#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 

 

Current Map of Delagrad (As of S01E16 - The Bevren Wood)

    Current Map of Delagrad (As of S01E16 - The Bevren Wood)

            I figured it was about the right time to provide a new map of the region for folks to look at, since describing a region can only get you so far. 
 

(Smaller map of the region)

(Big ol map of the region)

• The Bevren Wood
• Geographic Features
• The Shroudmantle Mountains
• The River Tealthistle
• Settlements
• Stormfaire (Largest Town)
• Leder
• Saphe
• Dragden
• Solin Hill
• Castles
• Abero
• Rosehome
• Interesting Features
• Inhabitants
• Fegreetha of The Pale Moon (Hag)
• Aramark the Gray
• A small enclave of gnomes
• Dungeons
• The Haunted Halls of Shaladyr
• Others yet uncovered

Party Roster and Character Sheets (S1E15)

 Here are the latest details of the party, as of "Episode 15: A Mask Revealed, A Friend is Found"

Marus
Class: Fighter, level 3
AC: 4 (Chainmail + shield)

Strength: 13                +1 to melee attacks and damage
Constitution: 9
Dexterity: 11
Intelligence: 8
Wisdom: 8                   -1 magic saves
Charisma: 8                 -1 to NPC reactions

HP: 14 (3HD)
Alignment: NG
Gear of Note:

• +2 elvish spear (communicates with birds)
• Ring of Fire Resistance

Teriad
Class: Cleric, level 3
AC: 4 (Chainmail + shield)

Strength: 10
Constitution: 7                   -1 to HP

Dexterity: 12
Intelligence: 14
Wisdom: 12
Charisma: 7                        -1 to NPC reactions

HP: 11 (3HD)
Alignment: CG
Spells Prepared:

1. Cure light wounds, Protection from Evil

Gear of Note:

• Potion of Control Animal

Belgin
Class: Gnome, level 2
AC: 7 (Leather Armor + dex bonus)

Strength: 9
Constitution: 9                    -1 to HP
Dexterity: 13                       +1 missile attacks, AC, initiative
Intelligence: 15                   +1 language (Draconic)
Wisdom: 12
Charisma: 7                        -1 to NPC reactions

HP: 8 (2HD)
Alignment: CG
Spells Prepared:

1. Chromatic Orb, Phantasmal Force

Gear of Note:

• Alquod's Ruby and Darlio's Quartz
• Potion of ESP

Cellim
Class: Barbarian, level 1
AC: 4 (Chainmail + shield)

Strength:18                           +3 to melee attacks and damage
Constitution: 10
Dexterity: 12
Intelligence: 9
Wisdom: 12
Charisma:11

HP: 8 (1HD)
Alignment: CG


Thaedore
Class: Halfling, level 2
AC: 5 (Studded Leather + dex bonus)

Strength:12
Constitution: 10
Dexterity: 16                            +2 missile attacks, AC, initiative
Intelligence: 12
Wisdom: 11
Charisma: 9

HP: 10 (2HD)
Alignment: LG