About #Hexcrawl25 & (a little of) The Grey Neighborhood Log #2

I stumbled about Hexcrawl25 firstly from Seed of World's where they are talking about the challenge made by Maatlock's Tavern about making region hexcrawl on each month until December 31st, 2025. It's Dungeon23 all over again, but more.... hex than before.

I made Office23 as pointcrawl, so I guess it won't be hard for me to join the bandwagon on this one. Yes, I know, I didn't finish my Dungeon. But hey-I managed to create three floors (the third one almost finished though) and I can rebrand it as three different stories WHICH can be interconnected one with another.

Back to this Hexcrawl25.

When I read these articles, my mind auto-connecting to a long-neglected project I made. The first game I planned and created. And it's still on its early stage. With this project, maybe - JUST MAYBE - this project will be having a proper blast off. At least, I can make a simple lore, simple map, simple stories I can execute and everything. Maybe an NPC or two, or maybe a band of bandits or an ature of creatures or counter of encounters. I think this year; I will delve more into the development of The Grey Neighborhood.

The main ideas were:

• Arrange 19 regional hexes in a floral pattern to create a campaign grid.
• add mountains, forest, roads, and points of interest (e.g., towns, dungeons).
• split each regional hex into 19 sub-hexes overlapping with adjacent regions.
• key 319 sub-hexes with content: monsters, NPCs, landmarks, etc.

I won't think much regarding the mechanism: especially about the miles or other measurement to be made. First, I don't know and imagine how far miles it might be (here we use meter); second, if I need that kind of measurement, I'll use meter and make it as easy to interpret or somehow easy to interpret. Maybe I can make the measurement in Day - Night cycle. Hmmm interesting.

A single sub-hex might be traveled in two days one night.

If there are encounter, add another one day and one night.

If there anything that can be entered (town, dungeon, etc) add another one day IF decided to explore. Exception for dungeon, ONLY AFTER the player exit / escape the dungeon, roll d6 to decide how many nights passed since they enter the dungeon.

Interesting. I'll just put it here. Just in case.

I guess that's it.

I also recommend you use this several things that might help:

• Gridzzly for making the hex easier.
• NPC Generator for making.... NPC. Duh.
• All Mighty donjon.
• Most recent page of Itch's Physical Games as inspochamber.

Let's see where this thing go then, shall we?

Oh and Happy New Year! May this year is YOURS year.

Lore : NUEARTH

Basic Information

One of several planets that Kame-Kami created from It's Eggs during The First Lays which had life in it. As if it was designated as a balanced ecosystem, Nuearth composed and terraformed in perfect balance - 50:50 ratio between the land and the ocean.

There was once a major world catastrophic event occured involving Helen & Romeo - the Twin Moon of Nuearth - causing turbulences and rapid changing on Nuearth : the disturbance of  sea levels, continental drifts and so on.

As the world progressing and the civilization emerged and survived the harsh condition post-Helen & Romeo, Nuearth was divided into three major nation : Utara Nation, Great Lands of Marsupi, and United Nations of Morotan.

Geographic

Nuearth was initially had only one land mass, stretched from one side to another. Due to the effect of the Clash of Helen & Romeo that last for five years, it forced an extreme terraforming of Nuearth : continental drifting, extreme rising sea levels, sinking lands and extreme rise of sea beds that turn some of it into lands.

• The Great Sea surround the whole lands of Nuearth since day one;
• Utara Nation located on the North West of the world. While mainly grasslands, Utara Nation also covered by harsh tundra environment on its North side. Snows were endless and frequent heavy storms happened;
• Great Lands of Marsupi is the largest continent / nation on Nuearth. The climate on Marsupi was rather unique compared with other continent / nation;
• United Nations of Morotan is strangely different from other two continents - the land were fertile, the climate was stabile and only had two weathers : sunny and rains. United Nations of Morotan was more considered as the perfect nation to live on Nuearth.

Economic

Before the separation of the nations on Nuearth, the main and only currency is by using barter method. Of course, each commodity had their own unique values. According to the survived documentation of transaction found in [REDACTED], the most valueable commodity was called Aurorite.

Thanks to it's rarity and the high risks to gather it, those who able to get even a small piece of Aurorite, might be treated as someone with wealth. Another survived barter transaction documents found on the city of [REDACTED] was mentioned a barter of a two grams of Aurorite with thirteen lifestocks, ten sacks of rice and twenty bar of Gold.

The Grey Neighborhood's Log #1

In 2021, before I made the Itch account, before EMPLOYEE was even a concept, there was The Grey Neighborhood.

I even already declared it back then.

Back then, I even didn't know how to make a campaign, or a thing and two that I need to know and prepare to make a D&D campaign - heck, I even didn't really know what the current edition of D&D at that time! All I know was there is a game called Dungeons and Dragons that you play it with a dices and sheets and pencils and imaginations and a bunch of books. There.

And one day, I draws several simple figures and I posted it seperatedly at IG with each roles and health and defense and et cetera on each captions. And at April 28, I post the picture above along with their name - The Gray / Grey Neighborhood. At that time, it's just a concept - an adventure that involving a three boys, a sentient motorcycle, two creature that representing angel and devil, a tyrannosaurus, and a frog magician (that also a merchant). That's all. And I continue with my life.

2022, I started to joining the bandwagon. And all I had inside my head at first was The Grey Neighborhood. Due to limited knowledge and lack of experiences of current edition of Dungeon and Dragons, I believe it would be wise to based my game from it's fundamental, origin documents available on the internet : 

System References

By using Advance Dungeon and Dragons FIRST EDITION and AD&D Monster Manual. That was the first thing I had in mind - First edition will be providing basic informations that I needed. But Boy, how wrong I am.

I read the AD&D and didn't understand at all. I flipped the pages and presented in front of me tables with numbers and things. This is not as easy as I thought. After re-reading for several times and playing the introductionary solo adventure provided on the module, I gave up and start doing that I can do at that time : create the story.

Settings - why with the Risk Mgmt?

What is a semi-modern suburban area? what is encounter on risk management?

Imagine the first area from Tony Hawk Underground 1 but with red, ashes skies and it was a post-apocalyptic setting where the buildings were not buildings anymore but rubbles and ruins. Humans still exist in this world, but also with another sentient creatures - they are forced to lived side-by-side. And what with risk management encounter? I got the idea after purchasing Jason Tocci's 2400 and read several modules from it. And I thought "Shit.. this mechanism is risk-based management". But funny thing is, I didn't confident enough to put Tocci's 2400 on the system reference - I need more data and more evidence on how the game works.

Opening hook

As I mentioned above, I already had the setting on my head. And Preemo (from the word Primer) would be a great name for a starter point. 

Character creation

I remember when I deciding on this : I only had one d6 from a Monopoly and a d12 from MTG's bundle box. And why with the stats? Why there are only STR, AGI, INT, CHR, and WIS? Truth to be told, Constitution was the thing that I totally forgot and didn't understand at all. STR, AGI, INT, CHR, WIS - I'm familiar with these stat blocks, I knew it from the old JRPGs I played since I was a boy. While Constitution was a new thing for me. Hence, I left it out.

Three starting quests

And for The Grey Neighborhood, I wanted to implement a Quest system - which is an absolute steals from all those RPGs I played. 

I think I need to scan my writing book, it had so much more information regarding this.