#Hexplore24 Week 2: A World to Explore

Welcome Back...

            Here we are again, ready to discuss the latest week's worth of hexploration! I did quite a lot this week and its certainly reflected in what I have uncovered and accomplished. I want to dive into all of the neat bits and bobbles but I want to start off real quick with some reflections.

Reflections...

            The first thing I want to say is that I have gotten a bit better about cracking out a days' worth of exploring. This has helped quite a bit with keeping the process relatively manageable with my current schedule. I had fallen asleep on the couch the other day before I could do my day of hexploration, so I needed to do two days' worth of work in one sitting and it was a bit jarring that it took hours to complete. 

            The only other thing to mention is that this was a lot of fun as per before. My partner has joined in on each civilization or tavern generation, with such hits as The Crazy Grape or The Hanging Wineskin, and its been a lot of fun having her involved in the process. Watching the land really fill out has been rewarding, but more than that, watching these little rascal adventurers gather loot and kick butts has been awesome. The parties have done really well with surviving most of these run ins, and on many occasions scooting by on solid reaction rolls. As far as XP and treasure go, both groups have managed more than I would have anticipated, yet seem fair for 2 entire weeks of play. 

    

Hexes...

              The parties have uncovered quite a lot compared to last week thanks to the abundance of wealth and horses, hiring retainers and characters to take along for the high-speed ride. The map so far has 25 Plains (38%), 19 Forests (29%), 12 Marshes (18%), 4 Water (6%), 4 Hills (6%), and 2 Mountains (3%). This overall has been a seemingly even distribution and I can't complain about the current look of the landscape. 

Places of Interest...

               As everyone knows, these little nuggets have been the most exciting part of the generation of this land. Interestingly enough, there haven't been too many new places to check out, but the ones that I have explored have been really intriguing. I ended up landing a dungeon known as The Catacombs of Zax'Tyliuth (7,45), which I tacked onto a couple of Dyson Logos maps, and have been rolling up some encounters and rooms according to the Hexcrawl Generator. Beyond the pretty easy fights within, a few troglodytes, a few thieves, some striges, and cowardly orcs, the party lost their retainers to a trapped treasure chest and some sneaky trog who got a sneak on them. The party were able to scrounge up a great bit of coin and treasure on the first level, return to town and come back for another round. The party came across a wild stroke of luck, uncovering a 'wheel of fortune room' and managing to win a large treasure within.  

               More importantly it would seem, I was able to generate a few truly interesting settlements to hang around. Riverhelm (5,43) is the largest settlement on the map so far, and with it is a temple dedicated to an insane god known as Efu, who is a stone god of wealth who actually resides within the temple in the heart of the town. Oh yeah, who is in attendance of the religious ceremonies? Oh no one, just a few glabrezu. Additionally, the town has an esoteric guild of alchemists within it that I may need to reach out to for identifying magical things in the future. A few smaller settlements of note, Bridgeroot (10,41) is a pleasant village ruled by a bronze dragon in disguise, Idarsby (7,42) is a more reclusive spot with a dwarven tavern and brewer though they openly disapprove of Riverhelm. Lastly, I rolled up a dwarvish castle known as Lightway (14,45) which is chock full of dwarven construction workers and warriors, and luckily a benevolent leader (and an infamously mediocre gardener's guild currently on strike). I placed some rings of influence around these settlements just incase there were any reason for conflict or warfare among them. 

The Parties...

              The orange and gray party needed to hire on new members as they lost some along the way, including the orange party after losing Gord the Dwarf to a 5-headed Hydra they'd encountered just north of Riverhelm on the frozen lake. 

               Not all is bad though, the Gray party just about entirely reached level 3, which means that Dender the knight is now officially to be knighted, no longer a squire. Somehow I will need to manage an encounter with the reeve of Hazelhedge and an official of the Empire of Athiel knighting her, which will allow her the right to claim territory as her own. The party already has so much treasure, I hated having to hire couriers to carry thousands of coins out to Hazelhedge, so I had considered claiming the zombie infested Castle Cloudfall (3,48). If the gray party establish themselves there, they can hire mercenaries to guard it while they quest, as well as potentially grow something of a small settlement out of the place. This right here is what I think the Old School experience is all about in my opinion, so you better believe I will be contemplating this move. 

