Savage Hexcrawl - Part 4: Players' rules FAQ

My Savage Hexcrawl rules are almost two years old. Since then I have used them in few campaigns with different groups and with players new to the idea of hexcrawl. This post is a collection of answers for questions that kept popping out during those games.

How much time it takes to travel one move point?

Move points don't work that way. It is an abstraction that does not really take time into consideration. Think of move points as a combination of effort and skill in travel. People who are less suited for travel will have more trouble travelling the same path than a seasoned explorer does. Novices will get tired faster and they will get lost more often. So in general, it will take a character who receives 5 move points, twice as long to travel the same distance than a character who receives 10 move points. If you want an actual time required to travel one move point for for your character/party divide 8 hours by the amount of move points. So an average character with a Pace of 6 would spend around  1h 20min to travel one move point. I would advise you against translating everything into hours and minutes however. The system is abstracted and move points include things like stops for food and drink and getting lost and backtracking during travel and short encounters. If you spend 4h inside a hex doing normal "RPG adventuring" you don't loose any move points automatically. You are still able to travel as much, but now you risk travelling at night, as you wasted daytime. 

What move points do I get if I use different means of travel on the same day?

The system assumes that you will always use the fastest means of travel for the bulk of your journey. If you have a horse, you will ride it. If you have a car, you will drive it. But stuff happens. Horses might die and cars can run out of gas. There can also be terrain that does not allow different means of transport. A horse cannot climb a steep mountain and a car can't drive through a river. If you have to change means of travel your GM will need to do some math. Calculate roughly how many percent of your move points you have used. So if you spent 8 points while on a horse, you have spent 80% of your daily travel time. Take the remaining percentage and translate it to move points based on your new Pace. So if your horse died after 8 move points and you have to travel by foot you have (Pace x 100-80%, so 6x0.2) 1.2 move points left. Any fractions are rounded down as changing means of transport takes time - taking your equipment down etc. You are NOT getting a fresh set of move points based on your Pace (so 6 for Pace of 6) because the characters are already tired from the journey. Even riding in a car will tire you out. The same happens if you find a horse or a car in the midst of the day. You translate the remaining percentage. Your character is already tired from travelling this day.

What happens if I get Encumbered or Wounded?

If during your travels there is a negative change to character's Pace (Wounds, Tiredness and Encumbrance all affect Pace) and because of it you become the slowest in the party, the group automatically looses movement points. The amount you loose is equal to the difference between the original party Pace and the Pace of the character who just got Wounded, Tired or what have you. So if your party Pace was 5 and a character with Pace of 6 got two Wounds and got encumbered (making its new Pace 3), they loose (5-(6-3)=) 2 move points. This is why it is a better idea to setup a camp for the rest of the day to rest and heal before continuing the journey.

Why would I explore a Hex?

As mentioned in Part 1, you can spend a move point to explore a hex, but it is not explain what benefits does it give you. Exploring a hex makes the GM draw another card to check for Events. It lets the players seek more adventure, no Notice test, just card draw. Exploring is also used when trying to find something inside the hex if you don't know exactly where it is. GM might ask you to explore the hex and test Notice or you can explore it until a good event card shows up. So if you know that there is a small keep inside the hex, but don't know exactly where, you need to explore it, plain and simple. In metagaming it also adds to variety - you will add more entries to your notebook for that hex, which will make the world seem more alive.

Where am I inside the hex?

Short answer - doesn't matter. The system is abstract, it only matters that you are somewhere inside that six mile radius. Rest of it is not on the map, but in the minds of the GM and players. If you need some concrete info, you can travel to the middle of the hex by spending half of the point cost for the terrain type (so 2 for swamp or 1 for plains) and traverse it by paying all of it. If you enter a hex but don't have enough points to exit, or even a middle, just narrate where you are.Use your imagination  ;)


Those are all the questions that come to mind. If you have any more, feel free to ask them in comments and I will answer them here. I will eventually add some more GM advice and combine the hexcrawl info into a pdf.

Savage Hexcrawl - Part 3: GM's Encounter Rules

The "joys" of life slowed the savage hexcrawl in past few weeks down to a crawl (oh, bad puns!). Nevertheless the series is not abandoned and is continuing today with the topic of encounters. We have touched on this topic in Part 2 - where we looked at what encounters are and how they fit in into a random hex. In the Part 3, GMs will get the rules (or perhaps guidelines?) on how and when to select the encounters.

