Well I've been slacking on these, my last update was 2 months ago. There was a break for Christmas in between so not so bad, and I've been making other posts - so I'll forgive myself. Anyway let's get into the updates.
No RPG Theory this time around, I'm expending most of my thought in that direction on the Chainmail deep dive. But I'll be talking about a hexcrawling supplement for Shadowdark released by Todd of Hexedpress, talking about my recent games and closing with some content shoutouts.
I still need to decide what to call this section, its certainly not a review - at best I've read through the product and I'm sharing some initial thoughts. I'll come with something punchy eventually.
For full transparency Todd reached out to me as he knew that I'd be running some Shadowdark and provided this free of charge - I said I'd take a look and that I might as well share my thoughts on the blog. Sorry its taken me a while to actually get around to it Todd. Also I'm a fan of Todd's work, I think he's a great content creator who makes really positive content and I'm impressed by his dedication to his almost daily streams. So this will likely be biased even if I try not to be.
Okay so what is it? Well its part explanation of the wilderness exploration procedure and method of play and part system for describing and adjudicating said wilderness exploration. The method, unsuprising from the Authors name, is hexcrawling.
The product is short at only 22 pages, but it does a really great job at doing what it sets out to do. I'll split my thoughts into 3 topics: The Explanation, The Rules and The Advanced Rules.
“...If you want to add elements of navigation, exploration, and expedition into your campaign, then read on!”
I think my favourite part of the product is the explanation. Not only is it good at describing how but it also explains the why. And both of these are often missed in most rule sets, simply providing you with movement rates and letting you sort out the rest. In this case the entire document is interspersed with explanation for each part.
The intent is to make a wilderness exploration procedure that is not dissimilar from dungeon crawling, this is nice as the target audience is coming from a dungeon crawling game, and it allows comparison between the two systems highlighting the contrasts between them and their similarities.
There is good use of tables, diagrams and other images to go alongside the text which help illustrate the point. And I like the explanation of how to use and adjudicate using a hex map.
Okay so I mentioned that there was a similarity to the dungeon procedure - well its similar to the dungeon procedure of BX not Shadowdark. I personally don't think thats a problem as the real time, go around the table, system in Shadowdark I don't think works for this type of play (probably why its omitted, and why I'm interested in seeing how Kelsey tackles it). So I can't really take points off for it not conforming as even the single page that is dedicated to overland travel leaves me confused.
The procedure is basically as follows: The GM describes, the party decides on an activity, GM adjudicates and time moves forward. Various checks are made depending on how long the party have been exploring (encounter checks etc.). Simple right? No issues or bombshells here, lets keep looking. Next we come to Terrain a thorough list is provided, each of these has a difficulty rating in four categories: Movement, Conditions, Actions and Challenge. Movement makes sense, the more difficult a terrain is to move in the slower you'll go. Conditions is a bit confusing at first, but thanks to the explanation I can wrap my head around it, basically terrain can make various “activities” harder and so they'll take longer (we'll revisit this when we get to activities). And lastly encounters and navigation are what you'd expect higher difficulties give you more encounters or a higher chance to get lost. This is all good stuff, simplifying terrain types down to how they'll actually effect the procedures of play.
Activities or actions - this is where I'm not quite sold, but it might be a case that I haven't played it out and it actually works much better than I'm imagining. There is no problem with the actions themselves which are: Travel, Exploration, Camping and Resupply. There are problems with the terminology used, for example the terrain table is talking about conditions when it really applies to actions (conditions sounds like a more generic term that should effect everything) - and then Travel is an action but its already modified by the Movement difficulty of a terrain type. Lastly, the worst case scenario for the time it takes to complete these actions is 6 turns - that is 18hrs! These are really minor issues that you can work out, but a little bit of tightening up in this section would help. As for the time of activities, this might not be as bad as it seems - I'd need to actually play it.
All in all, this is very useable. It gives you, the GM, a system of adjudicating player actions in a consistent and fair way. Giving them choices for how they want to explore an environment, and engage with the risks of doing so. As the document states, if you want to go from point A to B, then this system isn't needed - this is about going out into the untamed and unexplored wilderness in search for adventure - and this will no doubt let you do it.
