Running the Hexcrawl - Mythic Bastionland TTRPG

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[@jeremytitus9519]

Oh my. I read that title as “Ruining a Hex Crawl”. I’d like to see that tutorial.

[@BoredToBoard]

How to run the mighty newt point: "She turned me into a newt!"....."I got better"

[@Smittumi]

Stream starts 6:30

[@ca7582]

Thx

[@jeremytitus9519]

Based Smittumi

[@jonbrouwer4300]

Very cool to see how a campaign would run in practice! I really like how the Myths provides structure, but still make everything emergent and unique for each campaign.

[@ZeroPhoenixTheLastBladeTheory]

This came at a great time, just finished drawing and keying the hex map for a 9 player campaign starting this friday. We spent our session 0 making custom knights - I'd love a video of you creating a sample knight from scratch.

[@Bastionland]

This video goes through character creation kzbin.infoVqR6DbUiQSo?si=_WCIqC8pT1HnPvlQ Hope you have fun with the campaign, I'm interested to hear how it works out with nine players!

[@ZeroPhoenixTheLastBladeTheory]

@Bastionland Sorry, I meant WRITE not create. You did a video on "Writing Failed Careers" I would love to see you doing one for knights. (Since 9 players [+npc knights for holdings] is going to chew through the 12 playtest knights rather quickly 😅)

[@bogumi7797]

Hi - question. Not sure if it was answered somwhere, if so, sorry. what if players want to invest themselfs into encountered omen? Lets take en example with the river one from beginning of this video. Lets say players talk to the monks who offer bread to the river. They gain knowledge of what they are doing and want to press on with this myth. What should happen then? It feels natural that monks would send players somwhere, to the next omen of this myth maybe? Ask for something in return etc. My intuition is that than players could be directed to the this myth's hex, or at least somwhere wbere the next omen of this myth couls be encountered and potentialy start the whole adventure. Basicly it feels like the first question from players during omen would be "cool, where should we go or what to do next to get more knowledge of this myth". Do MG then should improvise the fixed location of next omen fron the list? Maybe direct players to nearest Seeker or smth? Amazing game, as a backer cant wait for backerkit and early pdf's! Game looks absolutly amazing, and Im huge fan of Into the Odd which I played already a few times (with Fallen Marsh module) with diffrent player groups in Poland :) love from our community, Chriss and keep on designing! :)

[@Bastionland]

Glad you're enjoying it! You're right that if players investigate a Myth they should get some more clues, but the general guidance is that only Seers know the specific location of the Myth Hex. The Monks in this example might know something that hints at the next Omen or maybe even points in the general direction of the Myth Hex, or they might direct the Knights toward the nearest Seer for guidance.

[@razorboy251]

That hex map looks gorgeous! What did you use to make it?

[@Bastionland]

I used Hex Kit, it's well worth checking out!

[@drillerdev4624]

Well, that old man sure was scary! This is probably a matter of personal taste, as I've never been a fan of hexcrawling in particular (on the other hand, I love the mapping systems in Electric Bastionland), but I can't help but feel that they slow down the flow of the story (the parts that one would omit while reading The Princess Bride to your grandson). And in the Mythic Bastionland case, it seems to me like travelling largely drains your resources, (and in a rules light environment) while potential benefits that might come from exploring are mostly left to the GM discretion, instead of being balanced into the map generation itself. I'd love to hear other people's experiences with it, as I know this is my personal bias. I know one can always hack the system , but with hexcrawl being such an integral part of the experience, I would be wary towards tampering too much with it.

[@AnnaTheFallMaiden]

whoop! and backed 😄

[@ZeroPhoenixTheLastBladeTheory]

The volume of your mic is often pretty low, I'm hoping you could bump it up for future streams 😅

[@Bastionland]

Noted, thanks!

