Hi, I'm still alive. I've been pretty busy, busy moving, busy writing, busy working. I've recently moved across the entire country, and during my downtime I've been writing a small hexcrawl for my group to play as a mini-campaign when I visit them over breaks, and for a few new players I've met already. It started off as a simple hexcrawl featuring an awful forest and witch hunters, then ambition got the better of me so I added a fleshy dungeon. Consider this my belated addition to Nate Treme's Pamphlet Dungeon Jam. Here you go, the setting along with a few design notes further down this page (I recommend you read the second PDF in the folder first):
I'll admit, the product isn't done-done yet, it's writing is a tad unorganized and its formatting could use a little bit of work. It's kinda hard making a pamphlet because you need to allow yourself to not give all the information you want on a location, just enough so it's runnable and it gets its theme across. This will be edited later perhaps, but in the meantime I'm happy to not worry too much about perfection and have some good gameable content. Here's some suggestions that I thought might be a waste of space or inappropriately placed in the pamphlet:
- Replace the Hag's Hut with the Tomb Of The Serpent Kings. The hag is squatting in a tomb (replace Xiximanter with the hag), her experiments have escaped (re-skin the goblins to be more... fleshy), and most witch hunters have died inside of the tomb (replace the undead snake-people with undead witch hunters).
- Add the Sleeping Place Of Feathered Swine somewhere around here, possibly the hag wants the cysts from the Feathered Swine.
- The bottom of the cauldron in the Hag's Hut is a portal to another plane. Possibly to the Stygian Library. (I am 100% using this shit, wish I had enough space in the pamphlet to make a small pocket-dimension)
- Insert your own dungeon at the bottom of the Ruined Tower, it's just asking for it.
- If you want you can make Garmr's Den also lead to a part of a dungeon of your choice. That could be clever.
Keep in mind that if you add any really fantastical things with the suggestions above, it will subtract from the low-magic feel of the place. I made the hexcrawl so magic isn't a giant part, you could even make the hag a giant fake if you want, just an insane lady. Now, I had a small and sloppy process while making these, figured that I might as well document it and maybe refine it in a later post:
The Hexcrawl
- Use the Welsh-Piper method for making hex terrain, ignore half hexes. This should end up with 10 primary hexes, 6 secondary hexes, and 3 wildcard hexes.
- The first three hexes will be your three factions, as small-ish hexcrawls like this should have about 3 factions:
- Hex I should be a village or town.
- Hex II should be your dungeon.
- Hex III should be some other miscellaneous faction.
- The last three hexes should be of your choice:
- Hex IV should be something with hostile intent.
- Hex V should be something with neutral intent.
- Hex VI should be something with weird intent.
- Make an encounter table and a rumor table. You can use whatever method you want with this, I use a basic D6 rumor table (1 rumor utterly false, 2 rumors somewhat true, 3 rumors true) and Ben Milton's method of encounter tables.
- Include some (at least 3) important NPCs of the town. I originally created a separate pamphlet for the town, but found it ultimately unsatisfying to completely fill out.
The Dungeon
- Literally just use this to make the dungeon contents, it's excellent and fits on a pamphlet nicely.
- Use this to make the map.
- Have fun.
Also, if you want to watch a really good video on witch hunts, watch this one. I don't like getting political in this space, but this is one of my favorite videos of all time, a genuine work of art. This hexcrawl is almost definitely in the time when people still believed that it was magic that made witches evil.
Anyway, have fun, I'll be posting more since school's out.
 |
| The Most Cursed Of Hands |
I'll admit, the product isn't done-done yet, it's writing is a tad unorganized and its formatting could use a little bit of work. It's kinda hard making a pamphlet because you need to allow yourself to not give all the information you want on a location, just enough so it's runnable and it gets its theme across. This will be edited later perhaps, but in the meantime I'm happy to not worry too much about perfection and have some good gameable content. Here's some suggestions that I thought might be a waste of space or inappropriately placed in the pamphlet:
- Replace the Hag's Hut with the Tomb Of The Serpent Kings. The hag is squatting in a tomb (replace Xiximanter with the hag), her experiments have escaped (re-skin the goblins to be more... fleshy), and most witch hunters have died inside of the tomb (replace the undead snake-people with undead witch hunters).