Another note about Shadowdark compatability. As this is a conversion from Todds own system, lots of the mechanics are tied to a d6 - but Shadowdark appropriate DC's are provided as well so you've got options. The d6 chances are provided first, maybe the DCs should be first if this is for Shadowdark though. Then the DCs seem off to me the Normal difficulty has a DC of 18 and an Extreme difficulty has a DC10 - Shadowdark is a roll over system, so you'd be passing extreme checks much more frequently than normal checks. Maybe its a case of the GM rolling these and succeeding actually causes the bad thing to happen? So if you rolled an 18+ you'd have an encounter rather than the other way around (that does line up statistically a 1 in 6 is close enough to a DC18). This leaves me a bit confused, it needs some explanation for how to actually roll these dice if using the DCs. Whilst it might make sense for the DCs to be this way it makes it a bit confused for when a characters attributes might modify the DCs (like they do for getting lost in Shadowdark). I'm not sure if I'd prefer them to be flipped and player facing or not, maybe I'd remove the DCs from encounter checks keeping them as X in 6 (Shadowdark is always 1 in 6 for encounters) and then make the other checks player facing.
The “standard” rules aren't really anything new or exciting - they are a great and simple procedure that will work though and again I think what makes the sections up until now really worth it is the explanation that goes alongside everything. This next part starts to delve into new, exciting territory (or perhaps more appropriate it begins to explore). The basic idea here is to give terrain types something similar to a monsters statblock. We get a HD (Hazard Die instead of Hit Die) and then Attributes (with a handy acronym).
HD is effectively linked to an areas difficulty, with “Normal” difficulties equating to a HD of 1 and “Extreme” difficulties to a HD of 3, there is an option for Mountains and Hills to instead be an additive effect rather than their own terrain types - so you could have a hilly jungle (4HD). There's a bit of a disconnect with the Shadowdark rules though - the DCs are now 7 + the HD of the terrain which gives you a DC of 10 for extreme (the same as the original) but a DC of 8 for normal which would have been 18 in the standard rules, and it flips the DCs on its head where we had to assume the GM was rolling and 'succeeding' on the check caused the bad thing to happen (getting lost or having an encounter). A couple pages later we get a different answer (which I think is the correct one) a task should have a DC set based on its difficulty Easy being a 9 and Extreme being 18, the HD then modifies this - this gives much more appropriate numbers so I'll assume the 7+HD is a mistake. This also lines up with my suggestion for changing the standard rules, now checks are player facing with harder checks having the higher DC.
Okay apart from some confusion around DCs (which I think is resolved by changing one line) the HD makes sense. Attributes give the GM a way to diversify the generic types. The attributes are Turbidity, Ruggedness, Activity, Peril and Scarcity (TRAPS for short). Each of these attributes are rated similarly to the terrains HD and a generic terrain type will have the same attribute score as its HD. But, if we want to make a plain which is invested by bandits we could up the Activity score from the default 1 to 3 (or a much higher number) signifying that you are much more likely to run into an encounter than would be typical - this number is then used instead of the HD when modifying DCs.
Further on we get an explantion for how encounters work for this system, and it clears up the standard rules. The GM is making the check and succeeding makes the encounter occur - so we intuited correctly, but as I said this needs to be explained earlier in the document before we get to the Advanced Rules.
There's a bunch of explanation for all the attributes and what they mean both in how the effect the fiction and the mechanics, I won't dive in deep here, but these are at their core good ideas - you can create unique terrain types when it might matter or just go with the standard when it doesn't. The document ends with an example which helps tie the system together.
Overall I really like it, there's a few things that I think should be tightened up around the DCs and integration with Shadowdark, but this system works and achieves its goal of providing both a simple system to run this style of play but also allowing the GM to go beyond the basics and add some variety to their wilderness. I think this would be a good product for someone who is running Shadowdark but wants to run wilderness exploration rather than just dungeon crawls and is finding the Shadowdark rules lacking, or is new to the style of play.
I think it could use some further expansion, an easy one would be a modifier for roads or trails, but doing so also risks increasing the scope beyond what is necessary.
If this sounds interesting you can check it out on itch.io. I feel bad about getting this for free when I did like it, so I went and bought a copy which should add a community copy which you can pick up for free.
