Hue and Cry

Because I realized I had need for something like this, both through play and through chatting with someone outside my group, here are rules for handling reinforcements when you fight part of a group of monsters inside their lair.

Hue and Cry: Not all monsters will be in their lair at all times. While this makes it easier to fight a small group, the others may show up and fight later! When fighting some monsters in their indoor lair, make a Per or Per-based Observation roll for the monsters; add any bonuses for Acute Hearing or similar Hearing-based traits. On a success, a number of monsters equal to one plus the margin of success will show up in a minute, and they will be aware there is fighting. Any not showing up in this group will show up in 1d hours, and will be unaware there is a fight. On a critical success, that number of monsters will show up in 3d seconds, with any not coming in this group will show up in a minute; all will be aware there is fighting. On a failure, all of the monsters will show up in 1d hours, unaware of anything amiss.

Outdoors, folks are usually farther away, leading to a lower chance of someone being around to hear the fight. Faster monsters wander farther than slower ones. Thus, take the lowest encumbered Move of the monsters, not including any bonuses for Enhanced Move, and look it up in yards on the Speed/Range Table (p. B550). Apply twofold this as a penalty to any Hearing-based rolls as above; don't apply a bonus for Move less than 2.

Roll Per or Per-based Observation as for indoors, with the penalty above for distance. On a success, half of any monsters out wandering will show up in 1d/2 hours (keep fractions), and will be aware there is trouble. The other half will show up in 1d hours, unaware of anything amiss. On a critical success, half the monsters will show up in 3d minutes, and the other half will show up in 1d/2 hours (keep fractions), all aware of the fight. On a failure, nobody will be aware of the fight; half will show up in 1d hours, as will the other half (roll separately for each half). Divide any times for monsters who are aware of trouble and using Enhanced Move to fight by one plus the level of Enhanced Move.

Signaling: Any monsters outdoors may try to signal their fellows out wandering. Use the rules for Signaling on p. 28 of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures. Assume that each half of those monsters are 1d times Move/2 miles away; roll separately for each half.

Either indoors or outdoors, if the delvers start fighting any reinforcements, make another Per or Per-based Observation roll for anyone else still not in the room or lair. Handle as above, except this goes for all monsters that would show up as reinforcements, not half or margin of success plus one. This keeps the GM from having to roll for smaller and smaller groups!

The upshot of all this is that players never should be sure they have cleared the room or lair, which is as it should be.

Hex Ed: Wilderness Hex Crawls in Dungeon Fantasy

Well, here's a promised full article that never ran in Pyramid. This one is in part my try to make my own version of the One-Page Wilderness System using only d6s. This is somewhat informed by use, advising folks to not to fill every hex with an encounter, leaving the lesser encounters up to pure random rolls. Honestly, I use the original system myself, with my only tweak being a 12 is a purely random encounter. Yeah, it's a d20 roll, but so what? I also always make the standard four rolls for morning, afternoon, evening, and night encounters, not the two recommended here, which was hewing nearer to Kromm's recommendation to one random encounter a day.

Regardless, I think all encounter rolls need to hem to the idea that not only do you need truly random encounters, but you also should have a roll to trigger any nearby encounter. This goes back to early D&D, with the roll to see if someone comes out of a castle if you pass within a few hexes of it.

Not long after writing this, I understood what Rob Conley meant when he told me that getting lost rolls were more trouble than they're worth, and went to a failed Navigation roll lowering how far you get in a day, and something you roll only once a day. I am leaving the rules for getting lost for those folks who want them, however, as I did use them early in my campaign. I also have better ways of handling % In Lair, which are elsewhere on this site. For encounter distances, see the post about the ibathene.  

With GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures, Dungeon Fantasy comes out of the dungeon. A hex crawl can make a wilderness like a dungeon, but more open-ended.

A hex crawl is a set of adventure sites in a wilderness that delvers can explore. Unlike a dungeon, these sites are not linked together. Indeed, the dwellers in those sites may have little to do with each other, and could well have their own dungeons.

Hexes in a hex crawl are like rooms in a dungeon. Hexes show where things are, and give limits to movement and sight.

Making a Map

For a hex crawl, you need a map with hexes. Hexes can be of any size, which is typically a number of miles. Most hex maps have hexes that are 4 to 12 miles across. Bigger hexes won't have many encounters from nearby hexes happen, while smaller hexes will have many more. You can get your map however you like, whether you make your own, you download it from the Internet, or you take it from another game. The original Dungeons and Dragons game took its hex map from Outdoor Survival, an Avalon Hill game.

When making a hex map don’t worry about filling every hex with an encounter if you are using smaller (4 to 6 miles) hexes! Only worry about the bigger encounters. Empty hexes can be like empty rooms in a dungeon, which give a break. You need not fill more than a third of the hexes, and can get away with filling a sixth of them. Fill them with settlements, lairs, landmarks, you name it.

Beasts can move between hexes. They're even more likely to do so, since there aren't walls and doors to get in the way. Hexes can even have dungeons in them, which let you run a dungeon crawl inside your hex crawl.

Lairs

In a hex crawl, “lairs” are all nests, buildings, caves, dungeons, and other places in which dwell monsters and other foes. For each monster lair, note the following:

• How many monsters are in the lair.
• How much treasure is in the lair.
• Whether the lair is hidden.
• Any special defenses the lair has, like traps or guard beasts.
• Whether the monsters leave the lair.
• If the monsters leave the lair, how many of them are in a group, how far (in hexes) do they wander, and when in the day they wander, typically day or night.

A lair itself is a place that might need a map, especially if you think the players might spend a lot of time there. Lairs often have non-fighters, like children or elderly, guard beasts, slaves, prisoners, or whatnot. There might be other lairs nearby, and they might be foes of the monsters in the first lair. The whole lair can be a dungeon, which is a nest of smaller lairs.

Moving from Hex to Hex

The rules for Travel (Wilderness Adventures, p. 20) handle most movement issues. Each hex has a cost to move through it. This cost is equal to the size of the hex in miles, divided by the travel speed for the terrain (Wilderness Adventures, p. 22). Each hex should have only one travel speed. A boon of hexes is that you need not worry about mixed terrain, since each hex has its own modifier for this worked out beforehand.

The delvers’ final travel speed (Wilderness Adventures, p. 23), multiplied by the daily travel time (Wilderness Adventures, p. 23), gives the total movement in miles they can go for the day. This is the budget the delvers can spend to move through hexes. To move from a hex, the delvers must spend the cost of the hex in miles. If the hex has a bigger cost than the delvers have miles of movement, they stay in the hex. Keep track of the number of miles they spend each day, since they can put many days’ travel together to push through a hex. Sometimes, it is best to make a hex map of a bigger hex if the explorers are moving around inside the hex and you need to keep track of where they are in it.

Example: A band of explorers have Move 2, which means they move a mile each hour. They take out two hours for foraging, so they get 10 miles of movement for the day. The band wants to move through a 5-mile hex of dense forest, which is ×0.20 to travel speed. Thus, the hex has a cost of 25 miles. It will take the delvers two-and-a-half days to go through the hex.

Getting Lost

When hex crawling in the wild, with no landmarks or road, make a Navigation roll to go into each hex instead of each day (Wilderness Adventures, p. 22). Success means the group makes it into the hex with no problem, while a critical success shaves off a mile of the effective width of the hex. A failure means the hex costs more to go through: raise the cost to move through the hex by +20%. A critical failure means the group has wandered into one of the two hexes to the sides of the hex into which they wanted to go. Pick one of them randomly, or the one with terrain most like that of the hex they wanted. A Per-based Navigation roll means someone has figured out that the group is in the wrong hex.

Ignore the above whenever the characters can see where they want to go! It’s a little hard to miss the big mountain or the hustle and bustle of a town from six miles away.

