A Hex a Week: Week 5

Another short one this week. I've been quite busy working on something that I'm not quite ready to put up yet, but that will see the light of day in due time. This week's hex lies along an old Roman road, and is home to plenty of desolate and forgotten landmarks. It's a lonely place, even as bandits remain a constant threat.

Pimp my Spider

Quick post today, just sharing a table I whipped up as I needed some variety in giant spiders for my game prep.

d20/d12	Spider Species	Cool Stuff
1	Black Widow	Enormous, dripping fangs
2	Brown Recluse	Winged
3	Wolf Spider	d12 extra eyes
4	Jumping Spider	Webs of gleaming silver
5	Orb Weaver	Camouflaged carapace
6	Harvestman	d6 extra legs
7	Tarantula	Human hands on pedipalps
8	Funnel-Web Spider	Intelligent
9	Trapdoor Spider	Huge, bulging egg sac
10	Ant-Mimicking Spider	Invisible Webs
11	Net-Casting Spider	Bladed legs
12	Bolas Spider	Scorpion tail
13	Camel Spider	-
14	Banana Spider	-
15	Triangular Spider	-
16	Crab Spider	-
17	Goblin Spider	-
18	Fishing Spider	-
19	Mouse Spider	-
20	Sac Spider	-

A Hex a Week: Week 4

This past week, I've focused in on an area deeply scarred by war. It'll probably be clear that I've been reading Don Rodriguez lately by the name of this hex and some of its contents. I've been trying to get a bit less sketchy with my doodles, still a long way to go on that, but progress is being made.

Weapon Subtype Tables for Random Equipment Generation Part 1: The One-Handers (And Hand-and-a-Halfers)

Of my earliest gaming memories, the fondest is looking over the illustrations in the 3.5e Player's Handbook. I started playing in my adolescence on the cusp of 4th and 5th edition, but my friend who owned the books played 3.5, so that's what we played. The illustrations were captivating to me, especially the equipment illustrations. For those who have not played D&D's middle sibling, 3.5 and 3rd edition were in love with polearms for reasons I still don't quite understand. If you've ever read 5e and thought it was odd that there was both a halberd and a glaive, you'd be more amused to read the entries on ranseurs and guisarmes.

Now, it's been a long time since I played either 3.5 or 5th edition, and nowadays I tend not to even differentiate damage for different weapons in most of my games, preferring the d6 damage die. Much has been written on differentiating weapons with a flat damage die, so I won't go too deep into that. The state of the art is, generally, to give weapons special mechanical traits or rule differently regarding different weapons ability to do different things on an ad-hoc basis, adjusted to your taste. Still, I miss the big, evocative lists of weapons that I was so taken by in my youth, so I've decided to write some tables for subtypes of each of the weapons found in OD&D Booklet 1. Each has an idea for what it might do particularly well, but I've kept these non-mechanical, both for the sake of system neutrality and because designing mechanical weapon traits is outside of the scope of this post.

I've titled this post with regard to random equipment generation, but you could just as easily have players choose from the tables and use the options as a referee to more evocatively stock armories, weaponsmiths and warbands. This week, I've done the weapon types that are (mostly) held in one hand. I've consolidated certain types together when they did not have enough variations to fill out a table and had significant overlap with other types. Next post on this will be the two-handers, which means lots of kinds of polearms. I will likely not give ranged weapons this treatment, as there just aren't enough distinct varieties with different strengths that I am aware of to fill out a post for them.

Some Character Like Conan to Bring Matters into Line

 "Anyone who has viewed a horror movie is aware of how dangerous angry villagers are. Whenever the referee finds that some player has committed an unforgivable outrage this rule can be invoked to harass the offender into line. Within the realm of angry villagers are thieves from the 'thieves’ quarter,' city watches and militia, etc. Also possible is the insertion of some character like Conan to bring matters into line."

This is the "Angry Villager Rule" of OD&D. I just wanted to muse on it, I don't have much of tremendous insight to say. It goes to show that some issues really have been the same since the start of the hobby, though today the advice would usually be to simply talk to the problem player. I suppose that might show a difference in maturity (of the hobby, not of individuals), but I can't help but miss this kind of off-hand, conversational advice. It feels less like I'm reading a rulebook, and more like I'm receiving advice from some guy in a game store, in a good way. Lots of OD&D feels that way. It also evokes a  kids smashing their action figures together sort of zany fun that I think maybe we need more of.

Maybe you should consider, if needed or desired, inserting some character like Conan to bring matters into line or, for that matter, out of it. After all, who is to say how the scenario will react to such an entrance. I guess if there's something to take away from this post, it's this: go read OD&D if you haven't. It's a quick read and whatever ways you're expecting it to be strange and intriguing, it will surprise you in a different way than that.

A Hex a Week: Week 3

I ended up putting this project on hold for the holidays, now that we're actually into 2024 I've picked back up with the first actual week of the new year. This week I've focused in on the nearby forests, filled with abandoned ruins and ancient megalithic sites.