Games - Solo Roleplay Example - Pathfinder - Hex Crawl, Part 1

Foreword

A large part of roleplaying games is the surprise inherent in discovery. Venturing into the unknown, at the mercy of fate, the dice, and the whims of the game master.

But a lot of that could be lost as a solo roleplayer. After all, you are your own game master. How can you surprise yourself?

Fortunately, there are ways to remediate that loss, and that is what I hope to demonstrate in today's post.

Spoiler Warning

This post discusses in detail, several elements of the Paizo Game Mastery Module D0 Hollow’s Last Hope. The point is to explain solo roleplaying with the Pathfinder RPG using a free resource. However, it shouldn’t be a problem for the solo roleplayer as unfortunately you will have to familiarize yourself with the module to some degree before playing it.

It will absolutely destroy any group play excitement – unless your game master deviates significantly from the module as designed. Something I strongly advocate for since there are always some players who delight in spoiling things in their attempt to dominate the table and beat the GM and players.

Oracles, Imagination, Objectivity

As demonstrated previously, using one or more oracles helps to both fill in gaps in the narrative as well as expand upon it much farther than you might expect. Provided of course that you feel empowered to exercise your imagination.

The irony of this situation is you’re playing a roleplaying game to use your imagination but that is exactly what you might in fact hesitate to do. And why? One possibility is out of your own conceptions of fairness and objectivity.

But you don’t really expect a game master to be objective, do you? When you’re playing a roguelike game you know the game engine is designed on randomness. It’s not going to purposefully rule to either give you more fun or make you miserable.  AI hasn’t progressed that far yet. (Unless our robot overlords are simply keeping us in the dark. All hail the wisdom of our robot overlords!)

But do you expect a game master to arbitrate purely and objectively the rules, adventure, and campaign? Do you go adversarial into a live game expecting to have to beat the GM and the other players? Or do you think the entire effort is cooperative? In either the adversarial or coop scenario the GM will be biased toward using the system to destroy player characters or provide them with an exciting story.

As a solo roleplayer that’s the decision you will have to make time and time again.  And when you can’t make that decision, you will have to lay out a test that will be at least partially, maybe mostly, objective, and fair.  Then, remember to apply that test the next time.

As an aside I look at the recent trend in some game designs to favour light weight rules and give the weight of fiat to circumstantial rulings and recall the past. Dragon magazine had a regular monthly column of rules clarifications. Errata sheets were printed. New editions published. All attempting to make sure that the rules were clear and rulings did not cause conflict.

My Custom Oracle

Through this post I will refer to a generic oracle. It was derived from the Loom of Fate from CRGE, but I preferred to put marginal Yes, But / No, But results bracketing the 50% mid-line. Since then, I have hacked this some more to make different options for when certainty is more certain as well as when uncertainty is more likely.

 

d%	Meaning
1%-5%	No, And Furthermore/Unexpectedly (Critically No!)
6%-15%	No, And
16%-40%	No, That’s it, just no.
41%-50%	No, But – In other words, mostly no, but also a little yes. Something small is right, or it’s not entirely false.
51%-60%	Yes, But – In other words, mostly yes, but also a little no. Something small is wrong, or it’s not entirely true.
61%-85%	Yes, That’s all, just yes.
86%-95%	Yes, And
96%-100%	Yes, And Furthermore/Unexpectedly (Critically Yes!)

 

Gameplay

It’s my opinion that narrative emerges from gameplay. I head into a roleplaying game with the intent to play a game and discover a story – not create a story with a game as the tool to do so. I’ve written stories since high school. Most of them garbage that could not even be qualified as fanfic, until about twenty-five years ago when I started looking seriously at the elements of fiction writing.

No, if I want to write a story, I’ll just do it.  When I want to play a game, that’s what I want to do and discover the stories, plots, and characters, that emerge. I’m not saying this should be your approach, just fair warning that this is mine and thus here is my inherent bias.

 

D0 Hollow’s Last Hope

It was decided. The carpenter and the holy sister (I decided later that Ziggy had been dressing as an adept of an order) would sneak out of town before dawn. There might have been walls to Falcon’s Hollow, but they neither surrounded the town, nor did they have functional gates.

