bonus does not apply. 

                                               i.     Gold for Life. You can sacrifice at least 200 gp worth of jewelry to reroll any dice check you make.

d.     Fight Dirty. The first time you make a Stunt (i.e. mess with your foe without damaging them), you succeed automatically.

C.    Naturalist. When in the wilds, you can spot anything unnatural or out of the ordinary. You leave no trace. Plants you nurture and grow can speak the common tongue.  

a.     Earth’s Calling. When you rest in the wilderness, you can learn a spell related to your environment. You have 1 Magic dice (MD) for casting this spell. (Ex: Volcanoes give you Fireball, woods give you Entangle, etc).

                                               i.     Old Gods Linger. While in a place of unbridled wilderness, you can spend your MD does not deplete.  

b.     Bark skin. Your skin turns wood-like, giving you armor like Chain.

                                               i.     Green Man. You become a plant. You do not eat, instead must spend 1 hour under sunlight each day. Weeds grow on your body, which rapidly kill off other flora if planted.

1.     Corridors of Time. Your ancestors in the future, when man is extinct and green men rule, have revealed to you the corridors of time. Once per adventure, you can restart a scene as if you had rewound time.  

c.     Extant Decay. You keep a jar of diseased dirt. Anything (or anyone) you spread the dirt on will begin to rot in 24 hours. If the jar breaks, you must spend downtime in a place of disease to craft a new one.

                                               i.     Wither. Up to [template] times per day, you can link yourself with another object / creature and rapidly age them (CHA save to resist). You can stop or reverse at any time, but you are linked with the target (so if you de-age they de-age as well). If your target is destroyed or killed, you cannot reverse.  

d.     Venator. When you slay a monster, you can harvest twice as many monster guts (for potions and the like). By tasting the blood of a monstrous creature, you know it and its kin's whereabouts within 5 miles.

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A short digression on skill-trees.

Secretly, every class with “sub-classes” has a skill tree. The approach here is very video-game-y, but players like unlocking things and having options. GLOG already does this by letting you mix and match templates; this is an extension of that, but keeping it constrained to one class. A party of Pine Eaters can look very different despite being all the same class.

Also, one space to interrogate is keeping options hidden until their unlocked. Unlocking “Grand Slug” is way cooler if you (as a player) didn’t know it was coming. 

 

The Ferric Hills

The Ferric Hills

So named after the Ferropine, iron bark trees which grow on rocky knolls. The region has unique weather: electric rain. Charged raindrops electrify anything metallic, discharging large amounts of energy. While this is dangerous for an adventuring party (a full plated knight caught in electric rain would be completely fried), the flora and fauna of the Ferric Hills have adapted.

Ferropine

These grey, iron-bark trees grow in clusters atop barren hillocks at their highest points. They are functionally plant-based lightning rods, and draw lightning to them during electric rain storms. They flower during storms, blossoming beautiful rust-red buds. These flowers fetch quite the price; salves made from ferropine buds can infuse objects with electric potential but harvesting them is hazardous.

When lightning hits a ferropine, it is discharged throughout the tree. Ferropines convert most of this energy into sugar via electrosynthesis. The remaining energy is dissipated into the root system, which blasts residual charge into the rocky soil. Given enough time, this energy will charge a rock sufficiently to cause it to “think” (much like how modern computers are thinking rocks). Thus, a stone elemental is born. The stone elemental will tunnel out of the hill, leaving a vacant cave below the root system. The ferropine roots continue to grow here, often creating impassable mesh-like barriers in the tunnels. Kilkalar birds frequently use these caves as nesting sites, their magnetic feathers allowing them to bypass the root barrier.  

From Scavengers Reign

Kilkalar Birds

Kilkalars are large, flightless birds with a flat, shovel-shaped head and an inverted ribcage that sticks out of its back. They scoop up prey with their head, throwing them into its ribcage, which closes tight and prevents escape. With prey captured, the birds then run into their nest, where they use the electric discharge of ferropine roots to kill and cook their prey. Eating cooked meat has given these birds unusually high intelligence (for a bird at least). Kilkalars have an extremely high tolerance to electricity when grounded.

