Actual Test: Yaksha's Hexfill Method

I saw this on Brian Yaksha of Goatman's Goblet's bluesky feed - and have been looking for an opportunity to test it. Interestingly, on a first attempt it flared out and did not work for me where I already had too many ideas, it worked really well for a different region where I only had some vague ones.

The framework that Yaksha pulled together has the following:
- 1 Unique Encounter
- 2 Tools/Gimmicks for the region
- d10+d4 Local Encounters
- d10 Small Jobs
- d6 Big Jobs
- d20 Scene-setting sights/stage design
- d6 bounties/location implications
- d6 ways to expand/change-up the area set to tone.
- 3d10 names for places (locales/nature sights/crossings.)

The area where it worked (red circle below), I had just a few facts. I had previously attempted to run it for the hex below, the yellow-boxes and it just bogged down for me. I will do a post-mortem at the end on the failure.

For context, the party had just made their way from the bold outlined hex on a rescue, climbing up onto the plateau region (yellow boxes) effecting a rescue at the south-eastern-most yellow box and then dashing for the nearest edge of the escarpment with a large caravan of rescued prisoners. Their theory was that the plateau rainforests were unknown, terrain, home to the people they had just raided while the swamps below were more familiar terrain for most party members and they prefered that, even if it were an unknown part of the swamps.

Working the process

The flavour of the super-hex was it being the border marches to dangerous neighbours to the east; once Kirianshalee worshipping moon elves, now an independent khanate of tundra orcs. because of this there are a line of fortifications, old battle-sites and heroic monuments, and miles and miles of defense in depth - physical traps, cultivated toxic plants, obfuscated tar-pits and natural hazards and dangerous beasts.

List elements below, I ended up doing them in a mixed order
* First Unique Encounter + Tools/Gimmicks for the region as the big flavour markers. Originally the unique encounter was the local competent military lord but then decided more adventuring fun would be had with smugglers.
Then 'Scene-setting sites/stage design' and 'ways to expand/change-up the area set to tone' all sprang from terrain - the tarpits, the swamp, the toxic hazards and then over and among that the dwellings and lairs of the folk who live here
Next Local Encounters and Big Jobs flowed from 'who is out and about here'.
Lastly "bounties/location implications" flowed easily enough from sites but then the Small Jobs were harder for me. I had to stop and think through what the various folk of the encounter tables would want day to day to get these ones.
In the end I abandoned names for places - my players have trouble enough with the big hex region names, extra location names would not help matters.

Venturing down into the Marsh that Remembers

* 1 Unique Encounter Poison smugglers - those who have made a living from sneaking in among all the dangerous plants and monsters, grabbing what they can for assassins and the security conscious elsewhere and hiking out, avoiding local patrols, foreign raiders and dangerous beasts. Going to be twitchy, competent, suspicious and knowledgable.

- 2 Tools/Gimmicks for the region -- Tar seeps, sticky, treacherous terrain - sap time, tie up people who cannot get up in the trees, make any other encounter more interesting (and flammable) -- poisons, toxins, hallucinogenic gasses - safe if cautiously traversed but set up so disturbances like a fight or an army attempting to traverse will set them off - then anyone present is on a clock - taking damage and dying -- traps and hazards from the recent conflict - classic hazards to spot and disarm, avoid or to fall foul of. Subtle as a literal log to the head.

- d10+d4 Local Encounters
F: Marsh that remembers
2 - Caravan bearing poison harvest - authorised, cheerfully well compensated,
3 - swamp shaman/witch - dweller-among-death-traps, eccentric
4 - camp of patrolling trap-maintainers - sappers of the local marchlord, willing to turn a blind eye if encouraged
5 - rival adventurers, archetype heroes - a shiny bunch of slightly better do-gooders
6 - obsidian horde scouts - lean, keen raiders seeking treasure, glory and skulls - maybe yours unless you can point them to something better
7 - marsh dwellers - hunter-trapper locals just trying to put a toad in the pot
8 - tar-pools - glossy, crusty, sticky and flammable
9 - Travellers bound for frontier - officials and reinforcements, demoralised by this humid, sticky mire, not going to ask questions if you don't force them to notice you should not be there
10 - Great beast - terror bird, queen of the swamps
11 - Wyvern witch minions - opportunistic scavengers looking to win favour with their boss
12 - Poisonous plants, hostile - giant fly-traps, pitcher-plants, etc.
13 - obsidian horde raiders in force - audible at distance, keen-eyed, wolf-mounted, on their way to fry bigger fish
14 - Watch force patrol

- d10 Small Jobs
1 - stand a watch at a place while trapsmen work
2 - harvest dangerous plants
3 - test out new brews of shamen
4 - fish something recently lost out of swamp
5 - help a traveller on their way
6 - port a raft from waterway to waterway
7 - catch a big dangerous croc
8 - drive off dangerous fauna
9 - tour shrines to appease spirits
10 - bring supplies to frontier fort

- d6 Big Jobs
1. Stall obsidian horde raid until reinforcements
2. Track/report smugglers
3. Find and burn toxic plants
4. Pathbreak/scout route for travellers
5. Infiltrate/assassinate frontier watch group
6. Find loot-train lost from hakkatorix invasion

- d20 Scene-setting sights/stage design
1. tar pits
2. toxic vale
3. stuck caravan
4. triggered trap with victims
5. scavengers defend feast
6. sunken watch-house on piece of old road
7. ridge, shock/impact signs
8. shrine to ravenqueen
9. hot, sticky swamp
10. swarming insects
11. abandoned fisher-hut
12. trapped traversable terrain
13. strongpoint, repurposed by locals as dwelling
14. swamp moonshine rig
15. stilt village
16. local fishers
17. herbalist racks, drying
18. tar-harvest barges
19. eternal flame
20. crocodile nest

- d6 bounties/location implications
1. Scout/recon by frontier watch or obsidian horde
2. Venomous monster catch
3. Poisonous plants harvest
4. Tar-barrels escort
5. travellers escort
6. Find lost person

- d6 ways to expand/change-up the area set to tone.
1. overgrown with poisonous plants
2. flammable oil slick
3. freshly installed traps
4. ambush position, with ambushers
5. hide-out for smugglers
6. monster lair

Names - I set aside as mentioned above.

Wrap up

On useability - taking those steps out of sequence worked for me - the 'places', 'inhabitants/encounters' 'missions' format is good. It helps think through gameable stuff then you spiral outwards to the more uncommon things or the non-obvious 'site' associated with an encounter or vice versa.

When it failed for me the first time was when I had a bunch of things already in mind and was trying to figure out where to shoe-horn them into this structure - was it an encounter or a site? That gummed things up completely so I would not recommend this process as a 'finisher framework' - this is something to turn a handful of high level ideas into a bunch of gameable stuff.