Monday, June 30, 2025

The Case for Planetary Romance

Richard Hescox
I feel like planetary romance (sometimes called Sword & Planet, though I think that might be better thought as a subgenre or sub-subgenre) is, I think, a genre well-suited for rpg exploitation, but despite this utility is oddly under-represented. Sure, a search for "sword & planet" or "planetary romance" on drivethru turns up a few pages of entries, but many of those are only sort of "planetary romance informed" (like Dark Sun) or really other genres (like Old Solar system space opera). 

Genre boundaries are admittedly, fuzzy things, so I suppose I should first define what I mean. Planetary romance is a genre about exploration of the biospheres, societies, and cultures of an alien world. Typically, the exploration of the world doesn't just entail the usual activities of naturalists or explorers, but additionally the uncovering of a mystery or mysteries. Planetary romance worlds are more than they appear. The protagonist of these stories is most often an outsider like the reader because that gives the author the greatest freedom into working details about the setting into the narrative. Since a singular world and its exploration is essential to the genre, world-hopping works may share stylistic similarities to planetary romance, but I don't think they belong in the genre--though one could have a planetary romance series where every installment was a different world. Works with a non-outsider protagonist might likewise be excluded*, otherwise some secondary world fantasies would be up for inclusion, though mostly I'd exclude those for their settings being too Earth-like. Lord Valentine's Castle, I'd say, one could call a Planetary Romance and has no outsider protagonist, but it has an amnesiac one, which serves the same purpose.

Sword & Planet, I think, is a subtype of planetary romance, where the planet being visited is (mostly) less technologically advanced (at least in surface ways), and the plots mostly involve action. That action typically resembles swashbuckling fantasy or Sword & Sorcery fiction. The exemplar and progenitor of this type is Burroughs' A Princess of Mars. Swords and sci-fi (like Star Wars or any pulp era space opera stories) have anachronist/inconsistent tech like Sword & Planet but lack the focus on a single world.

Anyway, definitions aside, why do I think it's a good genre for games, perhaps particularly those of an old schoolish bent? Well, the focus on exploration for one thing. Planetary romance easily fits a hexcrawl or pointcrawl model. Planetary romances like Vance's Tschai/Planet of Adventure series or the Alex Raymond years of the Flash Gordon comic strip involve covering a lot of ground and uncovering new things.

Panel from Flash Gordon comic strip by Dan Schkade

Secondly, while actual dungeons are perhaps few (the Cave World of Kira from Flash Gordon not withstanding), ruins to explore are quite common. A number of dead cities, for instance, turn up in Burroughs' John Carter series.

Third, there is an element at least close to picaresque in a lot of planetary romance. While the protagonists aren't typically rogues or anti-heroes, their adventures are episodic and involve navigating or outsmarting corrupt or stultified social systems. Money and food are concerns, depending on the story, and the protagonists often have to get menial sorts of jobs or get imprisoned for petty offenses. Don Lawrence's Storm, for example, is more than once forced into some sort of labor for basically not knowing local customs.

Don Lawrence

So, given what I've said, why isn't Planetary Romance more popular? Mainly, I think it's because there hasn't been a recent example that reached a wide audience. Burroughs' work seems old fashion (as the failure of the recent film perhaps shows) and newer examples (like Scavengers Reign) tend to position themselves more firmly in science fiction than as something that sort of mixes fantasy and sci-fi.


*There are certainly books in planetary romance series that have native protagonist (books in both Burroughs' Mars series and Akers' Kregen series come to mind), but these notably occur after several books with outsider protagonists to get things established, so I think my point still stands.

Friday, June 27, 2025

What it's Like to Travel The Stars

Presumably no one on Earth has yet experienced interplanetary space travel. When the creators of space travel-related media go to describe it or evoke the feeling of it for their audience they tend to analogize it in terms of some idiom of travel their audience is familiar with. The ways in which travelers interact with travel, the stylings of ships and controls, and the attitude of the world toward pilots--all of these things are typically informed more by the specific analogy employed that the speculative mechanics of the travel.


For example, the most pervasive of these is likely space travel as sea travel. This occurs at the level of language where we usually talk of "spaceships" instead of craft or vehicles and crew rankings/positions typically follow naval models. This analogy is evident in Star Trek in its naval organization and the conduct of its space battles, but also in the particular romanticization of both vessels, voyaging, and at times, captaincy. In Star Trek V, Kirk quotes the 1902 poem "Sea-Fever" by Masefield: "All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer by," and it's not at all out of place with the vibe.

