The Monsters & Mazes blog has suggested something to replace dungeon23 in the new year - #Hexplore24! The idea is to explore a generated hex each day for a year in “real time” - one game day equals one day in the game world. This seems like an interesting concept to me, but I’m not entirely sure it will feel natural to enter a new hex (and never an old one) every day. I guess if you set it up as “I’m going from A to B, and it will take me a year to get there” then it will feel more natural.
What do you think? Todd, perhaps this could be something to address in one of your streams?
Thanks for sharing this! I am certainly intrigued by the idea! I’ll read up on it from that link. I think I’d rather just posit it as create an outdoors setting in a year, 365 hexes, but I’ll withhold final judgement until I’ve read it.
Yeah, I’m with you on that one. I really love solo playing, but I mean, what if you die on day 231? That’ll be sort of awkward. So yes, I too think I prefer to just make a hex a day, basically. But the overarching idea behind both this and dungeon23 is great - make SOME little progress every day. Even if it’s slow progress, you know what they say - slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.
After some discussion on Reddit, it seems I misunderstood the concept a little. You’re not supposed to necessarily explore a new hex each day (unlike dungeon23, the goal is not to end up with 365 created locations after a year). Instead, as I understand it, the idea is simply “solo play one game day each real time day”. This makes more sense to me, because it allows for backtracking as much as you want, etc.
Come to think of it, I think I’ll use this to expand the incomplete TTRPG I’m working on. Every time I run into missing contents or mechanics, I add it (or at least a minimum viable version of it). That’s obviously more work than simply playing, but after a year I’ll probably have a decent amount of mechanics/content.
Wouldn’t a more spiritual successor to Dungeon23 be to generate a Hex a Day or something like that?
Maybe generate 365 of just something- so not necessarily a new hex, but a feature, creature, etc etc. So at the end of the year, even if you don’t have 365 Hexes, you’d have an amount of Hexes with 300-some features or encounters populated into it.
I’d love to explore some guidelines for an activity like that- I slept on Dungeon23 because I’m super newb haha, but I have been picking away at my hexcrawl…
What if one was to do Hexplore24, daily hex generation or some such but add a twist:
Change up the system being used.
I’m guessing a lot of games have pretty similar procedures, but it still might be cool to change up every week or month or so just to get a comparison of what the sort of… idk, priorities? of the system are in terms of generation and gameplay
Here’s a random off the top of my head Hexplore24 system schedule:
Jan: OD&D or Basic - start where it all started (more or less)?
Feb: AD&D or Swords and Wizardry or OSRIC maybe?
Mar: Worlds Without Number
April: Knave (1e or 2e)
May: D30 Sandbox Companion or another AD&D retroclone
Jun: Labyrinth Lord or another Basic retroclone?
July: Hexcrawl Toolbox or other tile-laying type game
Aug: Forbidden Lands
Sep: Adventurer Conqueror King (specifically to generate political domains, which includes figuring population distribution and generating natural resource deposits to help simulate the regional economy and no I’m not kidding lol)
Oct: Idk something sci-fi or gonzo just to shake things up lol
Nov: I’m dry lol- whatever you didn’t use in February or May
Dec: End with OD&D or Basic or whatever you didn’t start with I guess lol
This is basically just a grab-bag of games I know off the top of my head… biggest flaw with this idea is that OSR by its very nature is aping the same couple of systems, you basically just alternate AD&D and Basic with extra steps
Edit: a simple Google reminded me of a bunch of other systems like Mausritter and Symbaroum but I know next to nothing about these games haha
Intriguing! BUT I think it ends up putting too much emphasis on the mechanical part instead of the creation part. What I liked about D23 was that, ultimately, it was about creating and maintaining a practice of daily creation. If cycling through different tools helps, that’s great, but, really, the tool is not important-- it’s what we do with the tool, if we even need the tool at all.
really, the tool is not important-- it’s what we do with the tool, if we even need the tool at all.
That’s a really good point, and that’s something that gets discussed on the channel and elsewhere a lot is remembering that the crunch is just a tool to get to the fluff.
So the concept really only works if one wanted to document the minutiae of different generation systems… for some reason xD
So maybe the trick here is to schedule out different generation at different times throughout the year. Hexcrawls are a bit like Ogres after all- they have layers.
Terrain > Natural Features > Keyed Locations/ Encounters > Social Features (i.e. Civilization) > Factions
I’ll read up on it from that link. I think I’d rather just posit it as create an outdoors setting in a year, 365 hexes, but I’ll withhold final judgement until I’ve read it.
That’ll be sort of awkward. So yes, I too think I prefer to just make a hex a day, basically. But the overarching idea behind both this and 