Their black, magnetic feathers are of meager value in the market but make for reliable compasses (their tips always point north). In large quantities (i.e. a coat of feathers), they repel other ferrous objects, such as ferropine roots. Attempts to domesticate Kilkalar birds as mounts or as prisoner transport systems have largely failed due to the creature’s extreme reliance on ferropines; few farmers want lightning rods in their fields.

HD 2, AC as chain, ATK: Beak 1d3 or Scoop: DEX save to avoid or be trapped in the Kilkalar’s ribcage.

Stone Elemental

Boulders made animate. They wander the Ferric Hills as gentle giants, as they have no natural predators. Watcher lizards frequently ride Stone Elementals, as Elementals are both ideal sunspots and relatively safe transit.

HD 5, AC as plate, ATK: Slam 1d10

 

Voltic Leech

A small parasite, with ochre-white skin. Its circular mouth wriggles into its host’s flesh and attaches. The leech drains the electricity from its host, rapidly de-energizing it. Maybe useful if you’re about to be struck by lightning, but recovering from a voltic leech’s attachment requires long bed rest and plenty of electrolytes. (Blue Gatorade is basically a potion in real life, right?) Commonly found under the feathers of Kilkalar Birds.

 

Watcher Lizards

Appearance as a monitor lizard but with a third eye on their tail. Always watching, always alert, this third eye can see through all types of magic and other mundane forms of trickery, like disguises. (Some scholars argue that Watcher Lizards detect the soul or spirit of a thing, which cannot be disguised. Others retort that this cannot be the case as first, animals don’t have souls and secondly, why would a dumb lizard be granted such a gift?) This tail adaptation is the only reason these lizards survive; Watcher lizards are supremely lazy and love sunbathing.

Their tails can be brewed into potions of True Seeing.

 

Woolwhorl

An ovine with large swirls in its wool. Staring at its swirling patterns for long enough first causes headache, then confusion, then unconsciousness. This effect is amplified in herds or during electric rain storms: the static in the air causes their wool to stand on end, making their patterns larger. When attacked, Woolwhorls will just stand there and wait for their hypnotic swirls to take effect. Their predators frequently turn on each other in confusion, though solo hunters, like the Kilkalar Birds, have no issue.

Due to their disorientating pattern, most farmers prefer regular sheep, though Woolwhorl’s excrement makes for superior fertilizer.   

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Post Script 

There's been a lot of very cool blog posts (here and here) on creating realistic ecosystems / food chains. Having another system with logic to it gives players another puzzle they can figure out and exploit; if the animals can survive in this dangerous landscape, so can they. Additionally, if these creatures have some resource (magnetic feathers, eyeballs for potions), players might pay more attention to the environment. 

I've also just finished watching Scavenger's Reign, which I've liberally stolen from. Highly recommend.  

Hex'd about Hexes: Keep up the pace

 [Reviews of classic hexcrawls in Part 1 and newer hexcrawls in Part 2]

In part 1 of this series, I posited that procedure influences hexcrawl maps and hexcrawl maps should influence procedure. Largely, this is I also mentioned some core questions the hexcrawl should answer. Let's look at those more in depth. 

1. Is the crawl a "mini-game" to get to one location or meant to sustain multiple sessions?

Some adventures have a hexcrawl to fill space between the town and the dungeon where the real meat of the adventure is. The GM might handwave the return trip to town, skipping a repeat hexcrawl. This is a perfectly fine way to use a hexcrawl, but this means the hexcrawl procedure should be light; essentially a question of "which way do you go next?" similar to how you handle moving between rooms in a dungeon crawl. 

If you're planning on using this type of approach, the core design constraint is pacing: How can players get from point A to point B without it being a slog? 

You can calculate pacing pretty easily - if each hex has a 1-in-6 encounter chance, and you typically get through 3-4 encounters in a given session, if you put your dungeon ~15 hexes away from the town, you should be able to get there in a single session (maybe a little closer to let players explore more).[1] Don't let players aimlessly wander, searching for the dungeon. Give them vantage points, a treasure map, monster tracks, etc. 

Most hexcrawls I've discussed thus far are meant to sustain multiple sessions of play. For these, you need to consider navigable paths, vantage points, and key location placement more specifically. 

