Building Blightlands

I've been running an OSR style hexcrawl for several months, and I thought I'd write about the process I'm using to do it, what my goals are, and how it has evolved.

Initial Goals

My primary goal was to get the group I used to game with back together and their favorite experience was playing one particular game I ran. Those early games had hexes but were tiny and very much prepared. So I wanted to expand upon those successes.

My next goal was to use Obsidian to help me keep organized. I hadn't gamed in over a decade so my ability to have enough material in my head to safely improvise was gone. Also, philosophically I think improvising in games like this has discrete uses and isn't something I get to do because I wasn't prepared.

Finally, I wanted a world that I could add layer of detail to that would feel more and more real. Yes I'd have some overarching thing going on, but with little to no pressure to deal with it. I wanted the players to feel like they could explore and make the game their own.

Initial Prep

Since the game system I'm using is Adventurer Conqueror King System, it comes with quite a lot of guidance about building out a hex map and region. It covers how many hexes, dungeon counts and rough sizes, and most importantly population centers. In other words, you can rather quickly build out a kingdom with populations and various sized towns and have dungeons on the map to fill in later.

When reading that material it felt a little overwhelming, but it's procedural so you just trust the process.

With towns, a map, and dungeons placed it was time to make some decisions about starting out.

Starting Town

I chose to pick a starting town in one corner of the map. This was to limit my prep around it and allow a slow start. The starting town was a village. When I prepare a town there are a few things I do.

Rumors

Every town or village gets rumors. I try to write at least 10 and for larger ones more. These provide interest, color, and the seeds for adventure. There's no real rule to this, I just write whatever seems interesting. It could be about happenings in town, about a nearby dungeon, stuff that is just false, or anything really.

Using these rumors, I can begin to place their home in the surrounding hexes. A farmer losing their flock might have their farm one hex away, so I can place it. The wolves could be in that hex, or a neighboring one.

The town also gets a named leader. I hate NPCs, and so I force myself to do this.

Wandering Monsters

I used the tables in ACKS, but I wanted to address a few oddities that come with tables like this. First, the tables are tied to terrain which is good, but then there is the lair problem. Most creatures have a percent chance to represent you bump into their lair. This also makes sense. Sort of. Most creatures, in my mind wouldn't be far from their lair but these tables allow for it. Also, rolling a lair is like a mini dungeon and needs prep. For now though, I'll roll with this.

Exploration Rules

Again I defaulted to ACKS rules, which my players like, and in the past have made some great emerging adventures. It seems like a lot, but I remember that I got into a rhythm with this and my goal was to make it easy for me to keep up.

The elements that are at play for exploring:

• Encumbrance changes how far you can travel, so does the terrain
• You have to feed yourself, forage, or something else or suffer penalties
• Weather can cause navigation issues or other modifiers (Windy days affect ranged combat)
• Every day there's a chance you get lost depending on terrain and familiarity and nearby landmarks (This irks me)
• Wandering monster checks upon entering a hex

In practice this means that every day I roll to see what the weather will be and if they'll get lost in secret. I know their encumbrances so I can figure out how far they travel in a day. Finally I make the wandering encounter rolls and have the party mark the food off.

If players get lost, I roll to see where they go, and off they go. Even with a map, they'll believe they are headed in the right direction when they actually aren't. I make secret checks to see if one of them figures it out.

Making Hexes

I read so much about this, and found myself deeply conflicted. I wanted my hexes to have some interest, but also respected the reality that a 6-mile hex is a huge area and the chances of stumbling into something is far from guaranteed. So I settled on creating some tables for "Whats in the hex." Look at this link and the d4 Caltrops page. Its incredible.

Each hex gets 1-3 things in it. Since I'm using Obsidian, it does that for me. If I were at the table I would just note how many "Things" it can have and roll it as they encountered it.

The next challenge is knowing how players encounter something. Well I modified the wandering encounter roll. Initially it's a 1d8 and then you figure the creature. Now its 1d8, with a 50% chance it's a location or 50% it's a creature.

Landmarks

The biggest thorn in my side was landmarks. Landmarks serve as a highly visible reference point for players to use when navigating. Highly visible means they can be seen from distance. Distance means I can't always generate it on the fly.

I don't have a great answer for this yet, but my tables only generate a landmark every 1 in every 12 hexes or so, so it doesn't happen so often.

