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II: Navigation as Context to Narrative through the Imagined World

August 1, 2023

What is this:

An examination of my general thoughts on a subject, combined as a bit of a development log for a project I had been working on as of late; Beyond the Pines - a setting zine for Frontier Scum. In this outing I puzzle through the natures of various navigational methods to allow for different scales of movement within the imagined world.

Notion:

If random encounters represent the natural state of the imagined world and the player characters represent then intrusion upon that natural world, there must be a more correct way to properly align these facts to produce their intercession. Navigation must allow for the natural facilitation of these events by providing a sense of place within the imagined world which exists beyond the moment of the encounter rolled.

If this is to occur, navigation must provide the following:

  1. Immediate ease of use, understandable to all present without added reference.
  2. Means to discover ways to lessen the time/resource/energy sink of navigation.
  3. Means to make navigation work to their own desires.
  4. Ease of designating facts upon the fly.

Thus, to facilitate random events we must attend to navigation; and navigation must be both granular and simple at the same time.

Elaboration:

I have generally found navigation takes a few forms within the medium; chiefly in the forms of hex-crawl navigation and point-crawl navigation. In truth, each form feeds into another; a hex map is akin to a room map with easily identified points of entrance/egress; a point-crawl is just as limiting as being in a corridor which can go in two directions or in a valley blocked on multiple borders by impassable terrain.

For my purposes of establishing a sense of narrative scale in the imagined world, my hope is to establish a tiered set of protocols. One hex-crawls until they can point-crawl. One wanders and meanders through a location until they find the right paths, roads, side-streets and shortcuts to get where they need to go more quickly. Much like how when I first moved to Brooklyn I’d take an inconvenient route to get about, but now six years in I know what ways to maneuver quickly and to achieve additional daily goals.

Thus, to make this novel rather than merely ‘obvious’ we must establish our protocols. Using as reference The hexcrawl Toolbox (which I edited on), I find the concept of a day in the field taking place over three Watches (morning, afternoon, and evening) to be useful for setting things up. It takes two Watches to cross a hex fully; assuming no further obstacles would make navigation more difficult; and the third ‘free’ watch is spent on gathering supplies, exploring/discovering points of interest, or otherwise getting into trouble.

 

Fig 1. Murkhill Holler

This effectively makes an adventuring day while hex-crawling a bumbling affair of wandering for 12 hours (potentially longer), with 6 hours spent in various minor tasks (setting up camp, cooking, etc), and 6 hours spent sleeping. This would not be an ideal circumstance for most people, let alone those exploring unkind and unknown wildernesses; but this is an acceptable time-table if hex-crawling is meant to be the baseline protocol of exploration.

Thus for the purposes of Beyond the Pines, hexploration shall run on the same protocols. Weather will determine added mechanized harm and misery, such as suffering from potential fever if you opt to bumble through the hollers for 12 hours in the rain; but it will not change the time expenditure itself. You know you are hard spending 12 hours to get through a hex within a holler region, and thus you will spend at least 36 hours within a singular region. Knowing this as a rule, players can opt to avoid broader civilization (save for happenstance) and keep to wandering through the backwoods. Or they might bumble upon a point of interest, and then by said happenstance, reorient themselves to take quicker paths.

To better provide example, we will be elaborating on Murkhill Holler (posted above) and randomly generating points of interest from listings provided both in the “Places Near-and-About Murkhill” section, and the general appendix “Places Near-and-About Holler Country” which exists to help flesh-out randomly generated locations spoken of in the “Rumormonger” appendix. These, I view, as important support structures to ensure ease of rolling up interesting locales without too much prep beforehand.

Fig 2. Generated Points of Interest

As provided in the Murkhill Holler section, the holler seat sits in the northernmost hex and is connected by a train heading north westerly out of holler country and through miserable mires until it eventually reconnects with the Deadman’s Line and the ‘proper world’ of the Lost Frontier. As such, we do not need an additional point of interest for this hex.

