I did not know much about hexcrawls; however, this 'one-stop-shop' of hexcrawl information has been instrumental in making me see the possibilities of playing in or developing a hexcrawl. Same for Domain play, which I'm completely foreign to.

If you either play in hexcrawls, wish to develop a hexcrawl, or wish to explore the possibilities of Domain Play and theives guilds - then get this book.

[Backer of KS for the offset print of the Omnibus Book]

It is really everything a referee would need, to support this aspect of old-school ttrpg. A great, now all-inclusive, auxiliary book, made to work with the preferred system for many, Old School Essentials, but probably easily applicable for any OSR- rule set.

Thank you Todd!

The combination of Filling in the Blanks and Into the Wild, and an dicerolling program, is the system I use to build my sandbox's. The books incorperate the OSE random monsters as well as some dungeon design principals found within those core books. I enjoy when I can sit down and pound out some six mile hexes.

Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/09/100-days-of-halloween-osr-alternative.html

PDF. 48 pages. 1 table of contents page, 3 pages of OGL (which could have be brought down to 2 with better formatting), rest content.

Ok the PWYW suggestion is 50 cents. That puts this book at 1 cent per page practically. Easily the best page-to-cost ratio here.

The layout is basic to point of non-existence really. Not to be to judgemental but it looks like a PDF save of an MS Word document. There is very little art.

The 13 classes are Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, Thief, Assassin, Scout, Dervish, Berserker, Cerves Brave, Witch, Ironskin (Siderenos), Sorcerer, and Bard. All the classes are presented in B/X style; levels to 14th limited spells. The classes have some connection to an existing campaign setting that is not explained well here. Moreover they are also compared to other people's IP/Copyrights that really you can't do with the OGL. Each class also has a set of alternate rules that are interesting and would likely work well in Old-School Essentials or B/X game. The company behind this document has gone on to do other OSE-compatible products.

All of the new classes have quite a bit of detail which is good. A few notes. The Assassin and Scout get arcane dabbling which I like. The Cerves are Deer-folk and has one of the few examples of art. Though I would not use the word "Brave" to describe a warrior type. The Ironskin is a neat idea. The Sorcerer here follows the 3.x mold and that is a good thing in my mind. The Bard looks like it would play well, to be honest, but there are so many out now you can usually find one that does exactly what you want.

The Witch

Let's get why I bought this. These witches are divine casters, so wisdom is a prime along with Charisma. XP values are similar to clerics as is spell progression, though they do get spells at 1st level. This witch has various powers. They can use animals to see at 2nd level, brew potions at 3rd, craft fetishes at 5th level, dominate animals at 7th, scribe scrolls at 9th level, and at 11th create magic items. They form covens at 9th level and can curse or bless others.

This witch has a spell list, drawn from Labyrinth Lord, but no new spells. There are also a fair number of optional powers.

Ok. So there are a lot of good ideas here that are almost lost due to the sub-par layout and formatting. I am betting that newer books from the same publisher/author are much better. This one could go for an upgrade to be honest. There is a designation of Open Content, but it also seems to be from another book. So I am not sure whether or not it is for this book or not.

For the price though it is good. Even if you only ever use one class here, or even just the additional ideas for the basic 4 classes it is totally worth it.

I had really, really high hopes for this product. And it does have a lot of interesting ideas and concepts. Where the books falls down is on the presentation of the information. First, it doesn't feel like a cohesive system with one topic connecting and flowing into the others. I'd be really surprised if anyone was really running their games with these mechanics as written. Used for inspiration? Perhaps, but the reader is left with a lot of work to figure out how to get it to work in practice.

Also, the initial release, and the version of my immutable printed version, is rife with errors. Missing and incorrect page references are the biggest culprit. There are incorrect examples, tables with missing references, and so on. The publisher has released an errata sheet (seems to be fan made) and an updated PDF. So that is a start, but errors are in that version too. The add-ins like the fortress maps and player sheets feel like they are thrown in and without much thought, the sheets especially.

Last gripe area . . . much of the art and the player sheets are low-res and have that pixelated look that is so annoying in print.

