I had the opportunity to hit an estate sale Friday where I picked up a couple of vintage games... a 1950s version of Cootie (missing a couple of eyes, but otherwise complete) and Walt Disney's 1953 offering Peter Pan: A Game of Adventure. In looking at the game board, it struck me that it was a prime candidate for conversion to a good old-fashion hex-crawl! Who can argue with classic (though cliché) locales like: bear canyon, mermaid lagoon, rock island, pirates cove, skull rock, and hangman's tree? Now, just replace the goofy bears in bear canyon with werebears, turn the indian camp into a tribe of orcs or gnolls or whatever works for you campaign... awwhell, you get the idea.
So all that got the creative juices flowing, especially with an eye on the d30 Sandbox Companion. So between a couple of "nothing on TV" nights, plus this incessant ADD (not AD&D), I started cranking all kinds of things out... including a Hex Crawl Worksheet (a sort of sandbox equivalent of the Dungeon Crawl Worksheet), as well as a d30 chart for determining the terrain in the sub-hexes of a domain/atlas-level hex. I figured after the last couple of stinker posts (the pilgrim and language charts were some of my least popular downloads ever!), it was the least I could do. And seeing as I haven't really done a themed week since Worm Week, I figured it was time again.
BE SURE TO VISIT EVERY DAY THIS WEEK FOR A NEW PDF DOWNLOAD!
MONDAY: HEX CRAWL WORKSHEET
A letter-sized page with space on the left for 3-hole punching (like the Dungeon Crawl Worksheet), as well as places to note top-level info (scale, region, climate, predominant terrain), list key locations (cities & castles, settlements & strongholds, dungeons & ruins, monster lairs, and miscellaneous locales), and create up to 4 wandering monster charts.
TUESDAY (New Monster Day): A DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO LYCANTHROPES!
Stats for 71 different lycanthropes, including treasure type, alignment, and locales in which they're found! I've combed a couple of decades' worth of 1e, 2e and BECMI editions, manuals, and appendices for stats and information on all the lycanthropes I could find, and filled in the blanks with a couple dozen new were-types.
WEDNESDAY: FULL-COLOR HEX MAP OF NEVERLAND
THURSDAY: TBD
I'd love to finish up a Hex Crawl Master Mapping Key (like the Master Dungeon Mapping Key), but this will depend mostly on work commitments.
FRIDAY (d30 Feature Day): HEX CRAWL TERRAIN GENERATOR
Thanks for posting the Peter Pan board. The artwork is fantastic. I'd forgotten about Skull Rock - another candidate for influence on the Skull Mountain in the Holmes Basic rulebook (though there are many others in lit/film).
ReplyDeleteTSR's 1977 boardgame Warlocks & Warriors (designed by comic/fantasy writer Gardner Fox) has a similar type of wilderness map, with great artwork by David Sutherland, that could be used for a hex crawl. It even has random tables on the boards for some of the locations. See it here.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. The W&W game is definitely one I should put on my wish list. Those random tables got me thinking that Thursday's post should be background info on the Neverland hex map (wandering monster tables, etc,)
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of hex-crawl board-games: My Dark Tower lives. (but the motor sounds unhappy)
ReplyDeleteI would like to thank my parents for springing for this (expensive) toy, back in the day.
(probably the reason I'm having to trawl used-bookstores to finally get myself the old AD&D source books.)
Dark Tower really is an interesting "middle-ground" between board-game, rpg, and computer-game
... where the tower acts as Game Master ... dice ... and character sheet.
... but the tower only knows which kingdom your character is in ... not its exact "hex" location
... very loose.
I should bring it over some time