The City of Hex: The Late Baroque CSIO

If you read and enjoyed my post on the City State of the Invincible Overlord, you all need to go read this post right now by Jonathan Newell on the Bearded Devil blog. It talks about his method for preparing and running his gorgeously mapped city of Hex.

Bearded Devil, you are bringing into reality what I glimpsed as a possibility only gestured at by the City State of the Invincible Overlord. There's a lot to learn from Jonathan's experiment with Hex. For comparison's purpose, let's start with the City State of the Invincible Overlord. The CSIO has a gorgeous and detailed map, full of cramped shops, narrow alleys, and open plazas.

It uses this street map as the template for play, since it is designed to run at the level of micro-geography of the city. In fact, the map doesn't even divide the city into neighborhoods--as though such distinctions are too large scale to be useful in play. About a third of the buildings are keyed, and every shop, tavern, and temple is filled with leveled NPCs (some colorful) and abounds with rumors and opportunities for adventures. Different streets have their own random encounters mechanic built in giving a sense of the character of the city at the level of streets.

I think this approach was born out of the best kind of creative thinking, extrapolating from early dungeon play, and essentially imagining a sword & sorcery city at dungeon scale, except instead of fighting monsters you get up to capers, heists, arena fighting, bar fights, and general hijinks, a version of what (to paraphrase Jeff Rients) Conan and Lando Calrissian might get up to if they found themselves bored on a hot afternoon in Lankhmar.

The possibility that I glimpsed in the CSIO is of an entire campaign plumbing the depths of an inexhaustible wealth of delicious, imaginative, city material. Where, in some sense, the subject of the game is the city itself, and the goal is a sort of carnal knowledge of the overwhelming built environment, where the players come to literally know the texture of its streets, the little nooks and crannies, and dozens, perhaps hundreds of its myriad secrets. Where the player would know exactly what it looked like to gaze across the Plaza of Profuse Pleasures into the Park of Obscene Statues, or that beneath Boot & Strap on Barter Street, the shop of notorious bootmaker Karugy One-Eye, they might exchange news with bandits and blackguards over a cup of ale and roast pig, provided they weren't elves(!), before coming out in such and such a spot in the undercity.

In the perhaps imperfect language I have recently developed for trying to talk about what's fun about this sort of thing, we can say the CSIO was created with the idea that city exploration might provide the pleasures of secrecy & discovery in a sense modeled on exploring a megadungeon. Since my own infatuation with city exploration IRL is premised on a romantic but absolutely true idea that cities are repositories of endless secrets and anarchic human-wrought wonders, this idea really gripped me. How could it not?

But one deep feature of the CSIO is that it is designed for low prep gaming. It uses an absurdly fiddly, but extraordinarily flexible (once you grasp it) system of generic random encounters (the system is also in the Ready Ref Sheets). This system is intended to combine with the immense system of loosey-goosey location-based rumors and detailed keyed locations to generate endless possibilities for adventure in an improvisational mode. It invites the kind of play I've been using it for with my son and his cousins. Did I mention that in the last session they fast talked their way into Liar Mukang's Pleasure Dome, escaping by a hair's breadth laden with his riches on the back of a gold dragon? And that I did zero prep for that session? I can report that the CSIO works as intended, at least with the 10-13 crowd. [Note: Liar Mukang and his pleasure dome is hell-of-racist. It was a nice teaching moment with the kids. We got to have the fun of the adventure AND talk about orientalism afterwards.]

It is striking that the improvisational style of CSIO is in some tension with the ideal being gestured towards by the detailed micro-geographical approach. There's something hilariously incongruous about juxtaposing the detailed geographical detail and the generic nature of the encounter tables: we go from the notorious bootmaker Karugy One-Eye with 3 levels in fighter and his bigoted ogre wife, complete with the rumor that two drunken rogues are slumped over a staff of power at a horse tie, to this encounter you might roll: a noble wants to hire you. It works perfectly well as a package, with the detailed geography and entries providing a structure that works as a skeleton on which to hang the maximally swingy improvisational encounters and adventures. But one way to look at this combination is as a possible fault line in the CSIO. We can then think of approaches breaking one way or the other.