Topic-wise this has a lot of what I wanted and I hoped it would present a hex crawl system that would be my go to. I just didn't know that I would have to do so much of the work sorting it out.

I am immensely impressed with the detailed and creative procedures within this guidebook. As far as I'm concerned the material within ought to be considered an official mandatory release for ANY GM. OSE, 5E, what have you, ought to consider this just as vital as any version of the DMs guide. If I'd had something like this years ago my campaigns would have been so much more interesting, and inventive, for decades.

Really good resource in my opinion.

I like how the author filled in quite a bit with a number of the hexes and then left a lot of them with just minor details leaving me room to put in some of my own.

Heartily reccomend it to anyone doing some world building and sincerely hope they at least finish off this continent if not the whole world in this style of maps.

Very well written and thought out guide. Is good for Dungeon and Dragons style games. I gave it 4 rather than 5 stars because it could have been better. The site of the domain is not treated well. The location of the castle is also almost not there, e.g. is it sited on a river or road or both? There are several obvious questions like this that should have been answered and given rules for each case.

A tremendous work. If you like old-school play, this volume covers a whole other arena of gameplay when your sessions grow past the first set of "dungeon" complexes in walking distance of their starting town.

What I love as a DM is that it's very comprehensive, exceedingly detailed, and because I am a seat-of-pants game master, it's easy to strip down that complexity and just finally get how hex-crawling is supposed to work. How can you get the players to expore and uncover a world that doesn't exist yet, but will still make sense as you generate it in play.

Not only that, it has all the rules for interacting with what they find in a MACRO way. Establish your own settlements. Expand ones you find. Expand the borders of exsiting domains. Go to full on war.

This is all stuff I've seen before in a ton of different seperate and way less well organized works. This compiles all of that high-level gameplay in one volume, makes it super simple to use the way OSE is known for. I don't even play OSE specifically, but this is suitable to any D&D esque fantasy adventure game up to like, 2nd edition-ish, IMO. I use it with Black Hack no problem.

This thing operates like a missing Dungeon Master Guide for "well the players are bored with dragons in the dungeons, and want to take over the world. Can't say enough good stuff about this material. Super usable. Super useful. Great material to help your gameplay and game mastering uncover an actual living, breathing interconnected world.

Note: 100% get the "filling in the blanks" companion to this too. So much value. I realized that I got this book as part of a bundle, and my above review may also include praise for that book too, as they work together and I read them all at once.

A handy little resource to generate hexes, great stuff -     even backed Into the Wild off the back of this.

Thank you!

I can't recommend this title. $10 for a PDF whose print quality is abysmal. I can't imagine that the POD is much better. Can't speak to the quality of the writing, but the product is junk.

Finally got my hands on the hardcover print editon of Filling in the Blanks, and it was well worth the wait! Like every other slightly greying dude in his thirties, I'm working on a sandboxy hexcrawl and this book has single-handedly taken the pain out of most of that process. Plus, there's something so satisfying about holding a book and physically rolling out some dice while you scribble out some notes in pencil. On graph paper lifted from dad's office, obviously.

About the only complaint that I have is that the beautiful indie cover art is ever so slightly pixellated; a minor production error that won't impact this rating.

A lot of work, time, and care went into this effort, and it shows. Leback should be proud of himself. I, my players, and my wallet can't wait to see what he's got in store for us next time!

Very useful in creating a thieves guild for your players. I used this supplement with 5e making some tweaks and adopting some of the rules from "domain building". I highly recommend this if you want some in-depth rules for creating and maintaining a player-ran thieves guild.

Great tool for old-school hexcrawling. If you are looking to create a hexcrawl or fill out your world or just help organize your thoughts for populating your hexes, this is a great tool. Easy to follow instructions and random tables throughout enable you to quickly populate your hexes. As recommended in the book, make sure you grab 'Domain Building" by the same author, it is referenced quite a bit in the book. It is "Pay what you want" on DriveThru.

Absolutely love it. Clean, smart and simple! Became patron after it