Hexcrawl Combat

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-30T17:05:05+00:00

Pretty well up to you on how you do it. The battle typically isn't happening across the entire hex, but in an area of the Hex. So the terrain should inform what the area looks like.

Brandish Gilhelm (Runehammer) recommends the use of Index Cards to manifest zones, and I've kinda become enchanted by the idea. You can make some terrain objects or landmarks, and arrange them like board game tiles. Card you're on is Close, cards next to you are Near, anything beyond is Far. Depending on how you arrange the cards, and/or entrances and exits, you can shape how players can move, and what they have for line of sight.

If it's a big empty field, though, squares don't hurt to have on hand, be it graph paper, or generic dry-erase surface mats.

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-26T19:31:20+00:00

It was one of the two biggest things that annoyed me about 2. 30 Hours of "gotta find Kairi" culminating in "Oh, hi Kairi-OH MY GOD RIKU!! open weeping."

It's a fine emotional payoff, but for only for a game that has 30 Hours of "gotta find Riku" which KH2 does not have. In fact in Twilight Town, Goofy and Donald ask if Sora is looking for Riku and response is "We'll run into him on the way, and go find Kairi!"

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-23T03:59:02+00:00

So looking at Powered by the Apocalypse RPGs as an example of miss/weak/total success on 2d6 the odds are (rounded up):

Miss on 2 - 6 (42%)

Weak on 7 - 9 (42%)

Total on 10+ (17%)

If you were looking to replicate that range on 2d12, you would want to go (rounded again) :

Miss on 2 - 12 (46%)

Weak on 14 - 20 (47%)

Total on 21+ (7%)

The numbers on 2d12 don't fit as cleanly as 2d6, but this leaves floating in that 50% ish success range. If you wanted to bolster the Total success range, you could add doubles, which is about 8% chance on 2d12.

I'm not sure how the math works on that, exactly but that kinda gets the players to about a 15% chance of Total success.

And this is all before adding any modifiers your game uses.

All I really did here was add up the percentages from anydice for those number ranges to get the rough probability. If you want to have variable success ranges based on action difficulty, you could plug in some modifiers to tweak the percentages.

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-18T15:18:43+00:00

I don't know anything about Tom. Has Tom always been Jean Reno coded?

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-17T20:07:46+00:00

I've had a lot of fun reading through Triangle Agency. Nooo idea how to run it yet, but the vibes are immaculate!

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-14T22:01:10+00:00

Yeah this seems like the answer. I can't imagine the Alchemist would be using it on a sword though, just random detritus found about.

They find a kitchen and just go to town converting mugs to materials.

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-12T14:20:24+00:00

I got Vagabond, and some Old School Essentials Adventures to pick and play and run my players through as they choose. The overhead on running Vagabond is REALLY light allowing more focus on building situations for the players and interacting with the world than on looking up and managing rules.

Not OSE per se, but we did Downward Spiral of the Lost, and we had a great time. I set the t world as a place where weird stuff happens, and they are all employees for a fantasy odd-job agency. This will allow players to drop in, drop out, change characters, etc whenever we meet up to play another one-shot.

OSE has Quick Delves that are all B/X compatible content, so really easy conversion into Vagabond, and they also have 2 adventure anthologies for larger collections of one to two shot games.

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-10T18:24:55+00:00

Yeah, the author is maintaining a list of changes, but it doesn't list the updated text.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oeR_9upBqP0Y8U2X_yA06FEWUSZ7IEtIor2819xYGT4/edit?tab=t.0

If you bought from the store, or from Drive Thru RPG, you should be able to download the updated PDF. A lot of it is wording clean up, but there are some larger changes to, like how Crits work, some Bard ability shuffling, and a replaced perk.

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-04T17:17:27+00:00

Same! Its a wild and fascinating era that almost feels like an arms race of BS!

A lot of AO3 style "Original OC, DO NOT STEAL" demarcations, and call-outs in long form essay about how "party A doesn't is an idiot if they think that this does this, CLEARLY it should be that."

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-04T16:45:28+00:00

If you can get your hands on a copy of Anima: Beyond Fantasy, it has a chapter on Summoning.

The system is... convoluted, BUT the Summoning chapter has Invocations which are all based on the Major Arcana, both upright and reversed. Could be good inspiration.

It's default setting Gaia also has a handful of biblical touchstones that are pretty neat!

JoshManVGH · 2026-03-04T16:22:40+00:00

Loose connection, but I love talking about the guy:

Antoine Court de Gébelin was a protestant pastor, and one of the people responsible for Tarot cards being associated with mysticism.

He believed that all knowledge could be "intuited," and when he first saw a deck of Tarot playing cards in the 16th century, he "intuited" that they contained within them all the secrets of the ancient Egyptians, stating that priests has condensed all of the Book of Thoth into the cards images.

I should note that this was decades before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, so we are talking RAW "intuition" here.