Vornheim (I know, I know) ditched the micro-geography and keyed locations for a vastly more flavorful set of systems of procedural generation of the physical city itself, underwriting zero prep improvisational play to a higher degree. Logan Knight's Corpathium followed in this direction still further, supplemented with flavorful neighborhood based random encounter tables that moved the unit of the city from the street to the district. The experiment was to see whether we could replace the obsessive micro-geographical detail of the CSIO and its less successful progeny with methods of procedural generation to create the open sense of a truly vast city. Although those attempts succeeded at doing what they were trying to do, and so were a genuine advance, I think they missed the charm of the CSIO, conflating its approach with the boring enumeration of useless information that characterized later city products.

Hex breaks the other way, opting to dial up to 11 the intense, loving pre-generation of physical city as a boundless source of adventure. The game is run as a reverse West Marches campaign, with a shifting cast of players who set their own agendas in a sandbox consisting (almost) exclusively of the city itself for each session by voting in two polls, one to schedule a game and the other to set the agenda for the session (which they can edit to introduce whatever options they want). Jonathan then preps different areas and NPCs in the city as much as he can in advance, as in a West Marches game the DM would prep the portions of the hex map and adventure locations the players planned to visit. This approach of incremental city creation, with the prep racing ahead of the players via polling is an interesting approach. Over time, the city has taken on a life of its own and now is sufficiently developed that Jonathan says he has a pretty good idea what's going on in every neighborhood, and often at the street level. Which is nuts in the best kind of way.

As with the CSIO, Hex has a detailed map, allowing for play that is focused on the texture and microgeography of the city. If the CSIO map is pretty, the one for Hex is drop dead gorgeous. I mean take a look at this map fragment:

The Cultist Quarter & Enigma Heap

Jonathan runs the game with a huge version of the map rolled out on the table, which is how I run CSIO too (albeit with a smaller map). This emphasizes the freedom of movement for the players, and the city as a space to be moved through and explored. Unlike in the CSIO, where a lot of the game is about getting from point A to point B via the streets, Jonathan abstracts from movement between quadrants of the city, zooming at the level of the destination neighborhood. Using the polls to give him advance notice, he preps the descriptions for the streets and keys for the buildings and NPCs. Given how detailed his map is, he is able to print blown up versions of individual neighborhoods. Like so:

He also draws a lot of the crazy neighborhood blocks of clustered buildings that the players are likely to visit. Here are a couple of his drawings. How could you not be curious about each and every store, resident, floor and so on?

I find this aspect of his city especially remarkable. By employing his formidable artistic skills, as well as the aesthetic of a city of visually striking, quirky, simultaneously organic and jury-rigged clusters of buildings into blocks, he is able to give a rich texture to individual city blocks. I've never seen anything like this, but it sure would render memorable all sorts of locations in the city! He can literally just say to his players: this is what it looks like. This is what the prep of an adventure location might look like:

Obviously the city is extraordinarily flavorful, a place abounding in wonders, a sort of Dickensian, fey touched, demon infested, New Crobuzon. I think it would be a total blast to play there. Given my dispositions, imaginative burn out, and lack of mapping and artistic skills, it's clear that I will never be able to accomplish anything like this. Which is why I find this so fascinating. I can't wait to read more about how you run this game Jonathan. Perhaps one day Zyan Above can be a fraction of what you are making here.

City State of the Invincible Overlord: The City as Dungeon Crawl

The City State of the Invincible Overlord is a boisterous sword and sorcery city. It wears its pulp and weird tales roots proudly. It is the product of shameless pastiche. What would happen if Conan were in Lankhmar, and tried to steal an elven jewel from the Temple of Pegana? If that premise sounds appealing, then you just might like this city.

The City State of the Invincible Overlord (CSIO) is one of the gems of the early hobby. It was published in 1976 by Judge's Guild. The map for CSIO was sold originally out of the trunk of Bill Bledsaw's mustang at Gencon IX, along with subscriptions for future installments with a map key and rules for play in the city. Eventually it was sold as a package number, with a guidebook to the city, rules for encounters, ancillary dungeon maps, and the campaign hexmap #1 of their famous Wilderlands setting. 