Star Wars engages in the sea travel analogy, too. It and its imitators like Battlestar Galactica have capital ships acting as aircraft carriers. The Millenium Falcon is a tramp freighter with a captain supposedly inspired by Humphrey Bogart's screen persona (and perhaps his famous role as a tramp steamer captain in The African Queen (1951)). His adventures with Chewbacca prior to Star Wars probably look a lot like episodes of the radio series Voyage of the Scarlet Queen just translated from the South Seas to the Rim. Cowboy Bebop really hits you over the head with the tramp sea vessel analogy by having the Bebop land in water and being built from a sea-going vessel.


Star Wars likes to mix things up, though. It also employs the second most common analogy: space travel as air travel. Dogfights between fighters have moves out of World War II and hotshot pilots are almost as important to the narrative as they are in Top Gun. The cockpit controls of the Millennium Falcon, and the fact "she doesn't look like much" but "she's got it where it counts" could easily be the way a cargo pilot in some pulp adventure describes his aging sea plane, as in Tales of the Gold Monkey (or more accurately, the sort of fiction that inspired it) or the cargo planes in the early years of the Steve Canyon comic strip.

The third analogy that comes to mind is trucking. I define this as a focus on space travel as performed by rather unromanitic figures, blue collar-working stiffs, often solitary and with few amenities in their utilitarian-appearing vessels. It is not nearly as common as the other two, but it is specifically evoked in Alien and in Cowboy Bebop in the episode "Heavy Metal Queen." The farhaulers of the Transhuman Space setting also have some of this vibe. 


Are there other analogies? Probably. I think some media gestures toward spacecraft as automobile, often in a sort of plot where automobile itself is just the modern stand-in for the freedom of a "fast horse." Leigh Brackett has several protagonists on the run from the law in a fast, small ship like an outlaw escaping on horseback in a Western or a muscle car in a 70s car movie. Battle Beyond the Stars, the Star Wars-inspired space opera retread of the Magnificent Seven (and thus, Seven Samurai) has several of its "hired guns" traveling in solo spacecraft, and at least one is a cowboy. These are less convincing, though, because spacecraft tend to only analogize to cars or horses in media in limited ways. They always occur in "mixed metaphors."

And there are a lot of those of course, with Star Wars being the obvious example, as I said. Still, I find it interesting just how clear these analogies often are.

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Wednesday Comics: DC, September 1984 (week 4)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I read the comics on sale on June 28, 1984.


Warlord Annual #3: I reviewed this annual by Burkett and Jurgens/DeCarlo starting here. In it, Morgan and crew are back in time and meet one of Deimos' ancestors and also learn the origins of Atlantean beast-man creating technology.


Action Comics #559: It's another 2-story issue and again the first story by Rozakis and Schaffenberger is sort of a throwback as it brings back the Yellow Peri from 1982. Loretta Grant gets the magic book back that transforms her into the Yellow Peri. She performs good deeds magically for a fee, an idea of her grifter husband who eventually manipulates her into attacking Superman. Despite all this, Superman lets her keep the magic book in the end. I'd suspect that won't turn out well, but I'd place equal odds-on Yellow Peri never showing up again Pre-Crisis. We'll see!

In the second story by Kupperberg and Saviuk, an encounter with an alien creature results in the temporary de-supering of Superman's hair, allowing Clark Kent to indulge in a visit to the barbershop for a haircut.


Arion Lord of Atlantis #23:  Duursema is back on art. Arion and crew get back to Atlantis and the king seems uninterested in their warnings about Garn Danuuth. Soon strangers start being hostile to Arion and then his friends. Garn shows up but he seems all good now. This all culminates with Wyynde and Arion fighting a duel to the death in the arena. The weakness of this issue is that Arion seems really dumb. From the moment they arrive, and the king is acting out of character, he should have considered a plot by Garn, but know, he doesn't seem to even after his friend and lover turn on him. Maybe mind control magic doesn't exist in Atlantis, so he doesn't consider he because he has no framework for it, but I suspect his thickness is merely in service of padding out the plot.


All-Star Squadron #37: Thomas and Jones/Howell pick up where last issue left off. An uncharacteristically (well, for the Earth-One version, at least) hotheaded Superman is spoiling for a fight with the Marvels, and briefly gets it before cooler heads prevail, and they all realize they are on the same side. We hear how they got here from Earth-S and how they want to get Billy/Captain Marvel back and go home. The magical plot contrivance shield over Europe makes it difficult, but if the two join the technologically empowered JSA as plain old Freddie and Mary, it shouldn't be a problem. Sneaking into Germany, the JSA and the kids find Billy Batson captive, but they are ambushed by the Nazi Captain Marvel. It seems a Nazi scientist has a device that can separate the powered forms from those empowered by Shazam's magic lightning. They do that to Mary and Freddie, too, and send the Marvels to attack Britain.

