Author Archives: Goblin's Henchman

Flooding Dungeon Complex | Surprise Easter dungeon play report

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I don’t usually do play reports, but what the heck …

I discovered that the youngest Henchling had invited his friend over (his friend’s older brother decided to come along too) to play D&D (well AD&D 1e) over the Easter break. The other Henchling, FOMO, decided that they wanted join in. The catch was, I found out that I was DM-ing, that we were playing tomorrow at 12pm and that my services were required for about 2 hours.

Flooding Complex 

I scratched my head and remembered I had written a sort of puzzle dungeon (LINK) a few years ago, a dungeon designed to disorientate, and that was flooding to add some time pressure.

So, I went with that (with some tweaks), and decided to use 4 of the PC’s (picked at random) from my Carapace adventure:

These PCs were: Ganther (fighter; top left), Thanic (cleric; bottom left), Willan (magic-user; top right) and Han (Fighter/Magic-user; bottom right) – all about 5th level.

When I wrote this puzzle dungeon back in the day, I had a plan in mind, and I won’t lie, the dungeon played out how I envisaged, well near enough.

Dungeon Concept 

The key concept here is that 3 of the rooms look nearly identical (left, right and bottom rooms) and there is a rotating corridor that links them. So, as the PCs explore the place, they might first think they are going in circles (which they sort of are).

Play report

OK, here is how it played out:

Prelude  – I cut to the chase, they had a map and it had led them to a remote zigarat, where a tunnel in the zigarat led them to a darkened room, with a lever at the far end. I knew the oldest kid liked to be reckless, especially near the start of the dungeon, so sure enough he immediately pulled the lever. The floor collapsed and dumped them into the flooding complex:

Here’s the puzzle dungeon set up:

The PCs start in a big room, much longer than it is wide. Above is the hole they fell in from but is now blocked by rubble, although water is still gushing in. Left and right are rectangular door-like openings, but these are about 6 feet up off the ground. These door-like openings also have a waterfall like flow of water coming out of them. On the wall behind is a locked  portcullis. In front is a wall with a circular shaped exit – careful inspection will show that around the circular exit are faded carvings depicting the large coils of a giant serpent (just coils, no serpent head).

Action 1 – the fighter Ganther decides to try Bend Bars Lift Gates on the portcullis on the rear wall, needing a 13%  or lower on a percentile. They roll a natural 100%, which in this case is the biggest fumble possible. Joy is replaced by deflation. I decided that Ganther had wedged and jammed the portcullis in an nearly impossible position to open again, and in the process they have dropped an item through the portcullis (a magic tinder box that always allows them to light fires).

Here is the rest of the complex for context:

Action 2 – the party decided to inspect the elevated door-like opening on the left hand side using a magic item (a portable ladder):

They follow a passage running from this door-like opening that leads them to a room. This room like all the rooms now is misty with water vapour and partly flooded.

The players are now confused because this room (Room 2)  looks just like the room they just left (Room 1, start room). To the players, it looks like they have just entered room 1 via the portcullis on the rear wall. Of course this does not seem possible, not least because Ganther jammed it shut with his fumbled BB/LG roll, and because Ganther left behind his magic tinderbox behind that portcullis (which of course is not anywhere to be seen).

Incidentally, each time the PCs enter a room, I topped up a large glass with water, to symbolize the flooding of the complex. The players correctly deduced that when the glass is full of water, the complex will be sufficiently flooded that the PCs all drown. A pressure timer of sorts.

Before the PCs could orientate themselves, they had to fight 4 lizard men who had been hiding low in the water until then. They succeeded in killing them, burning some resources, spells etc. in the process. The PCs decided to exit the room via the round exit, but find it blocked this time. It was of course blocked because the rotating corridor is in the N-S axis.

Action 3 – the party backtracked to the start room (Room 1). Again the players are confused. There are no lizard men bodies, and the portcullis on the rear wall has been jammed in place (by Ganther). This time the fighter Ganther decides to collect his magic tinderbox that was within reach behind the jammed portcullis all along!

They also noticed that the circular exit is open.

Action 4 – The PCs decide to go through the circular exit.

For context, the whole complex is now filled with mist, water vapour from all the water pouring into the complex, all this water poring in is also causing the walls to vibrate (PS – these vibrations help to conceal the rotating corridor’s movement).

Unbeknownst to the PCs the rotating corridor rotates as they move down it, going from the N-S axis to the W-E axis, this rotation is triggered by crossing the halfway point.

Again the players are confused because this room (Room 3) looks identical to the last two rooms. But, they noticed that the portcullis at the far end is slowly closing. So, they bolt for it, making it just in time for the portcullis to close behind them.