2. Are hexes being used to solely measure distance or is there play to travel?

Sprawling, world-sized hex maps would be impossible to fully key unless you're a psychopath. For extremely large maps, such as Middle Earth, it's more helpful to use hexes as measures of distance. Procedure-wise, have the players draw a route on the map they wish to take. Calculate time required and resolve encounters as appropriate. At a large enough map, this is functionally a point crawl with added steps. [2] 

Smaller maps allow for more options for travel. While players move from hex to hex, can they Search a hex? Can they hunt? Can they get lost? If so, it's important for there to be visible landmarks to orientate direction. Can these landmarks help travelers see other locales? Here, you must consider if hex information is automatically discovered or only if time is spent via Landmark, Hidden, Secret doctrine. 

3. How many hexes should a group get through in a session of play?

My main complaint about Isle of Dread and Tomb of Annihilation was those adventures had rules that made traveling a single hex arduous (multiple encounter checks per day) and expected players to travel dozens of hexes to reach points of interest. These two design goals are at complete odds with each other. If you want players to traverse dozens of hexes, make resolving travel at the table fast in IRL time. 

On the other end of the spectra, you can slow down hex completion by either using crunchier rules or by creating dense hexes. More travel options (crunchier rules) take longer to resolve at the table and should feel meaningful. If players can search hexes, there should probably be something in every hex, even if it's minor. If players can hunt, food must be important. In short:

The more compact a hexcrawl, the crunchier your rules can be.  

What about making really dense hexes? Well... 

4. How much time should they spend in 1 hex? 

 Again, this is a pacing question and directly relates to the previous one but relates more to what you put in a hex rather than the procedure around it. If you put interesting, interactive things in a hex, the players will spend more time there. If all hexes are the same endless jungle, then players should be able to move quickly through all of them.  

I've already complained about these two modules, but if Isle of Dread or Tomb of Annihilation had every hex fully stocked, I think those adventures would still be a slog because they would take forever because the ultimate goal or "plot" is getting from Dungeon A to Dungeon B. The stuff in between is just slowing you down.[3] 

Conversely, with a compact hexcrawl, you can have every hex stocked. Your players can spend ~30 min poking around a random hex and still feel like they accomplished a lot during a session. Of course, not all hexes are created equally. Dungeons, towns, and faction headquarters will eat up more playtime than the hexes between them. But it might feel less satisfying if the journey wasn't interesting either. 

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I believe the core problem with hexcrawls is the interface between Backend and Runtime as described here. Hexcrawls largely struggle because the map & procedure (backend) do not support good pacing (runtime). I'm an advocate for each hex map having slightly different rules, size of hexes, etc. because that encourages slightly different styles of play, even if it is annoying to mentally switch from 6-mile hexes to 3-mile hexes. Hopefully thinking through these questions and understanding how map design and procedure influence actual play at the table will better support hexcrawl design. 

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[1] This is actually pretty similar design to a 5-room dungeon, though with more freedom of exploration. 

[2] An aside. Really large hex maps require random generation to stock or absurd amounts of prep time. Random generation can be done in play with good random tables but removes intentional map-design. I'm an advocate of Blorb principles and lean on the maximal prep side of things.  

[3] Especially in 5e where resource management isn't a huge issue. If resting overnight completely restores you, then combat encounters with no stakes are an IRL time waste.  

Top 20 INSANE (!!!) Wizard Pranks!!!

Or mostly harmless ways to trick your players using common wizard spells. 

 

1. The wizard flies on a rug, his feet strapped down. After admonishing the party from afar, he will offer to sell the rug to them. The rug is mundane. The wizard has cast “Fly” on himself. 

 

2. The wizard invites you into his study, furnished with a big shag rug. Stepping on the rug causes you to fall into the pit it was concealing. The wizard has cast “Levitate” on all the furniture in the room. 

 

3. The wizard dips a dry brush into a palette as he finishes a painting. He offers to sell it for a discount. The canvas is real but the wizard has cast “Illusion” to mimic a painting. 

 

4. The wizard offers to race the party down an open corridor. The wizard has cast "invisibility" on a door  half-way in the hallway and wants the party to run into it Wil-E-Coyote style. 

 

5. The wizard boasts of his great power. He is level 5 with 8 hit points and is extremely reckless. He carries nothing of value on him and is always prepared for a comedic death.

