Hot off the press

I'm super psyched to let you know that Hexroll was recently nominated to the 2022 ENNIES Award for Digital Aid/Accessory.

The recent changes to the generator were subtle but crucial. I'm now also happy to say that Hexroll is eligible to be at v1.0. What does it mean? not much. - except perhaps this does set the stage for a v2.0 - but more on this later.

Your Feedback

Getting here, what really proved to be most helpful and useful was your feedback!

Let's go over some of the feedback I've received and I'll share my thoughts, plans or any already made changes:

• Quite a few grammar and spelling errors
FIXED! and thanks to everyone who point these out for me.

• NPC's items don't show up in Secrets
FIXED!

• Spell lists would be easier to read if spells weren't repeated but instead listed their number of uses if more than 1 (ex: "Sleep x2", or "Sleep (2)".
FIXED!

• I wish there was a bit more guidance on how it's used for players like myself who are used to 5E modules and keen to experience OSR sandbox play.
  • Okay, so there's a whole different post hiding here but here's my approach - the short version:
  • My players know their characters could very well die in any session. I always tell them not to get emotionally attached to any low level character they play.
  • My players have the freedom to go wherever and do whatever they want in the sandbox (or from sandbox to sandbox - more on this soon). There is no linear story to follow, no predefined narrative or key scenes to play out. The players choose whether they spend a session in a tavern of rush ahead into the wilderness. They can go in any direction they choose to. Yes, this can also get super risky (see my first point).
  • My players have the creative freedom to add their own narrative where it is missing or needed. I'm giving my players opportunities to complement the sandbox with new storylines that were never there. ("Aha, another NPC with a missing middle finger. I bet this is the mark of the cult.")
  • As a referee, I am unbiased and only one step ahead of my players. I discover the secrets and dangers of the sandbox together with them.

• Could you maybe set a starting point and make the map say... expand on levels depending on where the players are.
(See my thoughts on the previous comment)
What I can suggest here is to scan the dungeons and find the one that looks the least lethal. Then, find the nearest settlement and choose it as your starting point. Prefer all rumors and quests related to this dungeon first and omit anything else until the PCs get a chance to level up a bit. Also, make sure your players know that some of the dangers lurking in the realm could be too much for their characters to handle.

• Dungeon are sometimes just too big
Firstly, keep in mind that dungeons in Hexroll are not meant to be fully explored or "completed" in the sense of completing a level in a video game.
Secondly, in some cases (such as when the PCs have a specific objective) you may want to gently guide them and make their dungeon crawl a bit shorter and quicker. In these cases you could opt to provide the PCs with hints on how to navigate a certain part of the dungeon. Old TSR games used to offer "Treasure Maps" to help PCs track down treasures or artifacts and there's no reason why you could not do the same.

• Being able to export and import to Foundry would be unreal.
I'm now considering this as one out of five different priorities to work on next. See the end of this post for more info.

• This also offers excellent possibilities for solo or GM-less play.
• I would love a "Solo Player" mode, which could include Fog of War and placing things like Items Held and other "spoilers" behind a spoiler tag.
Same here.

• Are city maps coming?
And here.

• The only thing I'd change is the ability to place map tiles and change the labels on stuff.
Sort of same here.

• Can you make a toggle switch button (checkbox?) that you can click to switch the AC to ascending AC instead of THAC0.
Adding this to the short term backlog.

• Can you please make a function to load settings for creation like the old SNES game save codes? like "save code" copies to your clipboard ->"8441 2176 4423 4428"
This is already supported - if you change any parameter in the generator form this will be reflected in the URL. If you bookmark the URL, you can recreate your parameters setup.

• We need to get a save in pdf button, please!
Try printing the sandbox page using the browser print function and then choose "Save as PDF". I've made a sincere effort to make the content as print-friendly as possible. Be ready for a novel-sized PDF though.

• What is "THAC0"?
Hexroll is using old-school rules. THAC0 means "To Hit Armor Class Zero".

• Have you considered color coding the hex map?
The colors are merely muted. Try choosing "Accentuate Colors" in the generator and see if this looks better to you.

How changes are rolled out

It is worth mentioning how changes to Hexroll are rolled out:

Any change or new addition to the generator or model is first tested and play-tested locally in our house.

Once we are happy with the change, we roll it out to the automated (on-the-minute) generator server and let it run for a while to see if there are no corner cases or unexpected errors.

Finally, the change is rolled out to the on-demand generator server.

What's next

Please let me know in the comments - what do you really want to see next in Hexroll by choosing one out of the following options:

5e NPC and Monster stats
Using the existing set of classes and monsters, I will convert all stats to be 5e compatible.

VTT Support in some form or shape
At the very least, provide VTT compatible maps with built-in fog-of-war support. Not sure how yet, but let's go with this for now :)

Continent builder
Allow combining several generated sandboxes into complete continents.

Solo gameplay support
At the very least, provide fog-of-war support in the existing hex map and dungeon maps for solo gameplay.

Settlement Maps
Generate city, town and village maps, indicating districts and key landmarks. This is probably the most challenging feature to implement.

..until the next time, enjoy the crawl!

Ithai