My purpose was to acquaint myself with the Pathfinder rules and the Golarion setting. I’d been reading, on and off, various fiction in the Wayfinder fanzine and Pathfinder Chronicler anthologies, had enjoyed perhaps a about a dozen (more?) comic books,  (although the Worldscape series seemed disjointed and contrived), was gobbling up Dave Gross’s novel Lord of Runes, and have yet to delve into a small collection of Pathfinder Tales e-books.

Even though I adore the visually stunning cartographic artistry of hand drawn and computer rendered maps when it comes to gameplay, I much prefer the layer of abstraction that hex maps provide. The simplicity of it, the ability to easily subdivide the map into component hexes and even randomly locate elements within the subdivisions.

Before I began with session zero (the previous post) I had already created a hex map derived from the area map of the Falcon’s Hollow environs and placed the “known” sites approximately where they were expected. Using this my party of two would embark on their hex crawl.

It’s beyond the scope of this post to get into details but I took a screen capture of the map from the module, saved it as JPG, and imported it into Inkwell Ideas’ Hexographer, the predecessor to Worldographer. It took several tries to get the hex diameter scaled correctly but eventually I achieved a workable approximation.

Hex Crawls

Strictly speaking, a hex crawl is not simply navigating across a hexagonal grid map from point A to point B. Beyond that basic limitation though what truly constitutes a hex crawl is highly variable based on one’s preferences, interpretation of the history of gaming, and selection of historical sources.

On one hand, it is possible to say a hexagonal grid map entirely devoid of features, maybe including the starting point, and then filled in one hexagon at a time as it is explored, is the purest form of hex crawl. This is the approach of the 1e AD&D DMG (p173, Revised, December 1979).

The Isle of Dread module includes a map of the namesake island with the coastal hexagons having terrain features marked in but not the interior of the island. Flash forward to 2011 and Frog God Games’ module HC1 Valley of the Hawks, literally Hex Crawl Chronicles module 1, and the included map provides the terrain and a key for where sites and features are located. Many gamers cite the Judges Guild products of yesteryear as a primary source of hex crawl experience and authority. I am regretably not sufficiently familiar with them to say.

For the purposes of the method, I propose the solo roleplayer must likely do some work as their own game master, but it should not be too onerous and once done allows the player to explore and adventure at leisure.

I’m not sure when hex maps faded into obscurity, and I have no idea when they became a going concern again. Even when I gamed on a weekly basis, I was never part of any local RPG scene.

Looking through my bookshelves I find that Vault of the Drow, The Forest Oracle, Dragons of Flame, and practically every BECMI adventure utilized hex maps.  Dungeon, issue 27, one of the few physical TSR Dungeon magazines I’ve acquired has both square and hex grid maps.

Middle-Earth Role Playing 2^nd ed, 1986, includes hand drawn maps but blank hex grid pages in two scales.

Raven’s Bluff included an overland map of The Vast, but it was not a hex map. Come to think of it I don’t recall any Forgotten Realms supplements ever having a hex map. Maybe some of the Bloodstone modules but I think that was for Battlesystem.

Dungeon Crawl Classics’ series of 3e modules are heavy on square grid dungeons and small-scale outdoor battle maps, but I haven’t found a hex map.  Certainly, the DCC 35 Gazetteer of the Known Realms box set includes poster maps that are beautifully rendered as though it should be inside an issue of a monthly geography and photography journal. If anywhere I would have expected a hex crawl it would have been DCC.

Setting Out

Using the regular cost tables and starting coin allocation for Pathfinder I equipped the characters then determined their overland rate of travel. I’m using common encumbrance so, laden with camping supplies, they aren’t going very fast. Also, I’ve figured two weeks travel, so they are carrying a lot of food though they plan to hunt and fish as well however that’s going to slow their pace also.

The adventure text says the trip should be three to five days. Neither of the characters are particularity outdoorsy in any way. I expect it to take longer.

D0 provides only three specific encounters and a very short random encounter table. With that in mind I borrowed the encounters by terrain type from the Rules Cyclopedia, 1eAD&D DMG. The Pathfinder Bestiary book as well as the online Pathfinder system reference sites have any monster or animal data that were required.

Adapting Hollow’s Last Hope to SRP

Let’s go back to the seven first principles of solo roleplaying for a moment - the Obvious, the Understood, the Invented, and the Questioned considered through Logic, Interpretation, and Improvisation.

Specifically, in this case, we want to question what the module designers, Jason Bulmahn and F. Wesley Schneider, tell us about the adventure circumstances.

