Saturday, May 2, 2020

more hex BS

>There shouldn't be even one feature per hex, not only because it's an insurmountable amount of work but because nobody will ever get anywhere. Most hexes should be movement fodder; spacing. Their content is the potential for random encounters.

Alright fine, I'll add your blog because your discussion of hex crawls is the only one that I can use directly: https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2020/05/making-wilderness-play-meaningful-system.html

Delta really shits on AD&D's overland movement chart here: https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2012/02/damn-you-gygax-part-3.html
He's right about OD&D, the OD&D system is so immediately playable that the AD&D abstraction seems pretty worthless. But I did some calculations of my own and AD&D is not unplayable. The movement rate charts actually assume 5 mile hexes, with heavy burden over rough terrain actually taking 3 turns to pass. With a scale of 1 hex = 5 miles, the AD&D chart is pretty useful for overland travel. Just don't use the given maps of Greyhawk, Karameikos or Faerun, as they don't use a compatible scale at all. But it does snag when traveling over multiple types of terrain, as you have to do out of game calculations and prorate your travel budget based on the type of hex you enter, so Delta is spot on, on that point. B/X and BECMI's wilderness exploration system actually has the same issue. It seems the only really useful, workable system for traveling over a hex map only exists in OD&D.

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