Back in 2012, I was chatting with a guy online who claimed that, by the year 2017, computer games would exist which would allow GMs to create off-the-cuff in real-time just like they can currently improvise at the gaming table.

And I said, “Bullshit,” for what is probably obvious reasons to most of you, but nevertheless baffle people who seem to think that the special effects in MCU movies are created by someone saying, “Show Captain America punching Thanos with Thor’s hammer” and then thirty seconds later having a fully rendered shot pop out of the computer.

(Short version: That’s not how that works. And the difficulty of generating a fully interactive version of the scene properly rigged and optimized for a computer game engine would be at least an order of magnitude higher, probably more.)

In the process of calling bullshit, however, I ended up creating an example of off-the-cuff design in a tabletop RPG that would be virtually impossible to replicate in a computer game engine even with procedural content generators vastly superior to anything we have available to us today. (And even moreso in 2012 or 2017.)

It was nothing particularly spectacular, but there were a few touches of the fantastical that I think are rather evocative and worth sharing, and so I did that here on the Alexandrian back in 2014.

But here’s the thing: We’re definitely closer to that future now than we were in 2012 or 2014.

(I mean, that’s tautological. But you know what I mean.)

So I thought it might be fun to take the descriptions from the Valley of the Sapphire Waves and see what images are conjured forth by Midjourney.

My methodology here is relatively simple: I input a prompt using more or less the words from the original write-up of the Valley. Midjourney will then generate four images, and I’ll select whichever one I think is best. (“Best,” of course, is subjective, but it will be some combination of accurate, evocative, beautiful, and useful. Basically, it will be the image I would select if I was looking for a visual handout to use while GMing.)

I don’t know what the results will be. (I suspect “surprisingly good, but not great,” but we’ll see.) And, of course, no matter how immaculate the result is, we’ll still be miles away from running a game for my friends in a computer game engine and getting the computer to pop out this entire valley (or even just these specific locations) in a seamlessly playable form in the less than five minutes it took me to originally improvise for table use.

VALLEY OF THE SAPPHIRE WAVES

The Valley of the Sapphire Waves is filled with rolling fields of vibrant blue grass. Anyone standing in the waters of the valley will perceive the sun as eclipsed because Helios mourns the loss of his first wife (the Ur-Goddess of the Rivers, see hex 1).

HEX 1

The Falls of the Ur-Goddess. The 300 foot tall waterfall at the end of the valley flows up because it is the place where the Ur-Goddess of the Rivers was slain millennia ago.

HEX 2

Obelisk of Moonstone. Raised as a holy site by the Heresy Cult of the Ur-Goddess. The moonstone will heal anyone touching it at night, but under the rays of the sun it is cursed. (Anyone touching it suffers as per a bestow curse spell.)

HEX 3

The Stirge Mires. 1 in 3 chance of encounteing 1-6 stirges.

HEX 4

Goblin Moonstone Scavengers. Small tribe of goblins scavenging the moonstones scattered in rocky crevasses here.

HEX 5

Vale of the Dryad. This forestland is protected by a dryad whose spirit is bound to a treant. All the squirrels here can talk, many spontaneously forming acting troupes performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

HEX 6

Graveyard of the Moonstone Cults. 1 in 3 chance per turn of encountering 1-3 wights.

HEX 7

Medusa’s Vale. A medusa makes her home in the Sinkhole of Statuary.

HEX 8

Sphinx Guardians. Once a great tribe of sphinxes guarded the entrance to the valley (they were placed there by Helios), but their numbers are depleted. 1 in 3 chance of encountering a sphinx, which 75% of the time will be an undead skeleton. Remaining sphinxes will ask sun-oriented riddles before attacking.

POST MORTEM

I’m not entirely certain Midjourney knows what a sphinx is. (Or, at the very least, “sphinx skeleton” leaves it in a tizzy.)

The most accurate image is probably of the squirrels performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (The Falls of the Ur-Goddess aren’t bad, but they’re definitely not flowing upwards.)

I like Helios rising to eclipse the sun, but for me the most compelling image is probably of the Medusa’s sinkhole. Ironically, this is also (with the possible exception of the undead sphinxes) the most inaccurate of the images. But I am deeply intrigued by the creatures crawling around her.

