Hexplore24: Week One

 

"It is said that not even setting sun dimmed the amber glow of the city streets. Moth lanterns were changed each day at sundown; fed from a lunarium and a special breeding stock prized for the exceptional brightness. There was a certain poetry in the changing of the lights. Countless little lives burned through each night to prolong the radiance. Few considered this as they engaged in extravagant balls, opulent night markets, and the other luxuries of high society. The symbolism was, in retrospect, obvious."

    The temple bell calls the acolytes to their evening prayers as we settle into the comfortable quarters the servants of Sune provided. Despite Aran's grumbling, we've decided to take a much needed rest after a week of hard hiking in the wilds. As fortune would have it, the hills gave way to a large shrine manned by quite friendly priests, or friendly enough after an exchange of coin. Without belaboring the fine details of the journey, we've discovered rough terrain generally directly south of Port Ensal that may serve as a natural barrier for larger expeditions. Second, there is a large concentration of consecrated sites; a temple to the The Dancing Lady, a remote mountain stream sacred to the Anura, a ruined shrine to Shaundakul and now this temple to Sune. Finally, large bands of monsters are not uncommon: we met a band of giant spiders, a flock of cockatrices, and a troupe of hobgoblins. The archpriest was relieved when we showed proof of slaying three of the cockatrices. It may have proved the turning point in our negotiation. The folks we've met don't seem overtly hostile but are certainly hesitant to trust outsiders which seems a prudent policy. They also have little to provide about the Golden City besides general caution and a sense of anxiety when we probe deeper. Not wishing to overplay our welcome, we drop the issue. 

 

    We wonder at the proximity of so many shrines, perhaps the ancestors of these people were more zealous than their cousins in distant lands and that culture has survived to this age. What is clear is that while they have had contact with the wider world, most of the population seems to descend from the ancient lines of the Golden City. We know their Gods by seemingly different names, a curious observation we will have to ponder. Our stores of rations are good for about a ten-day but we quickly tire of our slow pace. Athos in particular complains at our lack of forethought in preparing horses for the journey. It seems returning to Port Ensal would be wise but I hope to convince the others to take a wider arch through the mountains to our east and spend a few more days covering new ground. If all goes well, we may enjoy the tavern's strong mead in a few days.

 

Hexes Explored: 18

 

Features Found:

• 0623: The Iron Temple of Bast
• 0427: The Isle of the Asura and the headwaters of a river
• 0328: The Ruined Shrine of Shaundakul
• 0627: The Sanctuary of Passion

Notable Encounters:

• Three Cockatrices, nearly ended in disaster as they closed the distance quickly. A few timely arrows and insane luck with Dan's backstab prevented anyone from falling to their talons.

Current Party:

• Adran, Lawful Human Ranger 1
• Dan of Caladan, Neutral Halfling Thief 1
• Douse, Lawful Human Monk 3
• Athos, Lawful Elven Magic-User 1
• Aran, Lawful Human Cleric of Tiamat 1
• Mer-Sit the IV, Chaotic Human Fighter 1
   
  

Hexplore24: A year of hexploration

    Over the last few months I've played around occasionally with solo adventuring as a fun exercise in between prepping for sessions in my current pathfinder game. I rolled up some characters using Swords and Wizardry, slapped down the hex map I had been using for my pathfinder game, and picked some spots as sites of small dungeon-crawling adventures that I could largely use the procedures in B/X, OD&D, or other OSR games to run solo. Having the procedures for dungeon crawling and exploration made the process relatively simple and meant I didn't have to use other more complex tools like Mythic or some other GM emulator (which I am not against but personally I find too obtuse for my uses). I bounced around the world and had quite a bit of fun journaling from the character's perspective, using tools like ChatGPT for random prompts, or getting to actually use the enormous pile of printed materials I've collected over the last few years. That's why I was excited to learn about hexplore24, a yearly challenge to run a hexploration game every day of 2024. 

    After mulling over some ideas, I decided to play through a similar scenario to one of the earliest campaigns I ran: the search for an ancient city deep in the wilderness. The original game I ran in college had my players moving through a pointcrawl style system deeper and deeper into an unexplored wilderness in pursuit of a legend of a metropolis from another age (an El Dorado of sorts). While that game had many memorable moments (including when they finally reached the place and found it not quite so abandoned...), due to some shenanigans the players essentially wished (as in used the spell) the events of the game never took place. So this completely unexplored place is still out there somewhere, a perfect motivation for a solo hexploration game! 

