Dev log

2022 - v0.0 

Bought HexploreIt: The Forests of Adrimon (FoA) for €115 (inc shipping) from the Mariucci website after the game got good reviews.

2023 - v0.1 

Tried several times to set it up, but failed. Rules were not great. Printed out the LCG card fronts, but never built a complete set.

Got told that HexploreIt is more of a "system", where holes in the rules allow for "houseruling" and interpreting as you go, which is what even the creator himself does. Rule philosophy is to write with only the default most common case in mind. Exceptions should be "housed away". I do not accept that, but I do want to try out the Adventure book for FoA.

2024-5-20 v0.2

 - After I received the Fall of the Ancients crowdfunding product, it recommended to play a few games of FoA. Tried to set it up once more, this time making notes on paper.

Ran into several confusions, asked around on Discord where a certain @Darthus proved to be a great friend and he helped with ironing out the bottlenecks for setup.

2024-5-25 0.3

 - Decided that a proper, focused instruction set would be extremely necessary. Searched online for help. There were very few videos on youTube, bgg had very few files and they were fragmented, faulty and generally lacking. Reddit was also unhelpful. In short, if I wanted to write a tutorial I had to write one from scratch, myself. There were probably reasons why this had not been done before or why anyone attempting it had failed.

2024-6-1 v0.4

Establishing a baseline.

1. a) The index of both rb and sb proved worthless, half the entries missing so the index would have to be redone completely.
2. b) Found the Valor system for bonuses after repeat plays was underdeveloped, nobody would play that way, the steps were too large, and the unlocks too few, and nowhere to write down your score (in terms of valor).
3. c) The Circumstance deck always bothered me. You see 5 possible events, one of them will trigger, which is fine, but since Zerywia we all know better than have a uniformly shuffled event deck. Highland events should not occur when in a marsh. HI sb did have an optional table but how to use such circumstances was poorly explained and 1/4 of the entries weren't in the base game but RttFoA content (missing 3 indications of such). I had to rebalance the table to make it simple to use with only the FoA content.
4. d) so, if the document were to replace both books in terms of steps to follow, why not add a scoring sheet. Because the game ends in death or victory, I came up with (score 100x highest level boss defeated + sum of your stats). Later I found out about the Valor system (rb.74).
5. e)The rb Valor system was too rudimentary, plus you had to roll dice to keep a temporary score in your mind, very ugly, and no way to score (except writing on a single line in the book). With 2005+ achievements in video games in mind (and Palm Island) I wanted more granularity. But then I had to go through all the material (with only the base game), to name everything, including the LCG. Hence main completionist goals and sub goals were born, with (hopefully) cool titles.

2024-6-05 v0.5 

Setting the scope.

As you are likely to try to set up and play the game yourself before teaching it to others, it is written with true solo in mind, minimizing confusion.

In scope: 

• only the Forests of Adrimon base game content; later, edit the document if you want to include any of the excluded. Recommended is to play the game once in the current written form, learn it first. Most owners expect to play games solo.
• * In scope: since the rules (somewhere) allow true solo (1 hero), only true solo is addressed; as this is the best way to learn the rules with the least effort. Playing two-handed has more mental load, and is effectively a party setup, so giving page numbers on appropriate places on the steps will help to later make an inference for a 2+ hero game. You gain less boons at startup, but you do enjoy hero skill synergies.
  * In scope: quick mode, family mode. The goal is to learn to play, not provide a difficult challenge before you have a basic understanding.

Out of scope are specifically:

- Marathon mode. Standard mode, is already too long, no need for more.

- alternate start mode (sb.4).
- Return to the Forests of Adrimon content; most people only opened the base game.

- Fall of the Ancients stretch goal content box; this box has a lot of QoL upgrades, but it should be deferred to later after some plays.

- minified bosses from other volumes; there is a $0.00 document on the dev website detailing how to use a mini version of a boss from another volume into FoA. Most people don't even know about it so it's not addressed here.

- races, roles, aspects from other volumes. If you intend to import races, classes and aspects from other volumes, use the editable form of this sheet and expand the race and class Achievement section accordingly before printing - so you gain more points as check box.

- Combining FoA and VotDK. If you want it, the rb details it. I can't imagine who would want to actually play this.

2024-6-6 v1.0 

Tidying up, restructuring, before I put it from Notepad++ to Word.

Okay, so we have 400+ checkboxes [ ]. Original (rb.74) had only six. This means the scoring scale needs more balancing.

* decided to remove the roll d8/d6 to up your score temporarily (rb.75), it's not normal and is tedious.

* also scrapped any bonuses under 10 points, to stimulate focusing on low hanging fruit.

That needs some restructuring, moving the easiest ones to the top. Some are really hard, everything is 1 point though, maybe I should give more points to harder ones, but let's first keep it simple.