Hyperborean Hex crawl

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Posted by The_Great_Lestrade
1/15/2020 4:27 pm
#1

crawling out of lerker land for a post.

Not GMed in several years but the imagaination itch is making me restless. I might not get a group together for this but i want to design it anway. 

So i'm going to try and write a hex crawl and at least map it up nice for somewhere in hyperborea.

so where to map?

My criteria is;

> im going for 6mile hexes as these map approx 4 to the 24 world map hexes (i doubt mine will fit perfectly)
6 miles is a good density for exploration in my view, any thoughts?

> I want a good variety of biomes / environments. I really want some desert, some good Howardian desert. I'd quite like some sea with small islands, and some stepps or grassland. Mountains and woods are of less importance.

> no large cities, or only 1. Ideally a hex crawl should be about exploring the wild, therefore players need motivation not to pursue city adventures and the rural area needs to not have too many settlements.

> variety of danger levels, ideally starting area should be fairly tame and some areas should be death zones.

> i recon total size 50 hexes - 300miles. That should cover a short-medium campaign if this thing gets run.

The options; 

1 Xambaala - Yithorium area, pros; lots of desert, starting area populous, therefore safe(r), mountains create good barrier to south. The bad - perhaps too populous with major city just off map, no reason for players not to head off game area to west.
2. Esquimux bay to north Zakath Desert; pros, could extend south to desert area, has colder area to north for good climate gradient, ice could be used to prevent players just sailing off, cons; no mountains at all. no clear map boarders
3.Larchmere Yys - Dagon Bay - Lizard Coast - Red Desert. Pros- Larchmere Yys would be about right as a starting location with the lizard coast and black forest being good harder areas. Provides lots of biomes in tight area. Also hemmed on 4 sides by mountains and sea. Cons; none?
4. Wold Phellora to Cap Calencia region. Pros; Diamond Desert sounds like a bad ass harder level area. High risk reward, has good mix of biomes. Cons; might be too uninhabitated (but i could just reinterpret this). Diamond Desert takes up the centre of the map which is unfortunate given it is a death zone.

I am leaning towards 3. I think it would make the most natural hex crawl locale. Partly its a question of much i want  to reinterpret the map and how i interpret the gazette. The map has villages and cities on it, but i assume these are just notable features and not exhaustive. 


ive started sketching out terrain features;
once i have a good library drawn and scanned in i will make em into paint brushes and use them on hexes either in gimp or inkscape.



 

Last edited by The_Great_Lestrade (1/15/2020 4:29 pm)

 
Posted by The_Great_Lestrade
1/16/2022 7:04 pm
#2

After a hiatus, ive managed to claw together two players. Not much of a party, one Fighter, one Necromancer. I've thrown this together as a first dungeon.


Last edited by The_Great_Lestrade (1/16/2022 7:06 pm)

 
Posted by The_Great_Lestrade
1/16/2022 7:13 pm
#3




Might use this map, or I might use the hex map i posted in the mapping thread. You can tell I like maps, but that im not good at layouts

 
Posted by Caveman
1/18/2022 5:34 am
#4

I enjoy your map Lestrade.

Is the last map one of the archipelagos?

 
Posted by The_Great_Lestrade
1/18/2022 7:22 pm
#5

So i did not really decide when I drew it, but I'm thinking 6 mile hexes and its the line of islands tracking south across outer Dagon Bay. It doesn't map perfectly on but my players wont notice if i ever give them the whole Hyperborea map.

 
Posted by Caveman
1/19/2022 6:20 am
#6
Posted by The_Great_Lestrade
3/08/2022 6:34 pm
#7

OK, that first dungeon I posted above more than a month ago. Got 3 players and ran it
> Engelberk  the Necromancer
> Rotam the Cataphract
> Fiscaby the Fighter

Were all hired by Teltut the antiques fence of Bitter Shore to seek a lost ship and its captains emerald signet ring. He sent with them his Android / Metal Golem Faber, who carried a 6 hour fuelled lantern and some medical supplies. ( a nanny for these newb players).

I wont recount the whole adventure, we played for 3 hours and they got through the 12 room dungeon but some elements they did not explore at all. They were not old school smart players choosing to see what happens if i do touch X a lot. There is a bull statue standing guard in one of the early rooms. It is awakened by using the magical knockers to open doors. use 3 and the bull awakens and attacks. They used two and worked out the knockers were lighting rings around the bull, so decided to knock the third to see what would happen. Once they realised the bull would attack Engleberk and Fiscaby decided to stand in front of a door and dodge the bull then try and slam the door behind it. Not a bad plan. I made them roll avoidance saves when it charged. They both failed and got slammed for D8 damage which Ko'd both. they were knocked 20ft down a corridor and straight into a false wall. Rotam managed to send the stone bull back to sleep by closing one of the doors and knocking its knocker again. Both KO'd characters were restored to a couple of hit points and the adventure continued but man, each trap they encounters they considered springing to see what would happen. Like the final encounter with a sleeping siren. I though, given its a 1st level adventure, making the siren asleep they could sneak up on it and kill it quick. Instead they started looting the corpses on the other side of the cave for 20mins. So i rolled "wandering monsters" and it awoke. Fortunately they had waxed their ears already and out numbered it, so the fight was fairly easy.