Action 5 – they follow the corridor that is after the portcullis, and find themselves back in the start room (Room 1), but this time entering via the elevated door on the right hand side.

They climb down into the start room (Room 1) and discover that the circular exit is now closed off (because the rotating corridor is now in the W-E orientation). The Players figure there is no point going back the way they just came, because the portcullis closed behind them. So, they try to levitate up to inspect the hole they fell into the complex from, but that way is blocked by rubble.

When I wrote this dungeon, I imagined more of a long bending water slide that would be nearly impossible to wiggle your way back up. But, for kids this was a simpler explanation.

Action 6 – The PCs decide to once more go down the raised up left-hand door-like opening.

Again they returned to Room 2. Now the players fully sense that something is up, and the rooms are not the same, not least because there are four dead lizard men in this room, which are not in the other rooms. They find the circular exit is now open (the rotating corridor is now in the W-E orientation). This time they look more closely at the wall housing the circular exit and see that this exit is not decorated with the coils of a giant snake, but rather with a single giant Eagle-like wing.

Action 7 – they decide to go through the circular exit.

The corridor rotates and returns them to the start room (Room 1). They noticed that the wall housing the circular exit is back to being decorated with giant snake coils, and there are no dead lizard men.

Action 8 – they decide to go back through the circular exit.

Going through the circular exit takes them back to Room 3 again. The rotating corridor once more resets the portcullis, and triggers the portcullis at the far end to once more slowly close. This time the Players do not take the bait, and their PCs do not run through the slowly closing portcullis, they let it close. The PCs also realise that the wall housing the circular exit is decorated with a single giant bird wing again, but this time the wing is located on the other side of the circular exit.

Action 9 – they decide to go back through the circular exit.

… and just in the nick of time as the glass water timer was nearly full.

This time they find themselves in a new looking room, one with 4 x Lizard Men and a Water Naga.

Incidentally, this exit depicts the maw of a giant snake around the exit. For context the decorations around the 4 x circular exits depict a Couatl as seen from above.

Round 0 – The PCs are surprised but the monsters are not surprised. The lizard men run to attack, the Naga casts darkness around itself.

Round 1 was eventful, the PCs lose initiative, the magic user (Willan) who was in the process of (rather recklessly) casting fireball gets hit by a lizard man and loses the spell (his only 3rd level spell) and the Naga casts Mirror Image (but as luck would have it, they only generate one mirror image of themselves).

They fight for a bit, the lizard men are killed, the magic user is nearly killed a few times but the cleric does their healing thing. The fighter wastes a natural 20 critical hitting the mirror image. Naga magic missiles a bit, getting 4 magic missiles per spell. The magic user (Willan) manages to pepper the Naga with darts here and there until they run out of darts.

On the penultimate round (or perhaps the round before that) the Naga strikes the fighter (and tank) Ganther with a lightening bolt, taking them into negative HPs. Again the cleric manages to patch him up.

At this point, I’m thinking TPK, TPK, TPK, and start softening these kids up for the idea they might not win this fight. Thinking how are these kids (ages 13 to 9) going to handle their first TPK …

The Fighter/Magic-user (Han) has gone invisible the last round and has snuck round the back of the Naga to attack from behind. The (true) magic-user (Willan) is out of dart-ammo and charges in to attack in hand to hand combat. Ganther the fighter, now on single digit hit points, goes all in too.

Final round. Fighter/Magic user appears out of nowhere and hits, disrupting the Naga’s spell, the cleric Thanic (who has been defensively healing until then and is now out of healing, and has missed every other combat attempt they have tried to date) lands a hit and takes the Naga to zero HP, technically the Naga is dead, but Ganther still has their attack roll and also lands a literal hammer blow (with +3 damage) to take the Naga to beyond -10 HPs, which is a nice touch.

!! Victory !!

(no TPK, phew – I promised these kid’s Mums that these kids would have fun!)

Write like the Minotaur is real

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I came across the below highlighted text in Jorge Luis Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings:

Borges seems to believe that while the writing became fancier over time, the vibe was lost. Why, because of the lack of belief in the thing itself. Monsters became a writing exercise.

I sometimes wonder why the writing and certainly the imagery in newer editions of D&D feel somewhat soulless.

Are monsters no more than game tokens to fight?

As a kid I so wanted the Minotaur to be real. My suggestion (for what it is worth) is that you write and art* like the monsters are real. I think the audience will tell the difference.

Sure, at the table things can become real in the imagination of the players, but why not start there with the written text, start right in the mind of the reader, in the mind of the Game Master.

Is this just, it was better in my day kind of stuff?