Encounters

Check for encounters whenever delvers go into a hex, and one more time for each day and night. Roll a d6 twice to find out which hour of the day or night; if the second die comes up 4-6, add 6 to the first die to find the hour.

For 4 to 6 mile hexes, roll 3d on the table below. The extra roll for each day and night happens in the hex in which the delvers happen to be at that hour.

Encounters (4-6 mile hexes)

Roll (3d) Result

3-8 Nothing happens.
9 Clue to an encounter keyed to a nearby hex. Roll 1d, and count the hexes clockwise starting from the top-right hex. If this hex has no encounter, or the encounter keyed to it does not wander between hexes, nothing happens.
10 Clue to an encounter keyed to this hex. If the group is not moving or there is no encounter in this hex, nothing happens.
11 Random encounter. The GM should have a table of random encounters that are the lesser encounters in the wild. These foes can have a prefix (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1, pp. 36-38). You can roll randomly for these. Roll 2d. On a 2 or 3, that foe has one of the prefixes in that tome. If one of the delvers has Weirdness Magnet, the foe has a prefix on a 2, 3, or 4 instead. You should make a list of which prefixes monsters can have, and roll to see which prefix the monster does have. For monsters with lots of treasure or a complex lair, it helps to write up a lair before the game.
12 Encounter keyed to a hex two hexes away. Roll 1d, and count the hexes clockwise starting from the top-right hex; roll another 1d, and if it comes up 4-6, count another 6 hexes clockwise. (If you have a d12, you can roll that instead). If this hex has no encounter, or the encounter keyed to it does not wander two hexes away, nothing happens.
13 Encounter keyed to a nearby hex. Roll 1d, and count the hexes clockwise starting from the top-right hex. If this hex has no encounter, or the encounter keyed to it does not wander between hexes, nothing happens.
14-16 Encounter keyed to this hex. On 16, this happens near the monster's lair if the group was moving; otherwise, it happens outside. If there is no encounter in this hex, nothing happens.
17-18 Roll twice. Both results happen at the same time.

For 8 to 12 mile hexes, roll 2d on this table instead:

Encounters (8-12 mile hexes)

Roll (2d) Result

2-4 Nothing happens.
5 Clue to an encounter keyed to this hex. If the group is not moving or there is no encounter in this hex, nothing happens.
6 Clue to an encounter keyed to a nearby hex. Roll 1d, and count the hexes clockwise starting from the top-right hex. If this hex has no encounter, or the encounter keyed to it does not wander between hexes, nothing happens.
7 Random encounter. See the notes for 11 above.
8 Encounter keyed to a nearby hex. Roll 1d, and count the hexes clockwise starting from the top-right hex. If this hex has no encounter, or the encounter keyed to it does not wander between hexes, nothing happens.
9-11 Encounter keyed to this hex. On an 11, this happens in the monster's lair if the group was moving; otherwise, it happens outside. If there is no encounter in this hex, nothing happens.
12 Roll twice. Both results happen at the same time.

Clues are just that: hints that are about the encounter in question. These can be sights, sounds, smells, droppings, tracks, dead victims; you name it. The only need is that they have something to do with that encounter. If the players want to find out what left that clue, let them make a roll. They might roll against Heraldry (for an old banner), Naturalist (for droppings), or Survival (for an old camp). A critical failure gives wrong information ("Wild horses can leave claw marks too."). If the players want to follow the clue, let them make a Tracking roll to their way to the lair. A critical failure means they go the wrong way and alert one of the other deadly beasts in the wild.

The GM needs to put the lair of a random encounter onto the map when he rolls the encounter. To do this, roll 1d-3. Add the Size Modifier of the monster, or the Basic Move if it is lower than the Size Modifier. Subtract one for each of Bestial or Loner, and add one for Flight. If the tally of this roll is positive, fivefold that in miles is where its lair is; roll 1d for direction as in #6 above. (If using 4-6 mile hexes, skip multiplying it by 5, and read the number as hexes.) If the roll is 0, then the monster's lair is in this hex, but the encounter doesn't happen in it. If the roll is negative, the encounter happens near the monster's lair.

For a hex with a keep or a settlement in it, roll on this table before the group reaches the keep or settlement. The result on the table happens before the group reaches the keep or settlement. The keep or settlement is usually the keyed encounter for the hex. If the result is an encounter in the hex, then it will be guards or dwellers from the keep or settlement.

Let’s Split

Gamers have long held splitting the party to be dangerous. In a hex crawl, if a party splits up, like in Scouting (Wilderness Adventures, p. 25), each group coming from the split makes its own encounter rolls. Since each group will be smaller than the party as a whole, it is less able to fight whatever shows up.

Senses

Encounter Distance

When starting an encounter, each side makes Perception checks to see who is surprised. Let each player roll for his own character. For NPCs, roll against their highest Perception, and give them a bonus for the number of them there are. Use the “Size” column of the table on p. B550, but read “yards” as “NPCs.” For in-between numbers, use the lower bonus.

If no side is surprised or both sides are surprised, let the encounter start with 6d×2 yards between the two sides. If one side is surprised and the other is not, let the side that still has its wits about it choose what to do about the other. It can get to 3d yards from the other side before the other side becomes aware of it. If it wants to get nearer, it needs to make Stealth rolls, opposed by the higher of Hearing or Vision. Again, let the players make their own rolls. For the NPCs, roll against the highest number. The number of NPCs is a bonus for spotting stalkers, but a penalty for stalking. Use the same bonus as to Perception for surprise when spotting stalkers, but treat it as a negative to Stealth for the stalkers.

Finding Dungeons and Lairs

Most landmarks are easy to find. After all, what good is a town if nobody is there? But some spots, like dungeons or lairs, are hidden. If they were not, someone else would have already looted them! To find a hidden place, make a Tracking roll, and apply the Long-Distance Modifiers (GURPS Magic, p. 14) for the hex or other area size. (For 4- to 8-mile hexes, this will be -4; for bigger hexes up to 30 miles, this will be -5.) This is a thorough search, and the time the search takes is the same time it takes to move into the hex. Having a good map gives a bonus, and anyone with Area Knowledge for the place in question can roll against that instead. Failure means the delvers do not find the place, but may look again. Critical failure not only means they don’t find the place, but also that they alert whoever lives there! Anyone who fails can try again as much as he likes until he finds the place, gives up, or a grue eats him.

On a Clear Day You Can See Three Miles

A human can see about 3 miles in clear land. If one climbs a tree, he can see 9 miles. In hilly land, about 200 feet from sea level, he can see 19 miles. In mountains, about 1,000 feet above sea level, a human can see about 42 miles.

Realistically, size changes this. A smaller creature has its eyes lower to the ground, and can't see as far; a half of a mile less for each Size Modifier below 0 works for PC races. For each Size Modifier above 0, a creature can see another mile. For all but pixies and leprechauns, this isn't a big deal, and pixies can fly to make up for being vertically challenged. Don't worry about size if the looker climbs a tree or is on a hill, since the height of the tree or hill is now what is key.

To tell what something afar is, the delver makes a Vision check, as on p. B358. This is at +10 most of the time, since it is in plain sight. The relative Size Modifier of the target to the looker is a modifier to the check, as is terrain. For all but Mountain or Underwater terrain, dock another -2 for being in hilly lands.

Vision Modifiers

Terrain Modifier
Arctic -2
Desert -2
Island/Beach -0
Jungle -7
Mountain -4
Plains -0
Swampland -7
Woodlands -6
Underwater -8

Further Reading

Conley, Robert. How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. This is a step-by-step guide to making a sandbox fit for a hex crawl.
Sorolla, Roger S.G. One-Page Wilderness System. This is the inspiration for the encounter table; the original has a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.

