Hexes & Hate

And a very exciting book of monsters

Welcome to the inaugural Bastionland Presser. You're one of the brave nearly-500 subscribers, and I'm looking forward to sharing this semi-regular digest each week.

As you’d expect, I aim to keep things short, but expect the format to change as I get to grips with things.

---

This Week’s post revisits the idea of Traveller’s Universal World Profiles, where I make an attempt to trim them down into something I could use a little more quickly to generate Hexes.

UNIVERSAL HEX PROFILE - TWEI

Roll 5d6, drop the highest, then read the remaining dice as: 

Topography: Verticality of terrain.
Water: Wetness.
Ecology: Non-human life.
Infrastructure: Buildings, road, other human stuff. 

1=1: Trace
2=2: Some
3=3: Lots
4=N: Null, actively none, perhaps by design
5=H: Hazardous, not through lack or excess but the nature of the thing
6=S: Super, off the scale. Think big then go bigger. 

Seems like some people are already enjoying it, you can see the full thing over on the blog.

---

Elsewhere The Monster Overhaul finally launched.

Skerples has been working on this for a while now, but if you’re looking for a fiercely dense monster manual then this one looks pretty special. Go and check it out.

This feels like an excellent time to point out that when I recommend things like this I’m doing so without any sponsorship or kickbacks unless I specifically mention them.

I just think they’re neat.

---

Coming Soon

Those of you on Patreon will know that I’ve been reflecting on another year as a full-time TTRPG professional. Specifically how I’ve made peace with my backburner of unfinished projects and yet utterly failed to make peace with the hypocrisy of bemoaning the state of Twitter while continuing to use it.

But it’s not all bad.

There are good elements. The vast majority of times I get tagged it's something worthwhile, so I still look at my notifications and reply or retweet as appropriate. DMs are a handy way of contacting somebody new for a podcast or collaboration. Occasionally I forget myself and post some dumb thing and I get some funny replies. It can be fun. 

I just wish the good stuff was happening somewhere different to the bad stuff. The stuff I don't want to be associated with. The stuff I don't want to feel like I'm legitimising by staying there. 

So here’s to a little spark of hope that this newsletter represents another alternative avenue to speak with people.