The mind-controlled Marvels are able to get the better of the powered JSA members left behind, but luckily the group in Germany escapes. As soon as the Batsons and Freddie get out of the range of the Nazi's shield, the Marvels turn good again and help the JSA defeat a German invasion force. Then, they use their powers to recombine and transport themselves back to their Earth.


Detective Comics #542: Again, the assassin makes an attempt Bullock's life but dumb luck (scrambling to get a car cigarette lighter) saves him. With an injured arm, Bullock is on light duty and winds up being the one to accompany the Child Welfare worker to pull Jason from Bruce's custody. The legalities of Bruce's custody are weird here. Moench seems to not want to have Bruce breaking the law, but yet maintain he can't legally have Jason (for some reason the papers weren't signed). It just seems contrived. 

Anyway, while Bruce meets with his team of legal eagles and offers to double their salaries if they can figure a way to get Jason back. Jason slips out of his new living space to answer a bat signal and try to protect Bullock from the assassin. Ultimately, Batman arrives to save the day, but now Batman and Robin have two separate abodes.


Sun Devils #3: The mysterious, ethereal Myste helps Rik Sunn led hi ragtag squadron to victory over the Sauroid invaders. Their dictator natural executes the commanders responsible for the failure, but his troubles only increase as his Crustate allies rethink their planned attack on Earth. Meanwhile, the success of Rik and others leads the Centaurian forces to reconsider rejecting them, and they give them special status with new fighters and snazzy red and black uniforms. Myste reveals herself to the group and is going to continue to aide them. Rik and Annie get some private time and their relationship blossoms. Things aren't all roses for the Sun Devils, though, as we discover there is a traitor among them.


Super Powers #3: Kirby/Cavalieri and Gonzales/Kupperberg have the heroes comparing notes on their recent encounters with villains with heightened powers. Their speculations are cut short by an attack by the Amazons, including Wonder Woman, on the island nation of San Marcos thanks to the actions of the enhanced Brainiac. The heroes have to pull out all the stops to defeat them, including Aquaman summoning a kaiju. Then Brainiac de-evolves Superman to a belligerent, Kryptonian caveman.


Tales of the Legion #315: Levitz/Giffen and Shoemaker/Kesel have a trio Legionnaires crash the trial room of the Dark Circle, but the Circle members tap their sun's power to teleport themselves and Ontiir to a secret satellite. The Circle orders Ontiir to prove his loyalty by giving up his secrets and committing suicide. The Legionnaires arrive in time to prevent that with the Science Police on their heels. The Legionnaires see the Dark Circle's true Cthulhoid form. Ontiir refuses to drop his weapon and is shot and killed by Chief Zendak without us every learning what side he really though it was on. The Circle declares they have nothing to fight over anymore and leaves. Later, Supergirl tells Brainiac 5 that maybe she shouldn't and come, and she doesn't fit in with the Legion anymore. Promising to see him sometime later, she heads back to the 20th Century.

In the backup by Levitz/Newell and Tuska/Kesel, the White Witch continues telling her origin story to Blok. She reveals how Mordru was one of her teachers, and how he betrayed her out of spite and changed her appearance, so she looked like an old woman.


World's Finest Comics #307: Kraft/Rozakis finish this epic with von Eeden/Andrews. I wonder if Kraft was satisfied with the result? Anyway, Superman is trapped by the villains, giving X'ult time to reveal his backstory. He's an alien and the source of everyone's powers is really a technological artifact from his home world. He revives Barracuda and places her under his control. He makes the mistake of having Batman locked in a cell though, which the Caped Crusdader of course, escapes from, then frees Swordfish and Null. They get Superman out too, and the heroes confront X'ult. Swordfish's love frees Barracuda from control, and the two of them and X'ult are plunged into the past, still battling.

With X'ult gone Null's and Void's powers are...well, you know. The heroes take them back to the authorities.