(click on me to see my Stat Block)

* –  of course, this does not mean art needs to be photorealistic, perhaps even the opposite

EDIT – Reddit can be a good place to test your ideas. As a point of clarification, this post is not a defense of the TSR era writing style, but instead it is a look at modern D&D and arguably it’s lack of soul. On the face of it, old D&D was often badly written often using archaic language; and by comparison 5e era D&D text can be well polished and read well off the page. This post is about writing with (more) soul, and so perhaps how we can do our best when writing.

I’ve also changed the bottom image to remove the Stat Block …

DIY Lego Solar System – kids / school project

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I have no idea if anyone out there in internet land might find this useful.

Kids Lego Solar System project

Here’s an Excel grid layout if that helps:

Scale – all planets have been scaled proportionally to where Mercury is 1 Lego ‘pip’. Obviously, the smaller planets have the biggest ’rounding’ error. In the top image, some of the edge blocks have been removed to make the planets look a bit rounder. I think, when we made this from the plan above, we pruned the size of Saturn a tad, to allow us to make the rings of Saturn look bigger and so that we did not get too close to Jupiter when we did this.

The Sun is so big it is represented as the yellow vertical line on the far left.

There has been no attempt to space out the planets proportionally to their distance from the Sun. And this would probably look better if you added more 32 x 32 Lego mats to spread out the planets and if this were done on black Lego mats.

Sicherman Dice | 2D6 in the mix

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I’ve only just learnt about Sicherman Dice

Sicherman Dice

One die has sides 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4 and the other has sides 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8

What is fun, is when you roll and sum these two dice they have the same probability profile as rolling and summing normal 2d6 (peak at 7, low at 2 and 12).

Is this got any use in gaming? Mainly no, except perhaps a few things no one will ever use …

The chance of rolling doubles on Sicherman Dice drops from 1 in 6 to 1 in 9. So, in games where rolling a double might trigger an event it could change things up?

Ktrey of the D4 Caltrop blog fame on BlueSky made a fun and funny remark about what a d66 table might look like using these.

After the LOL-ing, I got wondering about this:

On the left you got a standard d66 (all results are equal – all dark blue and all have a value 1) but on the right you have a Sicherman Dice d66 table (where instead of 6 you have 6+). As you can see in the Sd66 table nearly half the options are gone (red) and some results are more common (darker blue):

Sicherman Dice - d66 table

Is this interesting, is this gameable? Just a little, and mostly no. But … here’s one way:

You might be able to use a normal d66 table for random encounters e.g. a Hex Crawl, but flip over to using the crazy Sicherman Dice (using the same d66 table) when the PCs get near the monster’s lair, e.g. near the dragon’s lair, where:

Dark Blue = Dragon 🐲
Medium Dark Blue = … Dragon’s henchman?
Light Blue = Monsters chilling in/near the dragon’s Lair
Red = everything not living in/near the lair because their not stupid

So, using the same table, suddenly by changing dice the chance of a dragon or dragon-related  encounter increases a lot.

Ok, it’s a bit a niche, and you need to own the crazy Sicherman Dice. But, maybe someone out their in internet land will think of something better.

In case you are wondering, I’ve bought myself a set of Sicherman Dice (hopefully arriving soon).

This video is fun and considers other polyhedral dice combos for Sicherman Dice: 

:O)

Broken Monster Manual | Second Life in Colour

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EDIT – Individual images: I’ve decided to keep this page for the mile stone updates, making collages. If you want to see the individual images, please see here LINK

I bought this broken down, split spine, board separated, sorry state AD&D 1e Monster Manual:

The idea is that I’m going to colour my way through it. A bit of meditative self time. At the moment I’m doing A to Z, but I may just mix it up as I fancy. 

I’m going to use coloured pencils as I don’t want colour to bleed through the pages. As you will probably spot, I’m not an artist! I should probably work out how to take better photos! 

Call it sacrilege, but I figure this book can have a second life, albeit under my amateur hand.

I’ll update this post as I meander along.

EDIT – I’m not necessarily following the colours mentioned in the description of the MM (I’ve only got so many brown pencils), I’m just going with whatever I feel like on the day. It’s also fun just to reimagine the monsters. D&D is a fantasy game amIright? 

Collages: A to B, C to D (except Demons, Devils, Dinos and Dragons), Demons, Devils, Dragons, E, Giants, Golems, G (other), H, I to K, …, L (Lycanthrope), L(other), M, N, O, P Q, R (cont…)

                  Es   Golems     H's  I J K              <– (in progress)

Slide show (up to  F, missing the Dinos):

 

Can we de-quantize D&D? | … did Heisenberg’s Hobgoblin just enter the chat?

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Asking for a friend: Does Everything have to be a Point Crawl?

