This past week I picked up both Hex Kit’s Fantasyland (with which the header image of this post is illustrated) as well as Beyond the Wall and its supplement Further Afield. I was immensely impressed with the art of both (and overjoyed to discover that Jon Hodgson – one of my favorite artist responsible for the artwork found in Cubicle 7’s The One Ring – illustrated Beyond the Wall), and was tempted to write separate reviews until I realized the perfect compatibility of the two products.

Beginning with Beyond the Wall: the game evokes a very low fantasy, heroic, near Tolkien-esque feel. There’s an emphasis on the Fey, people’s True Names, the mysterious nature of magic, and the bonds of friendship. Overall, the game is reminiscent of a more uplifting version of The One Ring, which happens to take the top spot as my favorite RPG of all time for theme, although its mechanics are a little arcane sometimes.

Speaking of which, Beyond the Wall‘s mechanical structure is very old-school. It’s efficient, relatively simple, and clean. It’s the playbook mechanism, through which players randomly generate their intertwined character histories and backgrounds, that really add to the desired feel of the game. I’d highly recommend that anyone looking to run a heroic, low-fantasy campaign emphasizing the bonds of friendship needs to buy a copy of this game to aid with character creation.

Beyond the Wall’s supplement, Further Afield, uses a hex-crawl mechanic to allow the characters to explore locations their players create in a manner similar to character creation. It’s here that Hex-Kit’s Fantasyland really shines, by providing similarly evocative maps. One thing to note is that the scale of Fantasyland and Further Afield just feel different, even if there’s no concrete reason for it. Further Afield recommends that players are able to cover 2 hexes in a day, while Fantasyland feels more like players should cover one hex per day.

Especially for me, who’s used to ornate and precise maps in my games, the abstract nature of hex crawls (and the ease of creating abstract maps with Fantasyland) is appealing. No longer do I have to worry about precisely where the forest is and how far it is from the river – now, I only have to think in terms of what sort of terrain characters will encounter each day. It provides for more flexibility by taking Dungeon World’s principle of “Draw maps, leave blanks” and applying the blanks to the already drawn part of the maps! That’s certainly a tool that can be applied to more games I run whether they use a literal hex system or not.

Overall, I highly recommend both products, even if you don’t plan on running Beyond the Wall or a traditional Hex Crawl anytime soon!

For those wondering, I’ll leave off with my thoughts on the above map. For my purposes, the number following the letter is the number of hexes from the leftmost hex on that row – so, for instance, H1 is ocean and H2 is coast.

C4 is an ancient dead willow, called the Aeldertree. It’s rumored that various witches and hags have made their home in its roots, accumulating vast stores of wealth.

C5 and D6 are a giant chasm that leads down into a subsurface dungeon filled with all manner of ancient monsters long forgotten.

C6, the Guardian’s Outpost, is a now decrepit tower that was formerly a garrison against whatever happened to crawl, scuttle, or slither out of the chasm.

D8 is a relatively isolated farming village on the frontiers of the northeast.

E3 is the players’ starting town, a relatively normal, undisturbed, agricultural community.

F1 and F2 are the Faerie Queen’s grove and farms, respectively. The farms of the Fey Queen are rumored to grow all manner of things from traditional crops to even gnomes!

F5 and G5 are the straights of Arubethar, a narrow passage of water separating the southern desert continent from the more hospitable north.

Until next time!