The heart of the product is the map of the City State. It is absolutely gorgeous, a thing of real beauty. It's set in a pleasingly complex geography, surrounding the Estuary of Roglaroon, and the Mermist Swamps, giving it a sort of seedy port feel. The map names every major street and plaza, and you can trace the many back alleys, and envision their twists an turns. It also shows you every single building in the city. Many (roughly 1 in 4) of these buildings have names and keyed entries.

The reason that the map is the heart of the CSIO is that it approaches the city as a giant dungeon. The idea is that it is full, dripping, almost implausibly exploding, with adventure. Just walking from one neighborhood to another in order to visit some shops will embroil a party in numerous exploits. The way that a dungeon map is the heart of a dungeon crawl adventure, and is a kind of known environment (to the DM), coiled like a spring with possibilities, and filled with fun to be had around every turn--this is like that--except bigger, more open, and so looser, and more free wheeling, dependent on chance and a greater level of improvisation.

When I say that the city is lovingly detailed, so that you can know every corner and alley way, and can catalogue at least a large fraction of its more interesting establishments, I don't mean that it is like a fantasy encyclopedia. Unlike many other city products of a later vintage, moved by a similar fantasy of totally knowing a city, the CSIO has no patience for extensive trivia. The entries are organized by street name. They are terse and suggestive of a whole scene of action, and have the flavor of something banged out in a fevered pitch on a typewriter. Here is a sample shop entry, under Barter Street. It is, in fact, the second entry in the book:

Boot & Strap
                              Class  Align Lvl HP AC SL STR INT WIS CON DEX CHAR WPN
Karugy One-Eye     FTR   CE     3     13  7    5    13    9      8      14      14     14        +1 Dagger

Notorious Bootmaster -- 28 pairs PROB 20% of fit, 3 GP each (double for Dwarves). Large Battle Axe over counter; Strongbox: 14 SP, 28 CP, 1-6 GP on person. Aliadar, huge Ogre wife: HD 4+1 HP:26 AC:5. Trapdoor to pit opening into tunnels below the city. Four kegs of wine, flask of oil, roast pig, cloak hanging on peg has key to strongbox. Map to 3000 GP hidden in the Despot Ruins. Customers include Bandits, Thieves, and Ogres, NA: 1-6, LVL 1-6 Sign over door 'Elves & Halflings Axe on Sight in Shop'. Rumor: Adolescent Wench is being dragged by her hair south on Slash Street by an Ogre named Gothmag. Rumor: Two drunken Rogues Possessing a Staff of Power are slumped over a horse tie (actually two dying Sages). 

This is pretty good stuff. A one-eyed notorious bootmaster and his huge, bigoted, ogre wife have a front shop selling boots. It smells of a pig roast and always seems full up with a rough customers, drinking wine, and gossiping. In reality, it conceals an entryway into the undercity, and these patrons are all smugglers, kidnappers, and bandits, who stop on their way out after work to get a plate of roast pork and a cup of wine from the underground roasting pit tended by the brutal ogre matron.

Notice that Karugy is a bootmaster who happens to have levels as a fighter. Now you might think this was specific to the criminal operation in this establishment--he is, after all, married to an ogress--but you'd be wrong. Every potter and barmaid in the City-State has levels in some class, usually fighter or thief. The assumption seems to be that everyone can hold their own, and the PCs are nothing special. This is also one of the many ways that the CSIO takes the mechanics of D&D incredibly literally, perhaps more literally than intended.

Notice too the system of rumors. Most entries have one, but this entry, being full of gossiping miscreants, has two. The rumors provides the dungeon master with something to slip in to the conversation if the opportunity presents itself, providing a sudden adventure seed to be followed up on should the players be interested. In this case, the rumors are probably what the cliental are discussing when the PCs enter the shop. Obviously this feature has to be handled with discretion and a light touch by the DM. It is something to liven up the scene, something we can assume the NPCs know about, and the source of potential good fun. But it should be used sparingly and introduced organically as makes sense.

