I do love the GM tools in WWN and it is great to see how they work in practice. Plenty of these sort of products seem theoretical, but its awesome to see them used practically by people who know what they are doing
This is great!!! I love WWN. Thank you 😊 Would love to see something similar using “The Perilous Wilds “ discovery and danger and detail tables as I have found that supplement to be one of the BEST for filling out a hex crawl.
Loved this. I'm one of those folk who very often can't see the trees for the forest - big picture, but I can't quite work out the minutiae. Seeing your method here is amazing! Unlocks the whole thing. Definitely looking forward to a part 2. Also now looking forward to working on my own setting for some DCC fun as well...
This is really cool! Amazing to see how quickly it generates engaging content. The two of you do a great job bouncing ideas off each other to flesh out the POIs. I really want to play in the academic wizard research site already! You keep this up and I'm gonna have to seriously look into WWN.
Thanks for sharing this. Really enjoyed learning more about this style of prep (hex crawl using tables) and I would love to see more. You guys inspired me to get the free version of Worlds Without Number and try it out myself. I'd love to see further examples of this kind of prep, the adventures that ended up occurring in this region, or really anything else related. Thanks again to both of you!
I'm glad you enjoy them! There will definitely be more but I think the next big ones we do will be CWN related except for the sequel to this video we need to schedule at some point
Wanted to say i love this video and seeing a hexcrawl come to life with these tools from WWN. Your energy and explanations and ideas were great! I have a question, before a session in the area, how much further prep do you do for each spot? Some seem very in depth. Would you say, as examples, draw town/dungeon maps, design a list of NPCs, loot, and/or small encounter or 2 in each?
Thank you for the kind words!! To answer your question (and I apologize if this gets long winded), I personally follow my motivation a lot so if it is a really interesting spot, the creativity might just flow easily and loot, NPCs and encounters might just come naturally and heavily. So I might have way more prepared for session 1 than I actually need. For example, the military base with the civil war, I would say if you really liked it, you could really flesh out the motivations of maybe 3 or 4 key NPCs on each side, have an idea for how the players could swing the balance of either factions, make some cool loot they may have as rewards, etc. It could be a place that could have an entire story arc that takes sessions to resolve. But if you aren't really interested in it or more importantly, if your players aren't interested and you don't want to do a shitload of work unless it is going to get seen or encountered by the players, I think you just need to get enough done for that session. To use the civil war example again, I would just basically jot down vaguely what the war is over and what each side believes briefly and from there a lot of RP can flesh that out on the fly organically if you know their motivation. As for encounters and monsters, depending on your style of play, you can have stuff ready or just roll on random wandering monsters or do both but you won't need much. In a single 3-4 hour session, an RP encounter with a faction leader could eat up a huge amount of the session time as the players negotiate, talk among themselves and ask questions. Throw in maybe 1-3 combat encounters and you basically have yourself a whole session covered. As for loot, you might just want to have a table handy and roll on it for what they find in rooms or on defeated foes or you could have a specific reward in mind for if they do a minor quest for the faction leader in that session (such as "kill the beast that is hunting our soldiers on the lower levels"). So to summarize this long ass wall of text I have written haha, there is no right answer other than have at least enough for 1 session unless you really like improv and just want to play by the seat of your pants. Some of the GM side stuff requires some discipline but you should never be completely miserable so if you feel like you're burning so much time and energy fleshing out one hex and not having fun, just stop and make sure you have enough done for your next game and enough info of motivations and tone to jump off of. Hope that was helpful!! :)
Torn between WWN and Forbidden Lands. I want to run one of them soon. WWN appeals to me because it’s OSR-adjacent, and won’t require learning a new set of rules.
Hi! Thank you for making this video. How did you set your hexes to be auto numbered? I am having a pretty difficult time either finding that setting or a module.
@@wasabiburger3047 I tried installing the module, but the numbers still don't show up and I cant seem to find the setting. Maybe I'm blind, but I'd appreciate a pointer as to how to turn it on. The module is already enabled.
