HEX & THE PUNKS

Hey, I wrote a game. It's a hack of Hex & the City which I'll tell you about one of these days. It's right below, for free (the file is just a placeholder). But it's kinda ugly. So if I earn 50 bucks with it, I'll whip up a nice layout for it!

Who are HEX & THE PUNKS? Flip two coins or choose:
Tails then heads: girls from the street with tags protecting their space
Tails then tails: cartoon heroines who shoot down evil empires from their interstellar ship
Heads then tails: a band of angry musicians who knock off bad guys with their sound waves
Heads then heads: a gang of warriors whose howling always foreshadow a fight

Or something else like the owners of a community kitchen who cook healing food or a team of plumbers who specialize in ghost leaking, you do you!

(it’s also a TTRPG by Côme Martin for 2 to 5 people and fast & nervous sessions, sketched in October 2024)

Basically:

Creating your witch’s easy: choose her a name, a description, something that’s obvious when we see her and something impossible to guess, then put points in her two scores.
The two scores are HEX and PUNK: divide 8 points between them. You can listen to X-Ray Spex with the volume turned all the way up while you do that.
If you want you can also talk about how and why you do magic but I think that’s pretty obvious.
So when you wanna do something and there’s a possibility that, if you fail, it creates something unexpected and interesting, you’ll flip coins, as many as your score in HEX or PUNK.
HEX is everything revolving around magic and the supernatural: casting a spell of course but also identifying magic, resisting a spell, speaking the language of devils, that sort of thing.
PUNK is all the rest: living fast, hitting hard, never apologizing.
If you test HEX, all the coins landing on tails are a success. If you test PUNK, keep the heads.
In general you only need one success to succeed (duh) except when other players think you’re facing tough adversity. In any case, put the coins that landed on the right side in the group’s bank, you’ll need them to cast spells and move along the adventure.

For spells, there’s three levels: 2 is the default one, but there’s also 1 for small spells and 3 for a big thingy. If you disagree on what level you need, talk or hit it out until it’s clear.
To cast a spell, say what you’d like to do then decide if you apply these 2 effects: “It does what I want” and “It hits the target I want”.
Each effect costs 2 coins per level (so four for level 2 and six for level 3). If you want, you can test HEX before casting the spell: that means you hang on a particularly strong energy current, you use your magical talisman, you chant a ritual phrase with your sisters, you give more efforts than usual to make it short. And so you’ll automatically spend the coins landing on tails for your spell. The rest of the cost, whether you test HEX or not, take it from the bank. You can spend it on a setting, an event or the big bad (I’ll explain this in a few lines).
Then ask another player to describe how things go. If you didn’t buy the necessary effects, they’ll probably go wrong. And the bigger the spell, the bigger the damage if things go wrong.

So OK but what are we playing? Well, depending on your starting concept, choose one of the adventures below. You can also make up your own by following a similar structure, you’ll see it’s not rocket science (especially if you do it as a group before you play!). For each adventure, there’s settings: you can spend coins from the banks to trigger the effects written on them. There’s also events: you can put them into play whenever, and the player who does so decides if you must pay 1, 2 or 3 coins to overcome them. There’s no glory in overcoming an event that’s bigger, it really depends on the story at that point. But you should know when you spend coins from a spell on events, you double the count, since it’s always easier to sort things out with magic!
And of course there’s a big bad: he’s always super strong, with a nasty scheme, and no one apart from you want to deal with him (well, sometimes it’s not one man but a group… but anyway). And so you can’t fight with him until you’ve overcome at least as many events as there are players, but after that you can whittle him down rather than facing him in one big swoop. And you can only fight him with spells, for a cost of 15 coins. It’s not nothing but remember that a big, powerful spell can do 12 coin damage at once, even if you have to cheat for that!

‘Cause yeah, all of that costs money, but if you don’t have or don’t wanna spend it, of course you can cheat and discreetly steal coins. The thing is, you take coins one by one and every time you do that, 3 things happen: first, you decide where you spend the stolen coin. Then, you add another on a piece of paper with “boom” written on it or whatever. Then, you flip all the coins on that paper and if at least one hands on tails, things go BOOM, in a rather big way (I’ll let you decide what that means). Then, remove all the coins from that paper, and feel free to cheat again.