Current hex crawl procedures

This is as much for my players as for anyone else, though right now they're in a big dungeon. But these are my daily steps at the moment:

1. GM determines weather (Nasty Weather, DF 16, p. 30) and disasters (Disasters, DF 16, p. 32).
2. Wake up. Handle effects of sleep. This includes docking FP for not getting enough or sleeping in a bad spot, as well as any HT rolls for healing overnight. In extreme temperatures, make the daily HT roll to see if anyone is down FP for the day (Harsh Climates, DF 16, p. 30).
3. Breakfast. Dock one meal.
4. Determine time intended to be spent traveling.
5. Determine movement rate (Trudging, Trotting, and Trundling, DF 16, p. 21; Covering Ground, DF 16, p. 23; Nasty Weather, DF 16, p. 30). Be sure to make rolls for way of travel (i.e., Hiking, Riding, Teamster), Navigation, and Weather Sense.
6. Determine the time (6+1d6) of the morning encounter roll.
7. Set forth. Make an encounter roll for each hex as the group goes into each one, as well as the extra one for the morning. Handle each encounter as it happens, then move on.
8. Lunch. Dock one meal.
9. Determine the time (12+1d6) for the afternoon encounter roll.
10. Set forth. Make an encounter roll for each hex as the group goes into each one, as well as the extra one for the afternoon. Handle each encounter as it happens, then move on.
11. Gather food (Food and Water, DF 16, p. 42). Make all rolls for hunting and foraging along the way after ending movement.
12. Make camp (Camping, DF 16, p. 24). This needs a Survival roll to set up the camp, and another to handle shelter if the group lacks a tent.
13. Dinner. Dock one meal.
14. Determine the time (6+1d6) for the evening encounter roll.
15. Camp. Make the evening encounter roll. Resolve each encounter as it happens, then move on.
16. Determine the time (12+1d6) for the night encounter roll.
17. Sleep. Make the evening encounter roll. Resolve each encounter as it happens, then move on.
18. Wake up ...

Central hex crawl link repository

I'm trying to put together a good list of hex crawling resources on the web. I'll update this as I get more things to put here, and have better comments. I'm doing this since it took me awhile to find all these myself, and, after I started writing this post a few weeks ago, Christopher Rice posted his to-do list for a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy campaign that, based on the list, seemed akin to mine. So Ghostdancer, this is for you, among others.

Design:

Trollsmyth One series heavy on theory. Gives you a good understanding of a hex crawl, but isn't heavy on mechanics. I often use his monster motivation table in part 17.
The Alexandrian Another series heavy on theory. Alexander has some mechanics with his.
Rob Conley Once you go through the theory to understand what you're running, go through this to start designing the sandbox. It kind of peters out about 60% of the way through, though most of the rest is easy to guess.
Hex-Based Campaign Design The Welsh Piper has a pretty good set of tables for the fixed encounters.
Twenty Quick Questions for Your Campaign Setting With the two above it, you'll narrow down what you need to write. I wish someone could come up with twenty questions as great as this list for other topics.
Improving the Hex Key Format Something that has bugged me for a bit, which is the best format for all these entries.

Books/PDFs:

These are mostly bunches of tables. You want tables. You will have trouble finding enough tables. They help when the players go off the rails, and since you're not laying down rails, you'll use them constantly. The first set is mostly for the sandbox, and the second set is for dungeons. Finding a dungeon will break up a boring trek. Most of these are NOT free, though some are cheap.

Yes, I shelled out for lots of these, over a period of about two years.

Sandbox:

d30 Sandbox Companion A masterful assortment of tables, and no, I'm not overloading it with praise. If anything, it needs a sequel to add even more of its amazing set of tables. I use this PDF more than any other, and it's my go-to source for road encounters. Cheap.

Ultimate Toolbox This was my earliest set of tables, and I used them quite a bit in early design. As a side note, I had the original Toolbox at my side when I ran D&D a decade ago. Not cheap.
Kellri's Old School Reference The fourth one is the gem you need. Generally handy, though it suffers from a bad PDF index and from coming from many older books. You need to look hard in here. Free.

Ready Ref Sheets The granddaddy of all of these, some of the tables are still handy even today. Some of them are better done in the d30 Sandbox Companion. And some of them are best left in the Seventies. It's also a great bit of gaming history. Cheap.
The Wilderness Alphabet Written as an above-ground answer to the Dungeon Alphabet (below), it does give a bunch of tables for rolling up random items in the wild. It would benefit from a publisher to give it better formatting and artwork. Cheap.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures I'm not planning on pimping my preferred system (wait, I just did that), but this is handy for actually handling play in the wild. I ran my campaign for months before it came out, so you can do it, but this makes it much easier. OK price. Something of a modern, focused Wilderness Survival Guide.
D&D Expert Set It still has its uses. It brings me nostalgia more than any product here, other than maybe the Wilderness Survival Guide. Cheap.

Dungeon:

Tome of Adventure Design I got this in a Bundle of Holding throw-in, and for something I didn't expect to use, I use it a lot, especially for its dungeon design tables. I got it too late for its sandbox design tables to be handy, though, truth be told, I'm listing stuff with better such tables. Not cheap.
d30 DM Companion The dungeon version of the d30 Sandbox Companion. It doesn't do much when everyone is above ground, but has loads of handy tables for when they're underground. I'm often surprised by what I find when I go looking in here, and it isn't a long book. Cheap.

The Dungeon Alphabet A good book of dungeon ideas. It's a spur for ideas down in the dungeon. OK price.
Tricks, Empty Rooms, & Basic Trap Design What it says on the tin. Incredibly handy for what it does. It has frigging drawings of the kinds of pit traps, man. That's just neat. Free.
D&D Basic Set I still use its dungeon stocking table. Cheap.

Information:

Hex Crawl A blog that its author seems to have forsaken last year, which is a pity since we need more of its tables and ideas. 30aug2016 The author has truly forsaken it AND its domain registration.
Run a Game: The Hex Crawl Another theory resource like the first two, this one is short.
are phantasia: Hexcrawl Resources A list of other resources, including a thread I started in the Steve Jackson Games Forums.
Gnome Stew Old School Fantasy Hexcrawl Resources Yet another list of resources.

Mechanics:

One-Page Wilderness System This one might be the most important one. It lets you run a hex crawl somewhat like a dungeon. I use a variant of this to handle wilderness encounters away from civilization (the d30 Sandbox Companion handles encounters between settlements). And the advice on clues is fantastic. I even imported clues into random encounters in the dungeon.
Cities Alright, you buy this one, but I use this for the town encounters. Cheap.

Programs:

Hexographer It's free for casual use, and is good for the drawing-impaired among us, including me.

Game log for 20 July 2014

Cast of characters:

Yémos, human male cleric of Dōsaútōr, goddess of magic (Eric)

Anêr, human male swashbuckler (Eric)

Mayhem, human male short barbarian of the Dragon Claw Clan (Chris)

Caleb, human male wizard (Chris)

Everyone started at 125 points, but had 21 to spend.

We start again on the morning of 24 Žnēâns. After looting the lair of the caterwaul, they walked for a bit, then ran into a big sinkhole, bigger athwart than a football field and deep. The group chose to walk around it, though it saw the tunnel in the middle, and made a note of it for later. The rest of the trek to Káddrakos was easy, and they made it to the gnome village before sundown.

Once in the village, the nervous little watchman told the gang that if it wanted to stay for the night, it should head for the Winking Friar, the village tavern and one of the few buildings in he village that could handle the "big folks." In there, they get room (on the floor of the common room after shutting for the night) and board (beer, lamb stew with odd spices and fruits) for 15 copper farthings each from a barkeep, a gnome man with no eyebrows. Yémos paid him 15 silver pennies for the whole group.

