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Old 11-15-2020, 06:11 AM   #21
philreed
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. . . it's hard to envision how it would work (as a packaged module) . . .
I highly recommend checking out the example that Steve mentioned in his update.
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Old 11-15-2020, 07:07 AM   #22
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While the extended outdoor adventure doesn't require any new rules per se, it's hard to envision how it would work (as a packaged module) without any guidelines, suggested techniques for handling those things that never come up in dungeon crawls, and tables of some sort.

Now if there's no intention of writing it all up as a module others can use, it becomes easy: the GM does what the GM wants as far as daily travel, supplies, weather, etc. Having once run a huge "campaign-within-a-campaign", where I turned the northern third of our big continent/world, all wilderness, into a large scale hex map the players were free to wander (purportedly the party of PCs were explorers on a quest to find a legendary, lost kingdom near the arctic circle). Running it was significant work of course, but even more work would be turning it into a publishable module anyone else could run -- it'd probably come out a 300 page manuscript and take the rest of my life to write it all up.
Normally, hex crawls have a sort of gazetteer entry for every (reachable) hex, describing what's in it with maybe a little story background.

Search for "free hex crawl" and you'll find a bunch of them...
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Old 11-15-2020, 05:08 PM   #23
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I highly recommend checking out the example that Steve mentioned in his update.
Fever Swamp might be a great example, but I'm not about to drop 18 pounds to check it out. Which is a mute point, as Zot's suggestion to just search on "free hex crawl" turns up numerous examples and some great blogs on the topic.

And yes, that's precisely what I was talking about in my own "campaign-within-a-campaign" example. Upon further review a number of the old TFT MicroQuests do qualify as "hex crawls", but technically those were Metagaming publications, not SJG, making it perfectly true when Steve says "we have never published" one. Semantics aside, I think it's a wonderful area, the best possible area for expanding the product line, and I'd love to see it! Doubt I'll write any, but I'll definitely buy them all.
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Old 11-16-2020, 10:19 AM   #24
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The adventure author really has the freedom to tailor the structure of the adventure in whatever way suits them best, without resorting to new rules. Don't want to incorporate survival aspects like food and water? Let the party travel with a supply train, perhaps gifted to them by the wealthy patron who sent them on this quest. Don't want to deal with travel times? All the locations are connected by a network of gates. An application of imagination will let you create the scenario in the way you want, all while staying within the established rules framework.
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Old 11-16-2020, 04:00 PM   #25
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I really, really don't see where the sub-topic of new rules came up in this thread -- no one has argued for that. Phil first mentioned it in a reply to my OP, but I hadn't said anything about new rules in my OP.

Now any module has to have what you might call scenario-specific constraints that could be called "rules" in a colloquial sense. The hex crawl might specify village A is 1 day's travel due west of town B, and village C is 2 day's travel due east of town A. If the PC party asks if it can please get from A to C in less than 3 days, the GM says "no". This is a completely different thing than talking about game rules.

If someone is writing one of these hex crawls and they don't like where ITL 41 says "If a party without a Woodsman is traveling through wilderness without rations and/or camping gear, each member must make a 3-die roll daily against IQ, or take one hit of damage from exposure", then no, they don't get to change that. That would be wrong. Of course the published adventure can't go controverting the RAW -- that would be terrible. But no one has proposed anything like that, so I'm not sure why we're talking about "new rules" one way or the other.

Any guidelines for writing these modules would be best to include the example Shadekeep wrote in the previous post. If you don't want certain circumstances coming up in your story, then write that situation out of the story by means of a plot device. Just remember players can be unpredictable, so think hard about what things might lead the story down a path that was never intended.
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Old 11-16-2020, 06:02 PM   #26
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He's probably responding to my comment about the desirability (to me) of a page or two of more structured treatment of hexcrawling, to let it play out more like a game instead of a freeform discussion. I.e., stipulate a turn, say how many movement points you get and spend to enter different sorts of terrain; expand on the thing about keeping yourself fed from p. 41. This suggestion went over like a lead balloon with the folks in charge of the product line, which is obviously their prerogative. I'm not bothered; they are running the game line well and can't be expected to agree with everyone all the time. Anyway, I already have what I'd say is an excellent couple of pages of ... 'guidelines' (??) ... covering this sort of play, so it's no skin off my nose either way.
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Old 11-18-2020, 01:20 PM   #27
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck View Post
Fever Swamp might be a great example, but I'm not about to drop 18 pounds to check it out. Which is a mute point, as Zot's suggestion to just search on "free hex crawl" turns up numerous examples and some great blogs on the topic.
The £18 for a physical hardcover version of Fever Swamp did seem a bit much, but it's also available via DriveThruRPG as a $12 PDF...
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