From a practical standpoint, the whole process of generating images took me forty-five minutes to complete. So we’ve obviously still got a long way to go here.

It’ll be interesting to see what things look like if we check back in on this in another decade. (Or three.)

When running a hexcrawl, the easiest option is to use a single random encounter table that applies to the entire hexcrawl. No matter the hex or circumstance, if an encounter is indicated you simply roll on your one-and-only encounter table and you’re good to go.

But it can also be well worth your efforts to prep and use specialized encounter tables. For example, you might have different encounter tables based on:

• Terrain type (forest encounters vs. mountain encounters)
• Type of travel (road encounters vs. river encounters vs. wilderness encounters)
• Time of day (night encounters vs. day encounters)
• Regional encounters (using different tables for the Old Forest vs. the Azure Fields)

These categories can also overlap with each other (or not overlap with each other) depending on how your classify your world. For example, you might have a Road Encounters table that is used in both the Old Forest and the Azure Fields, as long as the PCs are on a road. On the other hand, you might also have both an Old Forest Encounters table and an Old Forest Road Encounters table, distinct from the Azure Fields Encounters table (or tables).

WHY SPECIALIZED TABLES?

Specialized tables, as noted, increase the amount of work required to prep them and the complexity of using the tables at your table. So why bother?

Primarily, using multiple tables allow you to be more precise in describing your world.

• Wyverns only live in the mountains, so logically they should only be encountered there.
• A river-specific table would allow you to key boat-related encounters that would obviously be inappropriate on the King’s Highway.
• The shadow hounds only come out at night.
• Goblins infest the Old Forest, but fear to challenge the blue rocs of the Azure Fields.

And so forth.

This kind of detail and, crucially, distinction isn’t just about taking your worldbuilding to the next level. (Although it is.) It also creates a dynamic environment in which the players can make meaningful choices: Do you risk encountering shadow hounds by traveling at night? The risks of the Old Forest are different from the Azure Fields, where are you going to explore? And so forth.

Playtest Tip: The corollary here is that the PCs should be able to learn the details of your encounter tables. Not only can you use your encounter tables to seed your rumor tables (e.g., “Old Pete tells you that the shadow hounds only come out at night”), you can also tap them for background events or topics of conversation when NPCs are making chit-chat.

ADVANCED RULE: VARY ENCOUNTER CHANCE

You can vary the chance of having an encounter in the same way that you can vary the encounter tables you’re rolling on. If you choose to do this, I recommend simply writing the encounter chance at the top of each encounter table for easy reference.

Design Tip: One potential drawback of varying encounter chance is that it becomes difficult to pre-roll encounters, since you can’t always be sure exactly where the PCs will be for the next encounter check(s). On the other hand, it’s a very effective way of making some regions of your campaign world more dangerous than others.

ALTERNATIVE: CHECK ALL APPLICABLE TABLES

If you care about multiple encounter factors — e.g., both region and travel type — an alternative to prepping every possible combination of factors — e.g., having both an Old Forest Road Encounters table and an Azure Fields Road Encounters table — is to make an encounter check for each applicable table.

In other words, if you’re in the Old Forest and you’re traveling on the road, then you’d roll on both the Old Forest Encounters table and the Road Encounters table. On the other hand, if you’re in the Old Forest and you’re traveling along the river, then you’d roll on both the Old Forest Encounters table and the River Encounters table.

This can obviously increase the likelihood of an encounter, so another option is to check for an encounter and then randomly determine which applicable encounter table to roll on. (For example, roll 1d6. On 1-4 check the region encounter table; on 5-6 check the method of travel encounter table.)

On the other hand, checking multiple tables can be a great way of generating simultaneous encounters, allowing you to combine them in myriad ways (as described in Part 5: Encounters).

DESIGN NOTE: SINGLE HEX ENCOUNTER TABLES

Once you start designing region-based encounter tables into your hexcrawls, a common trap is to get a little too specific. While you certainly can drill your specialized encounter tables down to a specific hex (or perhaps a few hexes), you’ll almost never want to do this because the value-to-prep ratio isn’t great.

