One of the enduring thought experiments
of this blog has been the pointcrawl, a concept which has passed into
my brain by way of point-to-point wargames and Zork. Though I pose it
as an alternative to hexcrawling in truth at the table for me it's
more of a supplement, filling in and enhancing certain ways of
running large spaces (hey there's probably a post in there). This is the second edition of my own-going annotated index project for the blog.
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Pointcrawling
The meditation that kicked off the
ongoing thread. An introduction and counter-position to hexcrawling.
My first concrete attempt to adapt the
pointcrawl concept to something other than wilderness. The post
presents the known areas of Planescape's Sigil as a single pointcrawl
map. This experiment helped me gel further non-hypothetical
explorations in using pointcrawls to run undercities, megadungeons
and city ruins.
An attempt to break down the horizontal
hugeness of an undercity into a manageable form. Should be read in
conjunction with this post.
In which I admit to having a difficulty
in running city ruins and start to wrap my brain about how to do so.
The comments are interesting and not surprisingly start pointing to
pointcrawls.
Real needs in the Hill Cantons
campaigns lead me to put into practice the stuff above. Some methods
and guidelines for putting it all into practice.
Second part to the above post with a
crowdsourced unique structures table and other practical bits.
Not only are undercities and
megadungeons monsters of the horizontal dimension they can often
become quite complicated with vertical connections. Here is an
attempt to untangle that (and an experiment that only half-worked at
the table).
An example of how I use hexcrawl and
pointcrawl maps in tandem, in this case how I often break out the
contents of a single hex into a small area pointcrawl.
Win a Wargame Contest Results
Despite the unlikely title relevant as concrete examples of how to describe and present a point on a pointcrawl.
Win a Wargame Contest Results
Despite the unlikely title relevant as concrete examples of how to describe and present a point on a pointcrawl.
these pointcrawl posts are excellent. even if one does want to use more detailed maps, the abstract pointcrawl map is a natural, early stage in the development of a less abstract map.
ReplyDeleteas a player many years ago, i grew frustrated with trying to make a detailed, square by square on graph paper map of dungeons. i drew a box. wrote room details in the box. drew lines from the box to other boxes that represented other rooms or areas. that's all you really need to play and find your way around.
Nice articles! The link in "Pointcrawling Undercities" doesn't work. The URL http://hillcantons.blogspot.de/2012/05/designing-undercities-giant.html has a point at the end.
ReplyDeleteBreaking of Forstor Nagar is, essentially, a point crawl, but effectively a linear one.
ReplyDeleteThere's an error with the second link for Pointcrawling Undercities. It ends with ".html." instead of ".html".
ReplyDeleteHi Chris!
ReplyDeleteI want to translate your point-crawl articles to Russian for my friends and publish this translations in my blog - http://pnprpg.ru
What do you think about?
Go for it!
DeleteYehay!
DeleteOk, it's time to translate. ^_^