After a long break, interviews are back on Rand Roll. Starting with an interview with Ithai, the creator of Hexroll, who had an interview here in December 2021.
Chat with Ithai of Hexroll 2nd Edition
What has your gaming looked like since the first interview (over 2 years)?
Since our last chat, I continued refereeing the family & friends kitchen table Old-School Essentials campaign, and started another OSE campaign using VTT.
I also continued exploring new and old systems, searching for and adopting new house rules ideas to make our games even more exciting. I recently discovered "Dragonbane" and playing a new campaign using it.
What were the challenges of Hexroll 2E
Adding the ability to re-roll parts of the sandbox and then have everything in the sandbox readjust accordingly. This meant rewriting the core of the generator, moving away from Python to C++ for the extra speed, and figuring out all the edge cases when dealing with a very complex entities graph.
What are the next steps for Hexroll?
Adding the ability to extend and modify parts of the generator. This will be possible using Scroll modules. Scroll is the language Hexroll is using to generate entities. Anyone who wants to, will be able to write or customize parts of Hexroll using it.
What is the feature you'd most like to add but is currently out of reach?
One of the features I personally want is to export the entire sandbox into a ready-to-print PDF. I have a backlog containing over 140 tasks and feature requests by the community so this had to be pushed down the list.
What's the weirdest feature request you've had?
I don't think I had any feature request that didn't make sense in some context. I love getting requests for things I didn't think about as this introduces me to new ideas.
For example - I got many requests regarding Solo Gameplay. One in particular - adding a No-spoiler mask over secrets - made my experience with Hexroll much more exciting.
What advice would you recommend to anyone running a Hexcrawl?
One of the most appealing aspects of hexcrawling is player freedom. I always try to play together with my players and I recommend listening and adapting, keeping the narrative and exploration options as flexible as possible.
What resources would you recommend to anyone running a Hexcrawl (beyond Hexroll!)
Maintaining a physical or digital journal is always useful for any large-scale ttrpg campaign.
How can people help out with Hexroll?
Helping out with modding hexroll would be awesome - both with ideas and actual generators using scroll.hexroll.app
What other RPG tools are you taking note of at the moment?
Anything by Oleg Doyla (Watabou) is magical to me. Oleg is a true Wizard and always super helpful. I highly recommend following his work (at Patreon). I'm recently very impressed with his Dwellings generator progress.
What's your biggest hobby outside of rpgs and generators?
Between my family and my day job, all my spare time is dedicated to tabletop rpgs and Hexroll these days - and there's no shortage of interesting games to play and things to build.
More Interviews
There are many more Creator Interviews if you are a fan of rpg tools and tables.