                The orange party hasn't had as much luck, though they'd been hiring on new members and gathering XP fighting off the hydra and ending up safely in the castle of Lightway (14,45) by the end of the week. 

                I realize how in some sense I am violating the truest version of the West Marches style campaign, since neither party are communicating very regularly, though both stop by the Bronzebell Tavern in Hazelhedge often enough that I will let it slide. 

Highlights...

                Writing some of this with my partner has been a lot of fun, even if sometimes it feels like it breaks the style of the world, I am just happy to have her involved. 

                The gray party finding the wheel of fortune and somehow getting the best possible outcome, rather than spawning a dragon or a demon, and instead raking in somewhere around 10,000gp total is bonkers. 

                The gray party encountering 30 barbarians ice fishing on a frozen lake, enrage them and skitter off on horseback, though for a moment I forgot they were on horseback for a moment and got so worried they'd be served on ice. 

                The dwarvish castle of Lightway is going to be hosting an important wedding on the 17th of The Wolf (October), so let's see if we get that far; it isn't that this is some big exciting event, but rather it means some maybe super important event is now in motion. 

                Dender becoming a knight is certainly exciting as we get some true character and campaign development, and the possibility of making a permanent mark in this setting in only a matter of 2-3 weeks. 

The Future...

                Unfortunately, I may need to start running one group at a time, rather than running two, because the energy and time it takes to do so is a bit much still. I think owning a castle may make that a bit easier. I am truly excited to have some more level ups coming our way, and to see how deep we can dive into some other caves and dungeons. Additionally, I am hoping to see some new factions sprout up and run into a real enemy out there in the wilderness. 

#Hexplore24 Week 1 - A Wild Time

     

    Initial Thoughts...

        To begin, I just wanted to say that this whole experience has been a wild one. One would imagine this whole exercise to be boring or lonely, but in the end this procedural experience has been like an interactive novel where I simply operate as arbiter of rolls and rules. 

        I realized quickly that this whole process can be very time consuming, and that is very unfortunate. Compared to the #dungeon23/#dungeon24, #hexplore24 has been a matter of either a 5 minute exercise or a 2 hour one. I am certainly picking up the pace as I go, slowly but surely getting pretty reflexive with my efforts; roll a d6 here, a d8, got a 1 so I roll a d12 - and presto I've got a castle to get creating. But in the end, I think I have made some choices that have made it a little harder to manage. To put a bookend on this intro, I have seen this little campaign of mine take on a life of its own and it has been rewarding and exciting. 

    Time...

        I can't stress this enough: for this whole project to work out I will need to find a way to strike a healthy balance with this whole exercise. Since some of these days are bound to be simple, traveling only two hexes or so, finding nothing of note, it would seem that some will be quick and easy. Unfortunately, the more efficient I get with traveling (using horses, etc.) the more hexes I will end up in and the more places I will need to generate procedurally. Perhaps in the future when the characters are traveling only throughout previously explored hexes this won't be as much of a chore, but we shall see I suppose. 

    The Lands...

        The lands of this region have slowly but surely taken shape, and compared to my first experimental run on this procedural generation it is more or less of the same sort of variety and design. Interestingly enough, there isn't much for marshes, bodies of water, mountains and hills, but the plains and forests have been plenty. This has been pretty nice when needing to cross vast distances as the plains offer no penalties to movement, whereas marshes and mountains would bring travel speed to a grinding halt. Overall, I love seeing the map come to life, and the locations of note have been really interesting as well. 

    The Locations...