For example, imagine that you create six hex-specific random encounters. Well… how many times are the PCs likely to have a random encounter in that specific hex? And are those random encounters really so specific to that hex that they couldn’t be included in a larger regional table?

If the answer to that last question is, “No,” then the most likely reason is because the encounters are associated to a location within the hex (e.g., there’s a specific troll who sometimes charges a toll on this specific bridge). But an encounter that’s so tightly associated with a specific location is just a detail of the location, not a random encounter.

There can easily be exceptions to this. For example, maybe only in this specific hex will one encounter the weird abominations created by the genetic magic Alburturan, which have escaped or been set loose near his tower. It can totally make sense to have an Alburturan Abominations table that only applies in this very specific area. (And maybe you could find some other use for that table in the tower itself, thereby increasing its prep value?)

The point is that, if you’re tempted to do this, double check to make sure it’s really necessary.

Another option to consider is that special features like Alburturan’s abominations might be hex features separate from the random encounter system. (You can find another example of this in the original 1974 edition of D&D, which included a separate check to determine whether or not the owner of a stronghold will “ride forth” to meet any PCs passing through the stronghold’s hex.)

DESIGN NOTE: FOLLOW YOUR PLAYERS

To return to the beginning, the easiest way to handle random encounters in your hexcrawl with a single encounter table.

In fact, if you’re designing your first hexcrawl, I highly recommend doing exactly that.

As you’re running your hexcrawl, though, pay attention to where the PCs go and what they’re interested in: Are they spending a lot of time in the Old Forest? Are they asking a lot of questions about the Azure Fields? Then you might consider defining those regions and creating specialized encounter tables for them.

This doesn’t mean that you need to immediately create encounter tables for every other region on your hexmap! You can just continue using your general Random Encounters table for all those other areas. Add complexity over time and let your players and actual play guide your focus to where your efforts will be best rewarded.

If you’re looking for an intermediary step, consider adding a “Regional Encounter” entry on your general Random Encounters table. You can then key a single appropriate encounter (or, alternatively, a smaller 1d4 or 1d6 table) to each region, which will be triggered when you roll that Regional Encounter on the general table. This can, of course, also serve as the seed for a full regional encounter table when the time comes.

Back to Hexcrawls

Go to Part 1

Your rumor table should be a living document. The latest gossip, after all, is alluring because it’s topical, and the enigma of the table will degrade as PCs learn its content. Here are a few techniques for keeping it fresh.

SAME RUMOR, NEW CONTEXT

When you give a rumor to the PCs, cross it off the list. If you roll the same rumor again, you may want to roll again (until you get a rumor the PCs haven’t heard yet). Being aware that you’ve given this specific rumor previously, however, you might simply make a point of finding a different spin or variation on the information the PCs already have. (For example, if they’ve previously heard that a wyvern has been attacking travelers along the Southway, they might hear about a different group of travelers being attacked. Or from a group of explorers who saw the wyvern flying over the Red Plateau.)

Tip: In an open table campaign, the fact that one PC has heard a rumor doesn’t necessarily mean that the rumor will have truly “entered” the campaign. That PC might never be played again, and there may be lots of other PCs who never even meet that PC (for all of whom the rumor would still be completely new). It may be slightly less obvious that the same thing can be true in a dedicated campaign, as players may forget or simply lose track of a rumor they’ve previously heard. This is what makes the “same rumor, new context” technique so useful, as it can be used to reintroduce the same information in an organic, rather than repetitive, way.

REMOVE AND REPLACE

Alternatively, once a rumor has been heard, you can cross it off your rumor list and replace it with a new one.

You’ll also likely want to replace rumors that are no longer applicable (e.g., someone has killed the wyvern, so it won’t be attacking people along the Southway any more).

You may also want to periodically replace a random selection of rumors (whether they’ve been heard or not) just to keep the rumor tables fresh.

Tip: You can combine these techniques. For example, you might cross out rumors when they’re heard, but only replace them once per month (finding new contexts if they get repeated before then). Or just keep them until they get randomly cycled out.