Initial Play

Aside from my clumsiness getting acclimated to all these things, the players hit the ground running. They engaged in rumors, hired henchmen to bolster their forces, but might bail on them, and engaged in rumors and set off to explore.

Why all this background stuff matters is that at the table my job is to more or less represent the simulation going on. They explore, make choices, and deal with consequences. A very small example is that they went to track a rumor down that led them to their first dungeon. They didn't realize this, and had to wayfind their way. They found a ruined scout tower (Landmark) and realized something. It was taking them days of travel already and they didn't know how much further to go. They decided to make the tower a forward base, and set up a rudimentary supply line back to the town. They had to do this because towns have limited supplies, and they wanted to be ready.

Most games would've simply cut away to the good stuff like the dungeon, but my players now were managing supply runs, renting mules and carts, and defending their gear to prepare for their first dungeon. They cut trees and dug trenches, and secured their location. They sent scouts to see what was going on at the dungeon and made a plan.

All of these things emerged because supplies, encumbrance, market limits, risk of getting lost, and wandering encounters drain a party and create risk. Everything they did was to tip things to their favor and it worked.

First Fixes

Did I mention I hate NPCs? I do. I decided to make NPCs have a basic format of Description, Needs, and Agendas. Each NPC gets a roll for those categories and now I have something I can work with. This helped me immensely. This on top of the standard reaction roll gave me what I needed.

Second Fixes

I read somewhere that wandering monsters shouldn't just be fights, but tracks or signs of the creature that a party can use to track them to their lair. This fit with my earlier complaints about wandering monsters, so I added that in. Now wandering monsters were 3-4 rolls, but I like that it added another layer of interest and choices for the players to make.

They bumped into tracks, they have to figure out what it is, and if it's worth tracking.

Plants

I like the idea of plants and herbology and a player wanted to lean into it. So I began to develop a list of plants by terrain type. Each has a short description, what is commonly known, and what use it might actually have if you know what you're doing.

This began to immediately show up as interesting because it helped me fill out bits and bobs of lore with rumors, dungeons, and even unique items.

Factions

Thieves guilds, merchant guilds, evil forces, petty lords. These are all things that bring a world to life but it's more and more work. I cribbed the Mausritter faction rules. Larger towns would get one or two factions, I created a few that exist within the region, put major "Agents" in, and then decided to make a roll monthly to see how they progress.

The party immediately got wrapped up in one faction's antics.

Is It Worth It?

Yep. Every one of these layers I've put in adds something. As long as my focus is on adding things that provide interest and choice that I can manage, its good to me. I continue to streamline how I do all these things, but every addition has made a difference.

As for the common thing folks hate about hex crawls and the accounting and rolls, I think that's a choice. My players like it and I do too.

Recently my players encountered a dungeon. They prepared to go in and I asked for marching order and light. There were something like 7 PCs going in and a group of henchmen staying behind to guard supplies. When I asked about light, everything changed. They only one lantern and a few torches. Now they had some choices. Change marching order, have their stronger folks carry a lantern instead of a weapon/shield, or resupply.

They pressed on, and when combat broke out, and they had to drop their torches or set their lantern down, light became an issue. When they wanted to run monsters down, they lost time getting light. When torches burnt out, they had to hustle.

Some of this fiddly stuff can get frustrating, but it adds a depth to what is going on and makes the otherwise mundane choices more challenging.

A Note About "Competency"

In this style game it can seem like there are a million little details that exist to punish players, and I'm sure there are GMs who do that.

I treat my players like they're competent and their PCs like their competent. Choices don't matter unless they're informed. So, when they want to head out of town to adventure I will tell them how long the journey will take and remind them to get supplies. When they realize they don't have much light going into the dungeon I tell them what that means. They know they will run out of torches, that they have to hold a torch instead of a sword/shield, and how far away the nearest resupply is.

I consider games like this to be fun because players understand. There is plenty of room for surprise, but not because of mechanics. Even though I roll secretly for a lot of things that happen, they know this is part of the game.

An example is traps. They see a room with obvious signs of traps and I inform them of it. Then they make choices about how to engage. I secretly roll to see if they set it off. They understood the risk and made informed choices. This is key to games like this feeling like the choices matter.