Anybody here used hexflowers much? I spent a bit of time considering whether I could use any in my projects. I think they can add something here and there, so I’m tossing ideas around to figure out how to make them fun and useful.
There are a couple of concepts that I think may make them more useful for me: enlarging the flower sizes; and using conditional Navigation Hexes.
The standard hex flower is a 19-hex cluster, which is a central hex with two rows of hexes surrounding it. I’m thinking adding a third row of hexes to the periphery – which adds another 18 hexes to the flower – makes for a finer granularity, which, of course, means more options for entries, a greater variety of results.
A standard hexflower also uses one Navigation Hex. A NH is a visual guide to what direction to move from the current hex on the flower based on the roll of dice; a roll of 12 on 2D6 indicates moving towards the top of the flower, say. Well, one example hexflower had two NHs, each being used in a different basic circumstance (such as one in daylight hours and the other in darkness).
I’m thinking it could be really cool and useful to have a number of NHs available for some flowers, with the circumstances for using each dependent on play, directly. An “if the PCs have done X, then use this NH” approach.
I’m also enamored of the thought of having different NHs apply in different regions of the hexflower. Say, a region where the odds of staying in the same hex are greater, so the NH changes based on that. Two, three, four regions with bespoke NHs could make for some really interesting walks on the flower.
If you’ve used hexflowers much, I’d love to hear about your experiences.
My only hands on hexflower experience is with the weather hex in Vaults of Vaarn.
I think it works well in that it simulates a realistic sequence of weather. What didn’t work great for me was that it’s a page I need to lay out and come back to when I need to recalculate the days weather. If using it during prep, it’s no big deal. Just lay it flat, put a token on the middle and then do the rolls. Easy to pregen a months worth of weather and put that onto a calendar.
But to use it on the fly, I have to mark a hex with pencil where I left off to be able to put it back in the binder. Then I’m erasing and marking it up a bunch to keep it as a “running document” so to speak. It’s just a bit finicky and cumbersome to use.
I find a simple chart, or markov chain graph, that I can pin on the back of my GM screen to be more useful for the way I like to check for weather.
I’ve been looking at them as tools for prep, like the weather charts of old. With that approach, I’d be rolling and recording the weather changes on a calendar for play. I’ve not considered how to go about using one on the fly. Interesting challenge.
Just thought that perhaps a smaller flower would be usable for on-the-fly situations. Perhaps default to the center hex as start for each roll and the movement to one of the other hexes provides the change.
Roll a 3rd D6 of a different color and that could indicate how many hexes out from the center to move, which would allow for regular or large flowers usable on the fly.
I’m also trying to figure out what else I can use them for. I’ve a collection of flowers sitting in a folder to play around with, plus instructionals for creating them, so examples of some non-weather-related flowers (I recall one dealing with a volcano).
Hex flowers look really elegant, but I haven’t actually used them enough to figure out if they’re just gimmicks compared to any other kind of generator. At least some of them seem to capable of generating things that are much more complex and/or with less procedural verbiage than traditional table-based generators.
The one included in Running Silent, a collection of oracles for legally-distinct-Shadowrun, is pretty nifty for generating plot developments in solo play.
I used them for weather and terrain for my homebrew campaign setting.
I changed how the navigation key worked so that you just roll 1 die, 1-6 move you out the sides of the hex and anything over 6 keeps you in the hex. Was easier to think about the odds but more importantly meant that changing the die rolled lets you change the “stickiness” of the flower. I used a d8 for the terrain so sometimes adjacent hexes had the same terrain and used a d12 for the weather because I wanted longer stretches of the same weather.