Hexcrawl - Unsorted Resources

[bryce0lynch]

On Hexploration, a closer look

It's been out for a while, I figured I'd talk about what's inside. This is an screen resolution example of a hex from the Hexplore serie...

hackslashmaster.blogspot.com

Hex Mapping and Resources

I have begun creating a hex map of Alnwich and the surrounding land. I am largely following the advice of The Welsh Piper and The Alexandr...

abovetheflatline.blogspot.com

Into the Wild... erlands

This is the system I'm using for hex crawling in the Wilderlands. It is primarily based on this Unearthed Arcana article , but it also d...

inplacesdeep.blogspot.com

[Review] Times That Fry Men's Souls

Times That Fry Men's Souls is a campaign setting written by Seann McAnally / Nerd Glows On . The weird historical setting lends it to...

eldritchfields.blogspot.com

Hexcrawl Dungeon

Hexcrawl Dungeon

www.therpgsite.com

Wilderness rules, a wishlist

I'm looking for a good set of wilderness travel rules. The setting of Signs in the Wilderness is a wide, poorly-explored country, where se...

signsinthewilderness.blogspot.com

Hexcrawling In Fassulia And Beyond

So I'm playtesting Lungfungus's Fassulia and it's going well so far, but I'd like to talk about some things I do with hexcrawls (or rather ...

wizzzargh.blogspot.com

North-West Marches - Travel Rules

Credit Eric J Fitch Hex generation For each newly viewed hex, roll on the following table twice and combine the results. If y...

meanderingbanter.blogspot.com

The Bone Marshes: A Hex-Mapping Adventure About Getting Lost

A tabletop RPG adventure packed with mapping and navigation challenges.

www.kickstarter.com

Approximating the area of a hexagon

I needed to figure out how many square miles are in a hexagon. Turns out, nobody wants to give a straight answer when all you know about the hexagon is the distance face-to-face, which is what we a…

1d30.wordpress.com

Hex Describe

CONE OF NEGATIVE ENERGY

Campaign Wiki LinksToWisdom: HomePage

Hexcrawl

As part of my essay on game structures in roleplaying games, I specifically discussed the basic structure of the hexcrawl:(1) Draw a hexmap. In general, the terrain of each hex is given as a v

thealexandrian.net

A Set of Unified Wilderness Travel Procedures

OSR RPG blog with a focus on mechanically reinforcing immersion and thematic elements of story.

melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.com

Almost-Encounters: Sights, Sounds and Leavings

Regularly, when I roll for random encounters underground or outdoors in a game, I allow for the possibility that some kind of clue to an enc...

rolesrules.blogspot.com

A Marked-Up Map

I'm much too kind to show the influence map the Band of Iron left behind in the northern lands. Let's just say that purple worm example in...

rolesrules.blogspot.com

Old School Fantasy Hexcrawl Resources

Ever since Troy's article about running red box D&D for his kids at the end of January, I've been immersing myself in the OSR (Old School Renaissance). It's been a ton of fun, and one aspect in particular has been some of the most fun I've had as a GM in years. Even though I started gaming with...

gnomestew.com

The Hexenbracken

The Kraal

The Colossal Wastes of Zhaar

[BLOG] Shallow and deep wilderness sandboxes

Difficulties concerning this area of play notwithstanding , most of us manage to create and run rewarding wilderness adventures. The OD&D...

beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com

note the melan comments - towards the tower. vision distance and the importance of abstraction to immersion

Travel Times for Old-School Hex-Crawling

Here’s the handy-dandy chart I’m using to calculate travel times for “province-level” hex-crawls in my Panzoasia Campaign. It’s keyed for a scale of “1 Hex = 1 League”, which I prefer because it co…

engineoforacles.wordpress.com

Travel through the Wilderness, references

Looking for sources to run a wilderness game? Here are some great blog posts I've been reading lately (some from better authors than m...

signsinthewilderness.blogspot.com

Rules for hex crawls? | Dungeons & Dragons / Fantasy D20 Spotlight

What are your favourite sources for hex crawl rules and mechanics? Heck, what are your favourite rules and mechanics for hex crawls? The last time I interacted with the idea was the 5e adventure path that took place in the jungle continent, had a ruined city full of animal-themed temples, and a...