Starting my first time doing soon, it’s not sand box but will involve exploring and finding points of interest. How can I combine this with a more linear story? Like if I need certain points of interest to exist but also want the random stuff too
The two approaches definitely aren't incompatible, it just means you need to change how you drop hooks and put pressure on the players if they're straying outside of what you want. Such as only putting clues or hooks to the next story beat or putting time pressure on pursuing the main story. Look at games like the original 2 Fallout games, Morrowind. You could jet straight to the end of the game if you knew what you were doing, or only take the critical path, despite them being "sandboxy" in the sense that they had tons of points of interest. Ultimately it really depends on your exact wants for the campaign, but sometimes adding a linear story into a sandbox game can be as easy as starting the players off with a particularly strong hook that they're compelled to follow. If you mean combining it in the sense of generating a hexcrawl like this and then building a linear story from it, just take what Alex and I started to do towards the end where we were talking about scenario ideas. Generate your hexes, then start to weave a thread through the places you want the story to go. Things should fall pretty naturally from there. - Jack
@@iamdrwizard I was more thinking along the lines that I have a linear story that involves the party having to do small hex crawls to find the specific points of interests from the story. I was just wondering if there is a way to randomize the hexes with the chart while having the location of the set piece of the story be partial randomized as well.
You could potentially look at running a point crawl instead of a hexcrawl! That could do the job I think for what you want. Here's a good blog post that explains the style of play: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/48666/roleplaying-games/pointcrawls If you are bent on doing a hexcrawl, I think you just need to structure a story and basically have the quest giver/story-pushing element basically tell them to go to a certain hex (or hexes) and the players will more than likely just go there and you can just have them explore and come across encounters along the way.
Yeah I'll echo that, a pointcrawl will almost certainly be what you're looking for. Worth noting up front that you can very easily turn a hexcrawl into a pointcrawl.
It's a shame you hand wave the question "How many.interrssting thing can they be in a 6 miles hex." A lot. The 6 miles hex is hudge enough to justify each hex having something. As.you said, an empty hex is an empty room. A dungeon with 2/3 of his room empty is a bad dungeon.
Certainly! Irl, in similarly developed cultures, you'd see settlements and villages at least as commonly as every few miles, but that kind of density is hard to manage the cognitive load of for a GM and can end up feeling like there's no "true" wilderness in the hexcrawl for the players. A lot of travel is abstracted, so if there are constant POIs, it can feel like the only thing the players, and by extension their characters, are seeing are POIs. I'll also counter a bit and say that when you count hallways, a lot of dungeons are on a comparable level of emptiness. I tend to think of empty hexes as hallways in a dungeon, they're places for impromptu encounters to happen or for things to go off script. And there can still be interesting things on "empty" hexes, they're just not interesting enough to dedicate your limited prep time to initially. To your point, you can certainly make a dense hexcrawl that feels like a dungeon, but I'd hazard a guess that most people don't want a dungeon-dangerous hexcrawl if they're also putting a number of similarly stocked and dangerous dungeons inside of that very hexcrawl. Sounds incredibly deadly (which is fine!) but mostly it sounds like a TON of prep. There are a number of published hexcrawls that are certainly as dense and dangerous as a dungeon, but I'd hazard the guess that for most people, the hexcrawl is about the slow burn resource usage and broad strokes exploration, vs the minute-by-minute challenge of a proper exploration location. - Jack
Interestingly enough, the original guidelines for old D&D was to have 2/3 of the dungeon rooms be empty. This raised tension as players never knew whether that seemingly unremarkable room truly was empty or was hiding something wonderful/hideous. 😁
I do love the GM tools in WWN and it is great to see how they work in practice. Plenty of these sort of products seem theoretical, but its awesome to see them used practically by people who know what they are doing
This is great!!! I love WWN. Thank you 😊
Would love to see something similar using “The Perilous Wilds “ discovery and danger and detail tables as I have found that supplement to be one of the BEST for filling out a hex crawl.
I'll look into it for sure!
Loved this. I'm one of those folk who very often can't see the trees for the forest - big picture, but I can't quite work out the minutiae. Seeing your method here is amazing! Unlocks the whole thing. Definitely looking forward to a part 2. Also now looking forward to working on my own setting for some DCC fun as well...
