This is a game jam for us to all to contribute hexes to an OSR-compatible hexcrawl  set on a science-fantasy, sword-and-planet style-”Mars”. After the game jam ends, a compilation of everyone’s work – with the caveat that I will edit it and may reject some submissions for not meeting the criteria – will go on sale. All accepted contributors will get 1 share of the 1st month’s sales profits for each 1 hex that they contribute. After that point, any further sales will go to me as the editor. Everyone retains the rights to do whatever they want – including republishing – with their own work, as well as rights to use the other contributor’s work IF AND ONLY IF they are doing so in the context of releasing their own version of the Martian Community Hexcrawl with at least 50% of the word count of their version being specific to their version. 

Basic Setting:

• Mars is a desert planet criss-crossed by canals fed by oasises, mountain glaciers, and the twin polar glaciers.
• Mars used to be a verdant biotech paradise where all followed the Old Faith, but then there was a climate disaster combined with a plague that killed most of the biotech. This caused the New Faith to emerge, as a prophet declared this to be a punishment for violating divine prohibitions against biotech – the New Faith led the construction of the canals and now has power as monastic water-controllers. Both the New Faith and the Old Faith still have followers. 
• Mars has many, many different kinds of aliens and created sentient species on it, and no one’s totally sure which is which at this point – feel free to just make different aliens, constructed species, mutant clades, etc. etc.     
• Mars has humans.
• Mars has no earth animals, only alien animals. 
• Things that don’t exist on earth always have plain English names – no “quish’tars” or whatever. Call them “Longwolves” or something. 

Magic types are everything allowed in Triptych – here is the Character Options part of the playtest document.

Technology rules:

• Space travel used to be common, but isn’t anymore, because of the collapse – there are crashed satellites and destroyed/derelict star-ships to be scattered throughout the waste, from the old days of space travel.
• Canals and floating ships are the main form of transportation. Land travel is possible, but so dangerous most people don't do it (but then this becomes the means of travel for PCs, especially "low level").
• Half-ruined ancient mecha are rare inherited property that make their owners princes of Mars. They run on blood – 1 human’s-worth of blood gives 1 day of fuel per HD of the blood’s source.
• All weird gadgets have either an X-in-100 chance of ceasing working after each use or run on X HD-human's-worth of blood per use (X should be about equal to the level at which a PC can do something roughly equivalent).
• Use the prompt under Weird Martian Gadgets and your favorite LLM to generate Weird Martian Gadgets.
• Travel by boat is free… IF it’s towards the equator. Travel towards the poles requires either power from monster blood or power from weirdness or power at human walking speed by rowing.
• There is no long-range communication like radio or similar.

Six Hex Types: 

• Glacier.
• Oasis – each oasis is independent.     
• Canal – each canal section is independent, but the New Faith runs the actual water, and has a sort of Dark Ages Catholic Church thing going on where it is THE unifying international institution.
• Desert – 99% of the planet is desert, but fewer than 20% of hexes actually submitted will be desert, because desert is boring. We’ll just assume that everything that isn’t a submitted hex is desert. Maybe people can contribute Martian Desert Hex Generator for the minor variations in desert hexes, but they are mostly not important or interesting.
• Mountain – often in groups the size of small countries, sometimes with ruined dome-cities on top of them.
• Special – a scientific or fantastical source of terrain weirdness.

Hex Rules:

• Hexes are independent, because that's easier to map.
• No faction influences multiple hexes, because that's easier to map.
• Hexes need to be Triptych compatible (this is trivial) - just make them broadly OSR-compatible but system-independent.
• Hexes are [a days travel on foot/an hour’s travel by vehicle or beast] across.     

What will get me to reject submissions:

• If I do not feel a sense of culture shock upon reading your hex.
• If your hex looks like a stereotype of any country.
• If your hex looks like a stereotype of two countries, mashed together.
• If anyone in your hex thinks of themselves as evil.
• If anything in your hex "cleverly" undermines a setting element or expectation that is an already stated part of the setting.
• No orcs, no goblins, no dwarves, no elves, no standard fantasy stuff.

Copyright-friendly riffs on any famous Mars fiction are allowed – if it’s public domain, you don’t have to change the names first, but you have to prove to me that it is public domain.   

Hex Format

[Hex Name]  

Hex Type: (You must choose one of the 6)

How This Hex is Different From Typical Hexes of its Type: 

Hostile Encounters Table ("default" is an option): Friendly Encounters Table ("default" is an option): 

(For non-Tryptych) Ratio of Hostile-to-Friendly Encounters (make it something rollable): Factions Table (at least 2):  

Notable Location(s) in this Hex:

Water Source:  

Food Source:  

Money Source:

FURTHER SETTING INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE HERE

This includes:

• encounter tables, including the default Hostile Encounters and Friendly Encounters.
• an NPC madness generator.
• an LLM prompt that generates weird Martian gadgets.