Hexes with Depth: Overcomplicating the hexcrawl

Today's post is about something I tried that didn't work. It was a cool idea in theory, but it didn't produce the results I wanted.

My basic idea was this: add a second dimension to hexcrawl terrain types. Rather than simply having plains, hills, forest, deserts, swamps and mountains you now have differing intensities of each. Forests become sparse forests, medium forests and dense forests.

I was hoping this would provide a bunch of extra descriptive variety while traversing the hexmap without adding any real noodly details to keep track of. One end of the scale is the most featureless, least difficult to traverse version of a terrain type and the other end of the scale is busy, intense, and difficult. You have three times as many types of hex but still only have to think about the same number of types of hex you were already using.

The problem ended up being that there were three times as many types of hex.

You see, I like a hexcrawl where the players can get lost. If you aren't actually exploring, aren't figuring things out on the fly then there isn't really much point in doing a hexcrawl. Being lost is a part of the experience that I want to create. Traversal itself being a challenge and the possibility of ending up somewhere totally unexpected are awesome and fun.

With a lot of different types of hex, it became too easy to pinpoint one's exact location on the map simply based on the visible surroundings. There was no being lost in the woods, because there are some sparse woods this way and some dense woods this way. There's now only one hex anywhere in the vicinity you could reasonably be in. It became completely trivial, which made the whole process feel like a waste of time.

I ended up throwing the whole idea out in favour of fairly bland hexes with spread-out points of interest to navigate between.

I guess the lesson to be learned here is somewhere between "keep it simple" and "make sure you playtest". If you don't, it's easy to get lost.

Which die is the most honest?

There's a great Goblin Punch article about core resolution mechanics and the pros and cons of each. If you're even the slightest bit interested in RPG mechanics or game design I'd recommend giving it a read, but the general idea can be gleaned from the table at the bottom directly comparing a bunch of core mechanics qualitatively. I won't copy-paste it here, just go look.

What I want to talk about today is one specific aspect of this: transparency. Which die do people understand the odds of most accurately? Which one acts the most like people think it does?

Arnold lists the d100 roll-under mechanic as "perfect" visibility and the d20 roll-under mechanic as "high" visibility. I'm going to make the admittedly weird argument that the d20 in its 5% steps is actually clearer to the average player than the d100.

People do not intuit probability well at all. 65% doesn't feel very high despite the fact that you have almost double the chance of succeeding than you do of failing. Yet somehow, a coin flip feels like pretty good odds to most people. I mean, it's mathematically fair isn't it? Well, until you do flip it and it doesn't go your way. Or you've already flipped once and lost - surely it'll come up your way this time.

Famously, the video game XCOM tried to remedy this by having the displayed hit percentages lie (in a good way!) to the players, telling you that you have a 95% chance to hit but then applying a bunch of modifiers which give you a much greater true chance of hitting. Basically, they wanted people not to feel like the game was cheating them, so they made it cheat in their favour instead. The result? There were still memes about always missing at 95%. The odds are better than what's displayed and people still feel like the game is cheating them.

Human comprehension of probabilities is atrocious.

Finally getting to the point:

Let's map this to the initial examples: 65% and a coin-flip, but in the roll-under d20 system.

• To succeed you need to roll below 10.
• To succeed you need to roll below 13.

How do those statements feel? I don't know if I am an outlier or in the majority here, but the discrete steps of the d20 seem more intuitively comprehensible compared to the mathematical honesty of the d100. I have even seen convincing arguments from some real grognards that the "x-in-d6" of yore is clearer again, and I find it hard to disagree. Who knows, six might actually be a sweet spot between granularity and comprehension, even though it seems backwards that 16.67% steps would be intuitive.

The Ten Foot Pole Store

Read this post as if it's a goofy merchant character trying to sell you something. Prices are given in ten-foot-pole-equivalents.

Ten-foot poles:

Ten-foot pole - 1 - it's a pole, about ten feet long. Cumbersome but useful.

Decempeda - 1.5 - it's a pole, exactly ten feet long. Perfect for precise measuring, still cumbersome.