In short:
- HEX succeeds on tails, PUNK on heads. Successes go to a shared bank.
- When you cast a spell you spend 2/4/6 coins for each of the two effects, depending on the spell’s level. Another player describes the result.
- You can spend coins on settings to trigger the effects on them.
- You can spend coins (1/2/3) on events to overcome them.
- After a handful of events, you can face the big bad: put 15 coins on his head to take him down, only with spells.
- If you don’t have the money, you can steal coins one by one but there’s always a chance it goes BOOM.

Advice for the road:
- You can always make tests outside of events and all that, it’s a good way to earn coins easily!
- It’s better when things go quick, are lively, and smell like angry women’s sweat.
- Still, be careful with each other and see that everyone has their moment of glory.
- In doubt, privilege punk spirit over coherence. What’s “punk spirit”? Hell if I know.
- And if you end up not doing what was originally planned, who gives a fuck, right?

If you play girls from the street with tags protecting their space:

Big bad:
“Winner Wolves” (WW), a corporation buying back building from the hood to turn them into hunting grounds for the werewolves at the head of the company, hungry for feminine meat. Cost: 15

How the girls get involved (choose a starting situation or make one up):
Tails then heads: fuck, our squat’s about to be destroyed, what do we do?
Tails then tails: you heard about this girl who got attacked yesterday? I’m sick of these kind of things!
Heads then tails: am I the only one to feel like we’re getting more magic energy than usual lately?
Heads then heads: what’s with the shitty tag over our own? “WW”, what’s this?

Settings:
1. A building squatted by ghosts
Costs: 1 -> possess someone / 2 -> create scary lights or sounds

2. A street corner covered in street art
Costs: 1 -> transmit a message / 2 -> protect a secret 

3. The neighborhood’s sewers
Costs: 2 -> reveal a shortcut / 3 -> bring to the mythical depths 

4. The local grocery store
Costs: 1 -> get exactly what you need / 1 -> randomly stumble on the right person 

5. The local police station
Costs: 4 -> get the job done properly / 4 -> let compromising information slip by 

6. A vacant lot
Costs: 2 -> be full of magical energy / 3 -> serve as a hideout

Events:
1. A rival gang gets in the way
2. The cops do a raid
3. A werewolf attacks
4. Tags come alive
5. Something escapes from the sewers
6. WW starts its construction work
7. A building rebels
8. A woman disappears
9. The full moon appears in the sky
10. Two enemies strike a deal
11. Nature tries to reclaim its rights
12. WW starts an aggressive communication operation

If you play cartoon heroines who shoot down evil empires from their interstellar ship:

Big bad:
Emperor Zorg, a Venusian eunuch who collects women and kidnaps whole planets.
Cost: 15 

How the heroines get involved (choose a starting situation or make one up):
Tails then heads: hey, our friends haven’t showed up to Plutonian bowling, that’s weird!
Tails then tails: is it me or a planet just disappeared in front of us?
Heads then tails: I heard things are tense on Venus right now, men are on edge…
Heads then heads: things are bad, friends, the Mars Empress needs us!

Settings:
1. An asteroid field
Costs: 1 -> shake followers off / 2 -> provide rare metal

2. Near a black hole
Costs: 4 -> arrive “at some other time” / 4 -> arrive “somewhere else” 

3. A soft planet
Costs: 1 -> Enjoy a well-deserved rest / 2 -> provide the best pastries in the universe

4. An enemy ship
Costs: 2 -> copy the enemy’s radar signature / 3 -> sabotage communications 

5. A water planet
Costs: 2 -> discover unknown technology / 2 -> recharge the hydraulics batteries 

6. A restaurant near a sun
Costs: 2 -> stumble on unexpected allies / 4 -> inadvertently learn Zorg’s weakness

Events:
1. Zorg sends henchmen against the heroines
2. A celestial centipede feels like playing
3. An electric storm damages the ship
4. A loved one disappears
5. A group of men rebels
6. The ship has to perform an emergency landing
7. Zorg’s troops kidnaps all the women of a capital
8. A good-humored bet turns nasty
9. A cultural mistake has serious consequences
10. A stowaway is found on board
11. The galactic customs get involved
12. An alien artifact confuses everyone