 

6. You catch the wizard while he casts “Sending.” The recipient of the message? Your hot, single mom. 

 

7. The wizard frequently casts “Scrying” on your party and watches you like TV. He’s developed a parasocial relationship and will humorously quote your iconic phrases back at you when you meet. 

 

8. The wizard has cast “Continual Light” on a silver ball he hangs from the ceiling. He claims it is an ancient relic from the age of disco, (or the age of learning to scholars). By completing a ritualistic dance beneath its beams of light, the wizard can learn “soul” magic. 

 

9. The wizard likes to cast “Enlarge” on himself to always be the tallest in the room, though only by an inch or two. 

 

10. The wizard needs to get rid of a pesky monster/cursed artifact/experiment gone awry. He pretends to be dead and uses “Ventriloquism” to have the object he wants disposed of loudly declare its ill intentions in the hopes the party takes care of it. 

 

11. After bringing chili and beans for the potluck at your house, the wizard casts “Hold portal” on your bathroom door. 

 

12. The wizard sends letters in ancient tongues to the party, only discernible via “Read Languages.” The letters are ads for various language classes. 

 

13. The wizard casts a foul curse of poverty against you. The “curse” is just him casting “Locate Object” to find your treasure and steal it while you’re not looking. 

 

14. As above, but the wizard casts a curse of death. Using the money he stole, he hires a bunch of mercs to gank you. He also buys them cool Nazgul costumes to really sell the curse thing.

 

15. The wizard will offer to swap spellbooks for mutual study. He casts “Erase” to destroy any spells he already knows and then offers to sell you those spells back from his own spellbook. 

 

16. When resting, the wizard insists on casting “Sleep” on himself to take a nap. Its area of effect will hit the party as well. 

 

17. The wizard has an “Unseen servant” or “Mage Hand” that pulls down your pants at the most inconvenient. 

 

18. The wizard challenges you to a game of dodgeball. He will cast “Invisibility” on the ball right before he throws it. 

 

19. The wizard casts “Fly” and soars above the party before pelting them with eggs. He’ll fly with the sun behind him so they can’t see who it is. 

 

20. The wizard bores of these japes and jaunts. He offers to apprentice a party member, for a “small” fee. The prank? Student debt. Alternatively, the wizard treats his apprentice like a graduate student, I think that’s another appropriate sick joke.  

 

 

Spellbooks as Encounters

 It is a commonly held belief that spells are demons, bound in leather & parchment. Wizardly grimoires then are highly valued because they are difficult to obtain & likely unique. (System dependent - scribing is a long held tradition amongst wizards. However, both Knave 2e & Cairn 2e, my OSR touchstones, are explicit that spells cannot be copied). 

Most magic advancement comes from stealing a spellbook from a deceased wizard, either long dead or recently murdered. But what if we cut out the middleman and went straight to the source? 

Demons as Spellbooks as Encounters

Wizards seeking unique spells must seek demons to either slay or barter with. A slain demon will transform into memetic information and fly into a binding vessel rather than let itself dissipate. Typical binding vessels are spellbooks, though crystal spheres, wands & staves can be fabricated for a similar function. Illiberal wizards might even use their flesh as a binding vessel to ensure no others can steal their arcane secrets. A slain demon without a vessel to inhabit will fly into a creature's mind, quickly driving them mad and transforming their host into the same demon. 

 

The Sacrifices - The Worship of the Devil (1626), Jacques Callot 

Demons might also barter, though are always loathe to give up their freedom. Building a tower to house the demon is a common request, one reason wizards often live in them. 

Seeking a demon to acquire a specific spell works well if players are looking for keys to specific obstacles. Especially in designing a Metroidvania style-megadungeon with hard locks or gates, players can reason "We need to kill the demon of water breathing if we want to get through the underwater tunnel."

Demons as personifications and manifestations of spells take those spells to the extreme. They find and cultivate environments to maximize their spells. Here are some examples from the Knave 2e spell list and potential obstacles the spell might help overcome.

1. Demon of Waterbreathing - lives in a wooden cottage at the bottom of a deep lake. Never surfaces, but sings poetry dedicated to the moon, releasing air bubbles. Obstacle: underwater passageway or dungeon.