I put out this post that contain this statement:

“PS – While we are at it, we should probably acknowledge that every adventure format in TTRPGs/D&D is a point crawl. Dungeons are a point crawl if you consider the connective passages to also be ‘nodes’ in the point crawl. Hex Crawls are point crawls where every node has 6 exits that lead to another node (if you exclude any terminal edge hexes). So … everything is a ‘dungeon’ when navigation choice is (and/or encounters are) quantized.”

Or, perhaps to invert it … the classic D&D ‘dungeon’ was so very successful because it quantized (i.e. things into discrete packets, pixels, no continuums) the physical gaming world, making the game more manageable for the GM. That is, location nodes with encounters are connected together by ‘corridors’ which are just connecting nodes. Perhaps random encounters are so loved because they break up the quantization?

That successful quantized format of a classic D&D ‘dungeon’ was imposed on all D&D type adventure formats. Overland adventures were quantized into hexes containing encounters (AKA a Hex Crawl), and where each of these nodes have 6 exits leading to adjacent nodes. Again, this was done to make overland exploration quantized and so GM manageable. 

To me now, it seems somewhat ironic that the ‘point crawl’ format (as I believe was first proposed/popularized in Hill Cantons Blog) was seen as a novel format, whereas it  really just distils down what a ‘dungeon’ always was. No shade being cast here, seeing to the core of something should be valued above all. 

So, perhaps a point crawl is just a minimalist dungeon where the connective tissue has been removed, so perhaps “everything is a dungeon” is the correct manta, because the dungeon came first?! 

So why all the chiffchaff above? 

My original post mentioned above, just made me wonder –  

if you threw away the hex grid for overland exploration and did not formally assign encounters into fixed pixel-type hexes, would an overland adventure cease to be a point crawl (AKA a ‘dungeon’)?

if you threw away the 5′ square grid and keyed fixed location encounters in a dungeon would it cease to be a ‘dungeon’?

That is, is it possible to de-quantize D&D type adventures (de-point crawl them) and still have a viable adventure format that a GM could run? 

My guess is no, otherwise it would have already been successfully done – right?  

Even so, I must confess, I really like the idea of a de-quantized D&D.

… so how could you do it?

Problem: If you throw away the grid, hex and keyed encounters, then what’s the glue that keeps the thing together?

Problem: Many classic and modern adventures have a hook, some nice unique selling point, the thing the players came to do with their PCs (or rather the thing that interested the DM in the first place). If you remove fixed keyed encounters, how do you write an adventure that will suck the players in? 

I suspect (if it can be done) in TTRPGs you’d need a paradigm shift in how you play these D&D type games. Perhaps playing wholly procedural adventures (I’m assuming we are not interested in an A I  managed/GM’ed world right?). 

Perhaps you might need quantum ogres, or perhaps better, Heisenberg’s Hobgoblins where the hobgoblins exists in every location in the dungeon at once, that is until you ‘collapse the wave function‘ and the hobgoblin is located by the PCs …

Or, in a overland adventure, as you approach the dragon’s lair on the un-hexed map, the probability of encountering the dragon increases. But, there is a chance that the hill giants from across the valley are also passing through, or both. Or, does the GM need to start tracking the potential encounters as soon as the PCs get within a few hexes (cough cough) I mean a few kilometers of their respective lairs. We can go metric at the same time amiright? 

So far, none of this sounds fun. Well, a tiny bit fun. 

I suspect I’m so deep inside the ‘Point Crawl / Dungeon’ format well that I cannot think of a (good) way to break free of it.

Anyone out there thought about this already?
Can it be done? 
Is this even worth pursuing? It ain’t broke … 
Did I waste words on the obvious? 

EDIT – Depth crawls (as brought up by Evlyn Moreau on BlueSky) are interesting  because each instance (each node) is often stand alone, so not linked to the other previously generated nodes. Is it really a point crawl is nothing is permanently connected?

EDIT 2 – My head hurts, and I perhaps open Pandora’s Box with this one. ANT theory was raised a few time on Reddit (Note to self: add to reading list). Anyway, I think Ktrey of the d4 clatrops Blog fame showed this to me from page 12 of Keep of the Borderlands (when D&D was still quite young): 

To me, this text seems to approach what might be considered to be ‘Heisenberg’s Hobgoblin‘ where the monsters are not just fixed at their source location, but can exist anywhere near it, with a probability that decreases as you move away from the source location. I agree with Ktrey that his is a neat idea, but one seemingly abandoned long ago. Maybe it’s due a comeback! 

#PodcastTaughtMeWhat #pointcrawl #EverthingisaPointCrawl #EverthingisaDungeon

Podcast Taught Me What? | #6 Dungeons & Dreamboats (what else is a Dungeon?)