    I'll be making use of a variety of tools for the challenge including the fantastic Wilderness Hexplore Revised by Jed McClure, some of the procedures from Swords and Wizardry, OSE, and this neat weather table from the Wandering Gamist. Monsters and Mazes (who I first saw the idea from) has put together some other great resources as well as a summary of the hexplore24 idea. My goal is to really stick with this every day, so I need a straightforward and simple ruleset that I can reasonably expect to be able to keep up with which is where I fell apart with dungeon23. Tying each day to a "in world" day appeals to me and gives a sense of checking in with my party which is neat. I'll be using hex kit to make the actual map itself although I may keep a pen and paper map and update the hex kit map occasionally if it turns out that's my only digital resource. I'll also be keeping a journal of sorts which I can update each day with the events the party encounters. The hope is as we run into various terrain features we can organically create the same sorts of narrative story as in my previous game. The end goal is still going to be to locate the titular lost city which I will eventually place into the roll tables for the features or maybe triangulate it after finding various clues scattered around the hex map. I haven't decided yet but that is a later problem to resolve. Plenty of hexes to explore in the meantime! I'll update progress as we go along, maybe every week or so unless something really interesting happens.

     I rolled up a random town on the western coast, pulled my group of characters from my solo game and set off. Despite the ominous storm that blew through on the first day, the journey was quiet. I can already see some interesting terrain popping out of the random tables. No features yet (its only a 1/8 chance after all) and luckily no monsters. We'll see how long that holds.

 

 

An Epilogue

I started writing this not long after we finished up the final session but quickly lost interest. It's been a few months and now that I've had time to decompress it feels right to finish it up and tie it all off with the benefit of time massaging away the irrelevant moments. To get to it: 

So we had our final session. 

Dice were thrown, drinks were had, crazy burgers were made. It was an epic session; everyone was sweating and passed out by the end of it. Although, that may have been because our AirBNB's AC broke in the 90F heat. 

The multiverse was saved. In a way. And this is how it happened: 

They arrived at the Fortress of Conclusion, tentative and suspicious. The end was here and their quarry was no where to be seen. The great gates of the fortress stood open, a massive maw inviting disaster. An ill omen in the form of the tortured form of the wizard Desatysso was left to greet them. He craved death, they gave it to him. 

 And so they entered into the maw, I show the players this as they get their first look: 

  

Almost in unison my players all looked at me and said, "You bastard." The absolute highest praise for a dungeon master.

They'd already run through the tomb earlier as part of the adventure Return to the Tomb of Horrors so its been fresh in their memory. Burned even. They've also seen it a few other times, scattered one shots, etc. I'll make a post at some point about the apocryphal Tomb, it has some history in my games and I feel like I have a unique perspective on the thing from having run it so many times.

To make a much longer story somewhat shorter, the tomb was largely avoidable since they knew where all the traps were but they did notice a number of strange discrepancies. First was these strange black spikes hammered into the ceiling, usually above some particular object. The first was the shattered sentient bow of one of the characters that Acererak had yoinked during a previous combat. Other spikes pointed at the corpse of Acererak's servant Leon (a particularly loyal mortal servant slain by the party many sessions previously), the captured form of Acererak's Balor father, the ghost of his mother, his research thesis, and a particularly tasty cookie. Those sorts of things, you catch the drift. Reworked elements from the final dungeon in the Return to the Tomb of Horrors. 

Then they came into the columned hall and confronted the Arch-Lich himself. To their surprise, his phylactery was already dust on the floor; destroyed from their perspective by some outside force (the actions and sacrifice of my other group). He said he was tired and they are all going to die. They laughed at him. He brought forth his army. They quit laughing. 

What followed was nearly 12 hours of combat, blood shed on all sides. It was tense and to my credit, I kept it together for the most part.

If we were going to challenge a group of over a dozen 20th level characters, by god it would require something special. And so I dispensed with groups of pretty much every flavor of monster tribe; from a flight of each chromatic dragon to each of the demons and devils, to a host of mindflayers and other aberrations straight from the far realms. They did well enough, but understandably their resources started to dwindle. Spells were lost, consumables tossed, and rests were not possible. It didn't look good. Until they noticed the black spikes and yanked one out of the wall and the true situation revealed itself; the dungeon could be rearranged. 