        This really seems like the most exciting element of this whole project. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like I have had the greatest variety with locations. So far, I have gotten 4 castles, 1 temple with a village, 1 ruin site, and 1 lurid lair. Having to make sense of these castles has been a bit tricky, especially considering their ownership being zombies (abandoned), lizardfolk (hostile and numerous), kobolds (hostile and numerous as well), and dwarves (only 4 and the castle is toppled). Creating the castles' territory markers has been interesting, considering the potential for a territory war among villages or castles, but it would seem neither the lizardfolk nor the kobolds are anything but indifferent about their neighbors. 

        The temple I got was randomly one of the most interesting spots I've gotten so far, and it came with a village named Odjoust which was a certainly nice opportunity for rest out in the wilderness. 

        The ruins were not really important in the end, though the hill giant currently residing there certainly was a scary first encounter for the party. 

        The roads and rivers have made a world of difference and will make traveling out into the wild that much easier, plus they lead to other villages on occasion which will be a lot of help to make the wild a little more hospitable with some pitstops and taverns. 

        Lastly, the lair the party encountered was a doozy: a huge limestone cavern inhabited by 2 flame lizards and a heck of a lot of treasure. 

    The Party (Parties, actually)...

        The two groups that ended up heading out into the wilderness were the gray party (a knight, a cleric, a fighter, a barbarian, a magic user, and a druid) and the orange party (a ranger, a fighter, another fighter,  a dwarf, a bard, and a halfling). Both groups have seen battle, seeing mainly victory, but both have encountered death. I brought the orange party into this crawl as a way to keep the game moving while the other party was resting for a few days, and its made uncovering the map a much faster process in some respects. 

        The gray party got jumped by goblins in the zombie castle on their way out, having their magic user jumped and murdered in a surprise round. They returned home with a load of gems they'd gotten from some Thouls they nearly died fighting previously and gained barely any XP in the grand scheme of things. That money however did afford them some horses, which allowed them a great bit of mobility when planning their next ventures out. They arrived in Odjoust and the knight was almost killed by a thief who didn't like the party's frivolous spending in the local tavern, but subdued the thief and had them locked up. They traveled out to the lair of the flame lizards without knowing they were there, and they managed to kill the one inhabiting the lair while it slept, retrieved the treasure, and managed to get out of their even after coming across the other flame lizard (a random encounter with such eerie probability and coincidence) without fighting and instead skirting by the uninterested lizard thanks to a great reaction roll. They ended up getting lost trying to hurry back to Odjoust and instead encountered a ruined castle inhabited by a small group of neutral dwarves. 

        The orange party discovered the kobold castle and wiped a whole group of them without issue. They traveled up into the mountains before deciding to return home, though they ran into a large group of troglodytes with exceptional health. These troglodytes got the jump on the party with a surprise round and with their stench and 3 attacks a round, those level 1's didn't stand a chance. They lost the halfling and one of the fighters nearly immediately, and most of the rest of the party got terribly wounded. After the remaining fighter and the dwarf held their ground and killed a pair of the smelly lizards, the troglodytes rolled for morale and bolted out of there. I rolled for the treasure of these troglodytes and got an incredible amount of wealth, which was what the book said to do, so I wasn't about to turn down the magic sword and mound of coin and gems. The party were in a big hurry to get home with their low health and lack of reinforcements, so they engaged in a forced march to get back home to Hazelhedge. Luckily, having found a road by the lizardfolk castle, the party were able to really hustle and make it home.

        The orange party were able to level up, getting a lot of increased health, hiring some new characters to the group including a magic user and a cleric, as well as horses and some very valuable plate armor. Needless to say, the party were lucky to make it back at all, and they certainly reaped the benefits of their successes. 

    The Highlights...

        1. The gray party tossing some meat behind them to escape the hill giant, which gave me great hope for this being much more than just a slough of parties being destroyed by OP monsters in the wild, over and over. 

        2. The gray party catching the flame lizard by surprise and killing it before it could easily kill the party, scoring hit after hit on an enemy way out of their level of power. Then, slipping by the randomly generated other flame lizard (which was so very eerie to roll the exact combo necessary to get that specifically) on one excellent reaction roll. 

        3. The orange party barely surviving the troglodytes, I was on the edge of my seat waiting for their demise and overjoyed with the morale check, but I was really surprised by just how much wealth they'd had available. 

