Continuing my dive into indie tools and RPGs, today we're looking at:

Pocket Hex!

Pocket Hex is a brilliant little game/tool that is another one of the very cool offerings in the Solo But Not Alone 4 bundle that you can find on Itch.io.

The game is designed to be a solo hex-crawl adventure that is contained within three folded booklets - pocketmods - that you can easily toss into just about any pouch or pocket and take with you anywhere.

You'd normally print the map on the back of the same paper that holds the Base Mod (where our rules reside), but I like having this kind of thing separate and it's not any harder to fold up and toss into a bag or pocket like this.

^{And I at least think a separate map makes for great photos.}

The three books are each made from individual single-sided printouts and then folded so you can flip left to right like a normal book. At present, there are the Keyed Locations, Generation, and Base Mod booklets.

Base Mod

This is our primary rule-set and play reference sheet. In it we have rules and procedures for play, a basic yes/no/complication oracle, and some useful examples for clarification.

This pocketmod provides us everything we need to roll up a character, pick some equipment, and play the game. The basic flow of gameplay is to enter a new hex and generate those surroundings, interact with those surroundings, and solve problems. When you boil it down, that's basically the same as any other RPG or solo RPG you'll ever play.

The game primarily runs on d6s, a d20, and a d4.

Keyed Locations

This little pocketmod is used in conjunction with the provided map, giving information about all the... you guessed it, Keyed Locations.

The 'Slime-Angles' is one such location - a fun bit of worldbuilding and lore that gives us an immediate idea of the tone of the game. Lighthearted and more whimsical than gritty, it's an adventure that has a bit of a 'studio Ghibli' vibe to it (at least, in my first reading that's what I'm getting). Some of these locations feel like they'd fit perfectly within the world of Howl's Moving Castle, for example.

They also so far seem to have features that you could reasonably assume work with other Keyed Locations. This Slime-Angles for example includes a 'Bedchamber bell marked, "Fact"'. The Sixth keyed location is 'Manor of Fact', and it wouldn't take much to receive that item, visit the Manor, and figure out some way to fit the bell into a fun side-quest or something. These little tie-ins are all over these locations, and while they don't offer direct mechanical use (most of the time), they do offer some great chances for a bit of additional storytelling and inventive usage.

Generation

This pocketmod is the source of all of the games roll-tables, providing you enough on-the-fly generators to whip up a basic city, several types of biome, cemeteries, and wildlife. They also provide generators for 'Luck' and 'Foibles' which are mechanics that either give you a boost or a bane - as implied by the names.

Character Sheet

We also have a character sheet, but as it's very simple and not part of a pocketmod I didn't print one and will instead use my trusty old stack of recipe cards... but to give you an idea what a printed sheet could look like:

It's a very simple three-stat sheet with a familiar inventory system wherein you can only carry so much junk (as depicted by your available slots). This is something very familiar to us by now thanks to games like Knave, Whitebox, and Cairn. Which, speaking of Cairn, I should try and remember to give this a go using those stats instead just to see how well it works.

Folding a Pocketmod

Part of the fun of this tool is that you get to make your own little pocketmods from your printed sheets.

As you can see, these are all single-sided one-sheet printouts, and the magic is purely in how they're folded combined with a single cut along one edge.

Now, it may be because of my printer, but these do end up getting a little wonky when folded. They don't perfectly match up on every edge, but they function very well and they honestly don't look too bad when done at home as a quick DIY print-and-play. There was a Kickstarter for these as well that had professionally printed versions of these but I'm pretty happy with how my quick little printouts look.

I did try a variety of settings but none of them were exactly right, so I figured I'd just call it good enough with barebones default print settings and a bit of a wonky edge. I also wanted to see how they'd do printed on a little stiffer card-stock style paper, and it worked fairly well. I think it'll stand up to being tossed around the best, but the thickness of the paper also amplified how noticeable my imperfect folding was.

I had planned to sit down and record a session playing this today, but as sometimes happens, things got a little chaotic and I haven't yet gotten a chance to sit down and record. I will be giving this a play-test in the next few days though so I'm sure I'll return to post the gameplay once I've done that.

At a first glance, this looks like a very neat little self-contained game that is designed for travel. I can definitely see myself tossing this in my backpack for on-the-go gaming... but I'll talk more about that once I've had time to really give it an hour (or more) of play-testing.

As always, until next time friends - Happy gaming!

Link to next blog post & Episode 1:

https://peakd.com/hive-189497/@oblivioncubed/pocket-hex-by-lancraft-gameplay-episode-1

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I'll post more solo TTRPGs in the coming days, so watch my bluesky page or follow me here to enjoy that!

I've got a brand new TTRPG and Solo Gaming focused YouTube channel, and you can follow me there: OblivioncubedSolo

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