Notes on the Simulacrum Wilderness Exploration Mechanic

I'm completely in love with the wilderness exploration mechanic from the Simulacrum blog (which I'll call Simulacrum Overland in this blog). It prioritises:

1. Elegant simplicity (which I love because once rules become too baroque I stop using them).
2. Player facing mechanics (good, because I'm playing with the rest of the table, not with myself).
3. Interactions not already present in dungeon based play (good, because variety is the spice of D&D).

I am going to use the process pretty much as presented I think... plus a few more things, of course, because home brewing. Here are my thoughts at the moment, including a bunch of to-dos.

Note: Burden Level & Fatigue → OSE

Simulacrum uses a few abstractions which I'll have to translate to OSE. The first one is burden level, which is easy enough. Here's a bullet point table comparing OSE & B/X movement rates to Simulacrum Overland burden levels:

• 120' (40') ←→ no burden
• 90' (30') ←→  light burden
• 60' (20') ←→ medium burden
• 30' (10') ←→ heavy burden
• 0' (0') ←→ immobile

One way to deal with encumbrance is to use a wagon. Not too convenient for dungeons, however.
(Theodore Gericault)

Note: Weather for Simulacrum Overland

There are a number of systems for determining weather in OSR. I'm going to brew my own, with a view to working with Simulacrum Overland.

Simulacrum Overland is concerned about two conditions - precipitation and temperature. For my part, I am concerned about four seasons: Spring (the season of mud and rain), Summer (campaign season), Fall (harvest), and Winter (when it gets really cold).

I'm working on a first draft for a simple system which I'll share on this blog once it's done.

Muddy roads are inconvenient for hex crawling
(Johann Jungblut)

Note: Adapting Simulacrum Overland Travel to work in non-wilderness contexts

When rolling for Random Encounters in the Simulacrum Overland Travel procedure they are more likely in "wild" hexes and in "unsafe" locations.

That's cool, but doesn't work for one of the things I'm looking to get out of my homebrew - namely to make adventuring in settled areas as eventful as adventuring in the wilderness (corrupt nobles! peasant brigands! tax collectors! family feuds!).

Right now I can think of a few ways to address it:

• Remove the modifiers and have "local folks" entries on the encounter tables. This would be fairly simple, but lessens the difference from travelling through different hex types.
• Just add "local folks" entries to encounter tables where appropriate. That would make non-wild areas less interesting (fewer encounters) and significantly less threatening (assuming "local folks" encounters are less likely to result in fights). On the upside, it's the simplest.
• Leave the encounter tables for "monsters" and have a separate process for "interesting locals". Maybe make it part of the "generating hex features" part of the procedure. The challenge here is deciding on edge cases - where do brigands go? What about farmers who sometimes engage in brigandage? Or farmers in the middle of a dispute that the PCs could dragged into.

I'll definitely have to do some thinking here.

Note: Fatigue → OSE

Simulacrum Overland uses fatigue levels. I'll have to figure out what to do with them. Right now, I'm leaning towards one of two options:

1. Just convert it into HP damage. OSR already has one track for deleterious consequences, and I'm not sure adding more status effects will help what I'm after.
2. Have one "fatigued" status that can be on or off, and which - once on - requires all the different triggers to be addressed (so say, if you're fatigued from lack of food, overheating, and lack of sleep you'll need to eat, cool down, and sleep for the fatigue penalty to be removed).

Note: Develop (or steal) tables for overt and hidden features

I need to strike a good balance between hand placed features (which require some work) and random features, both overt and hidden (which in turn require work to develop as well). 

My sense is that somewhere between 50-75% of hexes should have some sort of hidden feature to encourage digging deeper. I also think that overt features should give hints of potential hidden features.

This is a problem for future me, but one I'll need to solve to my satisfaction.

This looks like the kind of feature where you roll a d6 and maybe get a boon or maybe something goes wrong.
(I'm not sure of the source)

House Rule: Variable Study Time

House Rule: When memorizing spells roll d6. That's the total level of spells the caster can memorize. If memorizing spells after a full day of rest (or rather a full day dedicated to studying) roll 2d6 for the total level of spells.

For example, if the caster rolled a 3 after a night's sleep they can choose to memorize three first level spells, one spell each of the first and second levels, or one third level spell.

Obviously a spellbook
(Jeff Easley)

My thinking is that this will counter the "adventuring day" concept a bit, potentially provide some meaningful choices under time pressure for higher level casters without impacting low level casters. This will obviously add days to get casters back to full readiness. This is intentional and will (hopefully) line up with other house rules and tweaks.

The Variable Study Time house rule is intended for OSE, but is applicable to most Vancian casting rule sets I imagine.