EVOLVE SITUATIONS

When you’re updating your rumor tables, it’s an opportunity to both evolve ongoing situations in the campaign world and give the PCs a vector for learning about it.

• A wyvern has been seen flying over the Red Plateau.
• The wyvern is now attacking travelers along the Southway.
• The wyvern has attacked a tax assessor’s wagon and carried off a lockbox containing 7,000 sp.

These situations, of course, don’t need to be limited to stuff that was previously seeded on the rumor table. There’s likely lots of stuff happening in your campaign.

CURRENT EVENTS

On a similar note, a rumor table can be stocked with current events and gossip. When you’re restocking, you may want to drop older events and add new ones to enhance the sense of time passing in the campaign world.

Tip: You can think of the rumor table as having certain “slots.” For example, entries 1-4 on the table might be current events; 5-10 point to random hexes; 11-14 refer to random encounters; and 15-20 being where everything else gets placed. This can help make sure that the table remains varied and “balanced” in its content, while also making it easy to, for example, swap out your current events.

RESPOND TO PC ACTIONS

PCs tend to do lots of big, splashy stuff (like killing wyverns) that are exactly the sort of thing people tend to gossip about. So when they do something notable, add it (or the situation that evolves out of it) to the rumor table.

Players love this. (“Hey! That was us!”) It makes them feel important and it’s a great of showing that their choices are meaningful and their actions have consequences. And the possibilities are almost limitless:

• With the wyvern slain, trade along the Southway has boomed. The caravan activity has outstripped the capacity of the Patrol Guild and they’re looking for freelance guards willing to ride with smaller caravans to Maernoc.
• Lord Erequad has issued a bounty for the adventurers who are believed to have stolen the tax assessor’s lockbox (which was originally taken by the wyvern).
• Four hungry baby wyverns have been seen hunting on the Red Plateau.

In a great hexcrawl campaign, the adventure never ends and the rumor table is constantly driving the world forward.

Back to 5E Hexcrawls

Go to Part 1

With a fully stocked rumor table ready to go, it’s time to deliver your rumors to the PCs. Broadly speaking, there are three approaches to doing this (and you’ll probably want to use all three): proactive, reactive, and opportunistic.

Playtest Tip: No matter how they actually get a rumor, you can have the players roll for their rumor! It’s a fun way for them to feel involved in the process and can increase their sense of “ownership” over the rumor they get.

PROACTIVE

Proactive methods sort of “push” rumors on the PCs without the players taking any specific action to acquire them.

INTERVAL TRIGGER: At some regular interval, the PCs pick up new rumors. This might be once per week, at the end of each adventure, once per downtime, or any such trigger.

ACTION/LOCATION TRIGGERS: You might also trigger rumor delivery based on actions the PCs take which are not, explicitly, looking for rumors. For example, they might get new rumors each time they return to town or visit a new town. Or perhaps taking any non-solitary downtime action triggers rumor acquisition.

In City-State of the Invincible Overlord, individual city buildings would be keyed with specific rumors (which would be delivered when the PCs visited those locations). That feels like low-value prep to me, but it could perhaps be used to good effect as a spice.

CHARACTER CREATION: It’s a very good idea to give any brand new character one or more rumors to kick things off. Before play even begins, these rumors will give them the knowledge to start setting goals and making navigational decisions.

RUMOR CHECK: At any point where you have a proactive rumor trigger, you can make a rumor check instead of automatically granting rumors. You’ll also want to decide if it’s possible to gain multiple rumors at the same time, and whether rumors are gained individually or by the whole group.

For example, in my last open table hexcrawl campaign, every new character would get 1d4 rumors (the stuff they’d heard before the player started playing them) and I would make a 1 in 6 rumor check for each PC at the beginning of each session (representing stuff they’d heard around town since the last time we’d seen them in play).

REACTIVE

As the players learn how useful rumors can be, they’re likely to start actively seeking them out. They may also go looking for other types of information without specifically thinking in terms of “rumors,” but which nevertheless can feed rumors to them.

INVESTIGATIVE ACTION: The investigation action is part of the urbancrawl scenario structure, but this covers any effort by the PCs to deliberately canvass a community for information. This effort might require a Charisma (Investigation) or similar check, with the number of rumors gleaned being determined by the relative success of the check.