They now have a small war chest of 1800gp. I play XP is generated from gold only if they blow it on parties or training. So either they get close to level 2, or they spend it hiring a ship to explore the archipelago. Perhaps I might come up with a town adventure.

 
Posted by Ghul
3/09/2022 3:36 pm
#8

The_Great_Lestrade wrote:

OK, that first dungeon I posted above more than a month ago. Got 3 players and ran it
> Engelberk  the Necromancer
> Rotam the Cataphract
> Fiscaby the Fighter

Were all hired by Teltut the antiques fence of Bitter Shore to seek a lost ship and its captains emerald signet ring. He sent with them his Android / Metal Golem Faber, who carried a 6 hour fuelled lantern and some medical supplies. ( a nanny for these newb players).


I wont recount the whole adventure, we played for 3 hours and they got through the 12 room dungeon but some elements they did not explore at all. They were not old school smart players choosing to see what happens if i do touch X a lot. There is a bull statue standing guard in one of the early rooms. It is awakened by using the magical knockers to open doors. use 3 and the bull awakens and attacks. They used two and worked out the knockers were lighting rings around the bull, so decided to knock the third to see what would happen. Once they realised the bull would attack Engleberk and Fiscaby decided to stand in front of a door and dodge the bull then try and slam the door behind it. Not a bad plan. I made them roll avoidance saves when it charged. They both failed and got slammed for D8 damage which Ko'd both. they were knocked 20ft down a corridor and straight into a false wall. Rotam managed to send the stone bull back to sleep by closing one of the doors and knocking its knocker again. Both KO'd characters were restored to a couple of hit points and the adventure continued but man, each trap they encounters they considered springing to see what would happen. Like the final encounter with a sleeping siren. I though, given its a 1st level adventure, making the siren asleep they could sneak up on it and kill it quick. Instead they started looting the corpses on the other side of the cave for 20mins. So i rolled "wandering monsters" and it awoke. Fortunately they had waxed their ears already and out numbered it, so the fight was fairly easy.

They now have a small war chest of 1800gp. I play XP is generated from gold only if they blow it on parties or training. So either they get close to level 2, or they spend it hiring a ship to explore the archipelago. Perhaps I might come up with a town adventure.

This sounds like it was a heck of a lot of fun. Love it.
 


HYPERBOREA- A Role-Playing Game of Swords, Sorcery, and Weird Science-Fantasy
 
Posted by The_Great_Lestrade
3/22/2022 6:32 pm
#9

Session 2

The party was recruited by Teltut the Antiques dealer for another task, bring back the Iridium and Basonite Orbs. He wants these for this backers, the secret societies of Port Zangeros. The orbs have magical properties -  not yet disclosed - and are able to open portals to other worlds - also not yet disclosed.

Having heard rumours of a great Obelisk the party decided to search there. They hired a privateer ship for drop off and pick up captained by Marbin, a tattooed naturist with a trident. They haggled him down to 700gp for the trip, half of which was covered by Teltut.

Enroute with the wind behind them they rolled a random encounter, a reaver ship crewed by dagonites with slave rowers. The fight ended up being way more one sided that i expected. Mabin's ship had a balistae the reavers did not. Engleburk the necromancer had Phikissipe shoot down an albatross that he then raised as carrion to use as a spy drone. He then used ventriloquism to have the opposing captain shout drop anchor at an opportune moment before ramming, causing the reavers to about turn. The party / Mabin's ship sunk the reaver's in two ballistae shots. It took about an hour to go down, so they boarded killed the captain, freed 14 slaves and salvaged some loot, of which they got a 1000gp cut.

They landed at the south end of the Root Nails larger island near the obelisk. Forged crappy flint spears for the freed slaves, gave them half their rations and a barrel of oil adn send them north to set up the come collect us beacon. They then murdered a group of fishmen worshipping the obelisk. The necromancer used his undead albatross to steal some of their weapons whilst they were worshiping then got surprise so this fight was also fairly one sided.

They then camped for the night, end of session.

I doubt the slaves will make it to the north end of the island. Will have to think of how to handle this. They are poorly equipped and there is quite a bit of danger on the island. Might just roll to see if they hit random encounters and then judge losses.

The party will presumably enter the obelisk. They are still all level 1. So im not sure how they will do. There are only a couple of enemies inside but these are a shadow and an Iron Automaton. They do have some magical radium arrows, so could hurt the shadow, but their chances are against the Automaton are nil if they choose to fight.

[img][/img]
 

Last edited by The_Great_Lestrade (3/22/2022 6:34 pm)

 
Posted by The_Great_Lestrade
3/29/2022 7:13 pm
#10



They enter the Black Obelisk!

There was variable or zero gravity? They deduced the way around the deathness trap by walking up the walls, trigged the grey ooze trap by poking it.  They killed a shadow using radium arrows. They found an infinite spool of pipe, some wands of light, a lightning lance and three Oon in sarcophagus that they awakened (the other 9 died in the waking process). They explored the map room and realised this is a beacon or portal to other worlds. But the items they seek, the orbs where missing. Apparently taken by Ghouls. Next week, can they escape the island? and make it across the island to the beacon point?
 

 


 
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