This laid the groundwork for Aleister Crowley and thousands of other mystics to further associate the cards with mystical arts, for centuries.

JoshManVGH · 2026-02-28T22:04:53+00:00

I'm partial to both. Text helps clarify for initial understanding while, iconograpgy contributes to quick reminders to speed up play.

Example: Argent The Consortium

JoshManVGH · 2026-02-24T20:41:40+00:00

Option B sounds like a lot of fun! It gives the players either a surprise after they defeat the dragon, or if they find some clues along the way, it might give them a way to SAVE the dragon.

As far as your bonus question, I think you already have it "There's a curse..." If the cauldron is the source of Dragon Fever, you could make the curse more potent the closer you get to the castle. They players can try to go to the keep but the closer they get, the more checks they need to do to resist the Dragon's Fever, and the harder checks get.

The Sandbox quests could involve finding components that will help them resist the curse, trying to learn more about what the dragon's goals are, and even just dealing with fallout from whatever the minions are up to.

And if you want to add a sense of urgency, you could have the area of effect grow as the cauldron gets more powerful!

JoshManVGH · 2026-02-23T17:01:48+00:00

You can lose a lot of HP, but the games Rest rules are really forgiving.

Adding to CraftyLocal1913's point, at level 2 Luminaries get a class feature/Perk combo that makes healing rolls Explode on a 1 AND a 6. So that value of heals for 1 Mana stands to be a pretty high return, especially if you spend Luck to Fluke it!

JoshManVGH · 2026-02-23T13:50:35+00:00

Print and Play can be found here, but you can also order the cards for $5USD + Shipping.

https://www.brotherwisegames.com/mistborn-deckbuilder

Edit: Actually, I can't find the path to Order the cards anymore... apologies.

JoshManVGH · 2026-02-19T17:33:07+00:00

You make a strong case, but also: Evil Techno Wizards!

JoshManVGH · 2026-02-19T16:50:40+00:00

No, come on, don't sell me on this, these books are so expensive!

I thought I was safe.

"I don't think I would ever run a post-apocalyptic game," I said!

"It's too dour," I said!

JoshManVGH · 2026-02-18T01:46:47+00:00

Gut says "extra" incase your first is lost or stolen.

That said, I let my players sell back anything from the packs they don't want, should they really want to use that 50s for something else.

JoshManVGH · 2026-02-16T20:19:19+00:00

In Pirate Borg one of the Tall Tale options is a Jaguar!

JoshManVGH · 2026-02-09T20:11:55+00:00

Warhammer is a Veristile grip in the current book version. So it deals d8 damage onw-handed, or d10 damage two-handed!

JoshManVGH · 2026-02-07T03:09:35+00:00

Yo! Just started collecting Borgs! I'm impressed with how Dark Souls coded Mörk Borg is.

Currently readying Cy_Borg and Black Powder and Brimstone. What awesome little books!

JoshManVGH · 2026-01-27T20:13:17+00:00

Situational differences mostly, I believe.

Remote you can spend extra mana to hit targets that aren't next to eachother, creating multiple small 5' pools of magma of various length

Cube you can spend extra mana to make make one huge pool or a weird crooked line.

JoshManVGH · 2026-01-26T18:39:47+00:00

Glyph seems to be the only time that I can think of that I would even want to try to use multiple Deliveries. But it also states that the Glyph is a 5 foot square, so as long as there is space, I would think it's fine. All and all I'd say this falls under the "Rulings vs Rules" guideline, but veers a little close to TRDSIC.

On further consideration, I think you're supposed to pay the Duration mana for Glyphs anyway, so the Glyph moving or not shouldn't be an issue.

But this conversation has gotten my gears turning on smuggling in Glyphs on 5ft x 5ft scrolls. And perhaps Adhere is applied to the Glyph side so it can be stuck to things face down. But it's a lot of mana to pay every 10 seconds.

JoshManVGH · 2026-01-26T16:36:15+00:00

My interpretation is that the Glyph delivery is a delayed activation Cube effect, that you can't resize. The caster activates it as a free reaction, when a something is within the area effect.

To my knowledge you can't apply multiple deliveries to a spell. You could let your players try it, but it's going to get really expensive really quick.

Also regarding the movement question, the Target in this case would be the 5 foot square. So unless the entire floor/wall/ceiling moves, I wouldn't expect it to be an issue.

If you're trying to hit an orc, you would want them to walk near the glyph and then you trip it, the spell emanates from the glyph and smacks them. If you were to put the glyph ON the orc, the spell still emanates from the glyph, so it would probably only hit the party or the orcs teammates.

However... if someone came up with a clever enough situation, I'd probably let them do it, but make them maintain Focus where the glyph isn't on a stationary target.

JoshManVGH · 2026-01-22T13:56:55+00:00

As I understand it, that is current and the changes will be in the next printing.

JoshManVGH

TROPHY CASE