If you play a band of angry musicians who knock off bad guys with their sound waves:

Big bad:
A music producer who sucks the creativity of women musicians falling under his spell, and re-injects it to talentless men singers.
Cost: 15

How the band gets involved (choose a starting situation or make one up):
Tails then heads: did I tell you about my cousin, the bass player who was trending mad on her social? She can’t play for shit since the other day…
Tails then tails: who’s that dumbass who went from total unknown to first billing in the cool local concert hall?
Heads then tails: I heard a big producer is looking for new groups to sign on his label, shouldn’t we call him up?
Heads then heads: wait, if the band with whom we’ve been rivals for ever decided to flirt with magic to succeed, we should do the same, don’t you think?

Settings:
1. A bar offering shows on Saturday nights
Costs: 2 -> finding harmony with the drinkers / 2 -> meet someone precious

2. The biggest scene on a world-renowned festival
Costs: 4 -> get massive support / 6 -> touch glory from the tip of your finger

3. A recording studio assembled in a country house
Costs: 1 -> sketching an obsessing riff / 4 -> compose the perfect song

4. The road between two stops on a tour
Costs: 1 -> find a short rest / 2 -> appease tensions

5. A record store managed by music lovers
Costs: 1 -> find the perfect soundtrack / 2 -> unearth a musical archive

6. A recording company inside a building made of metal and glass
Costs: 2 -> find the right person to talk to / 3 -> receive help from an unexpected fan

Events:
1. Instrument are not delivered on time
2. An epic storm breaks out
3. Someone in the band receives the perfect opportunity
4. Another band gets famous way too quickly
5. The band feels their creativity fade away
6. The band gets lost on the road toward a suspiciously isolated destination
7. A crucial recording gets stolen
8. A commercial operation crushes the competition
9. An argument devolves into a fight
10. The box has gone missing
11. A musical challenge is thrown!
12. Too many technical problems to believe in a coincidence

If you play a gang of warriors whose howling always foreshadow a fight:

Big bad:
Købrän, a barbarian for whom all magic shall be exterminated. He roams through the giant desert and massacres any witches he stumbles onto.
Cost: 15

How the gang gets involved (choose a starting situation or make one up):
Tails then heads: I found the head on our witch sister on a spike. As much blood will spill as the tears I cried.
Tails then tails: the winds whispered to me a barbarian claims to be more courageous than us. This insult deserves death.
Heads then tails: sisters, the desert’s sand turned gray last night. Magic is slowly dying.
Heads then heads: the old ones have summoned the witches congress. A serious threat is looming.

Settings:
1. A maze of tunnels
Costs: 1 -> get shelter and wait for things to calm down / 3 -> hear the secrets of the world

2. A thirsty jungle
Costs: 2 -> tame a wild beast / 2 -> find abundant food

3. An ancestral temple
Costs: 1 -> find lost peace / 3 -> learn sacred words

4. The oldest tree in the world
Costs: 2 -> receive a vision / 2 -> disappear for a while

5. The endless desert
Costs: 1 -> avoid getting stuck / 3 -> find a friendly camp

6. A snowy mount
Costs: 2 -> learn from the life growing there / 3 -> concoct a particular drink

Events:
1. A scorpio caravan blocks the path ahead
2. The purple sky perturbs magic balance
3. A sandstorm blurs distances
4. A horde of swarmers attacks!
5. A mysterious riddle is asked
6. Stars send worrying omens
7. A revered object disappears at the same time as a witch
8. The mounts refuse to go further
9. An ancient monster wakes up
10. The gang is prey to a chase
11. Something abnormal rains down
12. Everything crumbles under the gang