The Threat

Blackscour Taint is described in D0 as afflicting 1d4 townsfolk per day/per day up to 40 people. Meaning, one day after starting 1d4 people die. On the second day, 2d4 more people die. On the third day, 3d4 people die. If the player takes the estimated five days, then 15d4 people die before the cure is returned for an average of 37-38 deaths. The dying ceases after 40 deaths having taken the lives of any who lacked the stamina to stave of the disease naturally.

Furthermore, if the player character knows anyone in the village, then the GM is to roll 4d10 for each known person and assign the result to that individual. If the death toll reaches that person's assigned number, then they die from the disease.

On the fifth day of the adventure Bram and Ziggy had only just found the witch’s cottage.

What I Didn’t Do, But Should Have

Bram rolled local history and got two high rolls out of three for knowing the locations of the sites. I decided (arbitrarily, again) that he’d either been shaking down locals for stories or listening to folks talk while he worked. As a result, he has the locations of the dwarven monastery and the witch’s cottage. 

How it happened doesn't matter in this case right now. What's important is I decided how and later it might be significant.

Instead of just making a beeline to each site I should have marked the sites’ expected locations on the hex map and then asked the general oracle – are they in fact there?

I’ve done that now below for the sake of demonstration.

Witch’s Cottage – 83 – Yes. It’s where we expect.

Dwarven Monastery – No – It’s not where we expect. We’ll have to keep looking.

On the GM side of this adventure, looking more into the history of the region, we know that the big, volcanic mountain towering over everything was a major, massive, dwarven city.

It’s likely the monastery would be somewhere nearby. I would probably ask, is it in the valley directly north of the expected location? 93, Yes, And

That’s promising. I wonder what I’d find? On the other hand, it’s further away.

Day 5 - What I Did – Gods Forgive Me

No, I didn’t do those things. After five days of traipsing through the woods thirty-two townsfolk had died. Elise at the inn, was #31, though of course Bram and Ziggy wouldn’t know for many days. 

At this point I asked does the disease run its course and stop at forty deaths. 14 No, And. And? And what? Is there a maximum number? 42 No. Well, damn. I roll up the death toll for another five days, adding 1d4 every day to call that the AND. And what? And it continued to get worse.

At ten days the death toll is 122.

But we aren’t there yet.

Day 7 – Hex Crawl – Getting Lost

Using land navigation rules, Bram and Ziggy lost their way in Darkmoon Wood and stumbled upon a patch of waste in the middle of the forest. They are in volcano country. It wasn’t until I’d decided to invest in a Darkmoon Vale/Falcon’s Hollow campaign that I acquired the Pathfinder Guide to Darkmoon Vale and learned of official hazards but looking at the map and Droskar’s Crag towering over the vale, I was hauntingly reminded of Mount St. Helens in the Cascades range in the American state of Washington.  

However, Mount St. Helens was a mere 2,949m (9,677 ft) before it’s 1980 eruption versus Droskar’s Crag’s 8,785m (28,822 ft), putting it soundly between Everest and K2. But Everest and K2 are not volcanic. A closer approximation would be Ojos del Salado, a dormant stratovolcano at 6,893m (22,615 ft) tall on the border between Argentina and Chile.

I decided that the waste is caused by a fissure in the ground periodically expelling steam and toxic gas. Looking up this sort of thing that could be carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen, hydrogen sulphide, and carbon monoxide.

Now, can they smell it? (I didn't ask if they could see it. Well, you'll understand in a moment.) 16, No, Just No. Is it active? 84, Yes, Just Yes.  Here’s a tricky situation. I know that the vent is probably releasing invisible, undetectable, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. If they attempt to cross the waste or even linger too close, they’ll likely suffocate.

So, are they smart enough, observant enough, to save their own skins?

Are there dead animals around? 85, Yes.

That should be a common, easy Perception test by Pathfinder rules. Ziggy and Bram both have +4.

And you would not believe it – double natural 1s. Both are clueless and stroll nonchalantly into the middle of a field of toxic death.

Are you idiots on a lovers’ picnic or something? All starry eyed on your woodlands adventure together? La la la la la! I want to smack you both! This visceral reaction to an exceptionally bad die roll would come back to me later.

Okay, maybe this is cheating but I’m going to ad hoc a rule here.

