Design Commentary: Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl
I recently released my first game, Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl, which is now available on itch.io (link) or DriveThruRPG (link). While reviews and play reports from people that have actually ran or played a given game is infinitely more valuable than pontifications from the designer, I hope this is at least somewhat interesting and perhaps informative for those hoping to make their own games.
What is Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl?
Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl is an adventure in a brochure format. It is about exploring a fantastical, idyllic wilderness inspired by a variety of American folk songs, particularly the song of the same name. The map (and the territory) is generated using the tiles from the Settlers of Catan board game. While it is itself system agnostic, it has stats for 20 monsters listed in the brochure for Old-School Essentials, Knights of the Road and Errant, each of which is a separate file. The ideal use case is a one-shot, but it could be inserted into a campaign that can tolerate the early 1900s Americana tone. The following list summarizes some of the features in the adventure, to aid in the discussion below:
Two compound spark tables (which is a spark table where you get to choose the combination of words, like in my earlier post on gear) to generate character’s background and a starting item
A simple but effective hexcrawl procedure
A d6 rumor table (which contains a d6 subtable for generating a dungeon, the Robber Baron’s mansion)
Two 2d6 random encounter tables (for different types of terrain)
A d6 weather table
Six d6 tables for generating the contents of a hex (each corresponding to a tile type from Catan)
Three d6 tables to generate traps for a dungeon, the Food Pyramid
A random treasure table that will be discussed in more detail below
A d6 table to generate the Robber Baron, a potential antagonist for the adventure
An “Appendix N” of folk songs that inspired aspects of the game
20 new (or updated) monsters stated for 3 OSR systems
That’s a lot of random tables! And many have subtables that are not mentioned above. It should go without saying (and yet here I am, typing it) that the referee running this should keep a d6 handy!
Process
Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl began when, as I re-listened to the song, so much gameable content jumped out at me. I talked about this a bit in my initial blogpost that referenced the Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl. Almost every line functions as evocative word-building and, as a result, almost every line features somewhere in Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl. So my first step was to list out all of the lines in the song and categorize them as locations, encounters, weather, rumors, etc.
I need novel mechanics to sink my teeth into in order to really get interested in a project. Here, it is the use of Catan tiles to generate the map. This is not entirely novel, taking some inspiration from the new adventure The Undying Sands. But unlike that (excellent) adventure, Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl does not need specialty tiles. I love games that use components from popular board games (like a Jenga tower or scrabble tiles) as a mechanism. I figured that Settlers of Catan was ubiquitous enough for my purposes. By the way, it would be easy to repurpose this same mechanism if you are looking to make your own procedurally generated hexcrawl!
However, the hex map procedural generation alone was not enough to sate my unholy appetite for mechanics. The treasure table interacts with the exploration process in a satisfactory way. It is reminiscent of the terribly interesting Context-Sensitive Encounter Tables idea from the Mad Cartographer, where a 2d4+X table can afford a variety of results based on how “X” is defined. In Mad Cartographer’s own words…
“When using multiple dice, the results in the middle of the possible range are more likely and the results at the ends of the range are less likely. The most common result at +0 will gradually fade away until it disappears as the modifier rises, creating a much smoother transition between possibilities.”
The treasure table is a 2d6 table, but you add the number of tiles on the table (Catan has 19 tiles total). This means that the more the players explore, the more likely they will find valuable treasures. The table itself goes from 3 to 30 and ranges from common, contraband tools (basically worthless in a land where work has been outlawed) to the keys to the Pearly Gate. Including all subtables, there are 29 possible results on the table, which hopefully is enough variety to sustain a long excursion across this candied land.
Once I had a framework in place, it was easy putting all the pieces in place. There is no magic in this; it’s the simple work of coming up with ideas, something familiar to anyone on either side of a GM screen, whether or not they write it down. I slotted in the bits and pieces from the Big Rock Candy Mountain song first and then filled in the blanks. After everything was laid down, more or less, Ava Islam (of Errant fame) took an editor’s knife to the whole thing. What emerged was not meaner and leaner (it actually ended up with more content! You all have Ava to thank for the three sets of monster stats), but is a much better work that is more considerate of the players’ agency and the referee’s time.
