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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lackofname" data-source="post: 8126918" data-attributes="member: 87598">They're part of the colony, on board specifically to be either the Away team (Hexcrawling Exploration and "troubleshoot problems away from home base") or the Home Team (run the colony/diplomatic nation building with the locals and defense). The focus depends on what the group would enjoy more.I want to sort of run the game like PF's Kingmaker, but I've only read the first module (which is the exploration part) so I don't know how the resource acquisition/nation building is handled, but if the players aren't interested in that part then it doesn't really matter either way.1. Be the first to plant the flag on the new continent.2. Money. They want to gobble up as much resources as possible. Hurry, discover new things--spices? Coffee? DRUGS? Salt? GIMMIE.The settlement backer's POV: Politely exploitative. The locals are useful, but once that's over, buy the land out from under them and shoo them off; the native races aren't close to human so intermarriage isn't possible, their numbers and tech level isn't enough of a severe threat (and they're not warlike), conversion isn't a concern, so just bide time.If the PCs go the "Home Team" route, this will be pressure from the backers urging them to act this way, while the players (hopefully) won't agree. If they're on the Away team, it'll be going on in the background.Here's part of where things start hitting the skids.Indeed there was a previous civilization that was more advanced. It was wiped out because of bad things they did, and containing the fallout required heavy magical lifting from both nature spirits and extra-planar assistance. This area of the continent (The starter zone, basically) was walled off from the interior, and the locals considered everything associated with the prior civilization to be incredibly taboo--to the point some conservative tribes think building with stone is courting disaster; everything else made of stone got smote so why risk it? To them the stuff in the ruins is probably cursed or will unleash hell, so those weird foreigners are welcoming destruction on their own heads.Here's another problem. I don't want to handle these parts at all. This is more like what I am thinking:Away Team "While searching this hex, you run into an encounter in a highly saline pool. Looks like this is a potential salt mine, that's really important."Players: Cool, we'll let the colonists know.Home Team"So exploration turned up a spot that could be a salt mine. That's huge."Players: Cool, let's get some people out there.Month later: No one's heard from the salt mine in like two weeks.Players: Aw geez, let's go see what's going on over there...That's fine at first, but after a certain point, I am not really one for minor encounters like that. Usually I like bigger story things.Edit: As I write this, the more I'm leaning away from the Home Team, simply because I think it would lead to a lot less action for PCs. I do enjoy the settlement advancement/diplomacy element, but the system isn't built for it and really I want to show off the setting, and that involves Going Forth and Overturning Rocks. Half the inspiration here is Indiana Jones and other Pulpy things, which doesn't have to worry about currency and the specifics; Indy finds the thing, he chases the thing, he hands the thing off mingling with the locals and eating monkey brains.What [USER=6998052]@Jd Smith1[/USER] describes is more or less my ideal brand of magical item to the Magical Christmas Tree effect; each PC gets one item, it has multiple functions. But 1) I've never successfully done that before, 2) that takes away some of the incentive, the flair, the fun--once you have your own magical item, you don't need gold or to find any loot. When you don't need to find loot, finding a dingus of the thing isn't that important.Thinking about it, perhaps it might be easier to do the ol' 1e "Treasure = XP".I guess part of the problem is I don't know what players will like. I don't have a definitive group. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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