Jointed ten-foot pole - 2 - Unscrews at three points so it can fit in a pack or something. Can be separated into four 2.5 foot poles. Takes a minute or so to set up and pack up. If you buy multiple you can construct a longer pole with the parts! But the ends only have one joint, so you only get 5 extra feet per additional pole.

Folding ten-foot pole - 2 - Folds up in a zig-zaggy pattern with joints that lock. Quicker to fold and unfold than the standard jointed model, but can't be separated into four 2.5 foot poles.

Telescoping ten-foot pole - 4 - Very quick and easy to extend, but a bit flimsy. You can swing it to open it and you will look very cool.

Elastic ten-foot pole - 10 - Can be bent all the way round so that it touches end-to-end and still spring back into shape. Could be considered a minor magic item, as the material it is made of is fantastical in nature.

Other ten-foot products:

Ten-foot ladder - 1.5 - Two ten-foot poles connected by a bunch of rungs. Probably useless, to be honest.

Ten-foot rope - 2 - An amazing pole that can twist and bend in any direction!

Ten-foot chain - 20 - Like the ten-foot rope but metal!

Ten feet - 1 - From rabbits. Very lucky. Enough to share.

Magical ten-foot items:

He probably doesn't have all of these on hand - maybe the ones he doesn't have are legends he is seeking.

Staff of Ten-Footness - 100 - Once per day, a successful DC 15 spell check makes anything shorter than ten feet expand to ten feet long. Now I know what you're thinking, and I will not be liable for any damages!

Immoveable ten-foot pole - 250 - The infamous immoveable rod but ten feet long. Very dangerous.

Sun's Pole - 3000 - Extends and contracts at the will of the holder, but is very heavy. Has seemingly no upper limit on length.

Hitting a hydra

This is a mechanic for determining which head of a hydra gets hit. I swear this is simpler than it looks. If the logic doesn't immediately make sense from the chart, read on rather than scratching your head over it.

Heads	Dice rolled
1	-
2	-
3	2d2-1
4	1d2+1d3-1
5	2d3-1
6	1d3+1d4-1
7	2d4-1
8	1d4+1d5-1
9	2d5-1

In some games (e.g. DCC) you are already tracking the HP of each head of a hydra. In some (e.g. 5e) you are not, instead tracking only a, HP total and the number of heads. If you're already keeping track, this isn't a ton of extra overhead.

If a player chooses to strike at the hydra without aiming, roll the listed dice to determine which head is hit. The dice are simply a pair of dice whose maximums add up to the number of heads, plus one. For instance, 9 heads, plus 1 is 10, half of that is 5 so you roll two d5s. The reason you need to subtract 1 is because you can't roll a 1 on two dice, so you end up with as many possibilities as heads.

If there is only 1 head to hit there's obviously no need to roll, and if there's only 2 then just let the player hit whichever one they want. I considered a 3-in-4 roll to hit the desired head but it's getting too complex at that point.

Optional extension: Aiming

If the player aims for a specific head, treat that head as the "center" roll: the most likely roll on the pair of dice (the smaller die total plus one (yes, with different die sizes there will be two equal results, that won't matter)). Lower numbers go down the line, higher numbers go up the line, and the ends wrap around (aiming for the first head and rolling low can hit the last head).

This lets players be strategic if certain heads have certain abilities, rather than the center ones probably dying first. It also allows for players to try to kill the heads all at the same time.

Alternate version

Roll the two dice together. The leftmost die represents left, the rightmost die represents right. Literally just use where they land on the table relative to you. The difference between the two dice determines how many heads the player misses by, and which one is highest determines the direction.

This version came from a hexcrawl "lost" mechanic where two dice determined how far left or right travelers drifted.

Platonic ideal potions

Alchemists of old used to work with materials. They tried to turn iron into gold and find cures for ailments. These are still valid pursuits, of course, though medicine these days is left to the apothecaries and creating valuables from trash tends to require more magical capability than most are willing to sell their soul for.

