Tarot Crawling

I've uploaded a new set of rules to itch.io that use Tarot cards to prep and then run a wilderness area for exploration. The reason I'm linking it here is that the last page of the zine describes the primary function of bells within Gelgelim.

I've written about bells before. As a quick recap, bells ward off bad things (thieves, storms, spirits, witches, bad luck, demons, etc.), but it is difficult to model that at the table unless these warded-against forces actually plague the characters. And I'm not interested in making my players' lives more stressful in their urban interactions. However, by assigning 'bad luck' types of events to Tarot cards, which I present in the zine as an alternative to random(ish) encounters, I find a use for bells.

Bells make traveling more safe by reducing the chances of bad things happening. Different modalities and melodies ward off different things, and better bellringers can choose to weave together these modalities and melodies to abjure against more things at once. At the table, the player chooses some number of cards to avoid from a pre-selected list (boginky, spirits, delaying circumstances, catastrophe, traveling accident, and a few others). If I would reveal that card while the characters travel, I instead shuffle it back into the deck. If I draw that card again, the bells have no effect.

Silver bells repel boginky, both the card that invokes them and, if encountered anyways, will keep them at bay as long as the bells sound.

Adapting the Hazard Die to the Pioneer Hexcrawl

I am alive and around.  I've entrance exams in a couple of weeks and I'm spending most of my time preparing for them, as well as getting situated in Rochester.  I have been working on my world as well and wanted to share some of my progress with the Pioneer Hexcrawl.

Brendan, ofNecropraxis, has a system he calls the Hazard Die which provides the pacing for his games.  The general idea is that events happening in the game world = player engagement, so rather than changing the odds of monster or location encounters, he takes the 1d6 random encounter die and provides a different outcome for each result, so that something happens almost every day.  The context in which the die is rolled informs the exact outcomes.  Now, Brendan's overall approach feels more like the complicated board games I enjoy and less like a tabletop role-playing game, but since overland exploration is the most board-game-like structure within D&D, the two ideas are well-suited to each other.

Now, I disagree with Brendan's premise that stuff needs to happen every day, especially on a journey that might take months in-game.  In fact, I'm quite all right with a week or so passing without anything of note happening - that will provide time for the players to practice some self-care.

So, rather than the full-on Hazard die, I propose rolling 1d6 each day.  On the result of your favorite number, roll again to see the kind of event incurred.  This is all bog-standard stuff, except for the addition of travel hazards and resource depletion.

Roll	Outcome
1-2	Wandering Monster
3	Unique Location
4-5	Travel Hazard
6	Resource Depletion

Travel hazards impede progress for a certain number of days.  They will be terrain-dependent (probably no mudslides while traversing the desert), and can either be waited out or soldiered through (albeit with a possibility of damaging a wagon or animal).  I'm including here information for the Wildlands, a savanna and grassland that lies on the eastern edge of my world.

Roll	Travel Hazard (Wildlands)
1	Wildfire
2-3	Thornroots
4-6	Herd migration
7	Surprise swamp
8	Heat wave

Wildfires are a constant danger while on savanna and grasslands and can be caused by lightning strikes, perpetually-burning ground fires, sparks from rockslides, or a number of other environmental factors.  Wildfires are one of the major ways a savanna and grassland biome maintains itself, as the fires will kill off saplings but leave older trees while only burning the grass shoots, not the roots.  Determine the origin direction of the fire by rolling 1d6 and then determining which hex edge corresponds with the number rolled, and has a 3 in 4 chance of erupting some 2d6*10 mi away and a 1 in 4 chance of becoming visible only 2d10 mi from the party.  The fire's direction depends upon the time of day: daytime fires travel eastward (away from the sea), while nighttime fires travel westward (towards it).  Wildfires travel about 9-12mi/h, so if the wildfire menaces the party, determine its speed as 1d4+8mi/h.  Smoke will reach the party first, panicking the animals and potentially causing death long before the fire arrives - when the fire is within 20 miles, characters will need to start making Athlete (or Constitution) checks to avoid damage from smoke-inhalation, unless characters protect their airways with magic or wet cloth.

Thornroots are a kind of thorn-covered vine that outcompetes most grass and shrubs.  They are fire-resistant and deal 1 damage per 10' movement to unarmored creatures.  Hacking a path for a wagon slows progress by half.

Herd migrations: a herd of large herbivores are migrating across the path of the party and will take 1d3 days to finish.  On the Wildlands, the crossing animals would probably be antelope, gazeer, or buffalo.  Additionally, the next hex will have no grazing available.  Interfering with the migration could cause a stampede.

Surprise swamp: the area ahead is saturated with water but deceptively so - after traveling into the next hex, the lead animals (and wagon, if the driver fails a Wisdom check) will become mired in mud.

Heat wave: temperatures in the area reach dangerous heights.  Anything in full sunlight for more than an hour (or who enter combat) must save or suffer heat exhaustion (reduce Con, Wis to 1/2 usual and take 1d6 damage every hour not resting.  Cured by 1d3 days of total rest out of the sun).  Characters in any armor do not get the save to avoid heat exhaustion.  Resting is not possible while the heat is so high: no hp can be recovered nor injuries healed.  Water requirements for all creatures are doubled during the heat wave.  The heat wave lasts 1d4 days with an exploding die.

Resource depletion consists of just that: events that will either remove or require the additional consumption of the party's supplies.  While I think that my original idea to give wagons hit points has merit, the implementation of it also requires taking choices away from the players - having wagon damage events be part of the travel hazard seems a better solution.  Whenever this result is rolled, all wagons make a saving throw based on their condition.  Those that fail roll on the following table.