        4. The funniest was clearly the temple of Odjoust, which was a massive Epcot-style sphere made of tin, buried beneath a huge motte of dirt, dedicated to a goblin god of earthquakes and disasters named Pol, who has a holy relic buried within the sphere. The relic? a massive stone which slings random magic spells at people within the temple. 

    The Next Steps... 

        I am eager to keep moving on with this project and seeing where my characters all end up. It is safe to say that as I keep going things will get more complicated and refined, so I am sure my methods for recording this will follow suit. I will share the current map, and as time goes on I will share my mass cataloguing of every hex and its contents, once I find a good way to do so (50x50 hexes makes for one huge document.) I will do another write up of the party progress likely next week, so stay tuned for more!

The orange star is the current location of the orange party, and the same goes for the gray star. Hazelhedge is 0,49, Odjoust is 7,48. 

#Hexplore24 Day 1

 The party enter the main settlement of the area, Hazelhedge, and I rolled to see if there were any sorts of ongoing situations in town based on the tables within the book Sandbox Generator by Altier Clandestin. I got nothing of note so the party began their quest into the unknown. 

Day 1 of Raven:

Weather: Rainy, cold, high of 34°f.

The party travel southeast to a mound of eerie remains they’d heard about in a nearby forest. The mound was reputed to have ashes and crystallized tools buried below but unfortunately for them they spotted a Hill Giant guarding the mound. The Hill Giant also spotted them, and thus they began to run since the reaction clearly messed up, not wanting to die over some cinders and old junk. Since the giant had greater speed than the party, the evasion became a pursuit as per OSE rules. The party thought quickly about this and Offlan the Druid sacrificed valuable dried meat from his cooking kit to distract the pursuing Hill Giant. The distraction worked and the party escaped, deciding to travel further east. 

The party found themselves among more grasslands, and the storm had still not let up. Before the night had officially fallen and the party could set up their tent, they were ambushed by a pair of roving thouls. The thouls were unnoticed and closed the distance to the party easily. In a particularly mortifying and long combat (10 rounds altogether) the thouls had managed to nearly paralyze the entire party with their cruel claw attacks. As per their monster entry, they would rather paralyze all combatants then kill them rather than focus on killing any particular foe outright. Lucky for the party it would seem. After the first thoul was killed, I rolled for morale and the remaining thoul stuck with it to finish what they’d started. Though outnumbered, the thouls had managed to nearly kill the party off, after paralyzing 4 of the 6 party members, leaving only Hukdar and the mage Topolo standing. From the cold dead hands of the thouls the two found gems worth 710gp in total which is certainly a handsome sum. 

Thoul (pg. 115, Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Rules Tome)

The party then rest in their tent, consuming the gathered food Offlan had foraged along their way, leaving most of the party terribly wounded. 

Thoughts

Talk about an introduction to the project. I almost lost the party TWICE. Hill giant who pursues the party? Thouls paralyzing these level 1s? I can only imagine what would have happened had I rolled 3-6 thouls instead of the two. I did find it hard to tell when the party might roll for morale considering there’s no party available to make such choices. I do however feel like I ran the encounter properly. The knight and barbarian wouldn’t back down when the rest of the party were paralyzed, which feels proper for the code of conduct, alignment, etc. whereas the evil mage in the party immediately ran about 80’ away after casting his magic missile, ironically being the one to end the brutal combat. 

Overall, I do think that this process will hopefully be quicker in the future, but I figure a 10 round combat is an anomaly. I think combats like this are what make us in the OSR space come to love these relatively simple characters with such limited backgrounds and stories; they fight tooth and nail, and everything hinges on a single die roll at times. So, with that being said, I hope the scrappy gray team can make it home in one piece. 

#hexplore Before We Begin - Introducing the First Party

     Well, the time has finally come along. Let's get crackin' on this hexcrawl.

Some last minute notes before it all begins...

Consulting the Oracle... 

One thing that will certainly come up a lot during all of this crawling, is the need to decide on certain actions. Will they trust the hag? Will the dragon see them in this hex? Will they turn back now that they've run out of water?