Modern alchemy focuses instead on the abstract. Rather than distilling and modifying things, the art has moved on to distilling capital "T" Things. The ideas and concepts of our world rather than mere substances that exist within it. Ask a carpenter if you want a chair. Ask an alchemist if you want the very essence of chairness.

What's in this health potion? Why, health, of course.

A potion is the purified, liquified, and conveniently bottled essence of a concept. Drinking a strength potion simply makes the imbiber become more like the concept of "strength". A love potion makes a person love, and a health potion makes a person healthy. It is that simple. It's not always necessary to drink the potion - a bottle smashed open to quickly coat a substance can have the desired effect. This is a much more practical use for a potion of burning than drinking it. Trust me.

Potions of water breathing are often actually potions of fish. It is imperative not to screw up the dosage on that one.

It is even possible to brew a death potion - a substance which will kill, but will not show any signs of poisoning or any discernible cause of death. The drinker simply becomes dead. Equally possible and significantly more horrifying (or hilarious, depending on your perspective) are the results of drinking a potion of chairness.

The very same mechanism that allows potions to work is also what makes them so dangerous. Typically, ideals will come from a variety of ingredients and must be carefully distilled. Any number of other ontological contaminants can distort the effects, giving the appearance of chaotic unreliability. In reality, the reason your luck potion accidentally melted the person who drank it was because water is a primary ingredient, and wateriness was the concept that ended up being distilled. Honestly, it was an amateur mistake to even attempt to distill luck.

You can use a list of random concepts such as the one I threw together for freeform magic to come up with endless ideas for potions.

The Make Potion spell (DCC RPG p. 223) is one method of distilling concepts into liquid, though as with all magic, many of those casters of the spell do not understand what it is truly doing.

Making Immortals more DCC-ish

I've written before about my fascination with Immortals from early editions of D&D and a little of my own vision of them. While there is a lot I do enjoy about them, there's also a lot of room to improve. Here are some things about the original versions of Immortals that don't quite fit the DCC vibe, and how I might use some of DCC's design principles for Immortals in my own games and worlds.

All Immortals are the same

When one becomes an Immortal, they gain a bunch of the same powers as the other Immortals all at once and their old life becomes suddenly irrelevant (besides, apparently, the Immortal's personality and some fond memories). Immortals are not all identical, of course, but there is a core set of abilities that they all just have. These abilities are largely unrelated to each other besides being the kinds of things you expect godly figures to be able to do.

What if each ability critical to being an immortal had to be gained independently, and thus not all Immortals have all powers? The first step is, obviously, immortality itself. Bringing yourself to a state in which your death is no longer a guarantee. From there, all the other powers are just a matter of time - after all, you have endless years to achieve them. Characters could undertake multiple quests to gain the powers of divine spellcasting (truly creating their own spells, rather than borrowing them as Clerics and Wizards), various forms including ethereality and mortal avatars, teleportation, planar creation and dominion, and resistance to magical effects. Each and every one of these powers that is simply granted upon ascension could be an entire story of its own. Quest for it.

To be fair, it makes sense for Immortals to be so similar because there is only...

One road to Immortality

You might argue that there are multiple listed paths, but in the end they all amounted to finding an Immortal sponsor and doing some grand test or display of power to get your sponsor to grant you the gift of Immortality. This implies that you could draw a family tree of all Immortals, from the first of all time right down to the player characters. This set of powers is a gift that has been passed down.

This is way too straightforward and structured.

Being granted immortality by a higher being should be but one possible path toward immortality, let alone capital "I" Immortality. Perhaps it's the appropriate path for a Cleric to follow, the ultimate reward from their deity for acting as their Chosen, but here are some alternate ways to become immortal:

• Lichdom. Sure, this isn't complete immortality, but "immortality, unless..." is more fun anyway. Have players attempt to pull shenanigans like Voldemorting themselves into 7 phylacteries or dropping their phylactery into a black hole to make it inaccessible.
• Reincarnation. Give your soul some way to move bodies after your death and you even get fun new forms every lifetime.
• Discovering or creating the Philosopher's Stone.
• Regenerative immortality. Develop some magic, tech, or mutation which allows you to recover from any injury, given enough time and energy.
• Rewrite the annals of time such that your death is no longer destined, or that your existence is a universal constant.
• Pledge your soul to multiple afterlives and they'll use their power to keep you alive so they can avoid going to cosmic court over custody. This will piss your patrons off for sure.
• De-age yourself every couple decades. Magically, medically, whatever.

