Wwhy would a crunchy, in-depth, detailed, hardcore fantasy saga get a name that sounds like something inflicted on third graders forced to learn geometry?
By the way, one of the things I didn’t mention in the review is how neatly everything fits into the box. Here’s the game all spread out, minus a frame that goes around the map to hold the rows of Quest and Circumstance cards:
It certainly sprawls a bit. But here’s the game in the box. For scale, I’ve put it next to a copy of Gloomhaven and a Nintendo Switch running Bayonetta 2:
Ah, how compact games are when they’re not concerned with minis!
-Tom
To be fair Gloomhaven almost doesn’t have any minis. The box space they occupy is negligible.
I wouldn’t know because I’ve only opened the starter boxes!
But, yeah, totally fair point. Gloomhaven is pretty much just a glut of cardboard. I should have posed Hexplore next to the Kingdom Death: Monster box, but a) you and I are the only ones who have a real life frame of reference for it size, and b) it’s an ominous black slab that swallows all light and hope, so it doesn’t photograph well.
-Tom
Yeah, I will post my KDM box once I get the sleeves that I’m missing. With all the expansions, it’s full to the brim of cardboard (I had to take out the mini boxes, and I’m using a more space efficient insert than the one that comes with the game). I want to wait for the sleeves because they add space and the effect will be even more intense.
But the expansions are more content than the whole core game. It’s going to take me years to explore it, specially with a 6 weeks old infant.
M*0.5, not .05.
They should make a spell checker that also check the rest of the Wordpress entry.
Ah-ha, I knew my Rabble Rouser felt underpowered!
-Tom
Is it better than Hexplore?
Especially in my initial Kickstarter copy, where they don’t exist. (Saved me $16!)
Good thoughts Tom, I’ve been HEXploring this game for the last couple of weeks as well and have similar conclusions. It feels like the most lavishly produced roll-and-write PNP or gamebook ever, and I mean that in a good way. For me, the act of writing is visceral, and maintaining my characters by actually physically writing and erasing just invests me that much more in them, and helps with the narrative I’m playing out in my head. Much more interesting than pushing tokens or cubes along tracks. My Ogre Nomad and Half-Giant Scoundrel — Lennie and George, natch — spent more time looking for money to buy food wandering the countryside and fighting amongst themselves than they did doing anything remotely heroic, and it amused me to no end.
It’s definitely rough around the edges in some places — interaction between keywords needs a little better case definition, for instance — but it’s got heart, and vision, and it feels like a passion project. I like the self-directed pace and the unexpected dangers that can whack your party out of nowhere, even on turn 1. I play a lot of these sorts of games, and it’s nice to find ones like this and Gloom of Kilforth that try to do something different (and largely succeed).
(EDIT: Ugh. I have no idea why disqus sometimes uses my actual username “Marlowespade” and sometimes throws up letter salad.)
Sounds like in the new Kickstarter they’re adding a Storybook to both sets (with the Valley of the Dead King one being a $5 addon for folks who already own that game) that will add some more narrative to the game - you refer to it when you hit various triggers. Also, it sounds like the big bad in the new set adds more time pressure than the Dead King did, since she apparently increments a “Fate Cycle” that affects your powers.
I’m kinda tempted. I’ll wait and see what their all-in pledge looks like, though. Because that’s how I roll. (It sounds like there’s a few original Kickstarter roles and races that won’t be in even a top end pledge, which is not my favorite, but on the other hand there’s such a ridiculous number of them already that I doubt I’d miss them.)
Tom, have you tried wet erase markers? I’m not saying they’ll change your world, but they just might. No more will putting a piece of paper on your dry-erase board wipe out half your lines.
Of course, you have a new bits-of-sponge/just-spitting-on-things conundrum (let me recommend the bits-of-sponge approach).
So would you say that HEXplore It is spongeworthy?
Sounds like a veritable Hexplosion.
Yes, that’s a great way to put it! The tactile nature of boardgaming is already part of the appeal, and the act of writing just furthers that, doesn’t it?
Welp, thanks, jerkwad, for costing me a whole buncha Euros, which is even more in dollars.
Wait, you’re pulling my leg and trying to trick me into using permanent markers. Don’t think I won’t fall for it! To be honest, I don’t think I ever knew there was a such thing as “wet” erase markers.
I can get around the dry erase fiddliness with a careful table layout. But I’m not sure I could be bothered with having to use a wet sponge. I’m too attached to the pencil idea of just flipping around the writing instrument when I need to erase something. But now I have to go investigate this whole “wet” erase thing…
-Tom
I came in this thread thinking about that game
I think the place you’re most likely to have seen them, assuming you’re of a certain age, is with overhead projectors. But I quite like them: you get a finer line than dry erase, and you can wipe off a tick-mark or something with just a bit of rubbing, it’s only when you go to erase whole words or the like that you really need to get it wet.
Your other option is grease pencils, if you want a more pencil-like experience. They can be rubbed off dry, but you have to mean it: it takes a bit of pressure on the writing, they won’t brush away like dry erase. (If you want that real #2 pencil experience, you could probably wrap a bit of stiff foam around the back and tape a scrap of cloth over it, even.)
…Why yes, I have made a disturbingly in-depth study of uncommon office supplies for gaming purposes. Kind of you to notice.
Protip: when you accidentally or stupidly write on a dry erase board with a wet erase marker, don’t fret. You can erase wet erase marker marks by writing over those marks with a dry erase marker. Then rub both marks off with your thumb or a paper towel or whatever.
Does this game plan on adding Hexploitation, Hexperimentation, and Hextermination? I love a good 4-Hex game, even without Hexpansion packs.
This game sounds absurdly excellent and is really tickling the part of my brain that is desperate to run a traditional “Hexcrawl”-style RPG campaign (see here, albeit briefly) but also knows that I literally do not have the time to do so right now.
Something about that feeling of randomly generated (via combinations of race and class and items in the very traditional OD&D sense) characters exploring a randomly generated world full of table-derived encounters and cities and mysteries and magic just thrills me as a Gamemaster, because I live for the improvisational challenge of finding a way to tie that all together into a narrative for my players and to craft the chance interplay of numbers and stats and tables into a living world that breathes and shifts and matters.
The idea of packaging something very much like that experience into a compact, time-delimited boardgame is. . . erm. . . rather exciting for me, personally. Going to see if I can’t tempt one of my boardgame-focused friends into buying it so I don’t have to and step one step closer to needing to buy a dedicated shelving unit for boardgames. …
The game is called Hexplore It, right?