This is really cool! Amazing to see how quickly it generates engaging content. The two of you do a great job bouncing ideas off each other to flesh out the POIs. I really want to play in the academic wizard research site already!
You keep this up and I'm gonna have to seriously look into WWN.
Thanks, buddy! The pdf is free with 90% of the stuff in it on Drivethru so I highly recommend it! 😈
Great video footage showcasing the inner secrets of this tome of world building.
Thanks for sharing this. Really enjoyed learning more about this style of prep (hex crawl using tables) and I would love to see more. You guys inspired me to get the free version of Worlds Without Number and try it out myself.
I'd love to see further examples of this kind of prep, the adventures that ended up occurring in this region, or really anything else related.
Thanks again to both of you!
I'm glad you found it helpful! And yeah we'll definitely try to get part two out at some point in 2024 :D
I do enjoy listening to these various WWN vids from ya'll whenever I'm itching to listen to something WWN content. Hope to see even more in the future
I'm glad you enjoy them! There will definitely be more but I think the next big ones we do will be CWN related except for the sequel to this video we need to schedule at some point
Wanted to say i love this video and seeing a hexcrawl come to life with these tools from WWN. Your energy and explanations and ideas were great!
I have a question, before a session in the area, how much further prep do you do for each spot? Some seem very in depth. Would you say, as examples, draw town/dungeon maps, design a list of NPCs, loot, and/or small encounter or 2 in each?
Thank you for the kind words!!
To answer your question (and I apologize if this gets long winded), I personally follow my motivation a lot so if it is a really interesting spot, the creativity might just flow easily and loot, NPCs and encounters might just come naturally and heavily. So I might have way more prepared for session 1 than I actually need.
For example, the military base with the civil war, I would say if you really liked it, you could really flesh out the motivations of maybe 3 or 4 key NPCs on each side, have an idea for how the players could swing the balance of either factions, make some cool loot they may have as rewards, etc. It could be a place that could have an entire story arc that takes sessions to resolve.
But if you aren't really interested in it or more importantly, if your players aren't interested and you don't want to do a shitload of work unless it is going to get seen or encountered by the players, I think you just need to get enough done for that session. To use the civil war example again, I would just basically jot down vaguely what the war is over and what each side believes briefly and from there a lot of RP can flesh that out on the fly organically if you know their motivation. As for encounters and monsters, depending on your style of play, you can have stuff ready or just roll on random wandering monsters or do both but you won't need much. In a single 3-4 hour session, an RP encounter with a faction leader could eat up a huge amount of the session time as the players negotiate, talk among themselves and ask questions. Throw in maybe 1-3 combat encounters and you basically have yourself a whole session covered. As for loot, you might just want to have a table handy and roll on it for what they find in rooms or on defeated foes or you could have a specific reward in mind for if they do a minor quest for the faction leader in that session (such as "kill the beast that is hunting our soldiers on the lower levels").
So to summarize this long ass wall of text I have written haha, there is no right answer other than have at least enough for 1 session unless you really like improv and just want to play by the seat of your pants. Some of the GM side stuff requires some discipline but you should never be completely miserable so if you feel like you're burning so much time and energy fleshing out one hex and not having fun, just stop and make sure you have enough done for your next game and enough info of motivations and tone to jump off of.
Hope that was helpful!! :)
@wasabiburger3047 it was helpful! Thank you for the in depth answer!
I know this is a bit late but what modules would you recommend for foundry vtt?
Torn between WWN and Forbidden Lands. I want to run one of them soon. WWN appeals to me because it’s OSR-adjacent, and won’t require learning a new set of rules.
Hi! Thank you for making this video. How did you set your hexes to be auto numbered? I am having a pretty difficult time either finding that setting or a module.
I might use this for a DCC hexcrawl
Absolutely! These tools work for any system really!
I'm researching on how to best design a Hex map. I'm going to use the Hex grid on the world of Hubris in DCC.
I'm having no luck figuring this out but how'd you get the numbers on your hexes done?
Love the video but how did you add hex numbers to the Foundry?
