hexhog

hexhog.itch.ioWatchers of Voshod: Mörk Borg Edition by hexhogLift the curse of the vile Neckromancer! An OSR fantasy adventure for Mörk Borg

3 Apr 2025

Hello. I make TTRPG stuff. My newest adventure, Watchers of Voshod, is live on itch: hexhog.itch.io/watchers-of-....

So far The Rouse has it all: no quote marks for dialogue, indecipherable Britishisms, references I cannot make sense off, words I swear I never read before in my life, but it wouldn't be a Miéville otherwise. Makes you wanna eructate. There's also no plot but at page 67 I am only 4.8% in.

I'm having another run at Blades in the Dark, aka the book that put me off for a few years by referencing a basic action procedure "on page 230" or something.

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I am 100% aware that I am crawling into the niche of a niche of a niche with this view, given the traction all these hundreds of pages rulebook games have. Basically I am one mood dip away from reverting to just daydreaming and leaving my fellow men to their own games.

And yea, I have neither played Stonetop nor Blades, and not giving it 23 sessions across 2 years before voicing an opinion probably disqualifies me. Maybe they work beautifully "at the table". But I won't find out.

I'm having another run at Blades in the Dark, aka the book that put me off for a few years by referencing a basic action procedure "on page 230" or something.

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Maybe it's my early contact with Trophy and watching Jason Cordova GM where the confusion stems from. It is inconceivable to me that a player, instead of expressing delight when I tell them they slip and fall face first into a splayed open corpse, would start to lawyer out the make of their boots.

Worse yet is Stonetop. I was so excited, I was ready to dig in, but then I get a step by step flowchart lining out how to, well, talk, basically. I can't. I don't know who this is for. "Beginners"? Laughable. But then who?

I'm having another run at Blades in the Dark, aka the book that put me off for a few years by referencing a basic action procedure "on page 230" or something.

But I can already tell I won't get far, again. I am constantly confounded by the need of game creators to anally detail and categorize every player whim. Or rather, I understand why: to accommodate the exact kind of player that would put me off RPGs forever were they at my table. I think.

Hardly an original thought but there must be two kinds of players, those wanting to tell a story through the game and those who want to "win" in some fashion. And these I think you have to armor up against with rules for which 3 things influence the effect of your actions and shit.

vvitxcvlt.blot.imDogs - vvitxcvltI wrote another incident for Violence: Wet Dog Lodge. It’s in some sense a successor to Hell of Swans, but can be played as a standalone as well.

4 Sept

Slept on CAS but now I get where Dani Filth is coming from lyrically. Every Zothique story is like 3 COF songs smashed together. Absolutely glorious.

they know.

WOW! Another post, blot decided to fix syncing seconds before I mustered the resolve to vibe-code sorry assisted engineer my own blogging platform! Thanks blot! It's my Wet Dog Lodge design notes vvitxcvlt.blot.im/dogs.

hexhog.itch.ioWet Dog Lodge by hexhogAn incident for Violence

18 Aug

Back with a new Violence! Play to find out why the dogs are wet and what's up with poor Leda from A Hell of Swans!!! ps. Don't play or read if you are fond of dogs or whatever sorry!! hexhog.itch.io/wet-dog-lodge

15 Aug

Wet Dog Lodge, my new Violence incident, is text-complete. Since layout is trivial, I will mostly focus on finding a nice cover. Still fantasizing of having this or hellaswans illustrated and printed at some point. Maybe when I have a trilogy.

10 Aug

Swallow (2026). This gonna inspire my next Violence dungeon I swear I took this photo myself not AI.

vvitxcvlt.blot.imSwans - vvitxcvltI published a new adventure, A Hell of Swans, made for Luke Gearing’s Violence. I usually write some design notes directly on itch, but I since RPG

30 June

I wrote down some extended Swans design notes, mostly so that I will remember I did this all deliberately and it wasn't as much as a fluke as it will appear to me in the future. vvitxcvlt.blot.im/swans

25 June

"But how did you come up with this shit hexhog??" devlog

17 June

I've written a new adventure, this time for Gearing's Violence. Now yesterday a violence jam were announced for July so I have to sit on it till then I guess.

17 June

I think it's the best thing I've yet written. When I first read Violence I thought what are these weird ass combat rules. But then it dawned on me. And I could not have written this new thing without it, or for any other system.

17 June

After the strict mechanisms and motions I went through designing the Mythic Bastionland stuff I shifted into completely different gears. Freeform, literate, grounded. Sag River reads like a horror story, and this form I aspire to. Let's see if it's got any legs.

14 Mar

Read Sag River by Gearing today, following its mention in the Sorensen post. I can't believe this is free. I can't write. I can't anything. Also go Sorensen you are right everyone else wrong.

vvitxcvlt.blot.imConditions - vvitxcvltI have been thinking about ways to mechanically and narratively handle “conditions”. What is a condition? I would define it as a minor to

30 Nov 2025

Wrote about how conditions work in some games I know. vvitxcvlt.blot.im/conditions

16 Nov 2025

Joe Hill's "King Sorrow" has things going for it, but also contains some of the worst phrases in the history if literature.

16 Nov 2025

That an all-American girl thinks of "the dusky highway between nuts and asshole" when hearing the word "taint" spoken by a psychopath next to her on a crashing plane strains credibility, to say the least.

