My first sit-down with the Hexcrawl was fun, but a little tense. This feels more like an After Action Report than an actual play. I was using the Judges Guild Wilderness Exploration, Mythic GM and Deluxe Tunnels &Trolls for the mechanics.

Session 1: I have a party of a warrior, a wizard, and two rogues. As they are my test group, I haven’t built up much backstory, but I couldn’t help but imagine Gandalf, Aragorn, Merry and Pippin…in fact I may go change their names.

I will be using Saving Rolls for survival, likely vs INT or CON. The SR level will be determined by terrain and the number of hexes since the last sign of civilization (villages, roads, forts, etc). I say probably because I completely I forgot I wanted to factor in wilderness survival until I was half way through the session.

They found an encounter and a Lair on the last hex explored, on the shores of Lake Althode (Hex 0404). I rolled Giant Killer Bees for the encounter, so I opted (without rolling) to make the lair a giant Beehive in the bluffs near the lake. I hadn’t forgotten how fun T&T is when you’re rolling hand fulls of dice and looking for doubles. The party won with little difficulty, but they took enough damage that they chose not explore the hives.

The Positive: First and foremost, I enjoyed myself. The hexes that were generated made sense, and once I had a few done ideas for event hooks began to pop into my head. The combat was as quick and fun. I think as I get into it more, and remember to incorporate all the components I’m looking for, it will be a fulfilling solo campaign.

The Negatives: This will definitely be a game for early mornings, when the house is quiet and I have some alone time. It feels a bit like hearding cats, and until I’ve built up some gaming muscle memory for the systems it will be part work and part play.

Surprising turn of events towards roleplaying conversations today…

Visemar episode 5 is up. The pacing seems a little strange to me, but it could also be due to there being only four left. http://gamingwhiledriving.blogspot.com/2017/08/visemar-season-1-episode-5.html

Another Edge of the Empire session. I am in desperate need of repairs…

I had a really good solo skirmish using the Frostgrave rules. I hadn’t intended for it to be solo, my son was going to play. Understandably he decided to play games with his friends, but I had just gotten a new set of HoN terrain tiles that needed using.

I ditched the standard activation phases for the solo game. I used a hybrid of my HoN activation and that from mobile frame zero. In short, each unit rolled 1d12 and that number was their order. Then each warband rolled a die and the winner would act first if unit dice were tied.

To give the Wizard and Apprentice more prestige they rolled 1d6 for activation order to increase the chances they would move early in the round. I also allowed them to activate soldiers within 3″, as per default, and discarded the soldier’s original initiative die.

I also used and odd number of treasure sites to force a final conflict. Each side moved to pick up the treasures nearest their deployment zones, then converged on the final central market.

Their were a few surprises. This was only my second play of the system, I had not realized how useful the Leap spell was for warband mobility. I’ll definitely make that a mainstay of future wizards.

The other surprise was how much of the game revolves around positioning. There is lots of terrain to break up LOS, but getting caught out in the open could be disastrous. In fact the Necromancer warband lost half of it’s units on account of my poor movement tactics and some exceptionally good rolls from the Witch Doctor band.

Starting out a new Traveller game, I feel encouraged to share it with you…

Welp, time for me to hit the highway.