That's it. Simple and elegant, I think. More potentially hard choices to make while adventuring. Not tested in actual play yet, though.

...

I crunched the numbers a bit (see the table below), using the OSE Magic-User spell progression. Assuming average rolls (3.5 for active days, 7 for full days dedicated to studying).

Level 1 and 2 Magic-Users can expect to get all their spells back after a single study session on average. If they dedicate a full day to studying they can expect on average to get all their spells back as long as they're L4 or less; with the best roll even a L6 MU can fill all their spell slots.

At the high end of the scale, a L14 MU will on average need something like 21 days to fill all their spell slots if they're gallivanting about. If they buckle down and study all day long, it should take on average 11 days.

It also means to memorize high level spells, the MU is better off spending the day studying (the chances of getting a 6 is much less on 1d6 than on 2d6). This fits the fiction of powerful but anti-social spellcasters IMO.

Class Level	Active	Full Day	Spell Levels	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	0.3	0.14	1	1
2	0.6	0.29	2	2
3	1.1	0.57	4	2	1
4	1.7	0.86	6	2	2
5	2.6	1.29	9	2	2	1
6	3.4	1.71	12	2	2	2
7	4.9	2.43	17	3	2	2	1
8	6.6	3.29	23	3	3	2	2
9	8.9	4.43	31	3	3	3	2	1
10	11.4	5.71	40	3	3	3	3	2
11	13.4	6.71	47	4	3	3	3	2	1
12	17.1	8.57	60	4	4	3	3	3	2
13	19.7	9.86	69	4	4	4	3	3	3
14	20.9	10.43	73	4	4	4	4	3	3

This matches what I'm looking for in my game, but obviously it can be adjusted by changing the dice rolled, adding modifiers etc.

So what exactly is it you've got brewing there?

Messing around with preparing for a new hexcrawl campaign and I am - as you do - home brewing rules to match. The working title is Ragged Brew for the rules and... well, I haven't picked a name for the hexcrawl campaign yet.

Based on past experience, the hardest part is going to be to strike the right balance between sticking to the rules in the book (I'm using OSE as my base) and starting play on one hand, and home brewing everything over and over again to get it just right, but never getting to actually play.

Sometimes you end up thinking about playing the game more than actually playing it.
(Morris Meredith Williams)

Maybe this time will be different? We'll see. But I'll start by stating a few broad stroke things I'd like from my home brewing effort:

Crawl through both settled lands and wilderness. 

IMO there's plenty of potentially interesting shenanigans to get up to in "civilized" areas. Politics, romance, vengeance, social positioning and all the other things that generate conflict and stories often happen in the places where there are lots of people together.

Additionally, in RealLife (tm), most "unsettled" lands have people living in them (unless they are truly marginal or have been depopulated for whatever reasons), and I'm not super into the idea of just saying they're all monsters and thus can be killed. And that means I need the "civilized" rules for the wilderness as well.

Mainly, I think, it means that I'll have about an equal amount of tables for all population density hexes, and increasing the number of entries that deal with the doings of organized society as opposed to concentrating on monsters only.

Look at all these people. Surely some of them might do something foolish yet entertaining.
(Larry Elmore in the Mentzer Basic Set)

A sense of time, place, and social rituals

I've always liked how games like Pendragon and Ars Magica had a sense of the years rolling on, with gestures at the characters existing outside of "adventuring mode" and integrated into the world around them.

At this point, I think it means shifting some elements of gameplay time to longer units of measurement (like seasons) and also making hospitality a key part of traveling off the beaten path (few inns, less camping). If I do it right, I think it may help create more interesting time pressure choices as well as address a bit of the whole "adventuring day" type of gameplay.

I also would like it if the players (and characters) are happy when the random tables roll comes up "this place is famous for their local delicacy: spicy sausages" beyond purely as roleplaying fodder.

Wonder if they have any good food here?
(not sure of source, it might be the Witcher concept art?)

Make religion, gods, and spirits more mysterious

This is purely a taste thing - then again what home brew isn't - but I'm pulling out Clerics and Paladins. There are a bunch of aesthetic reasons behind it, but more practically it means I have to figure out how to handle game balance in the absence of convenient PPHM (person-portable healing magic). I'm looking at a bit of a mechanic on temporary hit points, and porting a bunch of the Cleric magic and abilities to other parts of the game.

Of course, it's OSR so "game balance" is not finely tuned or crucial, so I'm not stressing over it. But having/ not having PPHM and turning available is a default assumption with some consequence.

A king sacrificed to avert famine
(Midvinerblot by Carl Larsson)

...

No rules or tables or anything useful to other folks in this post. Rather it's a statement of intent and - hopefully - something that'll help me keep my eyes on the ball as I continue brewing. With a bit of luck something useful will come out of it eventually.