THE HEXCRAWL HACK: Problems

 THE HEXCRAWL HACK

Which problem I faced and cheapstake solutions

Hi everyone!

Today we’ll face the problems I faced when using The Black Hack to craft a hexcrawl campaign. The first and foremost, as stated previously, is that journeying in TBH is not this central. I needed a way to gamify resource management through the wilderness which was both gamey and predictable.

Surviving in the Wilderness

If there’s something the adventurers wants to do, well, that’s actually surviving. To survive a human being needs to eat and drink some. So, since TBH actually HAS a way to track time, I decided that an adventurer should roll a Usage Die each once per day for drinks and food. What if they can’t drink nor eat? Well, I guess they have Disadvantage on all rolls (yup, even Usage Die rolls, and even Damage) for all the activities it makes sense so. As an example, I don’t think that because someone is angry, they consume more torches. I think (because of personal experience) that if you can’t eat for a day, everything become incredibly difficult. I also think that, always due to personal experience, if you don’t drink enough, you become sleepy and heavy headed and stuff so, yeah, disadvantage.

“What if some adventure pal decides to share its food and drinks?”

Well they can! Of course, because they’re consuming double the food, they roll the Usage Die with Disadvantage.

“How is this fair or balanced?”

Well, I don’t know yet! I’m planning on running a Hexcrawl campaign with my playgroup so that we see how this works.

Outdoor Activities

So, I’ have to gamify some outdoor activities. Short Rest and Long Rest are already covered in TBH2e, I’d just add stuff from the disadvantage mechanic up there. Then I had to add something to not starve when you’re out of food and I’d call it hunt&forage.

H&F had to be based on WISdom. Why? Because Mages are “strong” the way they are, I wouldn’t like to make them the Jack of all trades. Clerics lean on WISdom for the magic stuff, but this reinforce the image of a friar studying on huge leather bound tomes written with feathers and stuff with all the gregorian chants on the background and I don’t know, I kinda like it. I’d prefer there’d be a ranger/barbarian class, but I don’t want to add too much niche stuff. As I stated I choose TBH both for the ruleset and the availability of the core mechanics, adding too much stuff player-wise invalidate the accessibility someway, don’t it? Also, you can get around it using the Background mechanic, not too bad.

Then, one day, I opened the Forbidden Lands Quickstart and discovered the Outdoor section. It has: hike, scout, lookout, forage, hunt, fish, camp, rest, sleep, explore.

They are pretty self-explanatory, aren’t they? The system is totally different, so I won’t break it down, but I’ll explain how I’ll make it work in my hack.

HIKE: no test required, simple marching/walking. You can push it as far as walking an entire day (COS Test for each March beyond the first. Failure means Disadvantage) but you’ll eventually feel sleepy from lacking of sleep.

SCOUT: WIS/INT test. Failure means you don’t know where you are. You have taken a random direction Or one at GM discretion.

LOOKOUT: WIS test. Success means you have the upper hand, failure means you don’t have time to react before initiative.

FORAGE, HUNT, FISH: Hunt & Forage. WIS/INT test, choosing due to narrative (setting a trap may be a INT test I guess). Success means success, failure means you have resources BUT a mishap occurs. Maybe what you H&F’d was poisonous and you don’t realise it until you ate it, maybe a random encounter. Or maybe you actually don’t collect what you need.

CAMP: WIS Test. Failure means the camp sucks in a way. Make it up.

REST: 1 HD of HP back, repair Armor Dice.

SLEEP: Roll all of the HD, repair ADs and get magic back.

EXPLORE: you find everything that’s in the Hex. Roll twice on encounters.

Emergent Problem: The Hexes

Now, TBH kinda factors in Hexes, but just kinda. Like, on harsh terrain you’d travel from a side to the center of the hex (instead of traversing it). This would be a bit confusing on mastering, So I decided to half the dimensions: in a march you can traverse two hexes hiking. This means on harsh terrain you traverse one hex. Mounts doubles the distances, but only on normal terrain. Also, for real life reference, Hexes are about 6 miles (roughly 10 km) from one side to the opposite. This grants a series of advantages: measurements are easily divided into pieces, and a person may walk for an entire hour covering 3 miles, making a 12 miles into 6 hours (roughly a March duration) at least plausible.

Rounding Up:

There are four Marches in a day, each made by Hours. In a March you can hike, scout, lookout, h&f, camp, rest, sleep and explore. Failing on rolls of one of the activities that doesn’t mean straight up failure but inconvenience.