Roll	Resource Depletion
1-4	1d8 wheel spokes snap
5-6	Axle breaks
7-8	Wagon tongue breaks
9	Water barrel rots
10-11	Animal goes lame
12	1d4 items go missing

As I stated before, whenever a wagon suffers damage like this, I'd recommend rolling for the next structural effect (roll a d8 on the table instead of the d12) which will take place whenever the wagon next fails its saving throw and subsequently rolls a wagon-damage result.

Wagon wheels have 12 spokes and can operate as long as half of them are still present.  However, whenever a wheel loses spokes, roll 1d12.  If you roll higher than the number of spokes left, the wheel collapses, breaking all of the remaining spokes and requiring a new wheel.

Lame is a catchall term for herd animals that have developed some difficulty walking.  The cause can be as benign as a pebble lodged in the hoof or as problematic as an infected abscess or damaged tendon.  In all cases, the animal cannot bear weight and can travel no faster than a slow walk (1-2 mi/h).  Curing the animal requires properly diagnosing the problem and then applying proper treatment.

And it looks like I need a whole post on wagons and beasts of burden, which will come later.

The Pioneer Hexcrawl

This is probably going to be the most familiar part of the entire pioneer endeavor, and that presents a unique challenge.  This hexcrawl has to be different than any other hexcrawl you have ever run.  Even if your players have traveled extensive distances with wagons and gear, this will be an entirely new hexcrawl for both them and you.  This hexcrawl is responsible for setting the tone of the entire settlement adventure, introducing your players to a different way of thinking, one much more grounded in the physical reality of their characters' situation.

We'll start at the beginning: preparing for the journey.  The full traveling group should number at least 20, including player characters: if the players want to do more than build and operate a single farm, they'll need more bodies.  The more hands on deck at the end of their journey, the easier constructing the settlement will be (remember that video last post of the approx. 50 workers raising a barn in 10 hours?).  Also, some of the non-adventurers will die along the way.  That will be a consequence of the journey.

The group's makeup will factor hugely into the success or failure of the venture, with regard to both the overall skillset and the relationships between each individual member.  I'll devote a post just to talking about the expeditionary group, which is why I'm going light on the details here.

Once the group has been created, the party needs to acquire supplies.  While I love fiddling with spreadsheets and accounting and looking at all of the fiddly details, I recognize that not everyone finds it fun.  Tough.  While you, the DM, absolutely must help the party choose supplies and quantities (offering suggestions and observations frequently), when the party makes all of the final decisions, they assume the responsibility for all of their equipment.  When a crucial supply is necessary and they didn't buy it (or didn't buy enough of them), they can only get angry with themselves, as opposed to blaming whatever abstraction is used so that your players didn't have to sit through and approve every blessed item.

As a rule of thumb, the group needs enough wagons that everyone in the expedition and all of the equipment can fit into the wagons.  Give each wagon a name and character sheet and distribute them to the players.  Wagons will have hit points and take damage from terrain hazards.  When they lose all of their hit points, they break - either the wagon tongue snaps, a wheel breaks or (eesh) an axle cracks (determine this randomly, say on a 1d6, 1-3 break a wheel, 4-5 wagon tongue, and 6 break the axle).  Repairs take a half-day, assuming appropriate replacement parts are on hand.  Unlike a regular injury, determine the next kind of break the day after the first one has been repaired - so if a wagon busted a wheel yesterday and was fixed, today the DM would determine what would break next - as the expedition travels, people will keep an eye on the wagons and will notice that the axle has developed a small crack, which is fine right now, but a couple big jolts will splinter it.

Every item brought on the expedition needs to have some condition for it to not perform as expected or needed - tools need a breakage chance, stored food needs conditions under which it will spoil, etc.  These odds should be slight and conditions unlikely - but they need to be explicitly stated and recorded somewhere.

You will need foraging rules - if a full day is spent foraging, how much food can be brought back per forager?  They'll need to account for vegetation and foraging skill.  I have a Hunter skill: it is an Apprentice task to find food for 1 in the woods.  Plains and scrubland are a Journeyman task, and desert and similarly inhospitable terrain require a Specialist Hunter test, and the difference between the check result and the test's difficulty (minimum 1) is the number of people that can be fed on a successful roll.

Lastly, in addition to the normal encounters of your hex crawl (random encounters, interesting location-based encounters to keep things different and interesting for your players), you will need journey hazards that put stress upon the wagons, equipment, and expeditionary group.  Things like needing to clear a path through a forest, crossing a river, a rockslide coming towards the wagon train or a mudslide that has washed away the path.  I'm a big fan of a 1d6 encounter die for most wilderness encounters, with a check every day.  Here, I'd roll 2d6 - one to determine whether an encounter occurs or not, the other to determine the type: 1-3 for a typical hexcrawl encounter, 4-5 a travel hazard, and 6 an interpersonal conflict within the expeditionary group.

So: takeaways from this brainstorm.  The Hexcrawl section requires:

Wagon character sheets

Expeditionary group mechanics to randomly create clusters of people interested in joining the party's caravan and simulate their interpersonal relationships

Thorough equipment lists, detailing dimensions, components, break or spoilage conditions, etc.

Hexcrawl encounters including typical hexcrawl items (wandering monsters, lairs, ruins, etc.), travel hazards, and interpersonal conflicts

That's a start.