From thereon I expect one or two points of interest proper will be more than sufficient to encourage discovery, exploration, and give context for random encounters which occur within the holler. This leaves room for placing emergent locations mentioned by way of the “Rumormonger” appendix lists, while also keeping things to general rolls on the “Places Near-and-About Murkhill” listing. Applied to the hex map proper, it looks (roughly) like this. With lines connecting these Points of Interest to allow for point-crawling navigation and a broader sense of spatial relationships for assisting in determining the amount of time going from point to point might take when it comes to mechanizing point-crawling.

Fig 3. Spatial Relations of Generated Points of Interest in Murkhill Holler

Frontier Scum, by its core rulings, includes implications of point-crawling with its map of the Lost Frontier. Regions exist in relation to one another by way of a number of dX+Y days of travel from point to point on horseback, with times doubled when on foot and quartered by train. As we are running on the above noted protocol of it taking 12 hours to cross a hex minimum, travel from point to point should take no more than 12 hours at the worst of times. If there is a road, path, trail, or other form of crossing, that should factor into dice notation.

Thus, with all of this in mind, the framework for Murkhill Holler, as generated, would appear as follows:

Fig 4. Names for Points of Interest and Routes within Murkhill Holler

For use at the table rather than prep work, it is as simple as allowing the players, once in Murkhill, to see a road and choose to follow it (and then roll up the name of the roads), or for them to find a point of interest and then determine how near it connects to another point of interest. Which in turn factors into navigation times. Without this knowledge of these connections it would take 12 hours to meander from Murkhill down to Brankner Ranch, one hex below it. Taking the Capstone Road should lessen that immensely.

By knowing the road, it is perhaps d6+2 Hours, or maybe d12 hours; with a random encounter occurring somewhere on the Capstone Road - though the frequency of random encounters with relation to navigation and time frequencies should still be determined

Operating from the mindset of OSR-type play, once per day an encounter seems fair enough; albeit that feels potentially too uniform. For the purposes of figuring out that frequency in an ad hoc way right here and now, I will consider the following:

  1. When hex-crawling, a random encounter occurs every 2 Watches (every 12 hours), as well as when the player characters enter a Point of Interest or transition into a new hex.
  1. When point-crawling, a random encounter occurs when transitioning into a new hex or entering a Point of Interest.
  1. If an encounter feels like it will make more sense in the wilderness than at a point of interest, it should occur on the road prior to arriving at a point of interest. This feels akin to a referee playing it by ear, but it seems an easy circumstance to allow for fiat upon.

All of this considered then, we can look upon a fully charted out Murkhill Holler like this example; representing a Murkhill Holler that has been well and thoroughly explored by the players before they have moved onward and to elsewhere.

Fig 5. Murkhill Holler as a defined space within the imagined world.

This all exists prior to factoring in that all the listed holler regions possess two important pieces of information in their entries; “Getting In & Out” and “The Path.” The first of which accounts for potential peril when exiting or entering the region, which in the case of Murkhill is that wandering over the muleskinner trails to the southern holler regions are made difficult in the rain due to potential mudslides. The second entry, “The Path” speaks to a hidden route which eases up travel time further, which for Murkhill Holler is a path known as The Wapperman Path, which leads south and cuts travel time by a further half if taken.

Now, for sake of considering it in execution; some example events on the route from Murkhill to Rocklend & Sons Watermill, taking the Capstone Road to Brankner Ranch and then Wickett’s Winding down to the mill. These events are drawn from the Random Events Throughout the Hollers and the Murkhill Holler random encounters table.

Within Murkhill (Point of Interest): The players come across 5 Bog War Veterans, feeling the ache in their bones and sighing (Murkhill Holler random encounter table.)

It is Morning (6:00 AM) and it is humid.

On the Capstone Road (Exiting hex): The players stumble upon 3 Boars, each albinistic, pale. Striking to look at. Strange to look at. They are unbothered by humanity, oddly so (Random Events Throughout the Hollers random encounter table.)