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Blurb: I listen to podcasts, some of which often throw out a game design ‘nugget’. If I find a nugget interesting, I think I’m going to put a pin in it and post it here. Consolidated List

#6 Dungeons & Dreamboats (what else is a Dungeon?)

Bastionland Podcast – Season 6, Episode 2 – Amanda Lee Franck

This episode threw up lots of game design nuggets, this is one of them. 

Chris McDowall briefly noted that Amanda Lee Franck had made three adventures on boats. 

The game design idea: anything can serve as a “dungeon” so long as it constrains the adventurers’ position to a fixed set of navigable locations. A boat is a ‘dungeon’, albeit a floating one. A cruise ship is just a floating/moving hotel that you can’t get off. In fact, a boat is more constrained than a dungeon as because, as a general rule the space outside the ‘boat dungeon’ is a sort of null space, a watery desert. Normally outside a dungeon is at least explorable terrain. 

With this in mind, let’s image what other constrained spaces could serve as “dungeons” – submarine, train, plane, that cool network of underwater tunnels in 1983 Jaws 3-D, (in fact this is a crazy dungeon where stone is replaced by seawater!), a strip mall, stadium, a cinema (1985 film Demons anyone?), jail, school, spaceship, subway, space station, Towering inferno, funfair, etc. 

PS – While we are at it, we should probably acknowledge that every adventure format in TTRPGs/D&D is a point crawl. Dungeons are point crawls if you consider the connective passages to also be ‘nodes’ in the point crawl. Hex Crawls are point crawls where every node has 6 exits that lead to another node (if you exclude any terminal edge hexes). So … everything is a ‘dungeon’ when navigation choice is (and/or encounters are) quantized. 

Summary, once you recognize that the classic and successful ‘dungeon’ format is just a constrained space with a finite number of linked locations, then other constrained spaces might occur to you to use as adventure locations.  

That’s it. 

#PodcastTaughtMeWhat

Solo Analogue A I for Commanding Armies in Warhammer type Battles – Hex Flower

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Ever wanted to play a table top war game (like Warhammer Fantasy Battle) solo, that is against an army commanded by A I General? Well, this is attempt to do that, using a Hex Flower as that A I General

PDF on DriveThruRPG – LINK
PDF on Itch.io – LINK

The idea is that you can use this Hex Flower as an analogue A I for solo (fantasy) battles – that is, you play your army and you use the A I to move the opponents units in the battle.

The idea is that the A I can surprise you, whereas if you play the other army yourself, you can never suspend disbelief and so totally surprise yourself.

The A I and especially the indicative actions are there to help guide the units’ choices.

This A I has been ‘flavoured’ for Orcs. But, believe it or not, I looked to Sun Tzu’s art of war for inspiration, and grouped actions into the four categories. So, you can repurpose this for any army (reject the flavour and embrace the essence of the AI’s instructions). I might yet make a similar product for other standard army types … Humans, dwarves, elves, ratmen, undead etc.

Historical Note – way-back-when in the G+ days, when Hex Flowers were still a thing that we were brainstorming about, I think this ‘A I General’ was first suggested by G+ user Neuzd: IMAGE. I think Neuzd had a lot of good ideas about HF, but with G+ gone it is hard to remember all of it! 

Hex Flower background – what’s a Hex Flower anywho? A Hex Flower (HF) is like a random table, but with a memory.

Hex Flower Cookbook – where I discuss the theory and design of Hex Flower Game Engines and some background and possible uses. But, you can also read some more about Hex Flowers on my Blog: LINK

– – –

Me on DriveThru; at the moment I’m mainly pimping my procedural:
:: High Seas ‘Hex Crawl’ – In the Heart of the Sea,
:: Wilderness Hex Crawl – In the Heart of the Unknown,
:: Dungeon/network generator – In the Heart of the Delve & Dangerous

Inversion of the standard 2d6 probability peak | “Why Mathematicians Hate This Simple Two-Dice Hack”

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I saw this blog post (All Hail King d12) and it made me chuckle – I presume it was at least partly tongue in cheek!

Anyway the central idea was this: “I want to see more wizards and dragons and shit!”

Of course 2d6 looks like the orange line below and a simple d12 gives a probability like the flat yellow line below (also includes a 1):

But, the above blogpost made me wonder how easy it would be to make a probability structure that looked more like the blue line, a sort of inversion of the standard 2d6 peak structure and by using only dice.

That is, go all in hard for those 2s and 12s.

