Tuesday, October 6, 2015

One-page wilderness system in 12-mile hexes

I've been always fascinated by Roger Sorolla's One Page Wilderness System. It seemed an ellegant way to mix random encounters with pre-planned situations and that was truly an achievement.
However, the system could result in rolling 7 times a day to check for encounters. While I know well those random checks from AD&D 2nd, I understand that was too much.
Why rolling so much? In thesis, you should roll once each 6 hours... but again every time the party entered a new (5-mile) hex.
But I wanted to do something different. For starters, I wanted to embrace the howling emptiness of a 12-mile hex. Why? In part because the party could move those 12 miles in 6 hours. If that change took place, I could reduce the number of rolls to only 4 a day (two during the day, plus two during the night, with a nice d6 telling me exactly when the encounter would happen).
A larger area would need another approach on the numbers of the encounter table. After a few iterations, I think I've found the best compromise:
 1-7  Same hex (1 = lair found if moving)
   8  d6 in yellow hexes
9-10  Clue to white hex (if moving)
  11  Clue to d6 yellow hex (if moving)
  12+ Nothing

     1.433 encounters/day

83.047% 1+ encounters/day
45.178% 2+ encounters/day
13.458% 3+ encounters/day
 1.649%  4 encounters/day
Now I just need to playtest this.

Addendum:
If using 6-mile hexes with 25% saturation, roll 6 times a day (four during the day, two during the night) and use the following table:
1-3  Same hex (2/6 = lair found if moving)
  4  d6 in yellow hexes
5-6  Clue to white hex (if moving)
  7  Clue to d6 yellow hex (if moving)
  8+ Nothing

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