Playing better and more often - you know the drill. Well I've done some wargaming, and I've got quite a bit coming up in the next month. But I mostly wanted to talk about my Dolmenwood game now that we're back from the holiday break.
The party has some success! At the time of my last update 0XP had been earned and they were just about to dive into Winters Daughter. Well I'm pleased to report that 3 sessions later they've just finished the module and earned a huge chunk of XP with most characters being very close to level 3 now, there's a tonne of treasure in this module.
Okay some mild spoilers to follow, I'll try to be vague. The initial delve was almost cut short as the party got into a scuffle with some angry defenders of the tomb, they got a taste for level 1 combat and the fragility of their characters - it didn't help that they don't have any fighter types nor the money to hire help. So we've got lots of 4hp or less and AC 10-13 characters. They emerged alive but only just, and then ran back to town to rest.
They headed back the next day, and begun to explore. The sessions are short and they're pretty nervous after their first encounter, but for the most part it isn't that dangerous an environment. So, they're able to get a decent idea of whats in most of the tomb. The strategy borne of this caution allows them to scout most of the rooms without risking much, and then making decisions about where to go and what to do with a bunch of information. I like it, and I think its worked to their benefit. After an encounter with a ghost pleading with them to return a ring, which they'd promised to return to a local wizard, the first session ends.
For the second session I played duet with a new player as most of the others couldn't attend. The new player hadn't played DnD before but they took to it pretty well, playing a Friar I had the head priest of the town ask them to follow a group of adventurers (the current party) who'd asked for advice on a lost tomb the previous day. They scouted out the path they'd taken and sneaked into the crypt behind them - checked a few of the rooms that the party hadn't fully explored yet and then met up with the party to introduce themselves, taking us to the next session.
The third, and most recent session then has the party make their way to the realm of fairy - eat some mushrooms for interesting effect and reunite long lost lovers. Again very little danger here, but the players again used their caution and some clever play to extract quite a bit of treasure avoiding the dangers mostly by social means. I find myself having to resist the urge to not let players get treasure from social encounters, thinking that if they're not tackling the risk then they might not deserve it - but I overcame it and was glad I did.
Then they got confident... With their bags full of loot, they just had to see what was behind a door, which they'd already heard monsters on the other side of. They busted it down and decided to duke it out in melee, with no apparent reward. They'll learn though - we had 2 of the 4 players go to exactly 0hp, potentially saved by a rule introduced in Dolmenwood but they needed magical healing, and the Friar was bleeding out on the floor. The reward they'd just received though? A necklace that could grant a wish. So now the party have an endless healing potion and I need to come up with a way to make their life difficult because of it. I've got some ideas which I'll share once they become apparent to the characters. All up 12000 XP earned (before being split) which is a hefty chunk, so next session we'll resolve all the leveling up and the return to town. I wonder if that wizard will be happy with the news they don't have the ring?
More games of Bolt Action. I played my Japanese again against two friends, got my arse handed to me. I was on the backfoot after getting hit hard by some artillery at the start of the first turn and having my artillery observer killed before they could call it in. I could moan about my luck (I was unlucky) but I thought I held on pretty well after that. The game went LONG and so we had to call it early, I felt there was a sliver of a chance that I could steal the win if we'd gone to the end, but just a sliver. So I accepted the loss.
I'm really struggling to figure out how I'm meant to play, I find that my units don't have the punch that I expect rarely doing any permanent damage and destroying units, something that requires further examination. I did get to blow up a tank by rushing it with infantry though so that works and gives me some ideas for the future.
I've got 2 games scheduled for February and then an Early War themed event in early March - so I'll be pretty busy and I'm looking forward to it. Then I'll probably want to play something else as a palette cleanser.
I've been slacking here, doing lots of reading instead. Making my way through the Black Company which I'm enjoying a lot (currently on book 7). But that doesn't stop great content from being made so here's a snippet of what you should check out.
And thats a wrap. Thank you so much for reading. If you have feedback send me an email at diegeticadvancement@gmail.com or send me a voice message on Speakpipe. I'm also on Discord in a few places, so if you find me feel free to send me a message there.
Bye for now!