As promised today I will start publishing my first Hexcrawl expansion for Blood on the Blade: the plan is to release every day a new component, making possible an easy understanding of the new mechanisms.
The first component revealed today is a new Enemy Sheet, dedicated to several wild animals that you will face during the campaign; White Apes, Jaguars and Great Serpents are now available here (this Zip archive will be updated in the next days with the new content so you can create a bookmark for it):
http://zak965.it/blade/Hexcrawl.zip
Those enemies can of course immediately used for the existing scenarios or for your own creations: tomorrow I will publish a new Scenario that will use those new components.
In the meantime, for the few players that don’t know what hexcrawling is, let me add a few lines.
Hexcrawling is a tabletop / role-playing game exploration technique that involves navigating and exploring a game world divided into hexagonal sections or “hexes.” It is commonly used in games where players traverse large and open environments, such as wilderness areas, dungeons, or uncharted territories.
Here’s how hexcrawling typically works:
- Hex Grid Map: The game world is represented by a hex grid map, with each hexagon representing a specific area or terrain. These hexes can vary in size, from small sections to larger regions. In the BoTB expansion, hexes will represent an are of about one square kilometer.
- Exploration and Discovery: Players move through the hexes, exploring unknown or uncharted areas, revealing details about the terrain, encounters, landmarks, or points of interest as they progress.
- Random Encounters and Events: Hex crawling often incorporates random encounter tables or events tied to specific hexes. These encounters can include various creatures, obstacles, NPCs (non-player characters), environmental challenges, treasures, or unique locations.
- Resource Management: Depending on the game system, hex crawling might involve managing resources like food, water, equipment, or time. This adds a layer of survival mechanics and decision-making as players navigate the terrain.
The plan is then quite simple: in the next days I will provide the rules for the exploration and discovery, the table for the random encounters/events and of course the hexgrid maps. This “light” set of rules will create a strategic layer on top of the current BoTB game: game events in the hexcrawl game will sometime trigger a specific BoTB scenario so instead of a abstract roll on the Campaign Sheet (as per standard BoTB rules) you will have here a much more narrative game. Or at least this is what I would like to be able to achieve.