As I have done in the podcast, I will be borrowing YUM DM's d6 Oracle, where I will be rolling a d6, and based on what value I get, I will have an answer somewhere between or around yes and no. 

1. Yes BUT

2. Yes

3. Yes AND

4. No BUT

5. No

6. No AND

So, as per the previous examples I might run into a result such as: Will they trust the hag? No but they will follow her cautiously from a distance. Will the dragon seem them in this hex? Yes and it will follow them from afar back to town.

EZPZ.

Building the Parties...

One part of this process that was a bit more fun than initially anticipated was drawing up the parties randomly. Sure, I could have hand picked what groups would do well, but where's the fun in that? So instead I used a random number generator and pulled the characters into groups of 6/7 until I had 8 groups in total. I then rolled another d8 to see which lucky group would be first out there into the big bad wilderness. 

We had some interesting balance issues in some parts with some parties having a much greater chance of survival in a wilderness than a dungeon, and vice versa. Some groups have a few evil characters within them, which I am sure will bring about some tension in the future. But for our purposes here, we only need to focus in on the Gray Party. 

The Gray Party... 

I'll push the character sheets I have in a spreadsheet to the bottom of this post, but this definitely proved to be the most tedious part of the project. Rolling up the coins, using a bunch of different resources for gear, and having to fill in all of those blanks was not exactly the highlight of the journey thus far. 

Those checking the sheets out will see that there are some armor and items not present in the OSE fantasy and advanced fantasy. I always thought it was a shame that the armor and item lists are a little skimpy, so, I started borrowing from AD&D and Labyrinth Lord, and others to add a little additional nuance to this part of character building and growth. Also, I got big lucky with rolling magic missile for my Magic User right off the bat. 

So, without further adieu, I will now begin the crawl. I will likely toss in a post for day 1 just to highlight how the process will go. 

 

#Hexplore24 The Adventurers

 Hello all, I return with a gang of fresh faces to take on the Hexcrawl!

While some might find the act of rolling up 50 PCs tedious and mind numbingly boring, I think we may be forgetting just how easy it can be to roll a character up using BX/OSE rules. Personally, I use the OSE fantasy and advanced fantasy rules so that I can get a full spread of PC choices and variety, although I tried to maintain a fair bit of balance among the basic classes and the nifty specialized ones. 

The Method

Although I may have gotten nicer numbers if I rolled 4d6 and dropped the lowest value, I felt that this would be at odds with the project of #Hexplore24. I want to experience the mundane and average characters surviving in this unforgiving and potentially unrewarding world in a way that I don’t set one side up for success or failure. Sure, it would be nice to send Butch Hammercrunch the barbarian in with 18 strength to crush his foes easily, but, I’d rather see victories won 

through the sheer will and luck of dice rolls. Sounds kind of crazy considering these characters are just 6 stats so far.

I did my best to not edit or reroll any numbers during the process, and only on one occasion did I need to go back and edit anyone. The character in question had no stats rolled above a 6, so I figured I’d put them out of their misery before things got started. Beyond that, I kept all those destined-to-lose characters and I wish them well.

For name generation I used the tried and true method of grabbing the first sound that comes to mind and then muttering prefixes or suffixes of names until it sounds name-ish, then I ask my partner if it sounds stupid, then I jot it down. As a personal philosophy, I don’t like to use real life names like Joseph or  Michael, but sometimes I take these names and alter them a little to get fantasy names like Josen or Mitael. As a last note on names, I also believe that a lot of names sound silly at first (Bilbo or Frodo, anyone?) and as we are exposed to them and see the name take on honorable meaning through the character’s action, we say the name instead with respect. 

The Product

The Madness

As you can see, from 300 dice rolls of 3d6, we have an average of 10.9, which is pretty much spot on. A lot of the characters have forgettable stat arrays, which is fine by me, but some have some very promising numbers. I avoided using the underdark based races, at least for now, as I don’t feel like the current game makes much sense to have Svirfneblin, Duergar, and Drow running around on the surface. 