TAVERN TALK: Buying a round of drinks and plying others over a cup of grog in the common room of a tavern is another common shorthand for gathering rumors.

BROADSHEETS & BULLETIN BOARDS: Broadsheets (the antecedents of newspapers) and bulletin board notices are formal packaging of “rumors,” allowing the PCs to periodically check in and receive a fresh packet of information. (You can imagine any number of similar packages, ranging from town criers to magic mirrors murmuring cryptic prophecies.) The content of each package (broadsheet headlines, job offers on the bulletin board, etc.) can be bespoke creations, but it’s just as easy to roll them up randomly from your rumor table.

RESEARCH: Delving into the tomes of the local library or digging through the musty scrolls of the official chronicles may not turn up any rumors dealing with purely current events, but there are any number of rumors that can nevertheless be delivered through PC research (e.g., the trade in wyvern eggs a generation back).

ADDING COST: Regardless of the precise method pursued by the PCs, you might consider attaching a cost to it (for buying a round of drinks, well-placed bribes, access fees at the university library, etc.). I’d recommend against making this a particularly large fee, since obviously you don’t want to discourage players from pursuing rumors. Something like 1d6 gp is quite reasonable.

Another option is to make the fee optional, but have it grant a bonus to the PCs’ skill check (making success more likely or improving the quality or number of rumors gained). In this case, since it’s not essential, you can elect to make the cost more substantial.

Once a cost, optional or otherwise, has been attached to rumor-gathering, one cool thing you can do is add this cost to the equipment list for your campaign: Now every new player rolling up a character and every returning player looking to resupply for their next expedition will have an in-their-face reminder that hunting for rumors is something they can do.

OPPORTUNISTIC

Because the whole point of the rumor table is to impart information to the players, you should seize opportunities during play that you can use to leverage your rumor table. For example:

• During any broad social interaction (e.g., the players say “we spend the evening drinking at the tavern”) you might mention one or two interesting things they pick up in the general conversation.
• During specific interactions with NPCs, the rumor table can be used to generate topics of conversation.
• NPCs might be specifically questioned or interrogated about the area.

In practice, the rumor table can be an incredibly versatile tool, and whenever a dollop of information would be useful or provide a bit of spice, you can simply roll or select an appropriate rumor for the situation.

CONTEXTUALIZING RUMORS

When giving a rumor to a player, you can simply drop it in their lap: “You’ve head that a wyvern has been attacking travelers along the Southway.” It works. There’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, it may often be the best way to present a particular rumor. (For example, when I’m handing out rumors to newly created characters at my open table, I don’t feel a need to get fancy about it: Here’s the stuff you know. If you’d like, maybe you could tell me how you know it.)

Frequently, however, you’ll find it more effective to contextualize the rumor – to explain exactly how they came by the information and perhaps even give them the opportunity to play through it. This is when you frame up a scene at the local tavern where the PCs have noticed a young man with a freshly bandaged wound on his shoulder. Now they can strike up a conversation with him, learn his name, and hear from his own lips the tale of how the wyvern attacked his caravan and carried away his sister. They can see the haunted look in his eyes as he describes how her screams still echo in his ears.

Now those wyvern attacks have been given a face.

If you want a more detailed breakdown of how to contextualize this sort of thing, check out Rulings in Practice: Gathering Information. But the short version is:

1. Summarize how they’re looking for information.
2. Frame the key moment where they’re actually receiving the information. (This may include playing out a short scene, but it may not.)
3. Contextualize the information, taking cues from the situation, characters, etc. to provide a specific slant or POV on the rumor.

If you’re uncertain how the PCs might have found the information, ask the players what they’re looking for then. See what they throw at you and then play it forward. Or here’s a short list of options:

• Talking in a tavern. (Is it a quiet conversation? Or do they hear someone boisterously boasting at the next table?)
• Saw the information posted somewhere (a wanted poster, a bulletin board, etc.).
• Chatting with a friend. (Which friend? Ask the player if you don’t know.)
• Performing research. (Where?)
• A letter. (From who?)
• A tarot reading, fortune telling, or divine vision.