2. Demon of Animate Object - lairs in an Ikea warehouse with a handful of enslaved carpenters. Some, but not all of the furniture is animated, turning the warehouse into a mimic-den of sorts. Obsessed with modern art.  Obstacle: large statue blocking a path, putting on a magical puppet show for a childish prince. 

3. Demon of Spiderclimb - already gifted a tower without stairs or ladders. It scuttles up the smooth surfaces between floors, taunting those stuck below. Obstacle: a chasm, a similar tower, a ceiling lever. 

4.  Demon of Fireball - dwells in a sweltering hot furnace. Ignitable pitch and oil leaks from the walls and ceiling. Loves demonstrating its power. Obstacle: Frozen door, a room full of enemies. 

5. Demon of Magnetism - lives in a junkyard or an old battlefield full of rusted swords, a melancholic monster who laments past ruin. Can create small magnetic storms to whirl shrapnel and cut those within to shreds. Adventurers should take to not approach with metal armor. Obstacle: starting a gear mechanism, stealing keys from a distance. 

6. Demon of Animal Friendship - wanders around a verdant forest, surrounded by charmed woodland creatures. Despises humans and those it can't enthrall but easily fooled by animal disguises (such as wearing the pelt & blood of a boar). Obstacle: A sleeping cow blocks a bridge, a skittish rat with a door key around its neck. 

Illustrations of the book of Job P1.12 (1826), William Blake.

 Wizards as Spellbooks as Encounters

 If spells are both rare and dangerous to acquire, most rival wizards may only learn 1d4 spells in their careers. However, they would be absolute masters of these spells, extracting as much use out of their captured demons as possible. Wizards would similarly try to maximize their spell usage. 

1. Wizard of Summon Idol & Spectacle - Can conjure both real stone statues and obvious illusions. Leads a religious cult, impersonating a godhead, using the illusions to give divine decrees and the statues as objects of worship. Followers are stoic lotus-eaters. 

2. Wizard of Time Slow & Psychometry & Lock - Lives in a vault filled with time-based traps (room slowly fills with water, walls crush inwards, etc.) simply bypassed with slowed time. Each room is Locked. Psychometry lets the wizard identify and learn about objects. They sell this service, but keep a library of all the secrets they discover in the vault. 

3. Wizard of Silence & Time Jump - this wizard is cloaked in a aura of silence, as they drag steel blocks around them. Upon encountering a foe, they will Time Jump the boxes and feign muteness, attempting to lure their target closer. After wasting time, the block will return, destroying their foe. (Ok, I've been doing my best by rolling on the d100 table in Knave, but this one is tough).  

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Creating spellbooks as encounters shows players what they can do with this power and makes treasure active instead of passive. Far cooler to win your magic through tricking a demon than off a the moldering corpse of a mage. 

Hex'd about Hexes: What's over the horizon? (pt. 2)

 

Part 1 Here

 The witch's curse persists, but we stay silly. This is part 2 of Hex'd about Hexes, where I examine the procedures and maps of DnD's favorite* wilderness sandbox: the hexcrawl.

 I complained about two iconic (and licensed) jungle adventures. Outside of the problematic depiction of native peoples, these modules have tedious crawls with long distances between points, frequent encounter rolls, and high odds of getting lost and wasting IRL time.

Let's take a look at look at some other well respected adventures:

Dark of Hot Springs Island

Another Jungle island crawl! But significantly condensed, with each of its 25 hexes having 3 points of interest. While system neutral, the module provides a procedure for exploration. 

The party gets 6 watches per day to Explore (find a point of interest in the current hex), Investigate (closely explore a point of interest), Travel (between hexes) or camp, presumably (though this isn't explicit). There is an encounter every time the players Explore or Travel. Lastly, players can get lost, though the book leaves it to the GM (and the game system) to determine how this occurs. 

These options give the players a lot of choice! They can make decisions! "We found this den of something huge! Should we Investigate or look for something easier?" And the map is dense enough for each of these decisions to matter -- not "well north-east and north-west are the same because our destination is 6 hexes away."

While encounters are frequent, they add dynamism to exploring. Encounters have context; the lizardmen aren't just wandering around, they are outside a location, which they have an opinion on.  Encounters are much less likely to be random fights. My only misgivings is the encounter table are nested 3d6 rolls, meaning the DM has to roll twice for an encounter, which could be streamlined but isn't too different from regular encounter rolls. 