It turned out to be harder than my intuitive primate mind believed it would be. Eventually I came up with this rule:

Roll D6+1 (or redraw a die with numbers 2 to 7) and roll a D6+6 (or redraw a die with numbers 7 to 12), and pick the most extreme result.* 

Simples – right!
:O\

Maybe you can do better!

And no, the answer being: renumber the table or move the entries around on the table is not allowed because that would be too simple and you’d need to change everyone’s tables not just your own.

Hopefully, I’ve got the maths correct for the rule D6+1 vs D6+6 take the number furthest from 7!

:O|

And, yes, this is not a serious post … well, not unless I can think of a more elegant way to do this …

* = see Colin’s comment below.

Hac-Man Hex Flower| a homage to Pac-Man

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This Hex Flower Game Engine is a homage to the classic arcade game Pac-Man. In this case ‘Hac-man’ runs the maze eating pellets and being chased by Ghosts. Can you get  past Level 3?

I got sucked into making this Hex Flower when I read that the my Hex Flower ‘edge rules’ were a bit like the ‘warp tunnels’ in the classic arcade game Pac-Man. 

It’s just a bit of fun – try it out and let me know what you think? 

Important:
This work is not affiliated or endorsed in any way by the owners of Pac-Man.

:: Link to PDF on DriveThruRPG: Hac-Man Hex Flower 
:: Link to PDF on Itch.io: Hac-Man Hex Flower 

The game is pay-what-you-want so you can download as a PDF for free (see link above), but you can make a donation to support my work more generally. 

Layout:

Hex Flower background – what’s a Hex Flower anywho? A Hex Flower (HF) is like a random table, but with a memory.

Hex Flower Cookbook – where I discuss the theory and design of Hex Flower Game Engines and some background and possible uses. But, you can also read some more about Hex Flowers on my Blog: LINK

– – –

Me on DriveThru; at the moment I’m mainly pimping my procedural:
:: High Seas ‘Hex Crawl’ – In the Heart of the Sea,
:: Wilderness Hex Crawl – In the Heart of the Unknown,
:: Dungeon/network generator – In the Heart of the Delve & Dangerous

Podcast Taught Me What? | #5 Make Drawings & Descriptions Additive

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Blurb: I listen to podcasts, some of which often throw out a game design ‘nugget’. If I find a nugget interesting, I think I’m going to put a pin in it and post it here.  Consolidated List

#5 Make Drawings & Descriptions additive

Bastionland Podcast – Season 6, Episode 2 – Amanda Lee Franck

This episode threw up lots of game design nuggets, this is one of them. 

The game design idea: When possible, a drawing and description of the same things should contain different information. Try not to describe information about a thing if that information is already present in the drawing. Or, in reverse, when faced with text, what can you draw that adds to the text.


Red is less good than green because in the red example the text/ drawing substantially replicate each other 

Amanda Lee Franck discussed with Chris McDowall how Amanda tries wherever possible to make drawings/illustrations that add to the description text (that is provides new/more information), rather than simply trying to faithfully reflect the text as an image. In the example that Amanda gave on the podcast (I believe this was with reference to Zedeck Siew‘s work) an illustration of a boat gave size/scale of the boat, but that this size/scale was not contained in the descriptive text of the boat.  

I think this is a neat idea, as it goes to the point of what is the purpose of a drawing if it only seeks to re-render the text in a visual form. 

Summary, make drawings that add to the descriptive text, or write text that does not simply describe the drawing. 

That’s it. 

#PodcastTaughtMeWhat

Podcast Taught Me What? | #4 Taking the Pith (keep it short)

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Blurb: I listen to podcasts, some of which often throw out a game design ‘nugget’. If I find a nugget interesting, I think I’m going to put a pin in it and post it here. Consolidated List

#4 Taking the Pith (keep it short)

Between Two Cairns – Warped Beyond Recognition – 6 Nov 2025, S4 E10

The game design idea: There is power in a  concise, pithy description, or as Clayton Notestine said in the podcast:

“The more you say, the more you put on a page, the less important all those pieces become“

There’s no good reason, in fact it could be a burden, to tell the GM things that don’t really matter or that do not help to evoke a scene. As a general rule, “the walls are made of grey, hard, speckly stone” is not that overly interesting or helpful.

You might also wish to listen to Tod from As If Productions, who had something to say about overwriting and so overloading the GM:

On Overwriting, with apologies to Ms. Engle (3m 54s)*

I said more about this topic here, but wanted to capture this in this ‘Podcast Taught Me What’ series. 

Summary, help the GM out by carefully curating the information into things that matter or add flavor. 

That’s it. 