Want the rules right here, right now? No problem! Savage Hexcrawl aims to be Fast, Furious and Fun! Read the TL/DR section for bare-bone rules summary. Read the whole thing for more in-depth explanation and other musings.

TL/DR: During a hexcrawl journey, PCs can stumble upon various encounters. GM draws a card (more, if the area is rich in encounters) from action deck for each hex the party enters and every time they camp in the wilderness. 

Face cards signify an encounter. GM will either roll on a table, or have an encounter prepared.

What does the GM need?

First and foremost, when running a hexcrawl (or other sandbox campaign) the GM needs to be prepared to improvise. A set of random tables can aid this improvisation, but is not necessary. Some encounters might be a part of elaborate plots, but players won't pick up on that. Others, will just be a random creations that players will want to follow and create an adventure out of it. Both are fine. Sandbox is all about the freedom of choice. Be prepared to let go of your crafted plots and improvise. The GM will also need a deck of...

Cards

Instead of dice for encounter checks - savage hexcrawl uses cards. Savage Worlds already uses a cards for initiative, so you should have a standard poker deck handy. During travel, draw card(s) for each hex the party enters. If you draw a non-face card (2-10) nothing happens, it is an uneventful leg of the journey. The party then moves to another hex and you draw again. Don't shuffle the deck if nothing happens - just keep drawing cards. It is not only faster than dice rolls this way, it also means that the chances of encountering something grow as you travel more. 
Drawing a face card (Jack, Queen, King, Ace or Joker) means that the party has encountered something. Now, you get to choose/decide what it is. We will leave random tables alone for time being (it is a topic upon itself) and focus on means of improvising the encounter. \
Now, look at the suit and color of the drawn card.

• Card Color: Red cards mean that the encounter is beneficial to the players, black ones are unrewarding obstacles. Bear in mind, that the color dictates only the outcome of the encounter., not its nature. Even combat can be beneficial (loot, info, etc.) and a travelling merchant an obstacle (wants to travel with you, party will be more visible etc.).
• Card Suit: Assign some keywords to each of the suits. Choose whatever fits your campaign most - there is no need for magical phenomena in a low-fantasy setting. The basic keywords I use are: Spades (♠) and Hearts (♥)  for travelers or creatures. Diamonds (♦) and clubs (♣) for places and obstacles.
• Jokers: Symbolize a twist of fate, something extraordinary and rare. Red joker means that something good happens to the party and black joker is an omen of something bad. Use Jokers for any idea that is too "out-there" or gonzo for your normal campaign.

Encounters

Use those rules to help you come up an encounter on the spot. If you are not comfortable with coming up with all of this in the midst of a session, feel free prepare few small encounters ahead of time. Create some villages, monster lairs, ruins, NPCs, events- anything that adventurers could find in the wilderness in your campaign. You don't have to decide where they sit on the map - you'll  plug them in wherever needed. Whatever wasn't used this session won't go to waste - note it down so it can be changed, tweaked and/or reused later.

When designing the encounter try to make it a natural part of the world. Ask open questions about the encounter. Places have reasons why they were built, NPCs have goals and needs.   If you add this connection between the encounter and the world, it will root the encounter in the setting and will make it seem like it was always there. Next, create few connections between your encounters. A bandit camp made out of a band of army deserters and a NPC royal investigator tasked with finding them and bringing them to justice create a great adventure hook. Will the players help the investigator and capture the bandits, or maybe they will side with the bandits? Maybe the bandits uncovered something about the local governor and that's why they are running away? What is the governor's secret?

Before you'll leave this post, think of a few encounters for your current campaign. Connect them to the world (why is it here? what is its purpose? How? What? When? Where?). Now connect it to another encounter and see how many plots you can create. Easy, right? Well, you just managed to improvise a good chunk of a session!

Savage Hexcrawl - Part 2: Looking at Terrain

We are back with the irregularly scheduled content for Savage Hexcrawl! Part 1 focused on the mechanics of travel. This part will look into those little hexagonal areas players will be travelling on. What are they? What do they mean? How can they become a tool for narrative roleplaying? There's only one way to find out! (that's a lie, there is plenty of ways, websites and content about it. Yet, I hope you will continue reading... ekhm, as we were).

What the Hex?

I am using 6 mile hexes in my fantasy campaigns. Why 6 mile? There's a great in-depth explanation on The Hydra's Grotto. But, in a nutshell - it is big enough to hide plenty of adventure and small enough to wrap your mind around it.

Also, Math! 