[@Osune]

Will there be insight / advice on how to design Myths and writing your own Omens in the style of the game? Either in the book on the blog or in a later video? Sorry if it already exists and I've missed it. I understand that there are always six escalating phases and they are designed as situations and there is no predetermined solution to them. Right now I try to solo the Quickstart with Mythic GME which works quite well to create Myths and Omens by just playing. But I wonder what your design / thought process is when you create the "Six Omens" story beat rhythm for each Myth. Also I'm unsure what the "Ruin" Landmark as game element currently tries to achieve. I fear that in the worst case it might get interpreted by players as an "active" Myth, in the best case it's a literal landmark. If interpreted as active Myth it feels like a red herring where I would need to give them a soft nudge to go along sooner than later to avoid frustration. And if its "just a landmark" the players might need the soft nudge and it feels not that different than using the spark tables as desired to decorate the world. Or is it intended as predetermined Myth site which can later activated if needed if you want to extend the game without changing the Realm? But if so why not just drop one in the Realm on demand where needed? I've seen in the earlier streams that the Landmarks got changed quite a bit and overall I like the current design. Where do you see the Ruin currently has its place in the game? I need to rewatch the play demo w/ PlusOneXP, but what are your thoughts regarding the Wilderness roll being open or secret? EDIT: just saw your comment that you prefer to have it rolled in secret. Looking forward to the game and sorry this got this long!

[@Bastionland]

There's no separate guidance on Myth creation in the book, but with 72 examples hopefully there's enough to get an idea of how they work. You can't go too far wrong with them, it's just 6 generally escalating events related to the Myth. Ruins are really there to hint at a wider, older world, and give some foreshadowing of future Myths if you're running a longer campaign. They're probably the least impactful of the 6 Landmarks but I find them a useful addition all the same.

[@minimoose7890]

Would you still pretend to make a Wilderness Roll when the players move into a Myth Hex, since if you don't roll they'd know you're automatically giving an omen for the myth they've landed on?

[@Bastionland]

To be honest if they're in a Myth Hex I tend to make it quite obvious, but you could definitely do a pretend Myth roll if you wanted to keep up the illusion.

[@minimoose7890]

Thanks! I see now in the rules that it indicates not rolling for myth hexes. Makes sense that if knights are hiking around a long time, it would often make things needlessly challenging to obfuscate the myths when they find them, could frustrate players and not make much sense of the myths are already close to their later omens.

[@ZeroPhoenixTheLastBladeTheory]

Is the wilderness d6 rolled by the referee or a player? I really like the example you gave of players thinking the plague and undead myths were connected, but I think that novelty would be lost if players knew rolling 1 = random omen.

[@Bastionland]

Yeah, for that reason I tend to have the Referee make the Wilderness Roll in secret.

[@benoitpoulin2733]

I do have a question about the myth location. When the players enter a myth hex, it triggers the next omen. Correct? What happens if they decide to exit the hex, then enters it again? And do it again until they trigger the last omen this way? Does not make sense in the game world... But as a player, it does...

[@Bastionland]

So normally you make a wilderness roll at the end of each phase, which has a chance of triggering an Omen from the nearest myth, or a random myth from elsewhere in the realm. If you end the phase in a myth hex then instead of making a wilderness roll you automatically encounter the next omen from that myth. If you leave the myth hex then you're ending your phase outside of the myth hex, so you'd make a wilderness roll as normal, so there's still a chance you'd encounter an omen, but it's not guaranteed.

[@benoitpoulin2733]

@@Bastionland Thanks for the answer. So let's say they (the players) find a Seer that tells them where the hex of a myth is. They go there without triggering any omens. So they trigger only the first omen when they arrive at the hex of the myth. To be sure to triggers all of the omens until the last, what do they do? They move to an adjascent hex to return on the myth's hex? That seems a little weird, and kind of creates a weird behaviour of the knights in the fiction. I am sure I am not understand something here. Can you enlighten me? Thanks again for creating your games!

[@emarsk77]

I have to say, as much as I enjoy watching your play examples, that particular hex tile set you use makes extremely little sense to my eyes.