A chandelier is the centerpiece of the Winking Friar, which was busy with gnomes eating, drinking and playing games. The group sat at one of the "man tables" in a corner and watched a bunch of gnomes play a game they called Pencils and Paychecks. While the gang ate, a gnome woman named Allikolíā, who had a prosthetic arm with a slot for her crossbow, came to the group and asked, in a scratchy voice, if it was going into the woods, and offered her services as a ranger if it did, as she knew the woods. Alas, they were going back to Mīstássun. She took it glumly, but said she would gladly go with the group if it wanted to go into the woods again; that a werewolf had pulled off her arm did not daunt her.

That night, Anêr found a gnome passed out on him; he rolled the drunk gnome under his head and used him as a pillow. The next day, they bought rations from the innkeeper, the village housewives, and a one-eyed peddler with big fetishes that he said came from giants who live in the swamp. They truly smelled of swamp.

They left the village for the trek though hilly land to Ōndrûnks. The weather was still nice. At midday, they ate lunch by a pyre for someone who had died a few months ago. While Yémos did not have the strength to cast Final Rest on the body, it looked burnt enough that even if someone did try to animate it, it would only be a weak skeleton. They reach Ōndrûnks as the sellers were taking down their stalls. Yémos asked one when the next market day would be, but the man wanted money for that datum. So, they went to the Magog tavern for the night. (And the GM got his "Supper's Ready" reference!)

There, they feasted on rabbit in applesauce and drank hard cider. Bîs, the barkeep, said that she didn't think she would see them again. Anêr said it was good to see her too, "sweetheart." She warned them about talking about Dībités Rock, and flaunting any wealth. The villagers ate, drank and played games her too, but a nearby card game burst into a fight, ending with someone borne out after the knives came out.

After all the bustle, Yémos made sure to cast Watchdog before going to bed. A tattooed lady saw this and came up to him, and asked, with her lisp, if he could cast it on her stuff too. Alas, Yémos did not do so, and so the woman slept in another corner. Yémos awoke four times that night from when creeps triggered his Watchdog spell.

The next day, the 26th, was also nice, and not long after setting out did five goons try to rob the heroes. Two got off surprise shots at Anêr and Yémos, but Anêr's Combat Reflexes let him snap to his senses and get out of the way, and Yémos's mail stopped the arrow.

The heroes let the bandits draw near. Three of them rushed towards them, while two archers loaded their bows for another shot. Yémos cast Shield on Anêr for two points, taking most of his Fatigue, but he didn't need it. As soon as one bandit, a woman with high cheekbones wearing cloth armor, got near him, he stabbed her in the leg, and the others fled.

Yémos interrogated her, and learned that the bandits camped not far outside of Ōndrûnks, and they had followed the heroes through the morning. The heroes took her weapons—a cheap smallsword and a pistol crossbow—and her grappling hook and rope and her money (53 farthings), bound her wounds, and left her. They made camp a few miles outside Lûtē Downs that night, and on watch, Mayhem spotted two goons looking to strike their camp, but they ran as soon as they saw he had seen them.

That next day, the 27th, was about the same as the last few, and that morning they passed through Lûtē Downs. After their midday meal, they ran into a well-heeled man with five guards coming from Mīstássun, who stopped them and tried to buy or sell magic weapons. The gang didn't have enough money to buy, and had nothing to sell, so the man, who had wooden teeth, turned to the northeast to make a sale.

Once back in Mīstássun, they sold the thief's weapons ($160, I don't care about its coins), and set up times to train on new skills (Mayhem wanted to learn Fast Draw (Arrow) while Yémos wanted to learn Bow). They bought a tent with their earnings, and took care of a day's worth of living expenses (that's $20/day for each adventurer). That evening, they went to Praidīvós's home, and talked to him about him not giving them payment. After some words, which were not always nice, Praidīvós said he would have flour and cinnamon ready for them to take the next day. Also, they sold him the gems they found in the lair of the caterwaul.

Notes

I need to have a camping log sheet for all those little camping rolls that we have, though now that the gang has bought a tent, that's one roll down.

They did most of their leveling up in Káddrakos, though for the new skills, I made them go to Mīstássun where they can train. They're off-template skills, so it's $80 a character point. I have no idea how long they need to train. A few days, I suppose. For stuff they already have on their sheet and are using I let them go up for free. Mayhem got Survival (Wilderness) and Stealth (he'd been rolling on a default for those), two levels of Axe/Mace and a level of Outdoorsman. Anêr got some Strength, and I don't recall what Yémos got.

Eric is especially keen on buying a beast of burden. With the money they got from selling Praidīvós the gems from the caterwaul's lair ($742), they might have enough left over, but we were getting up from the table. But they'll need it. They'll be hauling about 75 pounds of flour, sugar and cinnamon as well as their gear.

Game log for 22 June 2014

Cast of characters:

Yémos, human male cleric of Dōsaútōr, goddess of magic (Eric)

Anêr, human male swashbuckler (Eric, NPC)

Mayhem, short human male barbarian do the Dragon Claw Clan (Chris)

Caleb, human male wizard (Chris, NPC)

18 Žnēâns 2852, deep in the Eldalîvā Woods (2418)

The group made camp and a lean-to, and passed the night smoothly. The next morning, the day was pleasant, though Mayhem felt crummy that day anyways (missed a daily HT roll). They didn't make good headway through the woods, though much of that was from the density of the trees. They needed to forage for food, since Caleb's rations were out. Yémos got some nuts and berries, and Mayhem and Caleb got a few little rabbits. Luckily, nothing struck them through the day or through the night, in spite of their badly-made lean-to.

The next day was more of the same: a nice spring day, wandering south through thick woods, while Mayhem and Caleb had some bug bites while sleeping. They ate their small game and berries, then made camp and went to bed.

Between midnight and daybreak that night, however, Mayhem spotted a being walking towards their camp. He roused Anêr, then tried to sneak up on her. She turned and pointed at Mayhem with her spear. She asked him who he was, and he said he was Mayhem.

"The Mayhem?"

She was none other than Alligên, a woman of Mayhem's Dragon Claw Clan. She was wiry and her face was narrow, her dark brown skin was pockmarked and she had braided her brown hair and dyed it green. The two were far kin, Mayhem thought a third cousin or something.

After chatting a bit about bygone days, she got to asking why he was in the woods with the "townies," who had woken and come towards them. Mayhem told her that they were looking for a druid and some fauns at the behest of Praitanêr. This didn't make Alligên too happy, and she told Mayhem that she was the druidess.

Alligên would not help the gang, though nobody held that against her, though they thought she needed to settle down and maybe find a boyfriend. She did tell Mayhem that the men of Dībités Rock had to be following them, and of some of the other pitfalls of the woods, like the werewolves, the ettercaps and their big spiders, who had left the spider silk strands they found the afternoon of the 18th. Mayhem asked her if she could talk to the ettercaps to see if they would help for a snack of some bandits, but she would not, and said the spiders would eat them if they tried to do it themselves. She then stormed southward, and the gang went back to bed.

That morning, the 21st, Yémos took a look to the west, where Alligên had said the ettercaps dwelled, and saw nothing but thick woods. They instead slowly went to the southeast, caught their game, and went to bed. Luckily, nothing bothered them that day, nor the next, as they headed back towards Dībités rock, but staying to its south.

On the morning of the 23rd, they passed by a two-foot wide hole in the ground, and an hour later, saw a gang of six monks and a fighter taking down a bunch of man-sized spiders. Yémos knew their reddish tabards and bejeweled swords meant they were followers of Punšástōr, god of war. The man in mail armor and an old wig spoke to them, and asked them what they were doing so far out in the woods. Yémos said they were only wandering, to which the bewigged man said, "Yessssss, bullshit." Since nobody could think of anything else to ask each other, the two gangs split and our heroes wandered westward for the rest of the day. They were now out of food, and that night, the grind of the day kept Yémos from conjuring enough food to feed everyone.

