This is the kind of project where I’m split evenly between derision, admiration and respect. Someone is actually doing this thing, with as much accuracy to the 16-bit games (and DK64 too) as is merited, however much that may be. And they’re doing it, not as some D&D adjunct, but I would say as an accessory to an unproduced (as yet?) Donkey Kong RPG.
If you don’t know what that is, and I’d admit it’s meaning is sorta inside baseball…. A hexcrawl is a kind of RPG adventure that’s either partly or totally undirected. A large expanse of terrain is marked out on a hexagonal grid, secretly on a gamemaster’s sheet. The players of his game may have their own hexagonal grid, either completely unmarked or with only the most obvious features pre-inscribed upon it.
In the GM’s notes, some, many or possibly even all the hexes are keyed to a list of contents, waiting for an unsuspecting party of adventures to wander through/blunder into it. There might be deadly monsters, friendly allies, neutral NPCs, dungeons, lairs or treasures to find there, or some combination of these things. Just walking into a hex doesn’t guarantee finding what’s hiding there, if hiding something is, it may require a concerted search; or, the party might find it easily. It’s inherently a sandbox style of play, but the randomness of finding adventure, and the possibility that whatever might be there could be missed, multiplies the sense of possibility in the game world. A group might travel through a hex many times before a well-hidden encounter might get noticed.
This is the style of gameplay that the inspired creator seeks to bring to Donkey Kong Island, site of the 16-bit SNES classic Donkey Kong Country and its sequels. The inspiration is the same kind that craftsdwarfs in Dwarf Fortress get, referred there as a strange mood. Those moods can turn out well or badly, but if successful they produce wonders.
It’s an amazing idea, and a bit awe-inspiring, and at least a little bit ridiculous. But lots of things that I thought were ridiculous became immensely popular, Kingdom Hearts is proof enough of that. Actually, I still think Kingdom Hearts is ridiculous, and more ridiculous than this.
The nom de net of the creator of this is Farmer Gadda, and they have both a Neocities blog and a Bluesky presence, which is where I found out about this. A project like this, I’d have it pegged for a Mastodon announcement, but at least I found out about it somewhere.
There are two posts so far, an introduction and a page of system considerations. They’ve thought about it at least that hard, and I can respect that kind of maddened obsession, since after all have I not harbored a not-very-secret Rampart obsession for decades, since before Donkey Kong Country’s release even? (Checking facts: Rampart was 1990; DKC was 1994.)
So I say, shine on you improbable diamond! Keep on doing what no one’s done before! We eagerly await word of your efforts, and if you the reader would like to help support this crazy endeavor, you can hear evidence of its progress a week early by contributing to their Patreon.