How much exploration the players can do in one session is really dependent on if they want to Travel of Investigate. The procedure does require some rolling from the DM (especially if getting lost is a factor in your system), but something happens each time an action is taken, so it doesn't feel as tedious. 

The one question I have for Hot Springs Island is how difficult should camping be. Should players need a safe haven (a town or encampment)? How safe is the Dark at night? This can motivate players to gauge how far they can travel per day.  

Evils of Illmire 

Deviating from our theme of jungle, we move into the swamp. Evils of Illmire is a similarly condensed hexcrawl with 19 hexes populated with ~15 dungeons (with 10-15 rooms roughly). Illmire is mostly system neutral, though says it is most compatible with OSE. Illmire has a light touch with its procedure: it specifies that hexes are 6 miles, taking 4 hours to cross and players have a 3-in-6 chance of finding a dungeon per day. Encounters are checked each time the party explores, travels, or camps. 

With each hex having a dungeon, a 50% chance to find one per day is high, a 50% chance for nothing to happen is also high. The null case of dice rolls (you roll and nothing happens) should be avoided. That said, this procedure works in this case because each hex has a dungeon. Using this procedure for Isle of Dread would be maddening -- players would have to explore every hex multiple times to discover any dungeons. In this way, the procedure compliments the specific map it is written for. 

 Lastly, most of the hexes have some landmark feature that the players can engage with if they can't find a dungeon, those the dungeons are where the meat are. In Landmark, Hidden, Secret parlance, both Hot Springs Island and Illmire gate their most interesting content as Hidden points, accessible at the cost of time.

 Hideous Daylight

I'm cheating a little bit to include Hideous Daylight as it's not a wilderness sandbox, but closer to a dungeon crawl. It's 19 hexes, each filled with an encounter, a trap, something weird, or set dressing.  The hexes are 1/2 mile, so players can see the entirety of the garden, and threats can see them too. This means there is no chance of getting lost and the players can immediately start making plans about where they want to explore ("Let's check out those statues in 18. But how should we get there?"). 

It takes 10-20 minutes to traverse a hex, and a 2-in-6 chance of a random encounter is rolled each time the party travels to a new hex or lingers. This is standard rolling for wandering monsters from any dungeoncrawl, which encourages players to be efficient in their movement; dilly-dallying drains resources via encounters. 

Since they can see the entire crawl, they must decide on what juice is worth the squeeze. "The statues look interesting, but that's far away and we've already taken STR damage." This is opposed to crawls without obvious features. While players must make the same judgement about how far they can get, without being able to see an end destination, wandering monsters feel more like a tax than a risk. (This is especially true in systems (5e) where resting overnight alleviates all wounds). 

Dolmenwood

Dolmenwood might be the loudest voice in the room, though I don't think I can fully do it justice while being brief. Some key procedures: parties are given "Travel points" per day based on their Speed. They can spend those travel points on moving between hexes or searching a hex for hidden features. This is similar to Hot Springs Island, but is more modular as terrain affects how many travel points are needed for an action. Players have an illustrated map of the region, so they can make a roughly informed decision of whether to travel or search, absent of other information. 

Players can get lost, incentivizing them to stick to roads. The campaign book suggests two approaches to handling getting lost: telling the players directly where they've moved to instead or keeping that information hidden. Since the players have an illustrated map, the former makes more sense to me (though I have a strong bias against getting lost). 

Lastly, one encounter roll is made per day. Most of these are "a group of creatures," so the Referee has to inject some dynaicism, though Dolmenwood is so richly detailed this shouldn't be too hard. In sum, the Referee rolls two dice (lost & encounter) while the players have the opportunity to make a plethora of macro decisions.  

The map compliments the procedure - the roads between settlements might be the safest routes, but might not be the fastest. The rivers and lakes provide obstacles to navigate. While the hexmap is large, it's not sprawling; there is great depth to each hex, making each day of exploration meaningful. Likely, the party will spend much playtime in one hex, searching it, but the determined party can march through several hexes relatively quickly in IRL time.

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For all of these modules, there is some play to the crawl. Players can make informed decisions. There are fewer null cases where nothing happens. With points of interest condensed, players can get to exciting material quickly; the pace of play is improved. Next time, we'll take what we've learned and try to apply it to writing a new hexcrawl. 

