Gronan! Clean out your darn PM backlog!

A question mainly for Gronan and Chirine ba kal. But if anyone else has some ideas feel free to chip in if happens to know the answers. Helping out someone with a little research into the genesis of the random dungeon gen system. Far as we can determine Gary's article in 75 was the very first of its kind? I backtracked SPI and Avalon Hill and didnt see anything predating this in board game format.

1: What parts of Outdoor survival was used with early D&D? Just the map? Anything else?

2: Did early Tekumel have any random tunnel gen systems?

3: Anyone know what was the inspiration for the creation of the random dungeon gen system? Seems like Outdoor survival had one of the first random wilderness encounter rules. Way back in 73. But thats a different animal. Bunnies & Burrows and Superhero 2044 are two of the earliest RPGs with random gen systems of some sort. 2044s is pretty rudamentary and more like just an encounter gen system.

Thank you both for any insights into this.

Well, if I remember right the article in Strategic Review was 'Solo Dungeon Adventures'.  Its primary purpose was not random dungeon creation, but to allow solitaire play.

All we used from Outdoor Survival was the map.

EPT didn't have a random underworld generator, I'm not sure if Phil ever wrote one later.

Book III of OD&D has the rules for using the Outdoor Survival Map (page 15). Which I applied and created this.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2014[/ATTACH]
Full Size Map

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2015[/ATTACH]

The diamonds indicate lairs (or liars your pick).

It's a shame the whole idea behind the super-detailed outdoor hex crawl hasn't gotten more love. A really granular outdoor map plus a page or two of rules for movement, exhaustion, food and water, etc. can be a fresh take on the dungeon crawl, with all sorts of new opportunities for terrain, traps, encounters, environmental challenges, etc. Unfortunately, the idea seems to have withered on the vine and most overland travel gets treated in a very vague way.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1013573It's a shame the whole idea behind the super-detailed outdoor hex crawl hasn't gotten more love. A really granular outdoor map plus a page or two of rules for movement, exhaustion, food and water, etc. can be a fresh take on the dungeon crawl, with all sorts of new opportunities for terrain, traps, encounters, environmental challenges, etc. Unfortunately, the idea seems to have withered on the vine and most overland travel gets treated in a very vague way.

That's because it's: 1) a LOT of work, and 2) hard to make interesting. How exactly do you narrate that sort of thing? And each day? Often it turns out to just be repeating the same thing over and over.

GM: "You travel for the day. It is night."
Players: "OK, we make camp, mark off rations..."

...repeat five days in a row.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1013573It's a shame the whole idea behind the super-detailed outdoor hex crawl hasn't gotten more love. A really granular outdoor map plus a page or two of rules for movement, exhaustion, food and water, etc. can be a fresh take on the dungeon crawl, with all sorts of new opportunities for terrain, traps, encounters, environmental challenges, etc. Unfortunately, the idea seems to have withered on the vine and most overland travel gets treated in a very vague way.

I bet if you had a computer assistant to help with that, it would be a hoot.  

(Tosses that down, lit.  Runs for the exit.)

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1013575That's because it's: 1) a LOT of work, and 2) hard to make interesting. How exactly do you narrate that sort of thing? And each day? Often it turns out to just be repeating the same thing over and over.

GM: "You travel for the day. It is night."
Players: "OK, we make camp, mark off rations..."

...repeat five days in a row.

I think it's less the work, and more that it is hard to make environmental challenges interesting, such as food, fatigue, exposure, terrain, etc.  However, dungeon adventures also often ignore environmental challenges, and are more a series of point to point interconnected encounters and options for movement with encounters, plots, factions and so on.  I remember long ago, our wilderness adventures being much the same, except with trails and roads rather than dungeon corridors. It works great. X1 Isle of Dread is kind of a case in point. In our case, Larsedangly is right, we dropped that style of wilderness play long ago and have not revisited, I'm not sure exactly why.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1013577I bet if you had a computer assistant to help with that, it would be a hoot.  

(Tosses that down, lit.  Runs for the exit.)

That's been on my mind for like 2 years. I really need better examples of how this "mode" of the old-school games were handled by the GMs and PCs before I can code something for it. This thread looks promising.

So, here's the first thing that I have re-examined that would make this "mode" work better: Overland Random Encounter checks

The results of the Overland RE check ARE NOT meant to simply be "sprung" on the PC group. Instead, they should be though of as procedurally generated parts of the world that are NOW important because the PCs are close enough to interact with them.

First, the encounter should be rolled and the GM determine if it is a "Lair" encounter or a "Party" encounter.

"Lair" encounters are permanent additions to the hex-map, "power centers" for the GM to use as bases for the "new faction".