If each hex can hold plenty of encounters, how are you supposed to draw it on a map to show each find? The simple answer - you don't. On the map, both GM's and players', you should only worry about the general terrain type of the place. Note each discovered ruins, village and person  with the hex number on a separate sheet, or in a notebook.. We'll comeback to this notebook later, now we will look into what you should have on the hexmap - terrain.

I get bigger!

Mapping and Noting down...

On the right, you can find a (clickable!) table with some basic terrain types for reference. This list is by no means exclusive. Those types will change depending on the genre, campaign or even climate you are playing in. Each terrain is represented by a simple icon and has a cost in movement points (to be used with rules from Part 1). This is the general layout of the hex region and, by extent, how difficult it is to travel trough the area. It doesn't mean that the whole place is one huge swamp, forest, or hill. Just that it is this land's major feature - you need to fill in the blanks.

This is where imagination and some abstraction gets mixed in. Each icon represents a small piece of the game world. Maybe fully fledged by the GM, or maybe full of random encounters - it doesn't really matter. What matters, is that it is a place where many things can happen. Maybe you'll find a small hamlet where you can rest, a canyon that needs to traversed, temple ruins of a long forgotten god that you can explore, or maybe you will just travel trough this land encountering none of those? It doesn't mean that they are not there, they are just undiscovered.


Because each hex can hold so much, it is much easier to jot each encounter down, than to try to represent it on the map. After some time, you'll find that you have plenty of places, people, leads and other details about the game world. Even smallest detail can lead to a whole evening of adventure. It can also lead to nothing, it might be just a random thing that happened. Or maybe it will payout later, in few game days or even few sessions from now. Those notes, combined with hex map will help, both the players and the GM to immerse themselves in the world.

...Enconters

While exploring the lands and discovering new hexes is in the hands of players, the things they encounter in them depend on the GM. Each time players enter a hex, GM will check for encounters (yes, even previously discovered hex, although odds might be different). Encounters can be anything - people, places even the infamous wandering monsters. We will look at encounters, and the system behind them, in the future. Today, I just wanted to show you how much adventure you be found in a single hex. I will leave you with this artwork by the talented Courtney Campbell of the Hack&Slash blog fame. It shows a detailed 6 mile hex. Just a few hours of travel.

Savage Hexcrawl - Part 1: Mapping & Travel

Last time on Savage Hexcrawl we looked into the basics of hexcrawl play style. Today, we will look at how the players utilize the hex map to record their travels, map their journey while keeping the game Fast, Furious and Fun!

Mapping

Sample Players' Hex Map

It is players' responsibility to map their journey. They should already have a (preferably numbered) hex grid and pencils for drawing. For the sake of consistency, it's best if one player will be designated the mapper of the group. The mapper will draw the terrain type for each new hex the group visits. You don't have to be an artist - simple terrain type symbols, or even letters are perfectly acceptable. Best time to draw the map is when the GM describes the journey and checks for encounters.
If you want to note some of your smaller discoveries (6mile hex can hold a lot of things!), it is best to use a notebook. Just write the number of the hex and your discovery. Who knows, the party might want to return to it in the future.

Travel

Most OSR systems use some kind of speed attribute to calculate how much a character can travel during the day, then divides it by the hex size to calculate how much the party can travel during a day. All this math does not mix well with the Fast, Furious and Fun idea of gaming that Savage World has. In Savage Hexcrawl we simply use characters' Pace. Trust me, it works. It was not only playtested, but the math behind it works... if you squint a bit. Most importantly, this approach is Fast, Furious and Fun!

Determining party's move speed.

The party's Pace is equal to the Pace of the slowest character. This is the amount of "move points" you have for the day of travel. Basic, plain Hex requires 2 points to travel trough (1 to the center of a hex, another to exit it). A party of humans, in perfect condition can travel 3 of those hexes, roughly 18 miles in a day (6 to 8h of active travel, and few hours for stops, food etc.).
Various factors can affect characters' Pace, and by extent can change  the amount of points the party will receive for the day. Using vesicles or mounts will allow you use their Pace. Many other things will hinder your speed - most importantly fatigue and injury. Each point of Wounds and Fatigue lowers your "daily Pace" accordingly, even if you are riding a mount or driving a vehicle. If you are lucky enough to be a passenger - your are skipped when determining the lowest Pace. Suddenly, a donkey cart is not a bad investment.

