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).  

--- 

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.

---

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