Post Apocalyptic Hexcrawl Deck Log 001

    What is the post apocalyptic hexcrawl deck? Well, it's something that's probably going to be renamed, if I can ever think of a catchy name. Besides that, though, it's my current project. 

The Concept

    A map building card deck set in a post apocalyptic world. Simply put, the player pulls cards from the deck and the card tells them what's in the current hex tile they're standing in. It's a bit more in-depth than that, though, so we'll go a little deeper, but first I'll explain a problem I've noticed with just blindly pull cards from a deck or rolling dice on a table. 

     When you roll dice on a table or pull cards from a face down deck, you have no idea where your character will be going next. But, in real life, people make informed decisions about where they're going; they (on average) can see or hear where they are going before they go there, not to mention they can follow a smell if they so wish. 

    My cards, however, will describe what your character notices with their senses (mostly sight) before going into the next tile on one side of the card, and once you choose based on those observations, the card gets flipped over to reveal what the character's senses were hinting at.

    An important thing to note is that this will not be a game in and of itself, it will be a map generator to be played with separate post apocalyptic games that don't have their own map system.  

How It's Going

    So far, I have the basics down. I've made a spreadsheet with vague senses of a direction and the more detailed descriptions attached to those vague directions. It's not polished yet, I'm going to have a family member, who happens to be a writer, look it over and possibly add flavor text in the future.

    I've play tested already, and I'm happy with the results so far. (Photos of the test maps below)

    However, I was playing with the spreadsheet and a random number generator, and that had a major flaw. The random number generator would repeat numbers, essentially reshuffling the deck every draw. I'm getting "around" this problem by making more work for myself. I've started creating a printable deck so that I can play test it authentically. (Screenshot of that work in progress below) 

    Once done, this printable deck will be uploaded to itch.io for free (for now; once it's polished, I may add a cost). I expect to be done with it by tomorrow, so stay tuned for an update on that.  

    That's it for now; thanks for reading and have a great rest of your day.