Star Trek Movie Special #1: Nice cover here by Chaykin. Barr and Sutton/Villagrain adapt Star Trek III: The Search for Spock which was released on June 1, 1984. Though it's been clear from hints dropped in the regular series, that Barr knew at least some of the plot points of STIII, he didn't quite set things up for the start of the film, so there's a bit of discontinuity between what we last saw there and where this issue picks up. It's unexplained, for instance, at what point Saavik left Enterprise and how much time has passed since we saw Kirk acting as captain with a full crew compliment and the apparent decision to decommission the vessel. Still, the same creative team on the adaptation does make it seem to flow into continuity better. It will be interesting to see what they do regarding STIV that seems to pick up closely on the heels of this film in movie continuity, but won't actually be released until 1986, leaving a lot of comic issues in between.

Monday, June 23, 2025

The Rpg Art of Kent Burles

 I first became aware of Canadian artist Kent Burles via his comic book work in The Adventurers, though I had seen it decades ago in Malibu's Planet of the Apes comics, too. Once I began to associate his style with his name, I connected him with a lot of rpg illustration from the past I had liked but hadn't known the artist. He did work in the 80s through the 00s in a lot of places: Iron Crown Enterprises, Steve Jackson Games, Palladium, and Green Ronin, among others.

Here are a couple of pieces that really showcase his design sensibility. I love the texture on both of these. It recalls for me the work of Stephen Fabian:



His elaboration of clothing decoration, armor, and technology is a bit like Jack Kirby but also strongly classic Sword and Sorcery:





This is just some of the stuff I could find online. Some of his most fantastical work I think is in the MERP Dol Guldur supplement. I don't know if it says "Tolkien," but it's got a strong S&S vibe and hints of Kirbytech, and it really sells the evil and deadly nature of the fortress. Anyway, I think his stuff is under-appreciated, which is unfortunately true of a number of rpg artists' work of the same era.

Friday, June 20, 2025

Triads

 Welsh triads, a historical form found in Medieval manuscripts where folkloric and mythologic tidbits are presented in groupings of three seem a compact way of delivering some light setting info. 

Playing with the form, I came up with a couple related to the setting I posted about here


Three terrible spectres of the Realm:
Pendhol,who seeks his lost crown and lost head in the hills of Hern,
And Llaithwyn, Lady of the Night Mists, who the wise give courtesy but only fools embrace,
And Black Gawl, the hound loosed by the Beast from the Outer Dark to herald the doom of Men.


Three cunning folk of the Realm:
Morgna, witch and shape-changer, whose hut wanders the Marshes of Morva,
Wyrthegern the Mad, who lives in the wild and speaks in riddles,
And the Wizard Midhryn of Many Names, who was judged most cunning of all.

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Wednesday Comics: DC, September 1984 (week 3)

div style="text-align: left;">Join me as I read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at comics that were published on June 21, 1984.


Thriller #10: DuBay/Niño deliver a weird story (in a way different from how pretty much every Thriller story is weird) that feels like that last issue or next to last issue where they throw some stuff at you out of left field (see the endings of RustNth Man, and Druid, to name a few). Except this isn't the end. We get the connection between Quo, the Salvotini siblings, Lusk, Thriller, and the terrorist Iskariot revealed, as they are shown to be students of the mysterious Verity, who was sort of the "Golden Age" Angie Thriller. While we're getting all this backstory, terrorists set off nukes in New York killing millions. Well, they did, but then time gets rewound, and it seems like we're poised on a new age of spiritual awareness, but then Verity gets accidentally shot and killed. But perhaps that's what was meant to happen? I don't know, but there's a next issue. Niño's art here has a sort of Milt Caniff vibe, different from his usual look. 


Batman and the Outsiders Annual #1: While I'm sure there are some 70s examples, maybe even some 60s ones, the mid-80s seem to be the Golden Age of themed super-villain teams. We got things started with the Demolition Team a few months ago, and now Barr and his collaborators give us what I think may be the exemplar of such teams: the seasonally appropriate Force of July. A Conservative politician creates the team to promote his vision of American ideals and pits them against Batman and the Outsiders (why are they his primary target? It's their book!) who become aware of his connection to a theft from S.T.A.R. Labs. The politician, who took Orwell's 1984 as a how-to manual, has deployed a satellite to monitor Americans constantly for unpatriotic behaviors and attitudes. In the initial skirmishes, the Outsiders are defeated and captured, but eventually they win the day, and the Force of July appears to have been killed. (SPOILERS: They weren't.) Geo-Force and Metamorpho go into space to destroy the satellite.