OPEN TABLE RUMOR POOL

Here’s a fun technique that seems to work best with an open table, but can also be adapted for a dedicated campaign: When a PC gains access to a rumor, it gets added to the open table rumor pool. This list of rumors can be posted in the group’s Discord, put on a wiki, periodically updated by e-mail, or whatever other method of coordination your group is using.

When a rumor is resolved (e.g., the wyvern is slain), reward Inspiration. You can limit this to just the group who resolved the rumor, but it may be even more effective to award it to every single PC in the campaign. This heightens the sense of community in the open table, and can also motivate people to get back to the gaming table ASAP. (Since otherwise their Inspiration will be “wasted” if someone resolves another rumor before they can use it.)

You can also leave the decision of whether to share a rumor with the open table rumor pool up to the individual players: Doing so gives them the opportunity to benefit if someone else can capitalize on the information, but keeping a rumor secret might be desirable if they specifically want to exploit it for their own gain.

MODERATE YOUR RUMORMONGERING

Rumors are good.

Too many rumors, however, will overload your players. They just turn into meaningless noise, and the players will just tune them all out. So, paradoxically, too many rumors can end up being functionally identical to no rumors at all.

In short, to achieve maximum effect with your rumors, you want to limit how many of them you’re handing out.

How many? Well, this depends on the players. I’ve had some players who keep meticulous notes and will have a couple dozen rumors scrupulously listed (and even carefully cross-referenced to their maps!). I’ve had other players who get a third rumor and basically say, “Fuck this noise.” So this is really something you have to play by ear and be willing to adjust on-the-fly.

The key thing to moderate, though, are your proactive rumors: Opportunistic stuff tends to be linked to specific interactions which makes it more significant. And reactive stuff, obviously, is happening at the players’ own request, and so is naturally not overburdening them.

In many ways, though, this is ideal in any case: You really just want a smattering of proactive stuff to (a) help players who would otherwise be lost and (b) remind players that rumors exist, prompting them to do their own legwork to dig up more information on their own recognizance (and to whatever amount they want).

With that being said, you may also want to limit the group’s ability to systematically drain all the available rumors out of the campaign. You might want to, for example, limit them to 1d4 rumors per downtime or per session. Alternatively, perhaps villages are limited to 1 rumor, towns to 1d4 rumors, and metropolises to 2d6 rumors (1d4 of which require special effort). This structure can actually be used to motivate the PCs to explore more: You want more information? You’ll have to go to the big city.

Go to Part 3: Restocking Your Rumor Table

As we’ve previously discussed, exploration can take several forms. The most basic form is simple curiosity, in which you just randomly look around hoping to find something interesting. This is, more or less, the level of exploration provided by the basic hexcrawl structure: You pick a direction and you march forth to see what’s there.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Curiosity is the bedrock of exploration. But for a hexcrawl to truly come to life, the players need to be able to learn information about the region so that they can:

• set specific goals,
• ask specific questions, and
• plan their expeditions.

This is the function of the rumor table, which in its most basic form is simply a random table: Roll a die and tell the players a rumor. Each rumor provides a tangible nugget of information about the region:

d10  Rumor

1       North of Graykeep, there is a ruined arena which is home to minotaur.

2       A merchant has been kidnapped by goblins in the Old Forest.

3       An ogre living along Silkmauk Road has been known to offer aid and enigmatic trinkets to travelers.

4       There are ancient altars of red jadeite scattered throughout the area.

5       The old imperial fort stands on a plateau southwest of town.

6       The lizardmen of Tockmarsh are said to treat all tabaxi as if they were gods.

7       A white wyrm’s lair lies at the headwaters of the Red Rapids river.

8       A nymph of the White Wood will trade magic items for a vial of your tears.

9       In the Old Forest there’s a circle of stone sarsens. Stand amidst them and blow on horn of mistletoe and you can open a fairy gate.

10     Flying carpets have been seen in the skies around Mt. Skarlap, which lies east of town.

You can see how the rumors on this table would instruct the PCs about local regions (Old Forest, the Tockmarsh, White Woods) and interesting adventuring sites (old imperial fort, Graykeep, ruined arena, Mt. Skarlap) that they can now consciously choose to seek out (or use as navigational markers) rather than just stumbling across them randomly.