- Add the Sleeping Place Of Feathered Swine somewhere around here, possibly the hag wants the cysts from the Feathered Swine.
- The bottom of the cauldron in the Hag's Hut is a portal to another plane. Possibly to the Stygian Library. (I am 100% using this shit, wish I had enough space in the pamphlet to make a small pocket-dimension)
- Insert your own dungeon at the bottom of the Ruined Tower, it's just asking for it.
- If you want you can make Garmr's Den also lead to a part of a dungeon of your choice. That could be clever.
Keep in mind that if you add any really fantastical things with the suggestions above, it will subtract from the low-magic feel of the place. I made the hexcrawl so magic isn't a giant part, you could even make the hag a giant fake if you want, just an insane lady. Now, I had a small and sloppy process while making these, figured that I might as well document it and maybe refine it in a later post:
The Hexcrawl
- Use the Welsh-Piper method for making hex terrain, ignore half hexes. This should end up with 10 primary hexes, 6 secondary hexes, and 3 wildcard hexes.
- The first three hexes will be your three factions, as small-ish hexcrawls like this should have about 3 factions:
- Hex I should be a village or town.
- Hex II should be your dungeon.
- Hex III should be some other miscellaneous faction.
- The last three hexes should be of your choice:
- Hex IV should be something with hostile intent.
- Hex V should be something with neutral intent.
- Hex VI should be something with weird intent.
- Make an encounter table and a rumor table. You can use whatever method you want with this, I use a basic D6 rumor table (1 rumor utterly false, 2 rumors somewhat true, 3 rumors true) and Ben Milton's method of encounter tables.
- Include some (at least 3) important NPCs of the town. I originally created a separate pamphlet for the town, but found it ultimately unsatisfying to completely fill out.
The Dungeon
- Literally just use this to make the dungeon contents, it's excellent and fits on a pamphlet nicely.
- Use this to make the map.
- Have fun.
Also, if you want to watch a really good video on witch hunts, watch this one. I don't like getting political in this space, but this is one of my favorite videos of all time, a genuine work of art. This hexcrawl is almost definitely in the time when people still believed that it was magic that made witches evil.
Anyway, have fun, I'll be posting more since school's out.
after seeing contrapoints in yr heartbreaker and reading this, i had a feeling that the witchhunt video was gonna be oliver's pitch perfect halloween episode
ReplyDeletei was searching for yr bee dungeon for like an hour, and now basically i wanna be yr best friend so idk
Your Discord has bitten some dust. I'm putting together a GLOG campaign and would like to invite you.
ReplyDeleteEver since my husband got me divorced for the past 2 years, i v'e not been my self. I was reviewing some post of how i could get back my husband then, i saw a testimony shared by Marina Choas from SWEDEN about a spell caster named Dr. tunde. I contacted Marina Chaos to confirm about how Dr. tunde helped her and she clarified everything to me of how he helped her and that gave me the courage to get in touch with Dr. tunde for help. Dr. tunde assured me that my days of sorrows will be over within 48hours after he has finished with his work. I followed his instructions he gave to me because i had the believe, faith, hope and trust in him. Verily i say to you today that i and my husband are back together and i can proudly say and testify to the world of what Dr. tunde did for me. Contact him today via E-mail:(babatundesolutioncentre1@gmail.com) OR call him or whatsapp him +2348143581382 if you seek his help. Also specialize in treating all kinds of illness, HERPES VIRUS, HEPATITIS B, CANCER, BRAIN DISEASE, INFERTILITY, DIABETES AND MORE
ReplyDeleteIs iphone is better than android? Support for the latest OS, Apple's support for older phones is generally better than Android's.
ReplyDeleteYes i am totally agreed with this article and i just want say that this article is very nice and very informative article.I will make sure to be reading your blog more. You made a good point but I can't help but wonder, what about the other side? !!!!!!Thanks Anthony Scott Dietrich Gainesville VA
ReplyDelete