"Party" encounters are either new members of an existing faction, or independent "micro-factions".

Either way, the GM should not assume that the players are going to fight, talk, or even SEE the entity rolled up. What the GM should do is place the new "entity" in the appropriate context of where the party is traveling. If it's a Dragon rolled up without a Lair, then the PCs encounter signs of it's kills, hear about direct threats of extortion it has made to the town in the hex, learn of animals or people taken by the dragon from this hex, etc.

It's NOT a Final Fantasy style "fight this - you either win and continue or lose and die" Random Encounter. Why? Because those have no meaning outside of the initial fight scene. These encounters should have a persistent presence in the game world, and cause further problems for the locals if the PC party decides not to "clear" the encounter off the map.

I think the hex-map based play starts to make a lot more sense with this context, especially the "take and clear hexes so you can claim one and start building a fortification" style of play - where the PC party also has to manage troops and resources at home being threatened by these "procedurally generated factions" while they plan that next expedition to the dungeon. The act of traveling through the non-cleared hexes to the dungeon location and back to "home base" serves to generate more factions or parties on the map. Reaction rolls set their initiative "attitude" towards the players, and it is up to the PC party to "politic" their way from there.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1013575That's because it's: 1) a LOT of work, and 2) hard to make interesting. How exactly do you narrate that sort of thing? And each day? Often it turns out to just be repeating the same thing over and over.

GM: "You travel for the day. It is night."
Players: "OK, we make camp, mark off rations..."

...repeat five days in a row.

I find it works well when I have a detailed map & preferably some tables to roll on.
But most travel is on roads & not very interesting. The best hexcrawl I saw recently was a high level barbarian king traveling incognito across rough country, off the beaten track. Lots of opportunity for terrain, weather & encounters.

Quote from: Telarus;1013582That's been on my mind for like 2 years. I really need better examples of how this "mode" of the old-school games were handled by the GMs and PCs before I can code something for it. This thread looks promising.

Drat!  I was almost to the door, too. Now you've got me thinking how to write a GM assistant to manage the bookkeeping on that, but allow the GM to retain all the decisions.  I guess I deserved that.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1013575That's because it's: 1) a LOT of work, and 2) hard to make interesting. How exactly do you narrate that sort of thing? And each day? Often it turns out to just be repeating the same thing over and over.

GM: "You travel for the day. It is night."
Players: "OK, we make camp, mark off rations..."

...repeat five days in a row.

I think that is a perfect illustration of the sort of failure of imagination that holds people back. Your post could have been written about dungeons by changing one or two words, and the ecosystem of detailed dungeons and games about exploring them has to make up 90 % of the hobby.  A treatment of outdoor environments that works in this way is totally doable, and would be awesome.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1013545All we used from Outdoor Survival was the map.

I didn't play with Gary or Dave, but all my group used from Outdoor Survival in those days was the map. This was mostly in the early days when players would go from the town to the dungeon and back, so that we could have wilderness encounters along the way. We basically built our first "world" around the region covered in the OS map, then eventually started drawing our own world maps as characters started to expand their radius of wandering.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1013575That's because it's: 1) a LOT of work, and 2) hard to make interesting. How exactly do you narrate that sort of thing? And each day? Often it turns out to just be repeating the same thing over and over.

GM: "You travel for the day. It is night."
Players: "OK, we make camp, mark off rations..."

...repeat five days in a row.

In Campaign Cartographer, hex maps aren't that hard to make.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1013573It's a shame the whole idea behind the super-detailed outdoor hex crawl hasn't gotten more love. A really granular outdoor map plus a page or two of rules for movement, exhaustion, food and water, etc. can be a fresh take on the dungeon crawl, with all sorts of new opportunities for terrain, traps, encounters, environmental challenges, etc. Unfortunately, the idea seems to have withered on the vine and most overland travel gets treated in a very vague way.

Depends. Alot of space themed RPGs are essentially outdoor hex crawls. Occasionally with some spaceship exploration. some post apoc RPGs as well. Alot of walking the wastelands and ruins.

Dragon Storm as I've noted before has no dungeons. It is 99% hex crawl with an occasional passing through some ruins which arent mapped out. Managing your food and water is very important.

Id say the idea is very alive and well. Same with city-centric campaigns. Its just that there is alot of dungroncrawlers.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1013587Drat!  I was almost to the door, too. Now you've got me thinking how to write a GM assistant to manage the bookkeeping on that, but allow the GM to retain all the decisions.  I guess I deserved that.

At least two people have automated the random wilderness gen system from AD&D, one even went the extra step and coded the habitation rules in to seed the area with towns and ruins. Others have made their own.