A few hours after nightfall, Yémos saw a big cat the size of a man. He roused the others, who remembered it to be the caterwaul they had fought on the 12th. He cast Shield on Anêr, and the gang plugged their ears before the caterwaul's howl. However, the howl still struck Caleb with fear, and, with the wear of the day, the bad sleep from not building a right lean-to the night before, and missing dinner, Caleb passed out from fear. The caterwaul came nearer the gang, and pounced on Anêr. However, he did not do enough harm to knock down Anêr, who tried to strike back, but the caterwaul swatted away his rapier. Mayhem came and tried to strike its flank but missed, while Yémos came nearer. Now Yémos and Mayhem could see why the caterwaul was so eager to pounce: he had a big hard-on.

The horny cat tried to claw Anêr, but Anêr swatted his paw. He tried to strike his body as well but missed, but Mayhem stepped forward and buried his axe into the caterwaul, killing him. The next day, they ate Hello Kitty steak (as Eric dubbed it) for breakfast, found the cave of the caterwaul and its gems, and made their way northwest to the gnomish village of Káddrakos.

Notes

The characters got 6 character points. The gems in the caterwaul's smelly cave was the first big haul they had, since they ran away from the evil cleric in the goblin caves and striking Dībités Rock would be suicide.

We gave the rules on GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures a workout, which did take up quite a bit of time at first. This does make camping and navigation much harder without good gear; Eric said he wanted Yémos to buy a tent when they got back to civilization. Foraging was a big concern since they were running out of food. I'd like to cut down on the rolls, but taking extra time doesn't give more food, it only makes you more likely to find one meal, so there's not a big carrot there, much less a big deer.

A big takeaway from this is that the Survival skill is boss. It lets you forage, move farther, set up camp, and set up shelter, and those are only the daily rolls. If you run with wilderness exploration at all, not having Survival is like putting a gun to your head and hoping no one pulls the trigger. It's even better of you have Survival for the right terrain: Mayhem has it for Plains, which befits a barbarian from the hills, but they were in the woods.

If the weather looks good at dawn and nobody in your group has a good Weather Sense skill, don't try to make that roll. Mayhem is the only one who has it, and it's only a 9. They are in spring, before the rainy season, so failing the roll takes away more than making it gives them.

I also found to speed things up that only the slowest men in the group, Yémos and Caleb, should roll Hiking. Mayhem and Anêr walk too fast to have even a critically failed roll do anything. We wound up often having a fractional hiking pace, so they hiked for 10 hours to get a round number of miles (mostly 9 or 11, as it happens: both Caleb and Yémos have laden Move 2), then they forage for an hour in the morning and another in the afternoon to get the full 12 hours.

The daily HT roll for comfort had some oddities, but made for an interesting situation when both Yémos and Caleb, the two spellcasters, failed their rolls by 5 and 6 respectively on the 23rd. This meant they were down many FP when it came time to fight the caterwaul. When Caleb failed his Fright Check, he lost enough FP to put him to 0 as well as being stunned, so he was down for the count before anything started. It gave a bit of randomness and drama to the fight. No, I don't know that a caterwaul would have fought like that, but I rolled that he was looking to mate, and I wanted to have at least one fight.

I remembered to roll for disasters most days, but none came up. I made a roll for both the ones that weather affects and the ones it does not, but none of them came up to the 5 or less on 3d that I had set. I wanted to set the woods on fire, man!

One thing that even with simulationism, you have to look at a roll to make things interesting. I normally would not have had the druidess out at night, but I had her show up anyways when I rolled her to make things less of a grind. And I do know why she was out at night, rest assured. It was Chris who came up with the third cousin bit, I only had her as one of the same clan. She is also about the only NPC with whom Mayhem would have a bonus to his reaction rolls.

A bit of chatter that isn't in the log is that Yémos and Mayhem thought it better to get the food that Praitanêr wanted from Mīstássun and bring it to him rather than bring his bandits to the fauns. I have no idea how that will work out, being that wizards are quick to anger and that adventurers are crunchy and taste good with catsup, but it does give the wizard and bandits what they want, in a way.

Game log for 25 May 2014

Present:

Yémos, human male cleric of Dōsaútōr (goddess of wisdom and magic) (125 points)
Mayhem, dwa- er, human male barbarian of the Dragon Claw Clan (125 points)

NPCs:

Anêr, human male swashbuckler (ran by Yémos's player) (125 points)
Caleb, human male wizard (ran by GM) (125 points)

Log:

The game opens in the early morning of 14 Žneâns 2852, right after Mayhem killed the guard with iron plates for earrings. The other guards broke and ran (failed a morale check), and Mayhem shot the wounded, rough unshaven archer as they fled, killing him too. Caleb missed with fireball and set some brush on fire, though it didn't spread. Anêr and Mayhem tried to heal Yémos; Anêr failed, but Mayhem staunched his wounds, but Yémos is still out. They loot the bodies, finding 5 copper farthings on each body as well as armor, shields, bows and swords. Anêr put the mail from the guard with the big earrings on Caleb, as it wouldn't fit Mayhem, while Anêr took a bow and some arrows.

At daybreak, there was a short rain shower, but otherwise the weather was fine. The gang watched the keep, and saw some bustle, but no one came out to the thicket until evening, when six guards came and brought back the two bodies they had left out. The night was quiet, though only Caleb got a good night's sleep and healed a bit.

On the 15th, the day was again a nice one, and the morning was quiet. However, at mid-afternoon, two wolves, as big as ponies, came into the thicket, and both sides spotted each other. As the wolves walked towards the group, Mayhem and Anêr took shots, with the wolves getting it through their brains that the gang was shooting at them on the second volley. Mayhem at last hit for damage on the fourth volley, and the wolves made it to the bit of thicket where the gang had made camp.

When the wolves made it to the camp, Anêr lunged (All-Out Attack (Long)) and missed, while Mayhem put his axe into the flank of the wolf he had shot. Caleb missed with his big fireball. Then one of the wolves clawed Anêr, and the other clawed Mayhem. Anêr stabbed the wolf on him, but he wasn't strong enough to get through his thick hide, while Mayhem missed the other wolf. Caleb stepped back and started to cast fireball again.

The wolves kept up their fight, and one tried to claw Anêr again, who instead stuck his rapier into the wolf's paw. The other wolf clawed Mayhem. Anêr tried to stick his rapier into the wolf's eye, but missed, while Mayhem, mad from the claws, put the other wolf out with an axe smite. Caleb cast fireball, and held it in his hand to aim.

The last wolf kept coming at Anêr, but when Anêr stepped out of the way of his claw, the wolf fell to the ground. From there, the gang made fast work of the wolf, with Mayhem getting off two blows, one of which was the last. Mayhem could not get good pelts off the wolves, but did get seven meals of meat from their fleshy bodies, which were about 400 lbs. They spent the rest of the day smoking the meat and healing each other.

That evening, three thouls came to the camp, two of whom the group had met a few days before. Anêr hailed them, and the two groups chatted. The thouls asked for the wolf carcasses and pelts, and Anêr let them have them. The thouls did talk about the wizard or necromancer—they didn't know much about him—in the keep, though neither side told much about the other.

The night was quiet, and the group rested from its rough camping (Mayhem failed the daily Survival roll and everyone took damage). On the morning of the 16th, a pleasant spring morning, Yémos at last awoke, and drank the potion of Minor Healing in his sack. With everyone awake, the gang chose to break the seal on the letter that Mayhem had brought, and read it:

Esteemed Praitanêr, Master of Dībités Rock,

I need the blood of one of your summoned demons for an item I am forging. The cleric of Dōsaútōr has a suitable vessel in his sack to hold the blood. Usual payment offered.