Cost of Travel

Now that you know how many move points the party has for the day, you can start your journey. It is easy to travel on flat plains or on the roads. This way you can travel nearly 20 miles a day. Other terrains are not as fun to travel trough. 
Each terrain type has an assigned point cost to travel trough it. It starts from 2 points for easy travel trough plains or on the roads. Places like forests, hills or deserts will have a cost between 3 and 4, while going trough Mountains can will cost 6. Other things, like encounters, severe weather or crossing a river can add to this cost. So while in theory, a party can travel 3 full hexes each day it does not happen that often in practice.

Exploring a Hex

So far you know how to travel, but where is the promised exploration, you ask? Fear not! When you enter each hex, the GM will check if the party stumbled upon anything - most of the time they won't. But each hex can hold many secrets - small villages, ruins, travelling theater trope etc. If you want to explore what the area holds, the party can spend a move point and one player (let's call him the expedition leader) can make a Notice check wit a modifier designated by the GM (usually a minus). This symbolizes the party slowing down and exploring, instead of just traveling trough the hex. You can retry the Notice check as many times as you want, but each time, you need to spend a movement point. 

Camping

Travelling for a whole day in the wilderness is tiring. The party needs a good night's rest to recharge. When or they decide to stop travelling for the day, one character needs to test Survival Skill to find a good place for the camp. Any remaining movement points are added to the test on 1-to-1 basis. For each Success and Raise the party chooses a card suit. When the GM checks for encounters during the night, the party can ignore any encounter of the chosen suits (their camp is well hidden, they see the threat beforehand and know how to avoid it etc.). Critical failure on the Survival test means that the party wanders most of the night looking for a place to sleep - the characters will suffer a level of Fatigue for the next day.

Other

• Feel free to use the rules for Dramatic Interludes to spice up the travel even more - after all, you are not just travelling in silence.
• Don't be surprised that you won't encounter something each day. The campaign timeline, events or the fact in which hex you are can change the encounter chances.
• If you encounter something that you are not prepared to tackle - don't be afraid to back away. You can always come back here later and check it out.

Next time we will go into more detail about the terrain types and what they can hold. Stay tuned!

Savage Hexcrawl - Intro

As I am toying more wit the "fantasy as an alien planet" stetting idea for Savage Worlds (as first mentioned here), I find that i could use rules for hexcrawl to reinforce the theme of exploration of an unknown world. In this series of articles, I will try to adapt the hexcrawl play style to Savage Words. Let's start with some hexcrawl basics and theory...

What is Hexcrawl?

Hexcrawl is a technique for running wilderness (or wasteland, or space, or any uncharted lands) adventures. It provides rules for travel, exploration and encounters. It is usually paired with sandbox style play to create a truly open world game. In a nutshell - it adds rules to, and expands upon the "you have been travelling for 3 days" parts of RPGs.

Hexcrawl is not a new idea - it existed in the beginnings of the hobby. Companies like Judges Guild, among others, produced modules for this gaming style. Hexcrawl was loosing its popularity to the ready-to-use adventure modules that, where the new hotness in the 80s and was somehow lost in the folds of time. It resurfaced recently thanks to the OSR movement. This is when I got hooked.
The idea behind hexcrawl (and the origin of its name) is that a map of the game world is expressed on a numbered, hex(agonal) grid. Each hex represents equally sized area (Savage Hexcrawl uses 6 miles hexes) of a certain terrain type and can hold many encounters. This creates a game board of sorts, that players will explore.

The GM prepares the map of the lands ahead of time. He fills it with terrain types, cities, rivers, roads, etc. Non-lazy GMs will create adventure sites and possible encounters for some, or all the hexes. Others (including myself) prefer using random tables and improvisation. Use of randomized content is often seen as a necessity in hexcrawl or sandbox gaming. The truth is, you don't have to use it if you don't want to. You can prepare adventures and encounters ahead of time and plug it in during the session. Most GMs use middle-of-the-road approach, with some prepared and some randomized content.

Players receive a corresponding, but incomplete version of the hexgrid map. Depending on the campaign, they might be given a small known area (few hexes here and there), location of a major cities or some other landmarks. Even a blank hex sheet will work (this is what I'll be using for my campaign). The players will explore the area moving from hex to hex, completing their map and encountering all kinds of people, places and adventures.

If you are thinking about running a campaign where exploration is the main focus, you should give hexcrawl a try. It can the simple "your travel for X hours" into a a whole adventure on its own and adds a"gamey" aspect to travel. 

Next time we will look into how to incorporate hexcrawl into Savage Worlds, while still keeping it Fast Furious and Fun!