Greetings Brave Adventurers

We've had some great play-testing opportunities here at HEXROLL labs (so our family dining table) in the last weeks of 2021, and you can now see the results online.

Let's go over the things we've uncovered (and fixed):

Map Orientation

Playing exclusively using a tablet and without any preparation or familiarization with the generated sandbox, I found orientation to be an issue.

I already used separate browser tabs to keep maps open for reference, but that just wasn't good enough. I needed something better. I needed: hyperlinked maps and minimaps:

You can now use any maps in the sandbox to quickly navigate to area descriptions by clicking or touching the area number.

You can then go back to the main map by clicking the new minimap that is now part of almost every area description.

This should greatly help with orienting yourself around the hex map or in the dungeon.

Dungeon Conspectus

In one of our play-testing sessions, my oldest chose to referee the game and I took a player seat, playing as a 2nd level thief.

My kid has limited experience as a GM, but he was able to take a HEXROLL sandbox he never read before and lead us through a great game.

As a beginner GM, he felt he did not have enough knowledge about a dungeon before leading the party into it. Now, this is something I actually consider a 'feature'. I want to be surprised together with the player and I like this aspect in my games, but I can see how this can be an issue for others.

So I've now added a conspectus section to every dungeon, with a brief summary of the encounters, treasure or quest objectives the dungeon has:

This is now generated by default, but can be switched off in the generator options.

Settlement and taverns details

Taverns and Inns  now include staff and a random menu. I started including a pricing variable based on whether we are in a village, town or a city and based on the district type (so that, for example, food prices in a Palace District will be higher than in a Harbor District). The same scheme was also applied to item prices in shops.

You will soon begin to see more quest types added, and more links between elements of the sandbox.

What's next..

After detailing the settlement level of the sandbox, I will move up to the hex level again, adding more features and descriptions.

That's it for now. It's 2022. Enjoy the crawl!

Ithai