What were the painful parts?

@@HexedPress It's hard to sum up in a quick post, but I'll try. Also probably best to mention up front we were doing a trial run of a West Marches style game and my players did know the purpose of our session was to do a test run of some hexcrawl procedures I found online. We got into the world, and I gave my players some rumors. They decide this dwarven settlement on the literal other side of the map that was dealing with orc issues sounded like fun. So, they decided to just head straight towards the location. A point a to b travel. Every hex we entered was a lot of rolling. Rolling for them to see if they got lost, rolling for me to see if they had a random encounter. Camping for the night, rolling to see if they could set up camp and get a campfire going, me rolling for a random encounter. Explaining each hex as we went, and them just passing through to the next hex trying to reach the point of interest they wanted to get to. It went on like this for a bit, they had a ton of random encounters. I know that I could GM fiat a lot of stuff, but I was trying to get a grasp on the procedures and was trying to stick to things as written. I am also using the Shadowdark system, so we were dealing danger levels that increased the number of random encounters rolls and darkness being a threat so if they didn't get wood for a campfire, they'd have to sacrifice 2 torches to make one or deal with a heightened danger level. Then at the end of 3 hours IRL they finally reached the POI but our session was over. So, I used a return to town procedure from Five Torches Deep and ended up with 1 PC dying. At the end I talked to my players and the consensus was that they didn't understand the point of rumors and points of interest if the gameplay between homebase and the POI is going to eat up the entire session. I felt like things went way too slow going hex by hex and dealing with so many encounters, and landmarks in-between. They didn't like the idea of returning to homebase at the end of the session and felt like they would have wanted to stay at the dwarven settlement and investigate that area instead. In retrospect I see some things I could do to make things better, but overall it ended up being painful in the end. I think had we been running a dedicated group, and I kept POIs close at hand, and instead of doing a hex by hex roll I could do an overall travel roll it could have made things a bit better, but those seem to defeat the purpose and mentality behind a hexcrawl and West Marches game.

If we're mapping everything all the way down, that certainly works but I usually don't go that route unless that hex becomes an adventuring center.

@HexedPress that makes sense. So only the highlights works better for most GM's.

If you go back to 3LBBs, all the demihuman species had strict class limitations. B/X just simplified it into the RaC system.

Not EXACTLY. More like: make sure the points within your hexcrawl are accessible to the players through actions other than just wandering (and by he party knows this). They then create the pointcrawl as they go. When they reach the destination, they’ve created a crawl of the points they discovered along the way.

Good luck and happy holidays! 😁👍

Thanks for the heads up-up, I’ll keep my eyes peeled!

2 in 6 it is there and 1 or 2 sculpted and kept up very tidy. 3 or 4 Rough Hewn and unkempt. 5 organic like you are in the throat of a monster. 6. nice tile work but dusty & unused.

Right but, as in my example, rolls were made and there was no fudging or story-serving, yet we were collaborating on the world and establishing the fiction through rolls in a way associated more with story games than OSR. Yet it was a common practice when other means of establishing fictions were absent in play of games that would now be considered OSR.

As in my example, my use of fiction through rolls had nothing to do with story, just about filling in blanks. As for two rolls, it really makes no difference. Either way, ANY probability, whether divided into two rolls or baked into one roll, would not happen if not triggered by a player action. It’s a player driven roll establishing fiction, however we slice it. As I said, in my case at least and my experience, it was simply a way to fill in for when other means of filling in were absent and we would never have associated it with storygames or anything else because we were completely unaware of those distinctions. We were just gaming.

Thanks for the suggestion, I think that would be a great topic!

I remember there being some articles about that awhile ago but I don’t remember the content. I’m sure it’s worth a read!

Appreciate it!

Appreciate it! Glad that they help you! 😁

Yes, that’s a great way to put it! I did get to finally get into a game: The Dungeon Key’s Dirtbags with an adventure written by M. Allen Hall and it was excellent! 😁

@@HexedPress Awesome, I hope for a full play report! :)

I think that it’s reached a point at which, if you don’t want to wait, you have to get into the preplanning which I am TERRIBLE at.

Same! 🫡

Good question? Would a dense urban center have a higher percentage per check, higher frequency of checks, or both? Needless to say, I passed through the streets unmolested! 😁

Great points!