Some of these are even almost possible using spells in the core rules.

Immortals totally aren't Gods

To any peasant, even the weakest of Immortals would seem like a god. The original version of Immortals simply doesn't bring up the elephant in the room with this one. Gods presumably exist, as Clerics regularly receive divine intervention. In fact, Clerics will serve Immortals, so the reasonable conclusion seems to be that Immortals are in fact gods. But BECMI simply doesn't bring up gods at all, and the particular lack of any mention of particular aspects of religion appears to be a result of the backlash received by D&D during the Satanic Panic. Can't blame the publishers for not wanting to pour fuel on the fire there.

In DCC, it's not entirely clear what deities are exactly. Among the suggested Clerical deities in DCC RPG are proper gods, a demigod, an Old One, a demon prince and a demon lord. From this I would suppose that a deity in DCC is any being powerful enough to grant a Cleric their power. Any one of those creatures are likely immortal and thus classify as an Immortal.

It's not so much that they are gods necessarily, but they may as well be because who even knows what a god is anyway?

Immortality follows a clear and structured hierarchy

I'm not sure whether it turned out this way for the sake of game mechanics or whether the authors fell into the design traps many of us do while world-building - that old human obsession with labelling things and putting them neatly into a box. Whatever the reason, the Immortals set goes well out of its way to tell you exactly how many Immortals there are at which levels. To reach those levels, you specifically have to compete with and usurp existing Immortals.

A lot of mystery and variety is removed by this structured approach. On top of that, it bakes a lot of cosmic world-building into the mechanics of the game, leaving little (if any) room for the Judge and players to do their own thing. I have my own ideas about what the cosmos looks like with Immortals in it but it's very freeform and would likely be different in a different campaign world. BECMI gives you one version of the cosmos to play with, and it's not a very mysterious one. There's little to explore, which is odd given that exploring the secrets of the universe is supposed to be what Immortals do. I guess the authors thought that meant there needed to be answers.

How this all ties together

If we these things about Immortals, we end up with something that looks a little more appropriate for a DCC campaign. The advice given in the core book includes keeping things mysterious and unknown, having variety, and achieving great power through questing. That's all totally possible at the cosmic hero tier of play too.

I guess the next step is to create that tier of play.

Using Story Cubes as an Oracle

It was my birthday recently and my wife gifted me a bunch of Story Cubes. Specifically, four sets of them: Classic, Actions, Voyages, and Fantasia.

A version of this concept for those who do not own these dice exists here.

Left to right: Fantasia, Voyages, Actions

Four sets gives me 36 dice in four colors, for a total of 216 possible random pictograms if I draw dice from a bag. Very nice. My immediate thought was that this is effectively a d666 table (see below), but there's more than that. Let's look at what we can do with these.

Spark tables based on the dice

I wrote down what each face of each die looks like to me. Some are a little subjective and there's definitely word-association to be done with the visuals, which makes using the real dice far more effective at providing inspiration. But in lieu of owning the dice, you can use this as a spark table. Some of these are modern and don't necessarily suit all genres, but for a spark table I genuinely don't think that matters. If you roll "airplane" in a fantasy medieval setting, surely that still gives you some idea you can work with!

Result 266 was the rightmost pictogram in the above photo - I found this one particularly hard to interpret. Let me know if you know what that's actually supposed to be.