Praidīvós of Mīstássun

After trying to seal the letter once again, the group chose to go up to the keep, and went over its moat by way of the drawbridge as a bunch of surprised peasants and guards saw the battered crew. Two men came out to greet them along with six guards, with four more around the heroes. One man wore one of the black with red trim sashes and was bald but not old, thin but not weak, and wearing armor. The other wore leathers but with cloth coverings of red with green trim, and had greying red hair. When Yémos offered the letter to Praitanêr, the red-haired man told the bald man to read it, who put down his visor, opened the letter and read it for a second before handing it to Praitanêr.

After some asking, Praitanêr laughed when he found that the gang didn't bring the "usual payment," which was bread, cinnamon rolls, and flour. Furthermore, it had killed two of his guards (and the woman in leathers and wearing metal plate earrings, wife of one of them, scowled when Praitanêr said this). But he gave the gang a deal: he would let the heroes heal up for the next few days at the keep if they handed over their weapons for the time of their stay, then go south and find a bunch of fauns and a druid for him. After that, he would give it the blood. The group agreed, and it rested for the next few days.

On the evening of the 17th, Praitanêr gave the heroes a tour of his tower, showing off the fake woods and the keepsakes from his late wife. When Yémos asked about the dying woods, Praitanêr said it was "a small price to pay for power." Anêr sold the manticore stinger to Praitanêr for 9 pieces of gold ($180).

The next day, the 18th, was a fine one, and the group got its weapons from the guards, and started south, as Praitanêr had said the fauns and druids made camp somewhere to the south-southeast. After trekking a few miles, the group chatted, and agreed that Praitanêr was up to no good, and wanted to kill the fauns and druid since he was harming the woods. That afternoon, they saw three wolves who followed the group from afar for a few hours. They heroes didn't strike the wolves, thinking them agents of the druid. That evening, they made their way south to thicker woods, and made camp, and Yémos scrounged up enough food for a meal. In these thicker woods, they found what looked like thick ropes, but didn't have the weavings of normal ropes, instead being whole. They pulled down one, and it had no knot nor loop, but instead had stuck to the tree.

We broke there.

Notes:

A very good session, as we seem to have most of the kinks of play worked out. Five character points all around. Next session is hopefully in two weeks. Remember, making a log is worth character points. Also, drawing pictures of your character is worth it too, and I'll give points as well for making a picture of an NPC. After some chatter, Yémos and Anêr need to figure out their home town. Ideally, there's a short battery of things you should have written down about your character.

Weather or not

I'll start with an essay before I get to rules, which is why do we bother with the weather at all. Trudging through a snowstorm isn't too high on the cool scale in an RPG, unless the snow can fight back. (Now there is an idea, but to make it work, we have to have players interact with normal snow, so back to the essay.)

The first reason why we bother is a bit of hue to the game world. Verisimilitude. Giving us more of a reason to care about the game world by making it more true. It gainsays why we talk about how a monster looks, since we want to get a game edge by whacking its eyestalks or not hitting it with a fireball since it's made of water. It's a clear sign that you're dealing with a world with more to it than the dungeon of the night, and it's a way to tell one day from another. This reason has nothing to do with the game at hand, but rather to get the players to show up for the next game. If we want to have a weird weather effect in a game, it's much more effective if we have days of normal weather against which to gauge the weirdness.

The second thing weather does is it changes how much a group can move. Did I say "changes"? I meant "sometimes lowers." We assume that characters walk to the dungeon on a nice day with nothing to hold them back in the tavern aside from a hangover. (If it's a lovely day and you're down in a dungeon, you might be a munchkin.) If you're keeping track of game weather, on days with crappy weather it will take the group longer to get from place to place, like from a town to a dungeon. There will be days where it can't go anywhere. A good GM will have some adventures for when a group is stuck in town.

Coming from the last thing weather does we get to a third reason to keep track of weather, which is to make the game more about resource management. Some old-school types say RPGs were all about this back in 1980, which is horseshit since it was about fun, but there is fun in getting away with a trick in resource management. ("Hey, when we get out of sixth hour, let's get to Chuck's house fast so we can tick off our arrows and rations!") If a group of players scoffs at its GM as he makes them tick off rations and doesn't bother buying more since that cuts into how much treasure it can haul, then on the way home from the dungeon, it will either starve, which is truly not fun, or it will spend its time hunting and fishing instead of getting back home, which means it has more chances for a random encounter.

El Disgusto: "Camping? Why would I want to go camping? Nature kills! Haven't you learned anything the wilderness encoutners tables?" -- Al Bruno III, A Night at the Inn, a Day at the Racists

Some things that come from this. One thing is that a GM can be kind in giving out boosts to overland movement, since if a group moves too fast later, the GM can slow it down with a blizzard. If he's truly feeling like a dick, he can mess it up good with a tornado. Another thing is that if you have rules for this, players will build characters to exploit those rules. That's alright, since they're building characters that do something other than kill. Not that there's anything wrong with killing, of course.

Now for some rules. There are two spots in the GURPS rules for weather to give general effects: overland movement (mostly Hiking, p. B351) and the daily Survival roll (p. B223). I'm worrying about how common weather happenings change those, and not true fuckyouupforlife things like hurricanes or tornados or lightning strikes. My rule-of-thumb for things like those is if you get caught in one of them, you die. Someone who wants more detail can write his own rules for them, though death will be the most common result.

I've talked about movement in another post, but I'll post the same stuff again so I can have it all together.

Cold

Per p. B430, when the effective temperature drops below the bottom of a character's comfort zone (for humans, this is 35° F), his movement for the day drops by 10%. At 35° below that (0° F for puny humans), movement drops another 10%. For every 10° below that, that is another 10% drop in movement. If a character has an encounter at any point, he then makes the HT roll as described on p. B430 to see if he is down any FP at that point. The usual modifiers apply; roll 1d-2 FP if he failed the roll.

Keep in mind that movement happens in daylight hours, so for handling movement speed, look at the high temperature, not the low. Unless for some reason a character needs to get hustling at 3 a.m., we don't care about the low here.

Survival follows an akin pattern. If the low temperature for the day is below a character's comfort zone (35° F), his Survival roll is at -1 for the day. If the high temperature is also below a character's comfort zone, his Survival roll is at another -1. If the low temperature is 35° below the comfort zone (0° F), the Survival skill is at another -1, and it's at another -1 if the high is also lower than 35° below the comfort zone. So, on a day when it is at -5° F at daybreak, then rises to a balmy 20° F, the Survival roll is at -3 (both the high and the low are below the comfort zone, and the low is below 0° F), and the characters move 10% slower than normal (since it's below 35° F). That's assuming they're human and there's no snow on the ground or falling, of course.

If a character gets wet, then all penalties for cold are twofold. Feel free to screw over any character who goes ice fishing, then jumps in the lake, crawls out and goes sunbathing. That's pretty much killing yourself.

If the characters are making rolls against Survival (Arctic), then cold is the default assumption. Thus, there are no penalties to Survival for cold until the magic thermometer drops below 0° F (or 35° below a character's comfort zone, if you insist). This isn't for going through the woods near Verbobonc in December, but for truly being in an arctic zone. Also, this little boon is null and void for any characters who get themselves wet or don't dress for the weather.

A last note about temperature before we move on. When we say "temperature," we mean "effective temperature," which includes windchill. I'd eyeball what the windchill is instead of going through the math to keep play moving.

"Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat that yellow snow." — Frank Zappa, "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow."

