One-Page Hexcrawl: Lest These Dark Energies Consume Us All

[Commodore]

So one page dungeons. Who doesn’t crap on them? Generally systemless (ugh), devoid of broad context (argh), and focused on art and look over content (REEEEEE). I acknowledge all of these issues, and freely admit I find most one-page dungeons utter drek...but I still like the idea of One Page Dungeons. The idea of a small, compact structure designed to encapsulate a complete night’s session on a single page is worth pursuing. Nobody here needs to be told that brevity is admirable but I’m especially concerned with how a D&D session gets structured. The long-term TTRPG campaign is the king of all gaming experiences but the fact remains that when you manage to get 4-7 adults to sit down for three or four hours there have been real sacrifices made in each individual’s life to carve out that time and it’s ideal to strive for as much of a complete and satisfying experience as is possible in that single session. A one-page dungeon tries, typically, to deliver something along those lines.

And then there’s this other thing, the One-Page Hexcrawl. Take all the complaints about a one-page dungeon, throw out the simple structure that is an actual dungeon site, and then add in the controversy that is the vague and ill-defined hexcrawl procedure. Rather than look at a single session, a one-page hexcrawl implies at least a miniature campaign. Done badly, this hexcrawl is just a pretty map with sites of random interest without any motivation given to actually travel around. A lazy designer will just say “Gold = XP! Advancement system encourages exploration!” Okay, but practically there needs to be something more.

116_Roane Beard_Lest These Dark Energies Devour Us All.pdf

drive.google.com

Enter this adventure. A little tropey, but very solid setup: Necromancer opens crypt (0101), get overwhelmed by an entity, now seeks to tear the veil of reality and bring forth the dark entity upon the material plane. What makes this hexcrawl pop is that there’s a timer; each morning a die is rolled and either a blight advances, changing the hexes, or else the necromancer teleports to the nearest unblighted town to tear the veil; once all towns are blighted, entity comes forth. While this is going on, there are also standard sites of interest, like a logging town with a deer god cult, deceptive nymphs in the lake, a bandit king in the fort, etc. Along with how each feature and hex type changes with the blight this suggested a large number of factions in a tumultuous little vale (I opted to scale the hexes 6 miles).

All I’m asking for in an adventure is some fresh ideas, an evocative map, factions (or “stuff going on”), and some kind of impetus. Even though Lest These Dark Energies is statless and doesn’t provide a strict random encounter table it does mention what’s typically found in a hex (e.g., “cattle herds, centaurs” for the plains), coupling that with a tension pool let me add all the random encounters I needed, pulling from quick SRD references for creatures. Is this kind of thing something for you? No idea, but I got four good 3-hour sessions from it and it’s free. Roane Beard doesn’t seem to have made much else but I hope he writes again. This kind of thing really does put to shame the massive campaign doorstoppers that work so extremely hard to deliver less contented in dozens more pages.

 

[squeen]

I think the link is broken.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Yeah give us a link. This I gotta see.

 

[Commodore]

Should be fixed, hopefully.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Commodore, if you got a game out of this I commend you. But I cannot see how the single page I'm looking at can take much credit for it...

I'm confident it took the author more time to do the layout than it did to imagine this or write it up. This is one idea stretched over a whole page. Most of what he bothered to write down would follow logically from the initial seed. I mean, if you condensed this down to a paragraph, the very next thing I would think of if I wanted to make a campaign out of it - would be the rest of the things he wrote, or something equivalent. The fact that he added two or three words of dressing like "fertility cult" or "parchment wizard" I do not consider a value-add.

There isn't even an attempt to make things coherent. How does the necromancer move around? Every day she just randomly teleports to the next town... maybe? The hexmap doesn't have a scale (as if we needed proof that the author never ran this himself). So we have no choice but to roll randomly for how fast the blight spreads. Depending on the scale of hexes the DM uses, you might never be able to outrun it, let alone solve the problem. I think this concept would work well as a board game, but in D&D we need our time records to be - well if not strict, then at least gesturing towards the real world.

This would have been presented far better as an adventure outline. Give us the villain, write up the villain's lair in hex 0101 as an actual dungeon. Give us something on the villages we can work with (a paragraph or two each, not eight words). Maybe a few NPCs with agendas. The hexmap isn't doing anything useful. Skip it and just let me place the adventure in my own campaign world. Cut out all the bullshit, give me something I can use, flesh it out to 2-4 pages. I still have lots of work before me to make it playable, but maybe I'd get something worth my time.