This event occurs 6 hours into the journey, making it Midday (12:00 PM.)

Near Brackner Ranch (Point of Interest): Weather event was rolled. The day is currently humid, and as a result of this it immediately becomes worse. The humidity becomes as thick as chowder and unpleasant to move through; everything is obscured in devouring fog. The players have a chance to get lost if they aren’t lucky, and the weather may be way worse tomorrow. (Random Events Throughout the Hollers random encounter table, Humid Events random event table.)

This event occurs 3 hours after the last event, though it is still Midday (3:00 PM.)

On Wickett’s Winding (Exiting hex): The players encounter 2 Wanderers, vagrants who are singing loudly as they go on their way and unwilling to admit they are lost, belligerently so (Random Events Throughout the Hollers random encounter table.) This event occurs 5 hours after the last event, making it Evening (8:00 PM.)

At this point it has been 18 hours of travel, albeit the players have traveled through 2 hexes (usually 24 hours) by now. They opt to make camp. For the following day, weather is rolled with a -2 penalty incurred by the Weather event near Brackner Ranch. It will be Storming.

The players wake up in the Morning (6:00 AM) and meander through the stormy weather, getting soaked and miserable due to not packing raincoats.  

Near Rocklend & Sons Watermill (Point of Interest): The players encounter 4 Murkhill Scum, looking for an easy mark to scam or mug (Murkhill Holler random encounter table.)

This event occurs 5 hours after setting out, and it is still Morning (11:00 AM) when they arrive.

Endnotes:

Explaining how to place navigation within the context of random events so as to make them convey a sense of narrative scale in the imagined world feels complex when one gets into the reeds of it; but it feels also important to provide an understanding for the why and how of the dice being rolled. It is intended for use in play rather than purely for prep-work, my usual forte.

Going from hex-crawling to point-crawling feels like a novel, albeit obvious, transition; though it is unclear if further protocols to determine movement speeds would prove useful. Making roads/routes/crossings function as d6 hours between points is an easy ruling to use ad hoc; but perhaps it is overly simple for finalized use. That noted, making different granularities of road types feels a violation of the first point in this design process - it would require added reference if a “road” means a d3 hours while a “trail” means a d6 hours. There might be something useful to consider, but this remains a discovery phase. To break the first point will risk the second and compromise the third.

Protocols for determining if a location should be a “natural” or a “locale” do not currently exist, though perhaps they should; even if it is just a matter of a 50-50 spread. As it stands, designating facts (i.e. location names, road/crossing names) remains easy and the fourth point is fulfilled for my desires.

Concessions:

In the current version of these listing tables, the result to roll on the Local Encounter table is part of the overall d100 matrix of the Random Events Throughout the Hollers random encounter table. If one is in the seat of the Holler, i.e. Murkhill, it makes sense to roll this regardless of protocols. That it was allowed to be rolled upon again for the event near Rocklend & Sons Watermill was useful; but it should be more easy to roll upon for results.

This is additionally important as encounters for the likes of Bolton Holler may be less appropriate for Bolton as the holler seat township.

I may also need to expand the “Places Near-and-About” listings for the various Holler Regions to be d12s rather than d10s, as I ran out of names for routes on the general Murkhill list and was made to move on to the general “Places Near-and-About” appendix. Which is what that appendix is for, but I can see how this could be a stumbling point in practice.

Much to think upon, much more to create. Such is bloat, but such is the desire for a more perfect machine. Automation via the likes of perchance, will also certainly allow for this to be more quickly and immediately useful in play.

To put the long thing short:

Hex-crawling alone does not benefit my designs for Beyond the Pines, but neither does simply point-crawling; I think the choice to make use of either/both belongs in the hands of the players and must have purpose within the narrative of the world. I think allowing narrative scale via navigation grants context to random encounters and better allows them to exist as the natural state of an imagined world.

And sometimes, explaining why and how one rolls the dice takes a lot more diagrams and word count than one would anticipate.