Heat

Per p. B434, when a character gets to the top 10° of his comfort zone (which, for humans and the like is 80° F), instead of losing FP, the character moves 10% slower for the day. For each extra 10° of temperature, the character moves an extra 10% slower. This is to assume that when a character starts to overheat, he ducks into the shade, and that's where the time is lost. If a character has an encounter at any point, he then makes the HT roll as described on p. B434 to see if he is down any FP at that point. The usual modifiers apply; roll 1d-2 FP if he failed the roll.

For Survival rolls, it's an akin tale. If the high is above the comfort zone (90° F), then Survival rolls are at -1. If the low is also above the comfort zone, then Survival rolls are at a further -1. If the high is higher than 30° above he comfort zone (120°F), that's another -1 to Survival, and it's yet another -1 if the low is also higher than 30° above the comfort zone. These penalties get another -1 for every 10° higher than 30° above the comfort zone.

Like cold, there's a Survival speciality that assumes heat. I lied. There's truly two such specialities: Desert and Jungle. There are no heat penalties for these specialities until you get to 120° F (30° above the comfort zone) so long as you dress for the weather. Sadly for munchkins, this likely means no armor.

Again, "temperature" means "effective temperature." For heat, this includes humidity, though this isn't as big a deal as windchill. It doesn't play into deserts at all; if it did, you wouldn't be in a desert.

"Hot, hot, hotter than hell
She'll burn you like the midday sun, yeah." — Kiss, "Hotter than Hell"

Rain and Snow

First, a little rant about precipitation in roleplaying games. Every goddamn weather chart I see is geared towards having me roll up how much rain or snow falls in terms of how many inches (or whatever it is for you metric folks). I don't give a shit about how many fucking inches of rain have fallen! Nobody in a roleplaying game gives a shit about how many fucking inches of rain have fallen! We care about when the rain falls, how long the rainfall lasts, and how hard the rain falls while it's falling. We want to know how it makes life hard for characters.

When on the ground, rain and snow modify the terrain as p. B351: rain and light snow halve speed, snow deeper than ankle-deep quarters it. Roads don't matter; none of them are any good. Rain goes away after the day; snow stays until the temperature has been over 35° for 10 days with no snow.

When falling, rain and snow halve movement for a time equal to the number of half-hour cells (I'm using the d30 Sandbox Companion) for non-severe storms, and stop it for severe storms. Or, in short, it's -2.5% per half-hour cell of non-severe storms and -5% per half-hour of severe storms. You can round to the nearest 10%, so a half-hour of light rain is no big deal.

Rain can have a penalty on Survival. For a light rain—an hour or less of non-severe rainfall—there is no penalty. For moderate rain—more than an hour of non-severe rainfall—the roll is at -1. For heavy rain—an hour or less of severe rainfall—Survival is at -2. For a downpour—more than an hour of severe rainfall—Survival is at -3.

For snow, sleet or hail, these penalties are harsher. For a light snowfall (or a sleet storm, or a hailstorm)—an hour or less of non-severe snowfall—there Survival roll is at -1. For a moderate snowfall— more than an hour of non-severe snowfall—the roll is at -2. For a heavy snowfall—an hour or less of severe snowfall—Survival is at -4. For a snowstorm—more than an hour of severe snowfall—Survival is at -6.

Weather Sense

Weather Sense is a complementary skill for both movement and Survival. The GM makes the roll. On a success of any kind, he tells the group the weather for the day. On a failure, the GM tells the group the weather for the day before. On a critical failure, make something up, but don't tip off that you're making something up. Tell the players the opposite of what the weather will be or something.

A success knocks off up to 20% of weather-related penalties to movement and -2 to Survival penalties from weather. A critical success lets you ignore up to 40% of weather-related penalties to movement and -4 to Survival penalties from weather. A normal failure has no penalties, but a critical failure lowers movement by 40% and gives a -4 penalty to Survival.

Rolling the Weather

You need a way to roll up the weather, and I don't have one. I'm not about to write one, but I'll make a list of ones I know:

d30 Sandbox Companion. Since you already have this, you can use the weather system in there, though you should nerf gap between the high and low, at least in temperate climates (the normal gap is 15°, and the gap on p. 12 is about 40°-45°). I roll a d5 for variation, and add +1 to the roll if the average temperature for the day before was more than 10° below the monthly average, and -1 to the roll if the average temperature for the day before was more than 10° above the monthly average.

What, you don't have this? Get the hell off my blog and buy it. You need it if you're running a sandbox game, or almost any fantasy game. It's only $5. You have no excuse other than abject poverty.

Wilderness Survival Guide. If you want to waste loads of time rolling up weather, this is made for you. I have it for loads of reasons, but when I was in junior high, I tried rolling up a day's worth of weather with it and it killed a half-hour. I don't think I could stand to do that on the fly, but it does have loads of little goodies in it.

Dungeon Masters' Guide 3.5e. The last version (I don't count the homesick abortion that is 4th edition) has an easy weather system. The system is free on the web, linked above, and is good enough for game purposes. I'll link to Pathfinder's version, buried down the page; I think it's the same.

Empire Weather. It looks like something out of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and it's free. It's bare-bones and vague, and at some point, I'm sure you'll need to override a roll.

HârnWorld. Ah, made by a company that likes diacriticals on funny made-up words as much as I do. I've never tried it, but Hârn stuff is good if you buy into whatever assumptions N. Robin Crossby made with Hârn. It isn't cheap.

Wolfram Mathematica. If you want to ape a real-world spot, you could look up its weather from the recent past.

Look outside. No link for you! Stick your neck out the window. C'mon, I know folks say outdoor air hurts nerds. It isn't true. Really! Trust me!

Blankets and Tents

Going through the equipment lists, I see no special reason why anyone would bother to buy a bedroll or a tent, since they do nothing. However, a blanket is part of the basic loadout, and tents are offered as an upgrade, so they should do something. So, this is me thinking out loud about how to handle them.

Bedding

This is easier to rule. If you have no blanket or sleeping fur, your sleep is not as good and therefore some of your sleep time is lost. I can't find anything online about how much this is worth, so I crack open the Wilderness Survival Guide (which was among the first AD&D books I owned, by the way, though I lost my copy over the years and bought it on PDF again last year) and look on page 65. And the first thing that strikes me is how kind AD&D was to missing sleep: you only had to have five hours of sleep each night. Anyways, getting beyond that, it lists "Lying on bare ground (no bedding or padding)" as docking an hour off one's sleep, so we'll go with that. That will be two hours in weather below 35°F, but the blanket knocks that down to one hour, and the sleeping fur means no loss.

The other lines on this table bring up good issues. Plate armor knocks off four hours, which sounds about right; call all rigid armor knocking off half its DR in hours, rounded down. No loss for flexible armor; I think it's now a moot point that you can sleep in mail without much problem. Being below 0°F (or 35°F lower than your character's own low temperature threshold, for anyone with Temperature Tolerance) takes off another hour, while being above 90°F (or whatever your Temperature Tolerance gives you) takes off two hours.

Now, if you're hex crawling, missing sleep would have its normal effects, which means you're down FP. If you want to sleep a little longer, that will cut your travel time, so each extra hour cuts off 10% of travel, since I assume 10-12 hours of actual travel to make Move = 5-to-6-mile hexes. If you're using the slewing way of travel (hey, remember slewing in Microsoft Flight Simulator?) in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons, rule that not having a blanket means you get to wherever 10% slower, while not having a sleeping fur in winter or arctic weather means you get there 20% slower, or 10% slower with a normal blanket.

