With my Kaserne on the Borderlands campaign revolving around a village, one item that’s been on my players’ minds is the need for their characters to maintain awareness of their surroundings. A hex is something like 60 or 70 square kilometers, so exploring and mapping it doesn’t necessarily reveal everything it contains. Nor does this keep eyes on it after the initial pass. This is a bit of a gap in the core book’s rules, so we sat down at the virtual table to homebrew a downtime action. This also enables players who aren’t regularly able to make sessions to contribute outside “I brew fuel… again.” Here’s what we came up with:
Patrolling
Designate the hex that you’re patrolling (which may require travel time to reach). Roll Recon (additional recon team members may assist if they have Recon D or higher), modified as follows:
- Scout specialty present in the group: +1
- Open terrain: +1
- Woods or mountains terrain: -1
- Ruins terrain: -3
- Dark: -1
- Light precipitation: -1
- Heavy precipitation: -2
- Cumulative per person in the patrol above three: -1
The patrol finds one item of interest per success. These may be:
- landmarks
- exploitable resources
- hazards
- active threats
- intel/clues
- salvage items
- plot
On double 1s, something unpleasant (but not lethal) befalls the patrol.
(It’s not as rigorously-programmed as the core rules’ actions, but it has worked for us so far. I try to get a general sense of what each PC is looking to get out of their patrol and provide appropriate results so the player feels like the time was well spent.)