Characters get chances to notice obvious things, and have their common sense kick in, equal to their Wisdom bonus.

Second roll, 10 and natural 20. Ziggy wakes up, grab’s her companion’s arm, and looks around desperately for the fastest way out.

Day 8 – Discover the Forest Elder

I did not ask any questions at this set piece encounter / site although as I said earlier, I should have.

Playing it as designed the two adepts were not nearly enough to defeat the tatzlwyrm, a sort of minor draconic, cunning but not sentient, creature. So, I introduced Esther Heathminster, female halfling ranger. Both Bram and Ziggy were created as plain, level 1 adept class characters. They have not been given bonus abilities, levels, hit points or any other survival mechanism.

Nearby are the corpses of three hunters and the trio acquire some weapons, a small amount of gold and silver, and a signet ring bearing the likeness of a flaming hawk.

If I’d done this right, I would have asked the oracle if the elder tree was where it was expected to be. 07 – No, And – Well, that’s problematic. The Elder Tree is not where we expect to find it. And something else. Next question that comes to mind is, does the Elder Tree exist?

Well, think magically. We’re not talking about trees over a certain age.  It’s not the Millennia Tree, it’s the Elder Tree. So no, we don’t ask if it exists.  Somewhere in this forest is an oldest tree.

Ask instead, is it in this stand of trees? 12 No, And. But the characters wouldn’t know that unless they start searching. And that’s how even more days could have been added to the quest.

Furthermore, I have it in my head that the signet ring should be significant. The adventure module doesn’t mention it again.  So far as we know it’s just random treasure. You could ask a question here. I’m not. Yet.

The slain hunters, according to the adventure, were victims of the tatzlwyrm. Cut and dried, yes? You could ask a question here, too. But not yet. Not just yet.

No, those last two items I’m going to leave as loose strings. Maybe they’re not important in the long run. Maybe… well, we’ll see later.

No, I’m not being funny here. I haven’t figured it out yet and I’m purposefully leaving it open.

Day 9 – Travel, Random Encounter – Wolves

Nothing special about this. Bram, Ziggy, and Esther encountered a pair of wolves with the halfling ranger managing to turn them away using wild empathy.

Seemingly just a random encounter it would stand to reason that it could have been connected to the adventure. They had no idea if the wolves were thrall to the worg cooperating with the kobold king, but it was a good possibility.  

I should have asked if the wolves reported the no-scale two-legs creeping about.

So, let’s see now. 29, No. Just No.

Day 10 – Set Piece Encounter

Again, I didn’t ask any questions about this encounter, but just played it as designed. The hobgoblin and razorcrows were easily defeated and Ziggy saved the injured firefoot fennec fox.

Later, after the fox was healed, it stayed loyal to the half-elf woman.  Maybe someone more familiar with the Pathfinder rules would say this shouldn’t happen but I ruled that when Ziggy called a familiar this animal was bestowed with a mystical connection.

From this point on I arbitrarily keep the daily death toll at 10d4 per day and roll up five more days.

Wrapping It Up

I won’t go into further details but the quest for the ingredients consumes 20 days in total and the death toll to Falcon’s Hollow is 361.

I was curious. The population is supposed to be ~1500. I randomly assign 1599. Now, at the end of the adventure, Falcon’s Hollow has lost 22½% of its population. No one has not lost a family member, friend, or loved one.

How did this deadly fungus that, according to the herbalist, has never grown around Falcon’s Hollow before, arrive? Why, if the expected death toll was a mere forty souls, did it become nine times that number with no signs of stopping until all were dead?

For now, the threat has been neutralized.

Well, the immediate threat, at least.

But, we all know what’s coming.

Expanding Encounters

In the next post I will go into more detail about the mechanics of hex crawling, using random encounters, as well as set piece encounters, and how they should be the seeds for something more.

Just as the above ending of the adventure suggests that the coming of blackscour to Falcon’s Hollow might not have been a chance event so can many seemingly small elements lead to more story threads later on.

Is that signet ring taken from the dead hunters significant?

Was there some reason for the hunters to be at the forest elder?

Could the fennec fox, although it was seemingly an innocent animal and the victim of the vile hobgoblin, actually have been a messenger of fate?

We don't have the answers yet. 

And we won't until we roll some more dice.

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This article, and all others, are subject to the editorial whimsy of the author whenever he thinks, for whatever reason he thinks.