The previous week I had found and downloaded a scale version of the tomb (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/86168/Tomb-of-Horrors-Map-Set) and had cut it out. It was spread throughout three rooms in the lower level of the AirBNB. By pulling the spikes, they could pick up any room and move it such that its entrances matched up with another, i.e. swap rooms around. What was once a stressful but not terribly exciting series of combats immediately became a tactical opportunity, everyone bent on manipulating the geometry of the tomb to their advantage. Every trap, pit, and illusion could be flipped on their opponents. They could set up ambushes, split up groups of monsters, and make distractions. Play their opponents against each other (it wasn't an accident Acererak separated the Demons and Devils; little reenactment of the blood war anyone?). I don't think I've seen my group ever as engaged and a few hours later the dust settled and they found themselves again before Acererak, triumph in their eyes. They didn't see the Time Stop, Delayed Blast Fireball, Cloudkill coming...

A few of them went down straight away, obliterated by that combo. Their few NPC allies didn't stand a chance. They were furious. And Acererak just dropped another with a Power Word Kill before raising their dead allies to serve him. Again, it looked like the end was here. Except their wizard had saved his Wish. We all turned to him...

"I wish for us all to be restored to ..."

"Counterspell"

"What"

"He uses counterspell, at ninth level."

 

You could feel a pin drop as everyone looked around at each other. Panic and disgust. Of course he would.

 

"I can use my reaction during my turn too right?"

"I believe so yes."

"So I can counterspell the counterspell?"

"Normally easily, but for Acererak you'll still need to roll."

"What do I need?"

"You'll need a total of 23, it's nearly impossible with your bonus of +5."

"But it is possible, so I'll roll." 

 

Tension again, watching the dice slowly stop. It showed a 15. Not enough. Fear. It might as well have been over. They searched for any other advantage, trying anything they could. It didn't stick and they looked crestfallen.

 

"Hey, didn't I cast guidance on him a turn or two ago?" 

"You... did didn't you. And you haven't cast another concentration spell or take damage so its still up."

"We are at 20, he just needs a 3 or a 4."

They rolled a 4. Cheers, dancing, and jubilation resounded as their comrades returned. The rest of the fight wasn't easy, Acererak gave it everything but the tide turned. A few other tricks, a second stage, and a brutal smack down later it was over: Acererak was seemingly dead. It was already 1 in the morning, everyone was slumped over in their chairs exhausted but satisfied. And then I made a critical mistake; Acererak made a wish as well for them to see things from his perspective. They debated whether to counterspell it or not but ultimately decided they were curious enough to see what that meant. So we started up a game of 12 candles. 

Unfortunately it didn't go as planned. You can imagine the intended affect, they experience a game where they know they are going to lose from the beginning, they feel that gut punch reminder of life, and we leave it off with a bittersweet note (seriously check out ten candles, its a great game: https://cavalrygames.com/ten-candles). It would be a great tool to have them think about the perspective of the somewhat fourth wall breaking character that Acererak had become. But I was far too tired and it was my first time running the game. It went very poorly and we wrapped it up frustrated and disappointed.

My players were troopers and stuck it out another hour to do an epilogue scene with their characters which was amazing, tears were shed and their stories concluded. But I felt robbed as we could have used the time from ten-candles to have a more full complete ending for everyone to finish whatever business they had but that itself is life; You can't always get what you want. A teaching moment perhaps, know your limits and respect them. 

Everyone had a good time, maybe even a great one. The game ended and although I felt it could have gone better, after a few months to decompress and process not only the inevitable feeling of loss associated with completing something like this, but also my disappointment in how it ended, I feel at peace with the outcome. I've since started up a Pathfinder 2e game which has been very well received but I find my thoughts occasionally drifting back towards that low lying hill with three entrances. In some ways voices still echo within, torches casting light on mysterious murals and profane traps of devious design. Its magnetic attraction has me pondering hidden meanings, as if plumbing the depths myself for their secrets. Even in my games now my players still reference it; "But what color is it...?", "How many entrances!?", "Don't touch that fucking thing, it could be like that green maw...". And in that way the Arch-Lich triumphed beyond his wildest dreams: that place has left an indelible mark upon them. 

It also helps that their first wish in their new multiverse was to bring him back with a new chance at life. I play him as their mercenary companies chronicler, writing their stories into legend through the company newspaper and very occasionally delving into lost tombs from a forgotten age, torch in hand, ten-foot pole in the other. Certainly not Gary's intention, but much like his tomb he has become something else.

 

The legend of the Tomb of Horrors finally lives. 

     

-- Bing Image Creator Generated Image