Random tables - Deep game worlds
Hello creatures,
Short gloopy on a thing I realised looking at Luke Gearings excellent hex fill procedure. Go read it! It’s short.
I consider Gearing a master of the hexcrawl craft after reading bits of Wolves Upon the Coast. Keyed hexes in that setting bring the world to life in a way I am desperately trying to emulate. I think some of the secret lies in his hex fill procedure.
The fill procedure is marvelously simple. You have settlements, lairs and weird hexes. I guess there’s a hidden fourth element: blank hexes. Just these three, and links between them, are enough to bring a wilderness sandbox to life. I think this is because specific elements provide the main things people like about hexcrawls.
Settlements give you NPCs to talk to, places to rest. Lairs give you monster encounters (and treasure!) Weird hexes showcase the tactical infinity of TTRPGs by giving you something weird. They spice everything up.
The real magic comes when you place these hexes and consider their places in the game world - an important aspect of old school play. The settlements and lairs don’t exist in isolation - they interact. Thus a deep experience - and a deeply variable one - can come from very simple tables.
The fill procedure has been adapted to dungeon rooms too. I haven’t used this one myself, but it looks to be much the same, only highlighting what makes dungeon play work instead of wilderness exploration.
One thing I can’t stress enough is how easy this all is. You roll some dice, get some building blocks, and they almost assemble themselves once you start thinking.
I’ve been trying to make a set of tables for making compelling, gameable city sandboxes. I’ll have a gloopy about that soon. I’m still figuring out what makes city intrigue games “tick”, then simplfying it down into building blocks.
Alright, this was a pretty talky pretty useless article, I needed to gush about how good gearings hex fill procedure was. Next one will have some actual game content.
See ya round creatures!
Addendum: Factions