Now comes the more interesting nuance, and this is something I may do next in order to add some spice to this game world and gameplay: rolling for alignment. Perhaps this is some claim that is more profound than I think it is, but I think that the distribution of alignments for the average adventurer in this setting would be 50% Good, 40% Neutral, and 10% Evil. Of these, I’d break the Chaotic/Law axis evenly across each, so 33.3% of the Good are Lawfully Good, etc. I recognize this is also a bit tedious, but, I think the narrative that will arise from this will be extraordinary. 

If I have a group of characters preparing to leave the starting settlement and they have a 6 member party with one of those members being a Chaotic Evil assassin, things might get juicy and dramatic when we find a hoard of treasure and somebody with a poisoned dagger doesn’t feel like sharing. 

In the same respect, if a group of evil characters band together and head out into the wilderness, finding a lair all to themselves, we might have some villains organically arise and attract evil followers. Perhaps we even get some inter party conflicts when we find two or three rival parties not just fighting the wild beasts of this land, but also dealing with philosophically opposing PCs hellbent on taking the hard earned wealth of the good peoples of the land. Sound intriguing yet?

 1-5: Good

6-9: Neutral

10: Evil

And

1-2: Lawful

3-4: Neutral

5-6: Chaotic

 

So, this distribution was a little interesting. Along the Good/Evil axis the distribution of alignments was almost spot on, with Good 44%, Neutral 46%, and Evil 10%. Across the Law/Chaos however there were some discrepancies. I can’t in good faith say this data set had enough data to assure an even distribution, but it is interesting to see CG, an alignment that I’m sure is one of the most popular is one of the lowest occurring, whilst LG, lately regarded as lawful stupid, made up the majority. 

I’m sure not everyone is as excited by numbers as myself, but I will spare you all the rolls for wealth and gear for when we pick our first party to enter the fray in a couple days. Until then, consider me truly excited to begin this project!

#Hexplore24 Setting the Stage

     As per my last post, I’ll now be detailing the little bit of the backdrop for my #Hexplore24 campaign. I tried to keep things concise, and yet add enough detail that things would be intriguing without the baggage of constraining details. All art I use is AI generated and strictly for the purpose of a little pizzazz for these entries.

Background

An Apocalypse… The population of the world was once much greater. Empires spanned the globe; cultures were at war, people vied for supremacy, and constant innovation spurned these legions onward to greater goals with more at stake. This all changed with the rise of the Grand Magician Delexor. His magics conquered kingdoms and humbled the greatest of heroes, but his greatest foe of all was his own drive and creativity. Not many living to this day know specifically what it was that unleashed this spell upon the world, but the grim nature of this epic spell would reverberate into the world even today. Dark, unearthly magic beckoned the chaos of the abyss and the realms beyond, welcoming monstrosities and tragedy into these realms.

An Empire from the Ashes… The one empire to have survived the Arcane Dawn for some unknown reason is known as the Empire of Ayiel. Although their roots are lost to the annals of time, the truth of their origin is one protected by those in charge of the Empire. The Empire has always been run by a single elected Emperor, decided by the Council of Ayiel, a circle of powerful and mysterious mages. Their motivations are also unknown, although the Emperor has always been on the lookout for territory to claim, as well as the destruction of any other empire seeking any sort of power along his borders. Many knights and mages ride forth on behalf of the Council and their Emperor to seek riches and glories in his name.


Fledgling Societies… Those folks who find sanctuary outside the reaches of the Empire of Ayiel find themselves unfortunately within the reach of those who had claimed this lost world. Monsters, beasts, and those humanoids who were once allies and enemies of humans. Those few societies on the fringes of the empire discover riches and fruitful lands to create their own societies, if they are able to cut it on the frontier. Little is known about what is beyond the furthest frontier settlements, and thus what adventurers are able to learn is what is known.

