Drafting a hexcrawl module. Case study.

Miris Dor, a Polish blogger shared his methodology of preparing a hexcrawl module (however it’s not that hexcrawley as you may hoped for as he reveals his philosophy in the second episode). It’s in Polish so if you’re not lucky enough to understand it you can run it through an automatic translation, it works quite fine.

What staggered me a bit is that it seems like a heckin lot of work. I believe I’ve been there at some point in my hexcrawl experiences but now I allow myself a lot of freedom and improvising. And I don’t think it’s a matter of being a good or bad  DM but of grasping the concept that you actually don’t need a lot of prep to run a game which will be fun for all participants and you don’t need any particular set of skills acquired during a very long career to try it. It’s perfectly fine to stop the game for a minute or two to render another part of the setting. RPG adventures (please pay attention – not every RPG falls into that category) are all about participation and agency so it does not suck the fun from your game if you make up things on the fly. At least – that’s my philosophy and I’ll try to show you how it works on an example of a campaign which I prepared few days ago. It's not intended to be a guide but merely a collection of musings. 

The setting.

Sometimes it just pops in your head. In this case – I was watching a video on the Battle of Saule, remembered that there was an RPG about this particular historical context which I never played since I found it very disappointing (Crusaders of the Amber Coast for Basing Roleplaying if you wondered) and thought that it would be nice to run a game themed around the Livonian Crusades. Apart from that – I was born and spent my youth in a region conquered from the Prussians (the old ones, not the Pickelhaube ones) so I was very familiar with the history of extermination of Baltic pagan tribes.

What if I had no idea where to start and needed to prepare a campaign anyway? I would probably go for a very limited area of play and generic fantasy in the vein of Mystara. So: a small town, a deep dungeon, some cliché tropes like ruins of a temple and an evil cult. It works every time and later over the course of the campaign you can come up with details on the one hand and broader context on the other. Check In Search of the Unknown or Keep on the Borderlands.

The concept.

Ok, so what will the PCs do? Since the default in my recent games is old-school adventure – they’ll adventure, i.e. travel the perilous Wilderness (since we have the Livonian Crusades canvas: dense forests and vast marshes of the eastern Baltic coast), delve into ancient dungeons in search of long forgotten treasure (maybe amber instead of standard gold) and fabled magic.

Since I want the game to be about exploration, the PCs will be Christians coming to Riga soon after bishop’s Albert nomination (1202 CE should be fine). They will face the Unknown.

A good excuse is needed to kickstart the adventure, so let’s say that the PCs came to Riga in search of a Lost Expedition of Sir Eberhardt von Langenhagen who was searching for the Mythical Amber Skull. He simply ventured to the forests and was never seen before. What really happened to the expedition? No one knows so you don’t need to know as well, at least not now. The sam goes for the said artifact - maybe it's not even real, it doesn't really matter now.

Now, the most important part – the map. Usually I would prepare one using Hexographer or Hex Kit but now there is a possibility that I’ll need the map really soon for a live game and will not have a chance to print it out – I’ll go with hand-drawn one, I believe I have some clean hex matrix somewhere at home (why of course I have). That’s also the most time-consuming part. It takes me about an hour and a half of scribbling and the map is ready.

Adventure hooks? I decide that the players will get the map right at the start so they will see possible adventure sites. They will asks what is THAT? And by answering I will provide them with some hooks. Kind of blunt, but it works. Later we can add another sites or another map tiles which will need to be explored on a hex by hex basis.

Why there are dungeons and supernatural monsters there? Because it’s a fantasy game, d-uh. And apart from that:

• There are forgotten burial sites of ancient people, swarming with undead. Cliché as hell but works every time.
• Since the Christians brought their god to the land, demons came along. Literal gates to hell (Mythical Underworld if you prefer) opened and all kinds of monsters now infest the land.

The gears.

As I mentioned: I play mostly old-school adventures. So, it’s pretty obvious that I’ll pick an oldschool system. Since it’s about both dungeons and wilderness, we’ll go with Original Dungeons & Dragons without supplements. And with basic combat system, i.e. the Chainmail one. With fantasy combat table and Appendix A combat tables. You know, the armored foot vs light horse ones. There will be a slaughter of low level PCs. Just as I like.

In the vein of DIY spirit of OD&D let’s have some houserules:

• Travel speed is 3 hexes/day regardless of the terrain type.
• However – each day we will check whether the travel is not hindered. We’ll use Wind Force roll from vol. III as proposed by Roberd. Result of 2-3 equals one additional hex of travel that day, results 9-11 and 12 mean -1 and -2 hexes respectively.
• Let’s ditch the clumsy evasion and pursuit tables from vol. III. Instead let’s take the mutual sighting table from Gygax & Blume’s Warriors of Mars (p. 20).

• You know anyone who likes to calculate combat experience in OD&D? Me neither. So, let’s say that each party member will get full xp for a monster slain unless the monster is of a lower level (HD) in which case there will be no xp whatsoever.
• Let’s assume that each PC will start with retainers. How many? Maximum number allowed by their Charisma score. They will be Light Foot but the player may trade them for Heavy Foot (1 for 2 LF) or Armored Foot (1 for 3 LF).
• And no M-Us for players, at least at the start. I’m really tired of D&D classic spellbook. Clerics are fine, I guess. Maybe I will introduce some third party magic system later in the game. Most probably – brilliant Wonder & Wickedness.

Final touch.

Let’s search the net for some Samogitian names of the era.

Oh, yeah, the dungeons. A quick search among my papers and I have a handful of old maps from other campaigns. I’ll stock them on the fly.

And let’s have a custom made random encounter table. I could use the standard OD&D one and apply medieval Baltic textures on the fly but it’ll be better to think it through in advance. So I end up with a list for forest encounters (10 items), swamp (6 items) and dungeon (10 items). Should be more than enough for at least few games.

And one more important thing: the tone of the campaign. You may have thought oh man, another deus vult guy fascinated with crusades. Fear not, gentle reader – it’s quite the opposite. Despite that the PCs are crusader-types at the beginning, the overall tone of the campaign is intended to convey an idea that the crusaders were the bad guys. It’s not going to be subtle, it’s a tabletop fantasy rpg so if you want to have a message, it needs to be delivered straight. So it will be obvious that there is a colonization process taking place and it’s not a good thing when you are on the being colonized side of the stick. And it’s good to remember to avoid the noble savage trope if we’re dealing with colonization themes.

Also, remember to have a good soundtrack to listen to when you work on the campaign. Oh, yeah, I just remembered that in 2019 I recorded some singing Estonian medieval re-enactors. I need to listen to it once more. Or ten times on repeat.

What’s next?

That’s just a sketch. It will be expanded if we actually start the game. There will be random encounters which will carry the campaign to different dimensions. Players will have adventure ideas. Between the games I’ll roll what do NPCs do and it will turn the initial assumptions inside out.

Conclusion.

That was a relatively quick one. I believe it took like three hours to prepare this particular game. I’m aware that it’s not a universal way to go. It probably will work well for new DMs too. However, bear in mind that the Game is not really much of a manual which guides you step by step by preparing and running the game as many modern systems do. Probably there are better choices for improvised campaigns like a legion of Dungeon World descendants. Definitely need to check them out some day.

If I actually run it I’ll keep you updated how it’s going.

If you feel confused seeing a lot of things in Polish on the blog, check this note.