Hex Crawl Completion Update

My attempted design of a "classic" hex crawl (in the vein of AH's Magic Realm and other pseudo-RPG boardgames but at the "large expedition" scale) is currently in the rewrite/edit stage. Work has been slow, mainly because I'm realizing that my initial pass at the rules has created too many elements that are incompatible with one another at worst, or involve confusingly dissimilar mechanics at best. I've been trying to take a machete to the 50+ pages I have written, to cut them down to a slightly shorter and better organized second draft.

The rules currently draw substantial elements from the following systems, to give a feel for the flavor:

• Outdoor Survival: Movement mechanics, basic turn sequence, and terrain types
• Source of the Nile: Game objectives, mapping, and expedition organization.
• Underworld and Wilderness Adventures (D&D Vol III): Character design, encounters

Another sensible comparison might be Kanterman's Star Explorer. I've mostly avoided anything that resembles Magic Realm itself, since I feel like if I tried to imitate it I'd just invent an inferior duplicate.

This game system is intended to be detail-heavy and require substantial record-keeping. That's a nearly non-existent game category today, which is why I want to make my own! It will definitely require a calculator to handle all the combat calculations, but probably not a spreadsheet. The overall intent is to create a solitaire-appropriate game that allows me to either wander around a real-world map, or procedurally generate a random one as the expedition travels. Multiple players would mostly be playing independently (like Magic Realm) with limited interactivity, but that's a standard problem for adventure games that I've discussed before. Once I have everything working solo, I'll think about what to do to keep additional players from getting bored.

Here's a run-down of the table of contents with the state of completion for each section:

1. Introduction (revised)
2. Game Concepts (revised and expanded)
3. Victory Conditions (revised)
4. Character Creation (revised and simplified)
5. Recruiting and Outfitting (in process of revision)
6. Map (revised)
7. Time (complete)
8. Movement (draft)
9. Exploration, Discoveries, and Encounters (draft)
10. Combat (draft, very rough)
11. Exploration Reports and Advancement (draft)
12. Weekly Actions (draft)
13. Victory and Defeat Conditions: Competitive Games (draft, very rough)

All of that amounts to about 45 pages. Some of the rules are just placeholders (like, say, the encounter evasion table from Moldvay's B/X) which I want to avoid creating until after I've experimented with the game a few times.

Then I have a large number of mod-able optional rules that can help define the setting for the hex crawl (ancient mythology, medieval, fantasy, New World):

• Fantasy Race & Class (draft)
• Encumbrance
• Becoming Lost
• Reaction Rolls
• Dungeoneering

Aside from the fantasy optionals (which I've created to allow the game to borrow character and encounters from the Swords and Wizardry SRD for low-effort playtesting with a familiar fantasy feel), all of this is very rough and minimally sketched. I also want a weather system at some point, which I've already researched and implemented as tables but not attempted to translate into written rules.