The Jungle is Dark but Full of Diamonds: Prepping a Pulp Jungle Hexcrawl #4

Continuing on with preparations for my groups upcoming campaign, I've decided to focus on creating a hex map to crawl across. I was a bit at a loss for how to structure more tables to run this, and I was also a bit confused about how I could create a map. 

For my campaign, I was originally going to use the Tomb of Annihilation Chult map. After checking it out further, I realized that there were just waaaay too many hexes on that sucker for the way we've been playing our hex crawl. Up until now, we've been traveling one hex per day in our Barsoom/Purple Planet knock-off sci-fi hexcrawl campaign. I don't want to change our rules too much so that we can build off what we've learned as a group to make the next campaign roll along smoothly. 

Then, I became very enamored with the map from Isle of Dread for the super old-school charm it exudes. Still, it had possibly too many hexes and was a bit messy when I tried to scan it. Also, I didn't care for the numbers on the hexes. I find numbers immersion busting, and since we play online I need to share maps with players.

Finally, I decided that since I want to make a project out of this campaign that I can share, I'd best just make my own. I bopped off and visited game-icons.net and found some icons that matched up with my needs. Credit where it's due, I found the following pretty sweet icons to use in my map. I'm going to link them right here so the creators get their due:

• Peaks icon CC BY 3.0 by Lorc
• Caldera icon CC BY 3.0 by Lorc
• Mountain cave icon CC BY 3.0 by Delapouite
• Jungle icon CC BY 3.0 by Delapouite
• Swamp icon CC BY 3.0 by Delapouite
• Columbian statue icon CC BY 3.0 by Delapouite
• Stakes fence icon CC BY 3.0 by Delapouite
• Island icon CC BY 3.0 by Delapouite
• Village icon CC BY 3.0 by Delapouite

Thanks to both of these folks for allowing people to use their very cool icons. 

After downloading hex-shaped versions of the icons above, I opened up a transparent hex grid in GNU Image Manipulation Program (I can't abide using the short-form...) and copy pasted the icons in, more or less at random. I decided to use the statue icon to represent trapped temple/dungeons that my players can loot. 

The village icon will represent villages of the locals who are indigenous to the island, maybe human or possibly monstrous. The palisade looking icon will represent trading forts set up by a colonizing trade company. The cave mountains will be mines of magical diamonds. The mountain, volcano, jungle, swamp, and beach looking ones are self-explanatory. Everything not a hex is ocean. 

I feel really good about having just plopped them anywhere. This kind of placement could take me all day if I let myself think about it, so I much prefer just jamming them anywhere and making it up as I go later on. I don't think my players will care when we're at the table and I don't care to spend that much time on the little bits. My design philosophy is low-prep and minimalist, so I want to stick to that all the way through.

After slapping a white background behind it to see it better, this is the final map of the island.

Now, I'm sure some of you will look at this and say, "Oh, man, that's ugly!" and I'll admit, it's got nothing on Mike Schley's Chult! But, it's easy to see, minimalist as heck, and I really think it will serve the purpose while we play. It's still got quite a few hexes, but the super-basic hex shape of the overall island makes everything kind of within reach. Jungle and mountains are both tricky to traverse, so I'll stick with one hex per day like we are currently doing in our ongoing campaign. There are enough interesting sites like dungeons, trading forts, villages, and mines scattered about to keep things interesting I think.

Your mileage may vary, but when I look at this map I want to play! What do you think? Too simple? Have I misplaced any icons? Am I missing any important tropes? I'd be stoked if you comment and let me know! 

The Jungle is Dark, but Full of Diamonds: Prepping a Pulp Jungle Hexcrawl #3

Work is slow but ongoing on preparing for our next campaign, voted by my players to be a "pulp jungle hexcrawl". I'm sticking with my "A Village A Forest A Dungeon A Beast" framework for preparing to:

1) See if it works across genres (with some modification of course) and 

2) Hopefully save a few brain cells by reusing my old tables and structures as much as possible.

The rules that we use for online play are very simple and 'item based', drawing heavily upon the approach taken in ICRPG and Knave with generally classless PCs who are defined by the items they carry. This means that coming up with interesting and useful items is pretty important. 

That said, our system treats most weapons and armor exactly the same: weapons do 1d6 points of damage and armor reduces damage from a single attack by half once per item per session. The real fun are the items which could see many different uses depending on the context. 

My table is below. It's got numbers for rolling random treasure on the fly, but I usually let players select three items when starting a brand new player character.

I struggled a bit with the armor section given the 'turn of the century' setting that I'm using for the campaign. I tried to include some tropey items like a pith helmet that were obvious. Some others are just tribal versions that players might find more of depending on where they shop on the jungle island.

Have a look and tell me what you think fits and what I might have missed! Thanks!