 

 *See also: Point crawls

Hex'd about Hexes: Welcome to the Jungle (pt. 1)

I recently participated in a Blogwagon, writing a hex for a Christmas themed hexcrawl. Hexcrawls have been on my mind after finishing a small hexcrawl campaign with my players. One take-away I had was that how the procedure interacts with the map is significantly more important than the contents of the map. A given map-and-procedure combo answer these core questions differently:

• Is the crawl a "mini-game" to get to one location or meant to sustain multiple sessions? 
• Are hexes being used to solely measure distance or is there play to travel?
• How many hexes should a group get through in a session of play?
• How much time should they spend in 1 hex?

The answers to these questions should inform each other and how the hex map is constructed. To unpack this more, let's take a look at some  D&D Brand(TM) hexcrawls.

Isle of Dread  

 The OG wilderness exploration module and first TSR hexcrawl. It's using 6-mile hexes with a sparsely populated map (24 keyed locations in >200 hexes) and a slightly modified exploration procedure from Expert D&D - players map "1 hex of terrain in every direction when they pass through a hex," improving the odds of the players actually finding something.

Some rules: Movement in the wild is 1/5 of a move per turn in miles (a fighter with a 90 ft move can travel 18 miles in one day as a given example). However, jungles, mountains, and swamps reduce speed by 1/2. Normally, this would prompt some decision making on route,* but Isle of Dread is entirely jungles, mountains, or swamps, so a 90ft move fighter is always going 1.5 hexes. Additionally, players have a 3-in-6 chance of getting lost in the jungle per day. 

Parties with a guide can't get lost, making a guide basically mandatory. One of the villages on the Isle offer explicit guide services, but they will only travel ~a quarter of the way north.  Presumably, other friendly humanoid tribes would offer guides, though this isn't explicit in the text. Largely, the players are left to get lost. 

Lastly, the DM checks for encounter twice, during the day and during night. Jungles have a 4-in-6 chance of an encounter, so basically one per day.

Let's see an example of this in play:

The players have just run away from a difficult combat with the Rakasta Camp (9), fleeing northwest. They decide to press onwards. The players break camp and the caller decides to move northeast. The DM rolls twice, once for an encounter (4, yes) and once for getting lost (another 4, no). The encounter they roll is 2 dryads. The DM decides that 9 miles rounds up to 2 hexes. 

DM: You move 6 miles northwest into more hills. You can see west to northeast is jungle but to the east are hills. Suddenly, you see 2 dryads... [Encounter]

Caller: We continue north.

DM: Northwest or northeast? 

Caller: They're both jungle? I guess it doesn't matter - northwest.   

DM: You travel into the jungle. All around you is more jungle. Night falls, and you need to make camp. [The DM rolls for another random encounter, but the party is safe tonight. Day breaks and the DM makes 2 more rolls. The players are safe today but get lost. Rolling a die, the DM decides the party will veer west]. 

Caller: We heard there was a plateau in the center of the Isle, so we'll keep moving northeast.

DM: [marks that they move NW instead]. Ok, You move northeast and see jungle all around you, some tree houses to your west (10).

Caller: Interesting! We'll go investigate. [Play continues]. 

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Some takeaways: there's a lot of dice rolling on the DM side and none on the player's side. Once the players pick a direction, there's no reason for them to deviate. Getting lost was a boon in this case, as it actually gave the players something to interact with. But this process is tedious (especially if the players are changing ideas on where they're going based on new information; in the given example, the Caller is not discussing with the group. This gameplay is largely repetitive and lacks monotonous. 

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 Tomb of Annihilation

 36 years after Isle of Dread, WotC released Tomb of Annihilation, a hexcrawl through the jungles of Chult. With a set-up similar to Isle of Dread, surely, the largest TTRPG publisher wouldn't make the same mistakes as they did over 30 years ago?**

The hex map has >300 hexes with ~27 points of interest. It takes 30+ hexes to move from the starting city to Omu, a key location. Players move 1 hex per day, or 2 hexes if they take canoes. Moving fast increases your speed by 50% (but makes you more easily surprised) and moving cautiously cuts your speed in half (but means you can avoid encounters). This pace is incredibly slow -- it would take the party 6 days (12 hexes) to reach the nearest point of interest by boat if they take the most direct path from the starting town. 