#PodcastTaughtMeWhat

Podcast Taught Me What? | #3 Narrative Abhors a Vacuum

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Blurb: I listen to podcasts, some of which often throw out a game design ‘nugget’. If I find a nugget interesting, I think I’m going to put a pin in it and post it here. Consolidated List

#3 Narrative Abhors a Vacuum (~ missing link meets narrative vacuum)

Bastionland Podcast – Season 6, Episode 2 – Amanda Lee Franck

This episode threw up lots of game design nuggets, which I may cover in separate posts. But, for me this was the biggie: 

The game design idea: Missing link meets narrative vacuum. In essence, leave space (creative oxygen) in your adventures. Allow the GM to assemble their own ‘synaptogeneic jigsaw’ from the adventure scaffold you write. That is, the human brain strives to make sense of any situation, and given enough freedom will attempt to make sense of any set of disparate facts. In games of make-believe, the resultant links/connections can be unexpected and delightful.  

Amanda Lee Franck and Chris McDowall discuss the benefits of this approach. It invites the GM to make sense of the adventure from the parts the writer provides. In that way each GM makes their own unique missing links to the adventure scaffold provided by the writer, i.e. filling the information vacuum with narrative. Those links/connections will be those that make most sense to the GM, or provide the most fun or enjoyment. This invites the GM to be part of the creative process, and if nothing else allows them to better understand/assimilate/remember the adventure and to be able to run/communicate it effectively at the table. 

Of course, Amanda and Chris  go on to discuss that doing this is not necessary an easy thing to do. But for sure, not joining up all the ‘dots’ of the adventure is a good starting place. 

Summary, less is often more, don’t try to fix everything down, allow the adventure to have some narrative flex. Be brave, leave gaps. 

That’s it. 

#PodcastTaughtMeWhat

Podcast Taught Me What? | #2 Thoughtful Randomness

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Blurb: I listen to podcasts, some of which often throw out a game design ‘nugget’. If I find a nugget interesting, I think I’m going to put a pin in it and post it here. Consolidated List

#2 Thoughtful Randomness (Random with Purpose)

Between Two Cairns – Beneath the Muckfort – 20 Nov S4 E12

The game design idea: Randomness is not in of itself a virtue. For example, an encounter location with ‘2D6  goblins’, without some reason/context*, would appear to be just extra GM workload without much ‘sauce’. Why not just go with 7 goblins at this location?

This differs from a ‘random encounter table’ where it make senses to have entries like ‘2D6 goblins’. Otherwise goblins when encountered randomly would always be encountered in groups of fixed size. Likewise randomness of this kind would seem appropriate in procedural adventures where all encounters are essentially random encounters. 

* = perhaps the thought/context/reason is that there are 12 minus 2D6 goblins at this location and the balance of the goblins are in another location? That could be fun/interesting. Or, there are 2 goblins at this location unless the goblins have been alerted to the PC’s presence, in which case there are nD6 goblins at the location where ‘n’ depends on how many turns it takes for the PCs to reach the location as it’s being actively re-enforced etc. 

To be clear I don’t think this a contradiction to Podcast Taught Me What? | #1 Fixed Random Encounters, where it could be interesting to randomly generate the type of encounter at a location.

Summary, randomness is fun when if freshens things up (especially for the GM), but thoughtless/mundane/reasonless randomness can be just extra administrative/cognitive load on the GM.  

That’s it. 

#PodcastTaughtMeWhat

Podcast Taught Me What? | #1 Fixed Random Encounters

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Blurb: I listen to podcasts, some of which often throw out a game design ‘nugget’. If I find a nugget interesting, I think I’m going to put a pin in it and post it here. Consolidated List

#1 Fixed Random Encounter

Between Two Cairns – BSOLO Ghost of Lion Castle – 13 Nov S4 E11

The game design idea: Instead of populating an adventure location with a set encounter, consider having that ‘set encounter’ be generated/selected randomly in play at the table.

To be clear this is not the same thing as a ‘random encounter’, because those may or may not happen. This encounter is happening, but what is happening is determined during play. 

Of course, this is not an overt recommendation to go full 100% procedural (not that I’m against procedural adventures, quite the opposite). It’s just a pinch of spice. 

That’s it. 

Edit: My original post (reproduced below) suffered from a bit of ‘mission creep’ – so I decided to edit the post down to be a bit more pithy (above).

(the older longer post): 

The idea is to have an event/encounter happen, but where the nature of the event/encounter is random. So, not a normal random encounter (i.e. one that might or might not happen), but an event/encounter that will happen, but where the type of event/encounter that will happen is randomly generated.