Tents

Some other lines in this table from the Wilderness Survival Guide lead us to tents. If the wind speed is 20 m.p.h. or greater and you have no tent, it says to dock two hours. If there is light or moderate precipitation and you have no tent, it says to dock three hours. (Those in plate armor don't take this loss, so if the weather is bad and you know it will be, it might be better to sleep in your plate.) And, in the graf below the table, it says that you can't sleep outside a tent in "extreme weather conditions," listing a lightning storm, a hailstorm and a sandstorm as examples. All of this I am going to use as-is for my hex crawl. For travel without detail, give a bonus of +1 to the Weather Sense roll to lower travel time if there are enough tents for everyone.

Group Basics

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers and the Basic Set both call this "[b]asic equipment for Cooking and Survival for a group," which sounds well and good until you realize that there's no special group Cooking or Survival rules anywhere. So, we'll handle this like the tent: having Group Basics means that you get a +1 to foraging rolls since the gear lets you better skin and prep the food to make it last longer and get more off the bone.

(Note to my players: wow, I hadn't looked at the Survival skill in ages. You all will hate those daily rolls.)

Throwing This Open

Anyone have any ideas?

Game log for 2 March 2014

Present:

Mayhem, 125-point dwa-er, human male barbarian (Chris)
Yémos, 125-point human male cleric of Dōsaútōr, goddess of magic and wisdom (Eric)

Absent:

Anêr, 125-point human male swashbuckler (Rett)

Retired:

Caleb, 125-point human male wizard (Nate, run for this session as an NPC)

Notes about the above: Nate quit the game, so I ran Caleb as an NPC until we get a chance to drop him off somewhere. Or he dies, I suppose.

The game starts on 12 Žnēâns 2852, right after the death of the manticore. In a flashback to the 9th, Mayhem woke up in the tavern. Praidīvós realized he forgot to give Yémos the letter of introduction to get the blood from Dībités Rock, so he hired Mayhem to do bring that letter, with a payment of 10 gold pieces, payable when Praidīvós gets his demon blood. Mayhem makes it to hex 2216, and hears the gang fight the manticore. He comes up to the others and and they talk about slicing apart the manticore. Anêr tried cutting off the stinger, but stings himself, which crippled his left hand. Yémos casts Minor Healing gives Anêr back most of what he lost. They choose to move on.

No Emerson, Lake and Palmer springs to mind.

A mile or so eastward, they hear some whimpering coming from a cave, and see some tracks nearby. They try to sneak up to the cave, and they hear a howl. Mayhem fails his Fright Check, taking going ashen and and stunned for 3 seconds. An elf-like feline (a caterwaul) comes out of its cave and charges Caleb, but doesn't hit him. Anêr gets near the caterwaul but doesn't swing; Yémos casts Shield 2 on Anêr. Caleb takes a step back to ready Fireball. Anêr makes a mighty swing, but the caterwaul dodges. The caterwaul tries to claw the wizard again, but the wizard dodges, but loses his spell. Yémos then whacks the caterwaul with its staff, but the great cat stays and fights. Anêr swings again at the caterwaul, but the it swats away his claws. The caterwaul steps back tries to put those claws in Anêr, but the Shield spell helps Anêr shun the blow. Yémos takes a swing, and the caterwaul doesn't dodge. The caterwaul parries Anêr again, then starts to withdraw, running towards its cave. Yémos steps in front of the wizard, who tries to cast Fireball, but he misses. Anêr moves back to defend as well. The caterwaul gets into its cave when Mayhem awakes from his stun.

The gang chose to go eastward and leave the poor cat alone. After some more travel, they hear growls, which Yémos identifies as wolves. Since the wolves are not bothering them, and looking for prey, the gang instead goes onward.

Add a little more snivel, and some self-soiling.

About an hour later, they see a cave, to which they go and see four goblins cooking a rat. Our gang sneak up on the goblins, and Mayhem shoots the nearest one with an arrow. The goblin pulls out his bow and ducks behind another goblin, who gather their wits to fight the gang. Caleb tries to cast Fireball, but fails. Anêr waits, Mayhem moves nearer, and one goblin steps towards Mayhem and draws his axe. The one with his bow takes a shot at Mayhem, who does not dodge, but his armor stops it. The other goblins draw their bows. Yémos and Anêr near, and Caleb gets Fireball ready. Mayhem, sword out, takes a swing, and the goblin falls to the ground, groaning in pain  The other goblins run off. 

The gang ties the goblin, named Kuflaug, who had six copper farthings on him. They ask him what's in the cave, and after a bit, he asks if they will kill the wizard and his "red man." He doesn't want to go into the cave, so Yémos wants to take him inside, and Anêr leads him in at sword point.

A little bigger and much more badass than a goblin.

They go into a big round room, about 50 foot diameter, and see the rotten tapestries on the walls, and listen at the door at the far end. They hear nothing. They push it open and go down the hall into a smaller round room, with four doors as well as the short hallway going into the room. They ask Kuflaug about traps in the rooms beyond the door to their right, and he says he doesn't know. They listen at the door and hear nothing. They walk inside, and see five orcs in a big barracks, which scares hell out of Kuflaug. The orcs ask what the goblin is doing inside the caves with the men, since the goblins are paying them to kill the wizard. As they parley about how much money the orcs should get (all of it, as they say), a black pudding seeps into the room from under the door through which they had just come. Man, orc and goblin all run to the one other door on the other side of the room, and find the door is locked. The orcs start to hack at the door, while the gang talks about what to do about the black pudding. After some mishaps, Caleb gets the Fireball spell going, and singes it. The orcs spot an opening, and run around the pudding instead of going through the door, which they have now hacked open.

Not for eating.

The gang goes into the room beyond the broken door. The room has fewer beds, and bigger, with a big statue of a humanoid with an oversized head. Mayhem goes first, behind the trap finder, and spots the loose tile, but the goblin wasn't so quick and stepped on the tile anyways and died from the bolt that shot out of the statue's mouth. Caleb and Anêr both took a shot, while Mayhem and Yémos get out of the way of two more shots. Everyone looks back, and see the pudding trying feebly to chase after the orcs. All choose to look through the room and go into the next one. After pushing in the stuck door, they go into the room, which is even smaller than the last one, and has oily rags and empty tin vials are in a corner. A lone big workbench, missing a leg, is against the far wall, which has some phosphorescent fungus on it. Random broken tools lie scattered on the bench. Caleb advises against shutting both doors after smelling the trap that comes out of a bottle in the middle of the room. They go to the other door and find the old prison, with rusted manacles and chains and some bits of little bones.

And we break here. The two characters whose players were there, Mayhem and Yémos, each got two points.

Notes: We gamed in Chris's apartment. Chris, can you clean up the place a bit if you're going to offer? And maybe show off some of the four decades of gaming material that you've accumulated? I know your foot is bum. Hopefully, the weather will let us do better in two weeks, either make your trek to Universe Games easier, or make it easier to get your excess stuff out.

I think I have the random encounters down, at least when they should happen. Now to worry about lead in for those.

Our barbarian is lacking in wilderness skills. Those will help the gang to get through the woods. Namely, a guide should have Hiking, Navigation (Land) and Weather Sense and some Survival (in these lands, mostly Plains, Swampland and Woodlands). The other characters can soak up whatever Survival skills the guide does not have.

Speaking of Mayhem, he lived up to his name by shooting a goblin before I could even get in a Reaction roll. Who knows how they would have handled someone talking to them? The orcs didn't take it too badly.

The World

I made a world and am going to rely on it because I suck at writing adventures. I have that "failed novelist" problem that so many published scenarios have, and am sick of trying to write like that. Hence the idea of a sandbox has a lot of appeal to me. And being a Latin buff, I got the Tolkien bug and needed an outlet for that, though I wouldn't make my players pick those names if they didn't want.

So, for my players, you can look at the following things:

Players Guide
Map of Mīsarkênē, the County
Map of Mīstássun, the Town
Maps of the market villages in the County
Calendar of the world