If this information is so useful, why not just give it all to them in one big infodump? Partly this comes down to effective pacing. In an exploration-based campaign, you really want the players to be slowly learning new things about the area over time. This also avoids information overload: By spreading the information out over time, it becomes easier for the players to process it and use it. (It’s the same reason you don’t read a textbook cover-to-cover, instead processing a section of the textbook and then applying it through practice problems, classroom discussions, etc. before proceeding to the next section.)

Conversely, if you only want to give the PCs a few rumors at a time, why go to the trouble of stocking an entire rumor table? Why not just design the handful of bespoke rumors that you’re going to give them? Well, as we’ll see, a good rumor table is an incredibly useful runtime tool for the GM, useful for responding to any number of actions which might be taken by the PCs.

STOCKING THE RUMOR TABLE

Stocking a rumor table is pretty straightforward: Figure out what size die you want to roll, list that number of rumors, and number them. (Or, vice versa, make a list of rumors until you run out of ideas or feel like you have enough, then count them, and assign whatever die size seems most appropriate.)

But how many active rumors should you aim to have in your hexcrawl?

There’s no one-true-answer here. Personally, I like to have twenty. A d20 is convenient, and it gives you enough rumors to cover the breadth of the hexcrawl without going overboard. (If you own a d30, that can also be a fun way to use that unusual die. But a table of d100 rumors, in my experience, can be a lot of work to prep without really providing a lot of extra value.)

In making each rumor, you’re going to be looking at its source, focus, type, and truth value.

SOURCE

The source of a rumor might be a:

• hex
• random encounter tables
• roads/paths/trails
• factions
• NPCs

Basically, anything you’ve keyed or created for the hexcrawl can (and arguably should!) be fodder for your rumor table.

In fact, if I’ve started struggling to come up with new rumors to stock my rumor table with, a technique I’ve found useful is to just pick a random hex, look at what I’ve keyed there, and then figure out a rumor that could lead the PCs to it. (If you’ve done a 10 x 10 hexmap, for example, you can just roll two d10’s, cross-reference their position, and look at the resulting hex.)

Playtest Tip: You can also use this “pick a random hex, that’s your rumor” technique during actual play to generate rumors even in the absence of a stocked rumor table. Obviously this means you need to be a little more comfortable improvising rumors, but it’s a very flexible technique which, crucially, requires zero prep.

FOCUS

Potential focuses for a rumor can include:

• Location
• Creature
• Object
• Actions/Situations (including threats and upcoming situations)
• Background/Lore

For example, let’s consider one of our example hexes from Hexcrawl Addendum: Designing the Hexcrawl:

C2 – WYVERN SHAFT

60 foot deep shaft that serves as the lair of a wyvern. The wyvern has dug an escape tunnel that emerges from a hill a quarter mile away.

Wyvern: Has a large scar on its left side from a spear wound.

Treasure: 7,000 sp, 5 zircons (50 gp each)

What rumors could we generate from this?

Location: Adventurers exploring the Red Plateau southwest of town report seeing a mysterious 60-foot-deep shaft.

Creature: A wyvern has been seen flying over the Red Plateau.

Object: A wyvern attacked a tax assessor’s wagon along the Southway and carried off a lockbox containing 7,000 sp.  It was last seen flying west.

Situation: A wyvern has been attacking travelers along the Southway.

Lore: A generation ago wyvern eggs were taken from the Red Plateau and sent east so that the hatchlings could imprint on imperial wyvern riders. The practice ended because the plateau became depopulated as a result of the egg-harvesting.

Note that, regardless of the rumor’s focus, each rumor is actionable, in the sense that it gives a clear location for the PCs to go. This is not strictly necessary, but should be much more the rule than the exception: The primary function of the rumor table is to guide and inform the PCs’ explorations, and it can’t do that if the PCs lack the information necessary to do anything with the rumor. (For example, a rumor that just said “there’s a wyvern in the area” is, at best, very limited in its utility, because there’s no way for the PCs to go looking for the wyvern other than just wandering around randomly.)