Thanks for the kind words! Jack said it was called Grid Numbers I think
@@wasabiburger3047 I tried installing the module, but the numbers still don't show up and I cant seem to find the setting. Maybe I'm blind, but I'd appreciate a pointer as to how to turn it on. The module is already enabled.
What is the note taking program? Can you use it without a VTT?
Starting my first time doing soon, it’s not sand box but will involve exploring and finding points of interest. How can I combine this with a more linear story? Like if I need certain points of interest to exist but also want the random stuff too
The two approaches definitely aren't incompatible, it just means you need to change how you drop hooks and put pressure on the players if they're straying outside of what you want. Such as only putting clues or hooks to the next story beat or putting time pressure on pursuing the main story.
Look at games like the original 2 Fallout games, Morrowind. You could jet straight to the end of the game if you knew what you were doing, or only take the critical path, despite them being "sandboxy" in the sense that they had tons of points of interest.
Ultimately it really depends on your exact wants for the campaign, but sometimes adding a linear story into a sandbox game can be as easy as starting the players off with a particularly strong hook that they're compelled to follow.
If you mean combining it in the sense of generating a hexcrawl like this and then building a linear story from it, just take what Alex and I started to do towards the end where we were talking about scenario ideas. Generate your hexes, then start to weave a thread through the places you want the story to go. Things should fall pretty naturally from there.
- Jack
@@iamdrwizard I was more thinking along the lines that I have a linear story that involves the party having to do small hex crawls to find the specific points of interests from the story. I was just wondering if there is a way to randomize the hexes with the chart while having the location of the set piece of the story be partial randomized as well.
You could potentially look at running a point crawl instead of a hexcrawl! That could do the job I think for what you want.
Here's a good blog post that explains the style of play: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/48666/roleplaying-games/pointcrawls
If you are bent on doing a hexcrawl, I think you just need to structure a story and basically have the quest giver/story-pushing element basically tell them to go to a certain hex (or hexes) and the players will more than likely just go there and you can just have them explore and come across encounters along the way.
Yeah I'll echo that, a pointcrawl will almost certainly be what you're looking for. Worth noting up front that you can very easily turn a hexcrawl into a pointcrawl.
An editor's note? I didn't know you had an editor.
It's-a me!
@@wasabiburger3047 That doesn´t count, that´s false advertising! I want my viewing time back!
It's a shame you hand wave the question "How many.interrssting thing can they be in a 6 miles hex." A lot. The 6 miles hex is hudge enough to justify each hex having something. As.you said, an empty hex is an empty room. A dungeon with 2/3 of his room empty is a bad dungeon.
Certainly! Irl, in similarly developed cultures, you'd see settlements and villages at least as commonly as every few miles, but that kind of density is hard to manage the cognitive load of for a GM and can end up feeling like there's no "true" wilderness in the hexcrawl for the players. A lot of travel is abstracted, so if there are constant POIs, it can feel like the only thing the players, and by extension their characters, are seeing are POIs.
I'll also counter a bit and say that when you count hallways, a lot of dungeons are on a comparable level of emptiness. I tend to think of empty hexes as hallways in a dungeon, they're places for impromptu encounters to happen or for things to go off script. And there can still be interesting things on "empty" hexes, they're just not interesting enough to dedicate your limited prep time to initially.
To your point, you can certainly make a dense hexcrawl that feels like a dungeon, but I'd hazard a guess that most people don't want a dungeon-dangerous hexcrawl if they're also putting a number of similarly stocked and dangerous dungeons inside of that very hexcrawl. Sounds incredibly deadly (which is fine!) but mostly it sounds like a TON of prep. There are a number of published hexcrawls that are certainly as dense and dangerous as a dungeon, but I'd hazard the guess that for most people, the hexcrawl is about the slow burn resource usage and broad strokes exploration, vs the minute-by-minute challenge of a proper exploration location.
- Jack
Interestingly enough, the original guidelines for old D&D was to have 2/3 of the dungeon rooms be empty. This raised tension as players never knew whether that seemingly unremarkable room truly was empty or was hiding something wonderful/hideous. 😁