These rumors like almost everything in the CSIO are designed to introduce adventure primarily by providing tools for DM improvisation. But the main tool for improvisational play is the elaborate system for city encounters. You check for an encounter once per turn in the city. There are two sorts of encounter check, rolled on alternate turns. The first is a percentile chance of a special encounter for each named street. It runs from the prosaic, for example, on Barter Street where the Boot & Strap establishment is located:

                                              Barter Street
PROB 38% chance of being surrounded by Street Urchins demanding 1 CP each to go away

To the the fun:

                                              Festival Street
PROB 20% of 'Razing' (Harassment) By Party of Nobles, MA 17-22, LVL1-12; (Attack only if insulted)

To the bizarre:

                                             Prefect Street
PROB 10% of An Efreet Jumping Down From A Roof And Stealing any Item.

This is a neat mechanic that provides a quirky texture to the city, giving identity and life to the different streets, that come complete with vermin infestations, mysterious fogs, festivals, and roustabouts of all kinds.

The second sort of encounter is the more usual 1 in 6 chance, rolled then on a table, or rather a series of tables. Most of the encounters that result are generic, e.g., "A slaver attacks the party out of religious hatred," or, "An Amazon propositions the party to search [for something or someone missing]." In play, I've found this generic quality works very well, allowing one to adapt the encounter to the specifics of the ongoing situation, and providing just enough material to work with for purposes of improvisation. The tables have enough variety that I don't think they would get old. (In full nested combination, the tables produce thousands upon thousands of possible encounters.) They have consistently produced great fun at my table.

However, it took me a long time to grok the system, which worships at the altar of Rube Goldberg. The procedure is this. First you roll on a chart called "Type of Encounter" (1d6) 1: Attacked by surprise 2: Attacked 3: Slanders/Insult 4: Questions Players 5: Propositions Players 6: Special encounter. (There is, apparently, a lot of fighting in the CSIO.)

Special encounters have their own table (in some cases with nested further tables) which is fun, it can be anything from having a brick dropped on your head to having a town crier announce that the city is being attacked by legions of orcs. For 1-5 you then roll on the second chart "Who Encountered" 1-4: Men 5: Unusual 6: Per Quarter.

Each of these results requires you to roll on a separate table. If you roll 1-4 then you next roll on a "Social Level" chart which is a 1d6 and 1d20 giving you a range of possible folks, grouped by fanciness, with healthy quantities of town guard types thrown in to the matrix. There are further charts for a result of 5: Unusual people, and for encounters with 6: Per Quarter which sends you to a shorter table with the sorts of people you would expect to bump in to in the quarter of the city where the encounter happens. There are further charts like "Attack Reasons" or even "Who are the Vigilantes Searching for".

It could happen that you have to make up to 5 rolls, the first to determine that there is an encounter, and four separate rolls on different tables to determine, for example, that "Vigilantes are searching for a dwarf". Another problem is that women are almost never encountered. When they are encountered, they're supposed to initiate this weird mini-game where the PCs can pick them up through repartee rolls supplemented by gifts. This is especially strange in a city where the women encountered almost all have levels and seem to be just as badass as the men. I have the feeling that it is much more in keeping with the CSIO to have a looser and freewheeling sexuality to match the 300 religions that the guidebook tells us are practiced in the city. If ogres are marrying notorious one-eyed boot-makers, and S&M shops abound (see the entries on the fine establishments of Hedonist Street) then clearly anything goes in this city. At any rate, that's how I'd run it with adults.

I have to say, even with all the rolling on sub-tables and layout flaws, it has run like a dream for me at the table. So far I've run 8 (short) sessions with my daughter (9) and her cousins (10 and 13). They have gotten up to some memorable shenanigans. Here is one chain of events, that played out over three sessions, all the product of improvisation using the encounter tables, and the map and key.

When the party first got to the City-State (that's another tale!), one of the first things they stumbled across was auction in Slave Market Plaza. Their reaction to this trafficking in human wares was, "Slavery? Hell no! We are going to make these people pay!" So they came up with the brilliant scheme of selling the beefy half-orc fighter in the party as a slave (for a tidy little sum), and then using him as an inside man to rob his purchaser. I played up the slave-owner's villainy (he was a noble called Lugo the Cruel). In the end, the party fomented a slave revolt, during which they looted his mansion on Twilight Road.