The actionable specificity of the rumor can vary quite a bit, though. “West of the Southway” is less precise than “check out the Red Plateau,” which is less precise than “the adventurers offer to sell you a map indicating the precise location of the shaft for 10 gold pieces.” But even the vaguest of these nevertheless provides some specific direction.

TYPE

Thinking about a rumor’s type, in my experience, is mostly useful if I’m struggling to come up with a good rumor. But most rumors will fall into one of five types.

Local Color tells you something about an area or the people/monsters who live there (e.g., “The White Woods lies north of Mt. Skarlap” or “the ealdorman is a man named Harlan, who lost his wife in a goblin raid twenty years ago”). Local color may be actionable — if you know the White Wood exists, then you can choose to go there — but lacks a specific motivation for doing so.

Other local color may not truly be actionable at all. As such, you might even want to maintain a separate table of Local Color Rumors that you can consciously choose to mix in with more meaningful intelligence.

Opportunities offer a reward, payoff, or some other form of gain. Treasure is always great — caches of magic items or bounties paid for the capture of an outlaw, that sort of thing — but there are many forms of reward: land, favors, a chance to flirt with a handsome centaur. Think about what motivates your PCs and seed that into your rumor tables.

Challenges are like opportunities, but with the addition of some clear threat or obstacle which must be overcome in order to gain the reward. Capturing a bandit to get their bounty is an example of this, as is a mine infested with goblins or a haunted forest where rare alchemical reagents can be found.

One form of reward that may not be immediately apparent is the simple desire to be a Big Damn Hero. If you tell the players that farms in the Fieflands are being attacked by mutant marauders, the desire to save the day may be more than enough to prompt them.

This is aided and abetted by the common D&D conceit that “where there be monsters, there by treasure.” If you tell the PCs about a wyvern attacking travelers along the Southway, you don’t probably don’t need to tell the players that “the wyvern is guarding a cache of treasure” for them to infer it.

Dangers are like challenges, but without reward. The other way to think about this is that a challenge or opportunity is something that the PCs might set as a goal for themselves (find the nymph of the White Wood, slay the wyvern, etc.), but a danger is something for them avoid, most likely while pursuing other goals. It’s the Valley of the Monocs they should go around; or the red gems in Cawthorne Keep that should be eschewed.

The distinction here can be kind of hazy, and will likely even shift as the PCs grow in power and ability. (“There’s a dragon over there!” is a terrifying danger to a group of 1^st level characters, but a rich opportunity that will leave higher level characters salivating at the thought of looting its hoard.)

Mysteries are similar to opportunities, but the “reward” is simply unraveling the unknown and/or learning secret lore: What’s causing those strange lights in the Tockmarsh? Why are there 60-foot-wide shafts drilled into the earth all over this area? Who built the red jadeite altars?

This category of rumor really relies on humanity’s innate curiosity: It may take nothing more than offering the players an enigma to fill them with a burning desire to resolve it.

A final thing to note is that we’re categorizing the content of the rumor, not necessarily reality: For example, a rumor might offer an opportunity of an abandoned silver mine… and it’s only when they arrive that the PCs discover it’s infested with goblins. Something offered simply as a mystery to unravel might nevertheless result in discovering a huge treasure hoard.

TRUTH VALUE

Keeping this distinction between rumor content and reality is also useful as we look at the truth value of the rumor. Rumors can be:

• True
• False
• Partial (there is a hermit in Shamrock Cave, but the rumor didn’t mention he’s a psychotic axe murderer)
• Mixed (the “friendly old hermit in Shamrock Cave” exists, but he’s not friendly)

In structural terms, the key thing to keep in mind is that even a completely false rumor can nevertheless motivate the PCs to go somewhere or do something that will result in adventure.

What you want to avoid, however, is continually offering them rewards and then leaving them with nothing. As long as the players are getting reliably enjoyable experiences following rumors (even when the rumors are false), they’ll continue following them. If that stops being true, however, the players will just ignore rumors as being worse than a waste of time, and all of the wonderful utility of rumors will be lost to you.

Go to Part 2: Hearing Rumors