Simulating an Ecosystem with Random Tables

This is part of a series, which starts right here.

When I first read through Hot Springs Island, I saw the random encounter tables and I immediately wanted to change them.
It turns out, I was worried for nothing, because they do a bang-up job of exploiting bell curves. However, it still takes some time to create random encounters, and when you're at the table and trying to have a cohesive experience, spending 2 minutes rolling 3d6 four times and consulting the tables is 2 minutes too long. I utilized the HSI online encounter tool, as well as a tool you've never heard of called the Perilous Wilds Encounter Generator. Together, these saved me tons of time, and provided encounters that often were interesting and memorable.

To minimize downtime, I pre-rolled 20 encounters for each terrain type. I tried to keep the distribution similar to the bell curve, with 2 encounters on each table being more special and rare. This often meant meeting a new NPC. I added the last names of NPCs from the book to help develop them in my mind a bit more, and I altered some names that I thought were thematically out of place, but you'll find these to be totally usable in your game.

When players travel, they always get an encounter. Unlike other adventures, getting an "encounter" doesn't mean instant combat. This is because all encounters come with a random Activity. This means you come across 2d4 wild boars, or 1d6 fire imps, or any other combination of island denizens, who are always doing something, not just waiting around for players to appear. This also gives players a chance to scout encounters before engaging. My players almost always chose diplomacy with intelligent beings they encountered, and simply avoided beasts, not wanting to waste their precious resources (made more precious with the added pressures of encumbrance and time).

As I mentioned in my review there's a lot for the GM to memorize and/or internalize, even if you don't read the hex text until required by the game. In fact, there is too much for a GM to get their head around. I have invested at least 20 hours reading and re-reading the GM book over the months leading up to running the game, and I was continually noticing new things in the text with every new read through.

 

I explained weight tracking to my players when they made their characters. In general, once they were used to the idea, they managed their inventory by themselves, occasionally asking how much a new item weighed. This system ran itself after one session.

 

One player was assigned a stack of poker chips for tracking time.

 

I printed a copy of the map from the Field Guide so the players could write all over it as they explored. One player was in charge of writing down locations, but the map changed hands often.

 

The Field Guide itself was passed around often. Whoever wanted to research flora or fauna was welcome to do it at any time, including during combat. I briefly considered making the Guide take an in-game action to consult, but I decided it was more fun not to limit the book's use.

 

A read a blog that suggested delegating combat initiative and health tracking to a player. At first I was hesitant to allow such a break in immersion, but it worked extremely well. I'll be doing this in every game moving forward.

 

I lacked actual monster stats, but I had done a quick-and-dirty conversion to Dungeon World stats.

Dungeon World describes monsters in terms of their desires and behavior. I highly encourage you to look at my Google doc linked above. It's much faster than turning to their entry in the Dark book. The rest of combat stats were improvised tweaks of similar creatures from the Monster Manual.

 

Here's an example of how many things I was juggling while running this game.

• The players are traveling from their home base in hex 13 (chosen by the players). Whenever players travel, there is an encounter.
• I roll a d20 and read the result on my pre-rolled tables (note: This one bit of optimization probably saved me at least an hour total across all 6 sessions).
• I see on the table that the players encounter an NPC, which in this case is Tabitha, who is referenced in the Black book.
• I flip to her page in my bookmarked PDF and read her description so I can role play her personality and motivations.
• I read the destination hex's description, because the players need to encounter Tabitha somewhere near or at their actual destination. In this case, it's the Whale Graveyard.
• I quickly improvise a reason Tabitha is in such a place, and I tell the players what happens.

 

This is the standard procedure I used whenever the players explored a new destination. It sounds crazy, but I could complete this process from start to finish in less than 45 seconds. As the Alexandrian points out, having a clean procedure is key to running a hex crawl (though he had many more steps than me).

Alas, it's time to wrap up this series...