(A) Pointcrawl Mates – path more important than ‘direction’
This is archival material from previous blog
I remember years ago I was reading a lot about hexcrawls. I played before wildly different adventures. When I exposed myself to hexcrawl/dungeoncrawl blogosphere I was lost. It was almost ten years ago. I was fascinated. From this point on I tried to make every travel into hexcrawl. I wanted my travel to matter. I tried lots and lots of random generators, procedures and various duck. I never really pulled off interesting session this way. I tried hard. My players were angry. Usually even most dull and improvised scene-by-scene travel was better than carefully planned hexcrawls. I once asked some fellas to play hard hexcrawl with minimal rules – just some basic 1st level characters of some retroclone. We did it, it was mildly interesting. I remember the story about what happened in that session was way more interesting than when we played it. Duckton more.
I was thinking there is something wrong with me. Why can’t I pull it off? I was trying to comprehend various systems. I haven’t found the answer. But now I know for sure my style of gaming makes it better when I focus on scene-by-scene play. When the travel comes in form of interacting with interesting bits of travel. When it is Pointcrawl. And Pointcrawl needs two things – points and paths (crawls?). Points are points of interest. Paths are ways of getting between them. Both parts can be interesting, both are important.
Grid and hexes never really did it to me. How would you realistically divide world into hexes? I mean, I get you can travel along general directions, but if you don’t go via road there will be obstacles. I mean, sometimes very difficult obstacles. Sometimes you’d need to make travel around such obstacle and get into other “hexes” to get to one next to you. As said by Daniel from Detect Magic (https://detectmagic.wordpress.com) 7 years ago – there is always a path. If there is no path then you’re wandering without it and it is taxing. Navigation and overall getting somewhere through the wilderness without any path is unbelievably hard work. If you don’t know where you’re going and go by directions you need to have compass in hand at all times or check direction every so often. And have you been walking through the forest or on a mountain trail? Without any paths natural forest is dense. You are constantly struggling to get over streams, high bushes, swells and ditches. I can’t even imagine walking through mountains, even the short ones, without a trail. And today’s trails are way better that they were before. It is very funny watching youtubers talking about DnD and is 8 miles per day is realistic. I mean, if you are ready for the travel. And have nice shoes. And go via road. Not in wilderness, packed up with medieval equipment. The shoes? The backpacks? The untamed wilderness? There is a reason people built roads, and had guides and maps. Wilderness travel is tough slog.
So you have these two ways of getting somewhere – landmarks and paths. You may go by man-made road. Or game trail. Some long lost road of forgotten time. Or just next to a river or stream to have constant comprehension. Another way is when you know specific things how to get from place to place to know you’re going in the right direction. Like “go two hours to the west and you will find a river, then go north up to the giant rock. You can sleep there and continue north until you reach the line of trees. There should be butt-shaped hill to the west – if you walk east you will find a bridge”. Some cultures would leave some landmarks for those who know where to look. It’s mind boggling for me when hex maps have roads drawn on them. Why is it even hexed then?
Paths and landmarks are then very important in travelling. You get to go from point A to B. If poin B is unknown you get to wander or ask for directions. If you know it there has to ba a way. Like, every village has to have a road to the town nearby. Or at least bigger village with market square. Villages are interconnected. And it’s easy and convenient to travel there, so if you won’t choose it there has to be an issue. Is it flash flood? Or you’re outlaws who have to hide. Or there are known bandits, enemy soldiers or something. So you go through wilderness. In civilised lands it probably wont be too much of wilderness. You will walk somewhere in close range from villages, fields or at least remote buildings. If you get lost in the woods who knows what could happen. Unless you’re specifically prepared to wander.
What path do you go then? Do you keep something in your line of sight? Follow game trail? It won’t go in a straight line, I will have a lot of turns and it will probably cross another game trail. Wilderness is also crossed by rivers. You’d be very surprised how many water streams go through uninhabited areas. Unless you’re in deserted lands there should be a lot of water based obstacles. Sometimes they are not even just rivers but dried riverbeds, deep and tiring to traverse. And since rivers tend to bend a lot you may needlessly walk through one riverbed few times as the river turned and turned. I mean, hexcrawl doesn’t show that to you. Even if it is supposed to make travel more detailed by letting you travel through all the empty hexes it’s not going to show you what is in the wilderness. I feel as if hexes neither allow you for this zoomed in detailed travel nor zoomed out general fast travel.
I started really working on some pointcrawl elements. I mean it is hard. But the moment I sit and think “What could be around this ancient obelisk and how to get to it” I really picture all the awesome natural elements around. I will say I see it in Ghibli-style nature in my head. It’s imprinted there. Sometimes maybe it is game trail, but no animal goes near the structure. Or they actually live there. Somehow they traverse other obstacles – maybe there is a way only special animals know. Maybe the place is not some generic fantasyland set in pseudo-Europe. Maybe there are monkeys there. And you have to walk on the trees to get somewhere.
Also the pointcrawl travel has something in line with various procedures for travel. What is the system with ingrained “X encounters per X miles/kilometers” if not pointcrawl from one point of interest (may not be geographical but situational) to another? Also since we lose the part of objective bird-view geographics we can play it with abstracted elements. Urban areas. Ruins. More abstract places. Maybe even social connections. I remember some article about Fate and how you could use their Zones in similar manner to make social interactions limited – some “zones” or “points” are only for the priviledged and the “path” to get there is through some other social actions. Also there is a game called Arkham Horror which is also placed in point”crawl”, where you get streets and locations. I can easily picture session based on the map from the game. I can easily picture adventures with pointy city maps based on it. I’m thinking of making one.
Where does my unhealthy pointcrawl fascination comes from? I think from today’s prevalence of hexcrawl in adventures and material maybe. I don’t like hexcrawl. I don’t feel it is good tool to use. But yet in order to change that I should probably start doing something tangible and create and share pointcrawl maps and procedures and ideas instead of writing about them some vague duck. But it’s the same as my unwilling to use random generators and instead opting for just inspiration lists. Interpreting random results can be more daunting than just looking at an idea and shoving it into the game. But people still use hexcrawls and make random tables. I will really stop these rants and get back to work. I promise to share with you some of it.
Edit: I have found out there were another OSR people writing about Pointcrawls recently. Check it out https://alchemistnocturne.blogspot.com/2021/12/wilderness-pointcrawls-vs-hexcrawls-vs.html and http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2021/11/hexcrawl-x-pointcrawl-when-to-use-them.html