Time

• Year
• A year is 366 days
• Months
• There are twelve months in the year, each named after a constellation in the heavens that moves directly over the capital of the Ayiel Empire, the City of Silvertowers
• 1. The Raven
• 2. The Candle
• 3. The Lady
• 4. The Lord
• 5. The Dragon
• 6. The Serpent
• 7. The Tree
• 8. The Moth
• 9. The Ring
• 10. The Wolf
• 11. The Chalice
• 12. The Sword

I am certain a lot of other details will be coming forward as the narrative of the Hexcrawl conjures it up, so stay tuned.

#Hexplore24 Opening Thoughts

A Dungeon before a Hexcrawl

As many of you recall, 2023 began with quite the bang as plenty cracked open their fancy, grid-lined, handy-dandy notebooks and began their #dungeon23 journey. For some, including myself, this was a bit more of an arduous task than initially expected. Unfortunately, most of us gave up well before even the midpoint of the year. 

I think that the main reason why the majority of us lost steam with crafting this dungeon on the day by day is that we didn’t feel very grounded in the exercise. Without characters to march into these dark and scary catacombs it all feels sort of moot. I think that a Hexcrawl with the potential for growth and development will be different in this way. Not only will there be random lands and locations to bring forth a setting randomly, but having parties to explore and do things that shift the world forward will make everything feel that much more alive. As many of you likely know, I run the podcast in this general sort of way. This procedural form of play has been the most revolutionary move I have made as a player of TTRRPGs in the last 20 years of play. It seems to me that having a low-stakes, all fun and games, daily exercise across all modes of old school play will ignite that feeling of fun twice over.

Before the Crawl

So, as with Dungeon23 journey there will need to be rules to keep this whole process in line. Let’s lay out some ground rules, with many put forward by the originator of this Hexcrawl24 movement, Monsters and Mazes (link below). 

1. 1:1 Time; One day in game is one day in the real world. Simple. That means no skipping ahead and playing out January 2nd unless it really is the 2nd. Tedious to some, but it makes it that much easier to pace myself and to really enjoy the experiment of a world slowly taking shape. 

2. Procedural generation; It shouldn’t be any sort of a surprise, but I won’t be designing this world with much direction or railroading. Instead I’ll be using some generators, tables, and other such random resources. This world isn’t my creation, but I’ll be doing my best to make sense of what the dice tell me. My first choice of generators that I’ll be using for the majority of this exercise is the Wilderness Hexplore by Jed McClure. I’ll likely be tossing in a few others as well, and as I do I’ll be recording it in the blog.

3. Record Keeping; For all of this to be effectively recorded, I’ll need to take some good notes on what’s going on on the day by day. Each hex will be defined, each party will have their actions detailed, and all of the story and setting growth will be written concisely and as is necessary. 

4. Old School Rulez; I plan on running this using Old School Essentials, my favorite of the OSR movement rule systems. For additional rules and monsters I’ll be using the original BX rules and books including the Creature Catalog, AD&D monster manuals, including the Fiend Folio. Nothing quite beats old school when it comes to solo play, and honestly the OSR has revitalized my love of RPGs altogether so consider this all a big love letter to the greats. 

The Hexcrawl Begins

Although it may seem a little silly and contrary to my previously stated rules for this project, I decided I would create a little background for the campaign. None of this background will truly impact the project moving forward, but I think it offers a good bit of substrate to maybe draw from and to frame the future narrative. I’ll post the bits of the background in the next post in this series. 

Chronicles of a Hexcrawl

As of right now, I’ll be personally recording the events of the daily routine in a Google Doc, but I’ll be journaling (hopefully) weekly the progress of the project here on the blog. I plan on using Hexographer to record the map, and I’ll post pictures of the Hexcrawl in the blog as well. 

Monsters and Mazes Blog:

https://monstersmazes.blogspot.com/?fbclid=PAAaYxbSzjg426M0BrodyOaHZHcCjkxdfFijJfPH5gTbeA4VH7ltWokTfVHfE_aem_AbM7Xk7KKd5zJaLvja61dNgvFCpqY-BmgDUxkjdiay_5HsJ8ZFivzfaZZQrPsMXurZk&m=1