This issue also debuts Geo-Force's new, green and yellow costume. It also reveals that he knows that his sister Tara was a traitor, despite the Titans hiding it from him out of kindness in their book, Barr reveals that Batman apparently told Brion. Way to keep Nightwing's confidence, Batman!


DC Comics Presents Annual #3: From a story by Thomas, Cavalieri and Kane tell an action-packed tale of a cross-dimensional team-up between Captain Marvel and two Supermen--with appearances by Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. for good measure. Dr. Sivana attacks Superman on Earth-One, why the story doesn't really explain, because is main plot (and the issues) involves him having knocked out the wizard, Shazam, so he can set up a device on the Rock of Eternity and siphon the power of the magical lightning when he tricks Billy Batson into saying "Shazam!" Empowered like a Marvel, Sivana beats up Captain Marvel and imprisons him to die, then tricks Mary and Captain Marvel Jr., before heading to Earth-Two to beat up its Superman. Leaving him in a death trap, he travels to Earth-One and is about to kill that Superman, when Captain Marvel rallies and turns the tide. There is a lot of action, but not really a lot of team-up and most of the issue is the various characters taking on Sivana solo.


Blue Devil #4: This is a fun issue with a lot of the humor that marks the series. Superman takes Blue Devil to the Justice League Satellite to introduce him to Zatanna in hopes she might have a cure for his condition. Before he meets her though, he challenges Superman to an arm-wrestling contest and loses badly much to Elongated Man's amusement. When Zatanna does show up, she consults a book on demonology for background on Nebiros. She concludes that only Nebiros can undo the magic that grafted the costume onto Dan, so she opens a portal to the demon's realm and sends Blue Devil in to talk with him. It doesn't go well, and soon Nebiros is again loose in the world. After they battle him on the island where he was first awakened, the demon escapes and heads to Mexico.


Green Lantern #179: Wein and Gibbons/DeCarlo pick up where last issue left off. Jordan is back on Earth, but Ferris Aircraft is in flames and the Demolition Team are in custody thanks to the mysterious Predator. Jordan, feeling guilty, tries to do something--anything--to help. He finds out Clay Kendall has survived but is paralyzed. Carol angrily gives Hal an ultimatum: either choose her or the Green Lantern Corps. Hal does what anyone might do in that situation: he seeks advice from his friends who happen to be Green Arrow, the Flash, and Superman. Unfortunately, they all give different advice. After thinking it over, Hal visits Carol to give her his final decision: He's quitting the Corps.

In the backup by Klein and Gibbons, we're still on the world of "Green Magic." Green Lantern Hollika and her friends defend themselves from the scientists' submarine. The pilot turns out to be Tahrk's father who says he's escaped the Scientists to join the young rebels.


Infinity, Inc. #6: While most of the Infinitors recover from the beating their elders in the JSA gave them last issue, The Huntress fights with Robin to keep him from killing Boss Zucco who is now an old man with dementia in a prison hospital, and Brainwave, Jr. and the Star-Spangled Kid learn the details of the Ultra-Humanite's evil plan, which naturally also features a recap of Ultra's history.


Legion of Super-Heroes #2: The stakes escalate as Levitz and Giffen follow a similar pattern to previous arcs: small groups of Legionnaires engage enemies whose ultimate goals are uncertain and often lose, at best only driving the enemies off. The new Legion of Super-Villains is at least thwarted from their goal of killing any Legionnaires, but they're able to steal the Polymer Shield that covers Earth. In that engagement, Saturn Girl goes into labor! 

This issue also features the famous panel of the Legion of Super-Villains at a table, and Giffen/Mahlstedt have positioned them in homage to da Vinci's The Last Supper.


New Talent Showcase #8: Editorial seems to have given up on this book. The features are getting more amateurish and at least two stories seem to have goofs that should have caught. Contrary to this trend, though, is the cover feature Jenesis written by Newell with nice art by Beachum/Alexander. Alix Ward officially begins her superhero career while on vacation in Wyoming, but she almost gets killed in a fire set by her opponent. Her husband isn't sold on all this, but she derides his "bleeding heart" concerns.

Cosmic Clinics ends as weird as it began with like a whole limited series on fast forward in the pages of this one feature. Good triumphs over evil and the nefarious clinics are shutdown. Mirrage also reaches the end of his run, rescuing his girl from the deranged hit man. "The Mini (Misadventures) of Nick O. Tyme continues to do whatever it has been doing.