Of course it's free, and so you might say "hey TS, why be such a dick about it?" I think the collective cost we're paying is that we have to perpetually be contending with shovelware like this.

2/10 Blighted Hexes

 

[Beoric]

I could build a decent campaign out of that, but I doubt I could do it on the fly. I would have to stat out the Devourer at least, and probably at least sketch a few maps (the Bandit King's lair comes to mind). I imagine I would end up with many more pages.

Thing is, if I am putting in that much work, I may as well tailor it to the setting I am using, which mean the map mostly gets redrawn and some NPCs get rewritten. I would basically just take a couple of ideas and do the rest from scratch.

One bonus is that the terrain is not unrealistically varied. I hate maps that have, for instance, mountains is some weird configuration, or a hex or two from plains, so that I need to scour my world map for an existing terrain configuation that sort of matches it. This just requires a hex with plains or forest, or (depending on the size of your hexes) a forest hex next to a plains hex. Maybe I could use the map after all.

 

[The1True]

Pretty cool. As everyone is saying, it needs a sizable amount of fleshing-out. If we're looking at this as an exercise in working within a format, then I think we could legally add a page to this and call it a 'spread' and that way the author could squeeze some more key information in their, like actual hex descriptions/scale or at least fleshed out location descriptions.

Technically, you could even throw a third page in there: A monster, NPC and treasure roster to pin to the DM screen. If there's room; squeeze in a timetable to keep track of events.

Hell! Make a cover page as well with introductory information: Movement procedures. The Necromancer's story. Hooks/Rumours etc.

It really does read like a boardgame.

Did not deserve a 2/10. That was mean.

 

[squeen]

It doesn't get my juices flowing either. Sorry.

 

[Two orcs]

I concur this is a good sketch but itself not a complete product. I could make this into a session or two of adventure with an hour or two of prep-work by pulling the lairs from other products. The scale of the map and the local but serious threat suggests an early mid-levels party.

 

[Commodore]

So this, I think, is where we come to review standards. I don't think you're getting a complete product anytime you're grabbing a one-pager that has a scope outside of "one night at a dungeon". I was able to put it in my Coldlight Setting easily thanks to the realistic terrain, it's a decent vale for a rocky land:

I don't think One-Pagers should be reviewed as adventures. A good exercise might be to review what I had to do to make this a fun adventure:
-Stat antagonist, pull creature stats.
-Flesh out local factions.
-Make lairs (tower, fort, crypt). I have enough historical background that I just used standard ~14th century versions of each for scratch.
-Make the blight explicable in game terms.
I enjoy the exercise of taking seeds like this and turning them into an adventure; this experience along with the Trilema reviews make me think that maybe we should list one-pagers closer to "setting books" as adventure-making fuel rather than adventures in and of themselves, however concrete their geography.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

I don't think One-Pagers should be reviewed as adventures.

This is what I meant about us having to pay a collective price. By what mechanism should normal review standards be suspended? What about for two-pagers? Or half-pagers? Or a paragraph I wrote up in the shower? What number of pages permits the adventure to be reviewed at the adults' table? Making an product that is lacking intentionally is no excuse at all.

I think my review above was pretty accurate, considering how well it lines up with your list of things you added yourself. Even though you like the thing and I don't, we don't seem to disagree on what it is.

 

[The1True]

I mean, this idea is so for-free it's not even PWYW on DTRPG, so yeah, you're probably right, it doesn't deserve to be reviewed at the grownups table. I don't think it's even asking for that. I think with the three additions I suggested above (or at least the two-page spread) it could be playable and worthy of review as a PWYW or part of a compilation.

 

[Reason]

There is one guy, the Trilemma guy who has come the closest to making some good, useable stuff in the ultra short format.

He uses 2 pages though I think- just enough room to add in detail & turn the "good idea but I still need to spend an hour filling it in" to pretty much bang useable at the time. He did The Sky Blind Spire as a decent example.

 

[squeen]

There is one guy, the Trilemma guy who has come the closest to making some good, useable stuff in the ultra short format.

He uses 2 pages though I think- just enough room to add in detail & turn the "good idea but I still need to spend an hour filling it in" to pretty much bang useable at the time. He did The Sky Blind Spire as a decent example.

@TerribleSorcery posted a review about a Trilemma compilation here. I like them too.

 

[Osrnoob]

Its like UVG, not an adventure but good brain fuel you can use to prep. You have to build it out to either get material to improv or key to suit your game

What I mean is you cant just run the key at the table