16 Nov 2025

"Who the hell is that?" the psycho says. "Heck not hell" she quips as the man Frank Heck enters, seconds before she stabs him in the throat.

14 Nov 2025

My skirmish system for #MythicBastionland is coming together nicely. I think it adds a simple but interesting dimension to warfare.

13 Nov 2025

Experimenting with a skirmish system for Mythic Bastionland that has slightly more crunch than the proposed warband combat rules in the book, but sticks to the general combat procedure.

11 Nov 2025

Do I buy Wolves Upon the Coast? Gearing's writing is just too strong. I fear it will forever put me off writing anything myself. And there is a negligible chance I will ever get it to the table.

vvitxcvlt.blot.imThe Captive (Ned Beauman writing as Kit Burgoyne, 2025) - vvitxcvltThe Beaumanian comical turns of phrase (“capsaicin dervish”) are at every turn smothered by ultra-violence, gore and tragedy. This was too much

9 Nov 2025

Only mildly entertained by the new Beauman, sadly. vvitxcvlt.blot.im/the-captive-...

vvitxcvlt.blot.imThe supporting cast - vvitxcvltEver since reading Sam Sorensen’s post on “Legwork” I am gripped by the idea of providing a wealth of NPCs for every adventure or game I make. I am

26 Sept 2025

I wrote about NPC design on my blog. That's it, that's the update. vvitxcvlt.blot.im/the-supporti...

26 June 2025

Affinity template for #mythicbastionland sites. Far too much struggle. The location icons do not properly snap to the index numbers; hate the look of the triangle sites; the routes are styles, but no idea how to make that work for closed routes except with an extra crossbar. It will do.

Since I find myself unable to use even excellent, obviously superior prior work, I decided to cook my own system for hex map drawing using Affinity Publisher. #mythicbastionland

This is a ruin in a coniferous forest that is also a Curse location (the scribles along the border). The main terrain tile is the ruin, the trees to the left and right are a transparent overlay tile, as is the Curse. In this way, I can create landmarks in a variety of terrains.

Now is the time to not spend another 2 weeks on questionable improvements, but one thing I learned from the playtest is that having the index numbers (d6 and d12) of Myths at hand is a good idea, so I adapted the Myth tiles a little (these are not the actual numbers for this Myth).

Since I find myself unable to use even excellent, obviously superior prior work, I decided to cook my own system for hex map drawing using Affinity Publisher. #mythicbastionland

I think the overall readability could be improved a bit by making non-navigable (water) tiles a more distinct. I also noticed that on pro maps, like Dyson Logos', mountain regions tend towards stronger line strengths.

I agonized a while over how to handle rivers. Make connectable tiles? But then each river tile also has a terrain type: rivers cutting through gorges, or meandering over grassland. This would have blown up the number of required tiles considerably.

Since I find myself unable to use even excellent, obviously superior prior work, I decided to cook my own system for hex map drawing using Affinity Publisher. #mythicbastionland

Even though my illustration skills are badly lacking, the final result is quite pleasing to me. The terrain illustrations are evocative of a general landscape type, but still leave enough rule for the imagination, following the "map is not the territory" idea.

When Chris McDowall himself played with his HexKit map, I noticed he had a hard time finding the Myths he rolled for, so I made sure those tiles are distinct. It was a bit difficult not to overload the map with line strengths, especially since every tile can have a barrier.

Since I find myself unable to use even excellent, obviously superior prior work, I decided to cook my own system for hex map drawing using Affinity Publisher. #mythicbastionland

I considered hand-drawing, but in Mythic Bastionland, you need separate maps for the players and GM, and this makes fully handdrawn maps a tough proposition. Affinity it was.

My design goals were high readability, two-color maps with a layer system that allowed for easy conversion between player- and GM-facing maps. No larger filled-in areas so as to be printer friendly. And a grid system that supports snapping of map tiles.

Since I find myself unable to use even excellent, obviously superior prior work, I decided to cook my own system for hex map drawing using Affinity Publisher. #mythicbastionland

cone.itch.ioHex Kit by Cone Of Negative EnergyHex Mapping tool for table top RPGs

I tried HexKit (cone.itch.io/hex-kit), which is certainly an excellent tool, but the default tiles did not appeal to me, and many of the alternatives, including the fabulous Isle of Lore tiles (stevencolling.itch.io/isle-of-lore...) I found a bit too cute and quite unsuitable for printing.

I held off until I had the physical book, so yesterday I ran a mini-playtest of #mythicbastionland and was not surprised to find that this game has endless potential. 3 hexes and some spark table rolls in and the story bloomed into all directions.

vvitxcvlt.blot.imWillowby Hall and manor dungeons - vvitxcvltI got to play The Waking of Willowby Hall recently. For reasons outside of the module’s content, it was not a great experience. Still, I have some

28 Apr 2025

The Waking of Willowby Hall was not by cup of tea for a variety of reasons, some of which have merit from a design perspective. I guess. vvitxcvlt.blot.im/willowby-hal...

vvitxcvlt.blot.imDeep Carbon Observations - vvitxcvltI finally managed to read Deep Carbon Observatory, Patrick Stewart’s much-lauded adventure module. Here are some loose observations about the text.

21 Apr 2025

Some thoughts about Deep Carbon Observatory. A classic for a reason. vvitxcvlt.blot.im/deep-carbon-...