Saga of Swamp Thing #28: Swamp Thing is being haunted by the ghost of Alec Holland. He follows the ghost to his old lab, where Swamp Thing relives the mirrors of Holland's wife Linda, and the events leading up to their deaths. He digs a grave, hoping to put the spirit to rest, but the apparition of his old (pre-Moore) myself points him to the water where Holland's remains must be. Once he recovers Holland's bones and lays them to rest in the grave, Holland's spirit is at peace at last. A creative way to do an origin recap from Moore and McManus.


Sgt. Rock #392: Despite what the cover teases, Kanigher and Redondo aren't ending Rock's war, they just have the brass decide they need him doing basic training at Fort Dix. This is presented as permanent, but I'm betting he's back on the frontline's next month. Anyway, Rock's example and training makes a wimpy kid named Cohen step up.

In the backup story, "Escape," Harris and Lindsey spin a parallel story of two brothers: one a soldier escaping from a German POW camp, the other a criminal escaping from prison in the U.S. and losing his life after killing a dirty Nazi collaborator who escaped with him.


Supergirl #23: Kupperberg and Infantino/Oksner pick up in the middle of Supergirl's battle with the future man. It sort of turns out a draw, with Supergirl unable to lay a hand on him, but the mutant being expending too much energy. After he escapes, we learn his origin, which any astute reader would have guessed: Young genius Barry Metzner created an evolution machine to unlock the potential of his mind by turning him into a hyper-evolved, future man. Only the self-hypnosis tapes kept that megalomaniacal part of him dormant, but it a power outage let it loose. He and Supergirl tangle again, but future man keeps underestimating the Maid of Might. She appeals to the Metzner self within him, shocking him to fight for dominance with her apparent death. That trick gives her the opening to apply super-hypnosis and turn him back to normal. After all that, Linda Danvers goes home and finds old flame 
Dick Malverne waiting for her. To be continued!

Except it isn't. This is the last issue of the series, which I think is sort of a shame. There were some at least mildly interesting plot threads left dangling. It felt like the team was crafting something here that got cut short.


Warlord #84: I reviewed the main story here. In the Barren Earth backup by Cohn and Randall, Jinal and crew embark on their mission to capture a Qlov. They don't have much difficulty finding one but taking it alive is a different manner. The story ends on a cliffhanger, with the Qlov and Jinal squaring off for a sword duel.

Monday, June 16, 2025

Weird Revisited: The Moving Pointcrawl

The original version of this post appeared in July 2015. I never did finish writing In Doom's Wake, but it got playtested twice I believe. I really should get around to finishing it one of these days.


The pointcrawl, which abstracts a map to the important points, eliding the empty places/boring stuff a hexcrawl or similar complete mapping would give equal weight, is [in 2025 certainly!] a well-established concept. One unusual variation not yet explored [it wasn't in 2015, and still isn't, so far as I know!] is the crawling of moving points.

Admittedly, these would be pretty unusual situations--but unusual situations are the sort of stuff adventures are made from: Exploring a flotilla of ancient airships or the various "worlds" in a titan wizards orrery; Crawling the strange shantytown distributed over the backs of giant, migrating, terrapin. Flitting from tiny world to tiny world in a Little Prince-esque planetary system. Some of these sort of situations might stretch the definition of pointcrawl, admittedly, and to model some of them in any way accurately would require graphing or calculus, and likely both.

Let's take a simple case--something from an adventure I'm working on. Say the wrecks of several ships are trapped in a Sargasso Sea of sorts. The weed is stretchy to a degree, so the wrecks move to a degree with the movement of the ocean, but the never come completely apart.

The assumption (to make it a pointcrawl, rather than just a hexcrawl, where the points of interest move) is that there were pretty much only certain clearer channels a small boat could take through the weed--or maybe certain heavier areas that a person who wasn't too heavy could walk over without sinking in complete.

The map would look something like this:


Note that this map is pretty abstract, despite appearances. The distances or size of the weed patch aren't necessarily to scale with the derelict icons. Length of connecting lines is of course, indicative of relative travel distance. The colors indicate how "stretchy" an area is: blue can move d4, orange d6, and red d8 in feet? yards? tens of feet? Not sure yet. Anyway, whether this drift is closer or farther away would depend on a separate roll of 1d6 where odds equals farther and evens closer. Of course, they can't come any closer than the distance they are away on the map, so any "extra" distance would be a shift to one side or the other.

Zigzags denote a precarious patch, where there would be an increased risk of a sudden thickening (if I'm going with boat travel) or falling in (if I go with walking). Dots will denote an extra wandering monster or unusual event check.

So there are a lot of kinks to work out, but that's the basic idea.