In a later session, one of the slave's they freed, a loyal follower called "Lobster" because of a birthmark on his head, was slain by an attack from an ogre who came barreling out of an alley and took umbrage at the fact that Lobster was in his way. The players had really loved Lobster, and they remembered that a candlemaker named Remy on By Water road had offered to sell them a candle that allowed one to speak with the dead. Along the way they were propositioned by a noble wearing a mask, who said he had seen them fight the ogre, and offered them a hefty sum if they would use the same set of skills to kill a minotaur gladiator,  who was kept in some apartments of the undercity beneath the Sea Hawk Tavern on Regal Street. They agreed to the deal intending to swindle the mysterious noble.

When they had purchased the skull-shaped candle and conversed with Lobster in its eery red light, they asked him two questions. (1) You know the city pretty well, where can we get a fake minotaur head? Answer, "Try the mask maker on Festival Street, near the Plaza of Profuse Pleasures". (2) Is there any way we can bring you back from the dead? Answer, "For three days I dwell on the shores of river styx before I can be ferried across by the boatman Charon. During that time you may beseech Harmakhis, God of the Dead, to release me. He appears each night to receive a sacrifice in the bowels of his temple near the Square of the Gods." When they asked each question, I briefly looked at the map and consulted a couple of entries and voila sweet, sweet adventure hooks appeared. This is the kind of improvisational adventure, focused on the micro-geography of the city, that I think the CSIO is designed to foster.

I am moved by the approach of treating a city as a kind of freewheeling mega-dungeon. It taps into deep fantasies of mine of possessing a kind of carnal knowledge of the secrets of a city, a seemingly endless world of human creation that abounds in secrets and wonders. What can I say, I grew up in the East Village in the 1980's, and fell in love with the labyrinth of ruined splendor called Pittsburgh in the 2000's. How could I not want this?

Sadly, I think to really scratch that itch, the CSIO would need to be four, or even six times as big as it is. When I look at the map, I can't help but think to myself that the city is not big enough to sustain the sort of illusion it produces. The city is larger than life, and it is supposed to be crammed with every possible kind of intrigue and adventure--and 300 religions goddamnit--but it's the size of half the Greenwich Village. I want to prepare for the game by losing myself in the City-State's alleys and byways, to take a taste here and there, knowing that I could never hold it all in my mind. I want the thing to be big enough that the players feel that they could never explore all of it, and for the information they acquire about the city to be a big point of play. I want the shit to be deep.

Since it struggles with information and layout design as it is, to handle that quantity of material, it would need a serious redesign. The ideal form, I think, would be a clickable PDF of the city map, where you could click on each building to pull up the short entry if it has one, and you could fill in it whatever notes and information you want to add. Of course, part of the beauty of the original map is its lovingly hand-drawn, organic quality. We would need to keep the charm of that rather than opting for the smoothed over, artificially lit, hellscape that is produced by most digitized map design. At the very least, there should be more order to the map key, consistent use of the map coordinates to locate keyed buildings, and a quickly accessible index that let's you locate an establishment by name.

Another thing my ideal, fantasized CSIO would contain is excellent art, which it is almost entirely lacking in the original form. The ideal artist for the CSIO would be someone with a good pulp sword & sorcery aesthetic, the kind of thing you see in Conan comics by Ernie Chan or Barry Windsor-Smith, or maybe Stephen Fabian, or the sort of sensibility possessed by the artists currently working on the Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.

Erne Chan

In sum, the CSIO is one of the best products of the early wild days of the hobby. Looking at the rules of D&D in a very literal way, and having only dungeon crawling as a model to work with, Bob Bledsaw asked how the play of D&D might be extended to a sword & sorcery city. The City State of The Invincible Overlord is his brilliant if flawed answer. It provides one template for city design: the city as megadungeon, and shows us how it could be done well. Of course, we could do it better still.