So perhaps there is a room with a hole in the floor, and  … [[ roll on random event/encounter table ]].

e.g. D10
1. The hole emits an extremely strong magnetic field 
2. The fishing tentacle of a creature several rooms away waits to grope out
3. It’s a portable hole to exit the adventure 
4. It’s a mobile hole of devouring 
5. It’s a geyser, time it right and you can swim to  … 
6. It’s a meat chute packed with a near endless supply of unliving humanoids  
7. From it is a strong air draft capable of lifting a person off the ground 
8. It’s not a hole, it just looks like one – it’s a pressure plate for a trap 
9. It’s a drain, a big one … that can’t be good? 
10. Forget the orcs’ toilet, 6 orcs were gambling at a table drinking grog :O\

Ok, I got carried away there and not even in a particularly good way – the random table could just be your dungeon’s standard random encounter table, but where there is always a encounter at this location, perhaps because it the only source of reliable drinking water in the dungeon/forest etc.

I have little doubt this idea has been done elsewhere in published adventures, but I think there is something interesting in this idea and I just want to put a pin in it. I suppose it speaks to my ‘procedural’ sensibilities (to keep it fresh for the GM), but in this case without having to have the whole dungeon be procedural.   

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Kids play AD&D 1e | Ever been chased through a maze by a Minotaur?

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Adding a minotaur ‘hunter’ mini to the Hex Flower maze & pursuit gave the kids more buy in!

PS – they made it to the center of the maze, got the prize (the gilded mushroom; which was siting on an island surrounded by a lake of mercury) and out again, evading the minotaur using: a bag of fine chalk (checking for drafts that tend to blow out of the maze), a bag of rats (to distract the minotaur when it got close) and a magic butterfly that helps guided anyone lost.

Mechanically, these items allowed the party to change the direction of travel on the HF by one face (or in case of the rats, the minotaur’s direction of travel by one face to help distract/evade the ‘hunter’).

That’s it
:O)

Taking the Pith | Comment on keeping it short

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People use the word ‘terse‘ a lot when describing RPG content/adventures with concise content. I think they mean this in a positive way, but to me ‘terse’ has a negative quality – abrupt to a fault. I prefer the term ‘pithy‘.

I’m hardly a RPG publishing powerhouse – I’ve released 2 adventures and neither has exactly broken any records. Perhaps having Hex Flowers as a central mechanic limits them to a niche within a niche (at least that’s what I’m telling myself).

However, dusting off any self-doubt, I have something to say about words. Too many words dilutes a message.

Clayton Notestine said the below on the Between two Cairns podcast, and I agree:

“The more you say, the more you put on a page, the less important all those pieces become“
Between two Cairns, Warped Beyond Recognition episode, release date 6 November 2025; 23:28-23:34

May I also suggest you listen to Tod from As If Productions, who had something to say about overwriting:

http://On Overwriting, with apologies to Ms. Engle (3m54s)*

* = I have no financial connection with Tod, although before Patreon screwed up all my subscriptions, I did Patreonize Tod.

My personal learning about overwriting came from when I submitted some monsters for  Ford’s Faeries as coordinated by Eric Nieudan of The Merry Mushmen fame. The idea was to prepare a faerie type monster inspired by the art of Henry Justice Ford, but using no more than 300 words. My first try ended up being about 1500 words. I cut and cut until I got down to 300 words. I was fairly shocked, the result was 5 times shorter but I think about 5 times better.

Sure, I accept that there comes a point where you cut down to the bone and are left with only a bone and no juice. I don’t think most people get that far. Editing is hard, self editing is even harder.

My suggestion is cut your first completed draft in half and see if it is improved. Then again, what do I know!

Now, to practice what I preach …

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter” –  Attributed to Blaise Pascal

That’s it
:O)

Pre-rolled Random Tables | so you don’t have to

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The OSR/NSR (and splinter movements thereof) fly high the flag and associated benefits of random tables and procedurally led outcomes.

I’m fully behind this idea and the benefits.

That said, when listening to one of Fear of a Black Dragon or Between Two Cairns podcasts, one of the commentators said something that resonated with me (if I were a betting henchperson, I would say it was Brad Kerr).

They said something along the lines of: “Yeah, these random tables are neat and all, but sometimes I just want an answer“.

This podcast episode must be before or about 2023, because I tried to incorporate this idea into my procedural adventure Carapace:

(check it out – the video is from a now ended Kickstarter project)

My suggestion to anyone interested in procedural adventure design, is that when preparing procedural tables that have at least 3 outputs/parameters that stack/build a result – include some pre-generated outcomes.

Sometimes a GM will be under some time pressure and so just want a simple fast pre-generated answer. Why not give them that as an option.

Think of this as the adventure/dungeon equivalent of a pre-generated character.

I’m sure this idea is probably out there, but I just want to draw some (extra) emphasis to it.

That’s it
:O)