Introduction
Interluding our regularly
scheduled transmission of reinterpretations on common adventuring feats and
rules comes this post. I couldn’t quite shoehorn it as belonging to that
former category, thus a new sequence of posts begins, one that is oriented to
hexcrawl play.
Tying so many disparate actions
under the sway of the d20 while preserving a sense of task-identity and
immersion is a challenge; one that I relish, but a challenge nonetheless. Many
are the times I either see or sense the yawning great vaccuum of design space
waiting to be filled by breaking free of dogma and resorting to other mechanic
underpinnings; examples abound and some are downright impressive.
And here’s the thing: though I’m
loathe to mess about much with the player-facing part of the equation, the
referee’s pastures are a complete free-range for me, and I intend to run with
that for all that it is worth.
With player-hidden, or at least non-actionable
systems, I’m absolutely willing to make do with some alternative rolling
mechanics (as already happened with Weather). World running, after all, need pay no heed to Difficulty Classes, as
things are not trying to succeed at much of anything, they are simply happening.
'Blazers and Stragglers
This particular entry comes as a
reaction to
this classic Tao of DnD post. I still get a chuckle out of it: the image choice is spot-on, the argument being made is sound and there’s some gold
in the comments, too. Here is my take on this thinking as I’ve chosen for my
running, including the part left unanswered, of whom is caught where at which
point when an overland encounter commences.
A basic understanding is that I don’t
intend to mess with close formations while the party is delving in the
underworld, as these are a player choice and the minute-by-minute time frame certainly supports them
being strictly kept.
However, over the dreary, capricious
miles of unending and unchanging wilderness scenery and at a time scale of many,
many a long day, things take on a different tack, as individuals will drift
into all sorts of relative positions as dictated by a miriad of factors,
social, biological and terrain-driven.
The Crunchy Bits
The following methods should be
workable for both linear encounters (danger coming from a defined direction) as
well as for irradiating ones (something happens to or in the vicinity of one of
the characters, and it becomes important to define where is everyone else). I’m
taking it as a given that each player is provided with a personal and
identifiable polyhedral randomizer.
The more direct (but less predictable) method:
- Employ a drop-surface, such as
the lid of a cardboard box for reams of letter-sized paper and lay a square or
hex grid atop it, wherever the dice land is where each character is at the time
of the encounter.
- Designate how many straightened
handspans of height to drop the dice from, with a greater or lower height being
selected for as befits the situation/terrain type (standard being two spans).
 |
| Like this, but several of them. |
- Die-drop to victory (following
the same guidelines as below).
The more convoluted (but stabler) method:
- Have each player die-drop a d6
for the character he controls in the party (animals and possibly hirelings may
or may not warrant a distinct roll), each pip being worth 5 feet.
- If the party did not previously
indicate someone as navigator or pointsman, the die that ends up closest to the
upper edge of the drop surface is the one closest to the threat and is
considered the party’s vanguard, its result rendered moot. If a pointsman was designated, then that character’s
position is not rolled for and is instead automatically considered the closest
one to the threat (as dictated by encounter distance).
- If dealing with an irradiating
event or encounter, either randomize from which character it irradiates (here providing
a chance for each character in the party to test his fortune) or otherwise mark its spot as the middle of the drop box and begin
biasing the rest of the party’s positioning rolls from there.
- Each of the dice represents a
character, with the result shown on the dice signalling these many 5-foot
increments of distance to the character represented by the next closest die,
forming a result chain of sorts, following the die drop’s positioning. Should
two dice be roughly aligned, they can be said to be parallel on a given axis.
- Rugged terrain can physically
delay and separate the party members against their will and better judgment, with larger dice sizes
being used to account for this.
- Open ground, on the other hand,
will lend itself naturally to more spreading about as characters keep
themselves within sight, hearing and bowshot distance, this can be represented
as above but also with the die’s result being worth a greater number of feet.
- A Ranger character may edit his positioning by a number of squares equal to a roll of his proficiency die. If specialized on the terrain type count the roll as being multiplied by ten feet increments.
A more graphic example:
1.
Character A’s result is discarded on account of him
being the pointsman.
2.
Character C’s result of “2” indicates he is 10
feet behind A as well as 10 feet to his left.
3.
Character D is 15 feet to C’s right as well as 15
feet to his back.
4.
Character F is 20 feet to the back of D as well
as 20 feet to his left.
5.
Character E is 25 feet to the left of F and
another 25 feet to his front.
6.
Character B’s result points him as being 5 feet
to the front and left of E.
Note that a drop of d6 never
resolves into too great a spread: no matter where the dice ends up, its maximum
dispersion will never amount to more than 30 feet from the closest character.
So Strung Out
For a party making overland progress slowly
and cautiously (therefore at half rate), this will ensure that a relatively tight formation between characters is retained at all times (one-two
handspans/d4-d6 squares), as it will imply everyone stopping whenever someone does.
If the party is spread out while
foraging, canvassing the terrain on a search pattern or is deliberately ambushed
instead of just happening across something as a cohese marching group, the lay
of the land can certainly factor into things, as the characters will be a greater
distance apart (three-four handspans/d8, d10, d12 squares).
If the party is somehow routed
and running for their lives or for some other reason separated from all group
cohesion – lost from each other, assailed by the weather, out hunting game, individually
shopping about in a crowded market square – everyone should make a grab for the
d20 or be prepared to drop their die from the table onto the floor.
Closing Thoughts – Turn-About is Fair Play
With this procedure in place, it
is easy to see where feats, classes and whatnot magical reasons may enable
fruitful modifications to a character’s benefit. I don’t know that any of the
processes will prove agile enough to be recurringly applied, but then, no plan
survives contact with the table.
Notice that the dispersion method
works just as well as applied to a group of enemies being ambushed, championing
the underlying philosophy that, whenever character placement matters and the abstraction
cannot carry the answer, a good chuck of the diviners can always be relied upon
to inject some surprise into a running. This makes no bones about the fact that
sometimes life deals a raw hand (by our character getting caught in a dangerously
isolated position) but preserving the essential agency of allowing the player
to react, overcome odds and make something of it that will yet quake a bard’s
larynx. Or die an abject death, it cuts both ways, I suppose.