Classic	1	2	3	4	5	6
11	walking cane	mobile phone	weighing scales	expressionless mask	diagonal arrow	lightning bolt
12	ID card	rainbow	stone tower	pyramid	open eye	tree
13	planet	flashlight	apple	friendly face	modern tower	airplane
14	keyhole	comedy and tragedy	parachuter	striped fish	chaos symbol	sunflower
15	open book	bee	bridge over water	abacus	crescent moon	magician's wand
16	question mark	fountain	key	sad face	shooting star	teepee
21	sheep	padlock	learner plate	magnet	footprint	fire
22	house	speech bubble	sleeping face	light bulb	arrow (weapon)	clock
23	open hand	a six-sided die	magnifying glass	scarab	menacing shadow	turtle

Actions	1	2	3	4	5	6
24	push	falling object	press button	steal	set alight	think
25	listen to music	enter door	hide	falling person	play with dolls	hit ball
26	sore thumb	read book	surprise	gift	turn	touch (blindfolded)
31	climb tree	thumbs up	counting	kick ball	catch butterfly	eat lunch
32	drying laundry	reach high	point	knock	build wall	awaken to alarm
33	bounce	cough	walk	carry	light weights	lead the way
34	dance	break/snap	dig hole	shout/call	fight	fill hole
35	jump down	scissors cut paper	drop ball	cry	knock down vase	drawing
36	fork in road	ask question	hang from bars	throw ball up	rocket collision	laughter

Voyages	1	2	3	4	5	6
41	torii gate	dino skull	coin bag	tunnel entrance	waves	beans
42	backpack	monkey	goblet	cactus	sunrise/sunset	gauge/meter
43	skull and crossbones	six pointed star/sun	spotted mushroom	submarine	raincloud	gears
44	cauldron	spectacles	camera	pointing/accusatory	pill	elephant
45	rice bowl	stairway down	bandit	horned helmet	pouring flask	bacterium
46	exotic city	jewel pendant	octopus	crab	miniature person	mirror
51	circus tent	angry	cracking egg	opening chest (facing away)	road to mountains	puzzle piece
52	"ping"	crown	treasure map	snake	whip	ray gun
53	crow	scared	musical note	telescope	ladder	axe

Fantasia	1	2	3	4	5	6
54	frog	flute	bindle	slinky cat	shadowy imp	old crone
55	Zeus smiting	summit temple	sailship	minotaur	giant brute	last stand atop high ground
56	maze	harp	trojan horse	hypnotized/entranced	sly/convincing/hiding dagger	Icarus flying too close
61	monk	princess with sword	market stall	jester cap	pig on a spit	quill and inkwell
62	trident	opening jewelry box (facing away)	Charon the ferryman	Medusa	hermes' winged boots	high throne
63	wolf howling at moon	robed figure	birdcage	Gnome miner	path into forest	baby basket
64	bow and quiver	tankard of ale	crusader helmet	cart of hay	morningstar	longhouse
65	dragon	troll/ogre	shackled prisoner	castle gate	potion	wizard
66	tiara	hand mirror	path to hilltop tower	figure inside swirl	fairy	well

Yes/No Oracle

Draw three story dice from the bag and roll them. If the pictogram is something that would be beneficial to the situation or question, count one "yes". If it is not beneficial or is negative, count one "no". Majority rules.

You can get "yes, and" results if all three are positive rather than just a majority. If you use five dice, you can create a sliding scale including "no, and", "no, but" and "yes, but". Three positives or negatives is a softer yes or no, while a unanimous result is stronger.

You could theoretically play an entire storygame using this and only this. Do the heroes beat the army of orcs? Abacus, lightbulb, morningstar... It looks like superior intellect, strength and a brilliant strategic idea bring the heroes a decisive victory!

Character Generation

In games based around tags, traits, or aspects drawing a few dice and rolling them is all you need to generate a character. In any other game, you could use this to come up with the character concept and then use the usual generation methods to get there.

Four elements

You can also associate the four colors with the four elements and use that as your oracle, an idea that I got from the solo RPG Diedream. The colors of the sets I own are grey, blue, green and pink, which map closely enough to air, water, earth and fire. The tables above are colored as such, but you might as well roll a d4 if you're doing it that way. Sometimes these broader categories might be all you need, or they might color your interpretation of the images.