Each day the DM rolls three (3!!) encounter checks, an encounter occurring on a 16 or higher on a d20 (25% of the time). Per day, this means there's a 58% chance of an encounter. 6 days out from the starting town, we can expect an average of 3.5 encounters. 5e's combat runs slow (combats take me at least 30 min, typically 1h+), which would mean if each encounter was a fight,*** a single session would essentially be "you travel to this point, and that's it." (if they even make it, some points are even further away).

The party can also get lost if their navigator fails a DC 15 Survival check. They learn where they have (wrongly) moved to when they succeed this check. Let's be generous and say they have a +7 to Survival, difficult to achieve at low levels, they are still failing 35% of the time. So you can expect ~1/3 of your days traveling to be essentially wasted, which means more encounters. Learning where they got lost when they succeed on a check minimizes the amount of remapping and frustration players can feel at the table. 

Lastly, there is some mention of resource management under "dehydration," where players need 2 gals of clean water per day. "Create Water" is a level 1 spell that solves this problem. 

Let's consider play: 

Caller: We know our destination is south, so we move south.

DM: Great, let me roll 4 dice (3 for encounters, 1 for getting lost). [No encounters are rolled, they didn't get lost]. You move south into more jungle. Mark off water as you camp for the night. 

Caller: Ok, we move south the next day. 

DM: Alright, let me roll 4 more dice again. 

Etc. 

This feels mind-numbingly tedious. And this is the case where nothing happens! Imagine if there was an  encounter! Or if they got lost! Additionally, the map of Chult is so large, it's easy to miss points of interest by just wandering past 1 or 2 hexes. These are the same problems as in Isle of Dread, but somehow worse. 

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Largely these hexcrawls are flawed as the procedures are not in communication with the map itself. Tomb's 3 encounter checks per day would be perfectly fine if you could move through 6 hexes per day. Or if each hex had a point of interest and the map was twenty times smaller. Isle of Dread has players move at 1.5 hexes per day, which is just inconvenient for mapping/tracking. Despite 30 years of TTRPG innovation, both of these modules have the same approach. Circling back to our core questions, let's examine them:

Is the crawl a "mini-game" to get to one location or meant to sustain multiple sessions? 

Hexcrawling is the focus of the adventure.  

Are hexes being used to solely measure distance or is there play to travel?

Mostly the former. There are no decisions (play) besides which direction to go. Few landmarks to navigate by.

How many hexes should a group get through in a session of play?

For Isle, I'd guess around 8? That's roughly 4 days & 4 encounters. For Tomb, probably about 6 -- about 3.5 encounters for one 5e session. 

How much time should they spend in 1 hex?

Basically no time out of game, except for special points of interest.  

There is a disconnect between questions 3 & 4 -- if players shouldn't spend a ton of time in these hexes, then moving through them should be fast so they can actually get to content. These two examples are representative for many hexcrawls in this style: large empty spaces meant for players to wander around in, going through repetitive motions, dragging the game to a crawl. And it's easy to fix! 

Both modules even mention ways to improve this experience: pulling back on the random encounters. The authors know their procedure isn't functional. If you're writing a module that has an evident flaw in the procedure, don't tell the DM to adjust as needed, fix the procedure. I would also recommend removing the ability to get lost -- while iconic, the challenge is largely out of the players hands (succeed on a roll) or easily solved (hire a guide). And the punishment for failure is out-of-game consequence of boredom, rather than interesting in-game consequence. 

 This ran a little long, but I think it's worth going into detail since these two modules are iconic examples of hexcrawls (I'd reckon Tomb is what most 5e players think of when they think "hexcrawl"). Next time we'll look at modules where the procedure plays more with the hexmap. And we'll see if someone can make a engaging jungle island... (Spoilers: yes)

 

 *The decision making here can just be algebraic without a well-designed map. It boils down to "which route is fastest?" which is not a decision, but an optimization. 

 **I will confess to being a bit of a 5e hater, and WotC specifically. I'm trying my best to be objective and not just dunk on them.  

***Looking at the encounter table, most of the encounters are "this animal is pissed off you woke up with your nose still attached to your face."