The best way to understand the assembly line from “stray thought” to “finished product” may be to see a work-in-progress compared to the final. The image below is a framework from very early in the process, devoid of any of the above-discussed filling in. The components are all mostly there, but the way they work are different in the final version. It probably wouldn’t be particularly fascinating for me to drone on about every nit and twit that got changed, but if you are interested you can take out your magnifying glass and determine for yourself.
What It Does Well
I wrote the above caption when I was outlining this blogpost, but only now, as I write this sentence, do I realize that I’m somewhat uncomfortable with heaping on self-praise. Instead, here are some nice things people on Twitter said (with links to their blogs or itch pages, because aren’t those much better places to go than Twitter?):
“Using Catan tiles is a very good idea!” - Cigeus
“Besides being full of fun ideas for play and having cool art by HODAG RPG, you also use catan hex pieces to construct the map also the layout is really pretty!!” - Marcia B (aka chiquitafajita)
“This one is super legit, and Prismatic Wasteland included stats for [Knights of the Road]!! So flippin cool!!” - Bordercholly
“I purchased the Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl a little bit back, and its great. Its the sort of content that pairs well with Chromatic Soup 2, Catlands, or any other whimsical silly bit of Americana; and it understands what its about well--which is often rare in the Americana subgenre.” - Brian Yaksha (aka Goatman’s Goblet)
“Holy shit, this rules” - Joshy McCroo (aka Rise Up Comus)
“Super fun read, and beware the quick Yogurt!” - Iko (aka The Lost Bay)
“In my estimation, the finest hobocrawl around” - Ava Islam [this review is technically biased, but does that make it untrue?]
What Could Be Better
My major qualms come down to things I would have liked to include, if there were more room. If I had an extra interior panel or two, I would have included more detail for producing the major dungeons (e.g., the Mines of Marshmallow, the Robber Baron’s Mansion, the Food Pyramid) and preventing too much work for the potential referee. As it is, Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl is ideal for one shots or short campaigns for referees comfortable with more improvisation. The tools for improvisation are mostly there, but I think it is insufficiently fleshed out for all referees. Maybe one day I will release the full Food Pyramid dungeon as a companion piece.
And Now for Something Completely Different
Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl is far from the only game to come out this month that is worth checking out. If you are looking for other, recent games, I recommend:
Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier — Gus L. is a master of the classic style of play: dungeon crawls, faction play and creative problem solving. In his latest adventure (which also serves as a setting guide), you are a band of gem robbers in a desolate frontier. So much of good design is, for me, a matter of aesthetics, and Tomb Robbers drips with a stylized Western aesthetic that is a refreshing change of pace from the typical fantasy aesthetic of classic dungeon crawls that has been so oft-repeated that it has lost those remnants of the fantastical (between me writing this and hitting publish, Gus L. came out with a blogpost about aesthetics!). It’s $7.50 on DriveThruRPG (an absurdly low price for 60 pages packed with art and gameable materials).
Destruction! Of the Starhook Citadel — HodagRPG (who, full disclosure, did the art for the interior of Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl and the monster pages) continues to release truly bite-sized RPGs that are perfect for an evening of gaming when you can’t get quorum from your gaming group. His latest entry is an entire game system (D2021) that also comes with a quick adventure, all fitting on the same space as Big Rock Candy Mountain. The adventure is set in Hodag’s Hypertrench meta-setting, which does a great job of evoking the feeling of Star Wars before it grew into the behemoth it is today.
Blockcrawl #1 — When I’ve not been working this summer, I’ve mostly been playing Minecraft with my partner to decompress. Porting a Minecraft-type experience to the very different medium of tabletop games is a difficult design puzzle, and one that chiquitafajita is struggling valorously in pursuit of. This first issue has everything you need to begin mining and crafting (and fighting creepers and other enemies). It also has a cool Tetris-based mapping procedure. If you enjoyed the Catan mapping procedure of Big Rock Candy Hexcrawl, this is definitely worth checking out. It’s $1 or more on itch dot eye oh.