The Jungle is Dark, but Full of Diamonds: Planning a Pulp Jungle Hexcrawl #2

 I'm continuing to plan my group's next campaign, which players voted to be a 'pulp jungle hexcrawl'. 

It would be easy to just use a pre-made module or adventure. Two that stand out as being particularly awesome are the somewhat new Hotsprings Island and the super-classic Isle of Dread. But what's the fun in that? :P

Instead, I'm going to create my own jungle hexcrawl resource to use, similar in structure to our existing house rules. I've printed those rules out in PDF form here, and you can see them in a website right here. Have a peek and comment if you like or dislike what you see.

One difference between the fantasy rules linked above and our current sci-fantasy Barsoom desert wasteland hexcrawl campaign is the place 'magic' holds. In fantasy campaigns, its part and parcel of the fabric of the genre. In my "a village a forest a dungeon a beast' homebrew we used slot-based inventory (stolen from Knave). In this case, each spell was inscribed in a wand, book, rune or something and took one spell slot and could be used once per day. Simple. My players enjoyed this and I stuck with it for my sci-fantasy desert crawl: this time the 'magic' effects were tied to weird technology and devices, but functioned the same. 

In this jungle campaign, I'm thinking of magic being a little more rare, but still present. Spells will be tied to strange artifacts in a more Cthulu-style, Indiana Jones type thing. When you find the artifact you gain access to its weird and dangerous magic. 

I've made a table for generating strange jungle magic artifacts below. I played around with this with my kid and it was easy to come up with extra flavor to add about how the spell was cast to make the artifacts more fun. For example, a monkey paw closes its fingers into a fist, limiting the PC to using the spell 5 times. A bag of herbs must have some of the contents burnt, with the effect being tied to the smoke, a riverstone rubbed or a whistle played into the wind. The "Title" column offers the chance to tie another effect to the artifact: a cursed or unlucky item might give you -1 to all rolls while a beloved or fragrant artifact might give a bonus to NPC interactions. Up to the GM.

The table output is read: "The title artifact of prefix suffix" with the spell effect it contains being tied to the spells in my other rules "a village a forest a dungeon a beast".

For example, "The Screaming Golden Idol of Ilzkaka" can be used to cast an illusion once per day, but the golden monkey statue screeches like an angry howler monkey when it's used. Or something like that. . . 

The Jungle is Dark, but Full of Diamonds: Planning a Pulp Jungle Hexcrawl #1

 I'm currently running a Barsoom/Purple Planet styled sci-fi desert planet hex crawl, but I'd guess my group is about half done and it's time to start preparing for our next campaign. 

I put out a survey to my players, and the number one choice was "Pulp Jungle Hexcrawl". Allllrighty then!

I'd like to use this blog to track my process for creating this new hexcrawl. The desert sci-fi campaign I'm currently running is my first try at a hexcrawl and I'm keen to take what I've learned to be more intentional when planning this next one. I hope that sharing will help other GM's who are running hexcrawls in their planning as well.

I'm also going to use our previous set of houserules, "a village a forest a dungeon a beast" as a template. I'm hoping this can streamline the process and leave me with some kind of artifact of the effort to hang onto for the future. Hopefully, I can find some decent public domain art and make a PDF out of it, too.

To kick things off, here is a d20 list to create a 'turn of the century' jungle explorer . . .

 I'll post more of my prep work as I move forward with the project!

WORLDS OF WONDEROUS WEBSITES!?

 The number of amazing free OSR resources posted on the internet is amazing. I am constantly astounded by the creativity and generosity present in this community. I've downloaded a number of texts and PDFs that were freely offered, paid (and not paid) for Pay What You Want products on DriveThruRPG and itch.io, and learned loads of new tricks and ideas by reading blogs that I've discovered on r/osr.

Sharing via blog and PDF is standard practice amongst OSR creators and I'm so thankful that folks do this!

When Gavin Norman of Necrotic Gnome put the OSE SRD system resource document online I was blown away! What a useful resource! Not only did it share the rules in a clear and very table-accessible way for GMs and players using a smartphone or device, it even had great generators attached for treasure, magic items, and the like.  

This got me wondering why more OSR creators don't use websites and wikis to share their rules and creations. PDFs are great, but often they are arranged and laid out with the printed medium in mind. Sometimes it can be difficult to read a PDF on a small screen if you are on your smartphone at the game table. A website like the OSE SRD provides quick links to access information easily and adjusts the view to fit your screen. It's pretty handy . . . 

Sooooo, I've decided to put my rules and campaign toolkit "a village a forest a dungeon a beast" online in the form of a Google Site. VFDB Online (lol) will have all of the rules and tables in the PDF, but in the medium of a website.

I hope it's useful to anyone who wants to see the rules or access a table. 

Let me know if you think it's a useful medium for sharing OSR rules and content!