The History of Hexicon Fantasy Roleplay (II)....

Before Hexicon, the author (Kielan Yarrow) and players spent a number of years playing systems that were available (and popular) in the early 1990's - systems such as Runequest, Palladium, Harnmaster, WFRP, Pheonix Command, Call of Cthulu, Pendragon and of course AD&D - and enjoying them all a great deal in the process.

The common feeling however was that while each game had a number of excellent features which made the system worth playing they also had features that seemed to let it down in other areas or that the system(s) were tied too closely to a particular setting.

Over twelve months or so during 1992 / 1993 Hexicon (or "Kielan's System" as it was known) began to emerge in its initial and somewhat scrappy form. There was no urge or grand-plan to produce a world-beating system but more of an inclination to play a game that would handle well in any situation and reflect the kind of gritty, no-frills style of game that this particular group of players preferred.

From this initial stage it grew fairly rapidly due to bi-weekly sessions and a keen group of gamers who would constantly be adding sections, rules, clauses, races, spells and any other conceivable feature as the game was played.

A ruthless evolutionary process took hold over the following few years and served to hone and fine-tune the system; anything that was not deemed workable, fair (arbitrary) or realistic was discarded or amended until what remained was polished and well-oiled.

An important fact to emphasise here is that at all times there was a vital counterbalance between realism and playability in action during the game's development. The regular GM (author Kielan Yarrow) was (and still is) a stickler for accuracy, rules and realistic outcomes and would quite happily whiz through a three-page equation to determine how many beers it would take your character to get drunk on.

However, the players were not this way inclined - what they wanted was to be convinced that all aspects of their character's existence were being micro-managed without having to sit around for days waiting for Kielan to calculate a 'drunk-factor'.

So, as a result a compromise was always reached which satisfied Kielan's (and to some extent the system's) desire for realism and the player's desire to get on with it and be convinced that it all made sense under the hood. After all, 'You've Been Framed' was on at 7.30 and things had to get moving…

During this time Hexicon's game-world, Korin-Thar also evolved and developed being as it was the setting used throughout the game's development. As a result Korin-Thar has seen a huge amount of input and nurturing which is reflected in the rich level of detail of the World-Atlas supplied with the Hexicon package.

This evolutionary process continued for some time until in 2001 myself and Kielan set about the lengthy process of transforming the opaque and fairly-inaccessible set of tables and formulas that we had into a legible and understandable format.

This began as a desire to actually own a decent copy of a system that we and numerous other people enjoyed playing very much but it became quickly apparent that the result was something quite special and complete that could hold it's own on a gaming-shop's shelf.

So, nearly twelve or thirteen years after its inception the first edition of Hexicon Fantasy Roleplay is available for (hopefully) hundreds if not thousands of other players to enjoy.