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I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the concept of a Hex Flower. I’ll try to be brief:

The Hex Flower is a procedural random event “engine” that offers a kind of guided tour through a random set of events. There are a number of really interesting uses for this; chiefly for generating random terrain for a hex crawl.

The hexes are numbered from 1 to 19, not quite in order, but rather grouped by proximity to one another. Each area of the hex flower allows for some specific options that are not as common as other events. You navigate the flower by using a key, which tells you how to move when you roll the dice. You start somewhere, say, the center hex, and then you roll dice, look up the result on the movement key, and then move in the direction indicated, to the new hex, and then do what it says to do. Roll the dice, move on the hex flower, repeat.

I’m sure I’m not doing this concept justice. You can read all about it on Goblin’s Henchman’s blog. He’s got a number of examples and an inexpensive download from DriveThruRPG you can check out. It’s a deep dive, but it’s really understandable once you walk through it.

Ever since I ran across this idea, I’ve been fascinated. I love a good process to begin with, but this one looks incredible because it makes use of the bell curve and also allows for a kind of “internal logic” to the hex flower, because when you move into a hex, you have six directions in which you can move (usually) out of a possible 19, and they are dependent upon one another. In other words, where you are on the hex flower determines where you can go next. You can program some crude internal logic to the process.

This is the first one of these I’ve done, and it’s not fully fleshed out, but I wanted to show my work because I think this could work well. This little mini-game is for when things go off the rails, and the heist or the caper is botched. Alarms raised. Dead guard at your feet. Dogs loosed. The shit has hit the fan, and you’ve got to escape from the city, ASAP. If one were so inclined, one could use those blank hexes they make for custom Catan games and lay out 19 hexes on the table, so that everyone can see where they are on the map and what goes where.

How to Use This System
Here’s the idea: use different colored glass beads to represent both the players and the guards. You’re going to be moving from hex to hex, using the results from the table to create a crazy, frenetic chase sequence, with as much or as little roll playing and skirmishing as you’d like.

Put the guards on hex 19. Put the players on hex 10. Every turn, you roll 2d6 and compare the number with the Standard Navigation Hex. Move your glass bead out of the current hex, in the direction indicated by the dice roll, and follow the directions for the new hex. The guards do the same thing, ignoring the instructions on the hexes unless they are on hex 10.

Anyone landing on the center hex rolls a d6 to determine what they encounter. If someone moves back into the hex again and rolls the same result, simply drop down to the first unused encounter on the table. Moving into a hex already occupied means that both parties encounter each other at the same time. Players may elect to attack the guards in the hope of winnowing down their numbers. Players can elect to move out of the hex at the start of their next turn, before any skill checks or combat occur.

A few hexes will tell you to switch navigation hexes. You will use the new navigation hex until instructed to switch back. Several entries have parenthetical numbers listed. Those are Navigation Points. Spend those points to change the direction of the face you rolled on the navigation hex. If you roll a 12 and don’t want to move into the northern hex, you can spend 1 point to move to either side of that hex. A negative number means to subtract that many Navigation Points from the players’ pool. The quantity can’t be less than zero, nor more than 3. Oh, and if a move would take you off of the hex flower, simply wrap around to the direct opposite edge of the map and enter that hex instead. Simple, right?

The hexes are color-coded as an organizational device. In addition to running through the streets trying to find their safe house or the East River Gate or whatever, they can jump down into the sewer tunnels (the purple hexes) or they can take to the rooftops (the green hexes). When they are close to capture, the yellow hexes will make it hard to get away. The gray hexes are most of the street level obstacles, with the center blue hex reserved for unique encounters.

Guards
You will want to keep up with the number of guards chasing the players. Start with 1d6 guards, unless you have a specific number already in play. Any time the guards move into the Green Hexes or the Purple Hexes, they will lose 1 guard. Those two areas represent the sewers and the rooftops, and they are dangerous.

If the players are forced to fight the guards, use the current tally. If there are no guards chasing the players at any point in time, the players win the encounter and can safely escape with their lives and hides intact. If the guards overpower the players by a ratio of 3:1 or greater, the players will automatically be overpowered as soon as they land on hex 19.

I’d originally thought there would be a way to make a hex flower for heists (with serious and life-threatening events) and a hex flower for capers (with comedic or strange occurrences). My thought was that a generic caper table would be too broad; you’d almost need to build one from scratch that plugs into your adventure. The system is rough, but I think there’s something to it. What do you think?