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What is this? Is this a thread where i can't talk about the ancient and secret art of hex crawl gming? First thing on my mind is the games i use for old school gaming, Mazes&Minotaurs has already been mentioned and is a poo poo ton of fun. Also i quite enjoy retro phaze http://www.lulu.com/shop/john-higgins/retro-phaze-ebook/ebook/product-15391185.html Which has the lovely feature of denying the wizard his non-combat utility spells and making spells a permanent feature of the wizard rather than being changable. It has a much bigger effect than you think on spell selections.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:00
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Rulebook Heavily posted:What do you mean you can't discuss hexcrawls Whitemage, discuss yourself some hexcrawls. Hell, do a big informative post on them or something. And on reading it I guess Retro Phaze counts as close enough, so adding it to the OP. Can damnit, can disscuss hexcrawls. I hate typos. Hexcrawling and you So you want to run a hex crawl? Awesome, they are a lot of fun as long as you're not a huge grog about it, well at least i think so. The first thing you got to know, hex crawls take prep work, a Lot of prep work, most campaign styles you can BS your way through seat of your pants, not hex crawls, making the foundations of a hexcrawl caimpaign can take upwards of a month, and that's a Major upfront cost, know what you're going into before you do. A city and surrounding lands Start with a city and the surrounding lands, the city will be the main hub and should have a local lord(who should be high level.) surrounding that city are outlying villages and manors. Your players can't get out of the starting area at first, now don't question that fact, they can't, instead ask yourself why this is what do they need to do to go to another area. Resource management and exploration These are the focuses of a hex crawl game. Rather than encounters the main thrust of the gameplay is about resource conservation, this is the realm in which daily spells were designed to function.(And it's important to realize they were -per adventure- spells, not -per day- at first.) The main goal and source of fun is about exploring the world, which involves a lot of open endedness but also a lot of barriers to prevent it from giving your players option paralysis, this is part of the point of levels, each time your party gains a new level the areas they can go increases, and that means more options, it eases them into your world. Rumors are your friends Rumors are the main source of plot hooks, there is a reason why pcs spend so much time in barrooms. A good table of rumors contains a selection of random color, useful information and bogus information. While realistically most rumors are bogus information, ramdom color or very local, that's not what serves the game, you want your players to seek out rumors so make sure about half your rumors are real. And yes bogus information tricks your players, but don't be too harsh about it, lead them to nothing or minor animal lairs, don't lead them to the pit of 10,000 demons. Useful information comes in two types, treasure hauls and warnings. Mention the scariest monsters, and places where they can find some good loot for reasonable risk. Lairs and Locations vs. Random Encounters Random encounters are bad, they offer very little treasure(and hence little exp), they are encounters your players want to avoid, on the other hand lairs offer treasure far in excess of there risk compared to a random encounter, they are what your players seek. Risk vs. Reward Don't include under guarded hauls, but do include over guarded hauls. I'd say about half of all hauls should be what you view as the sweet spot of risk vs. reward, with the other half being progressively less good, the bottom tier being animal lairs that might have a few dead peoples stuff lying around. Include what your players want....but make them earn it Is the paladin eyeing that holy avenger? Make sure to include one in the game, but put it somewhere that makes sense, like say an abandoned castle with a death knight. Mix random and placed treasure The random tables exist for a reason, they are what you roll on to fill out your hoards, but include some placed treasure in there to, that's the big stuff and stuff you know your players will use. Don't forget to mention placed treasures in the rumors.
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Jul 11, 2012 12:16
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Rulebook Heavily posted:To be honest, I wish more retroclones would be braver with being not-quite-D&D. In the pre-90's publishing era, a lot of the games that came out were essentially a variety of D&D-except-different, and the retroclone movement could totally still do that and carve interesting niches out for itself here and there without lashing itself so completely to D&D as THE old-school gaming style. Well, they aren't. The point of the old school reniassanse isn't to take what was lost by the changing gaming landscape and taking it forward, it's rejecting going forward all together. Shame, but it's hard to reclaim things from living memory because of sentiments like that.
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Apr 9, 2013 15:29
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