forum.rpg.net

[BLOG] Let me use Huberic of Haghill

Accidental genius or random content mill? Opinions vary about Judges Guild, but there is a truth to both descriptions. Here was a pioneer ...

beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com

Reactions to OD&D – Hex-Clearing Procedures

Not to be confused with hexcrawling, hex-clearing is the process by which monsters and other hostile forces were cleared out of a hex in preparation for a stronghold to be constructed. Clearing a he

thealexandrian.net

[BLOG] Shallow and deep wilderness sandboxes

Difficulties concerning this area of play notwithstanding , most of us manage to create and run rewarding wilderness adventures. The OD&D...

beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com

Travel and hex-crawling, part two

Read part one here : https://daimon-games.blogspot.com/2019/10/travel-and-hex-crawling-part-one.html In this new post, we start by looki...

daimon-games.blogspot.com

In the Heart of the Unknown | Procedural Hex Crawling Engine

In the Heart of the Unknown – A Procedural Hex Crawling Engine ‘In the Heart of the Unknown’ contains procedural Encounter, Terrain and Weather Engines for Wilderness Hex Crawling…

goblinshenchman.wordpress.com

Hex Flower Game Engines | an overview and some thoughts

Background: For about the past year I’ve been blogging on-and-off about Hex Flower Game Engines (they are like a random table but with a memory). For example here and here. Download I decided…

goblinshenchman.wordpress.com

Hexcrawl Addendum – Sketchy Hexcrawls

As described in The Art of the Key, the first published module for D&D was Palace of the Vampire Queen. It used a very simplistic, tabular key:A year later, Judges Guild would release Wilderla

thealexandrian.net

Hex Crawling 101? - Dragonsfoot

Best hex template? | Original D&D Discussion

What templates do you use in your hexcrawls? For me, the numbered grid is a must. Some space left to make notes is also welcome. Few examples: http://quicklyquietlycarefully.blogspot.com

odd74.proboards.com

Hex-Based Exploration

Hex-Based Exploration

www.therpgsite.com

 

[The Heretic]

Silly question: I've always assumed that the distance covered by a hex as calculated from one flat side to the other. I have an adventure path that states that the distance was from one corner to the opposite corner. But but but...that just seems wrong to me. Am I alone in this?

 

[bryce0lynch]

You are not alone.

Mechanically, the purpose of the scale is to compute travel distances? So are characters entering from one corner or from one side? IE: this corner statement may be academically correct but irrelevant because its not how its used? Or is it? idk ...

 

[The Heretic]

I thought about this some more when I was trying to sleep last night. Consider:
The usual scale used for graph paper is one square = 10 feet
A ten foot square room is usually drawn with all the borders shaded in as walls
Therefore the traditional use of the square is from one side to the other = 10 feet. If it was one corner to the opposite corner, ten foot square rooms would have to be drawn differently.
The hex is just like the square, except that it has six sides instead of four. Therefore it should be computed the same.

This was a Pathfinder adventure path where I saw this. So you can blame it on evil, bad Paizo ickiness.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Hexes vs squares, corners vs. sides.... it's all just semantics. The DM decides how long something will take, and it takes that long... period. Even uniformity goes out the window, considering not all hexes are the same. Cross a hex, 1 day. Cross two hexes, 2 days. Cross a hex filled with jagged cliffs and thick brambles? Two days, or one and a half, or whatever you want. Ask a villager how far to the next town... "Oh about three days of walking". I'll never see a party complain saying "well technically we are crossing from the SE corner to the NE side, so it should only take 0.85 days"... no, the DM says something and it is what it is. Done. What they want to do will take 1 day. Ruling made, let's move on to the actual game please.

I will never understand why people let the game bog them down so much. You're the DM - the world is as you say it is.

 

[squeen]

For me...get called out months or years later due to inconsistencies. (Predicated upon a long-running campaign.)
Just makes it easier, I believe, if you have a system that works for you and is well documented.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Here's how I see it:

Take an easy to remember rule, let's say 1 hex = 1 day travel.

Going from a corner to a side? Takes a day - the terrain isn't so easily navigable.
Going from a side to an adjacent side? Takes a day - there's some big-ass ravine to go all the way around.
Going from a corner to an opposite corner? Takes a day - it's a lot of unimpeded walking in a straight line.

The world is not conveniently broken up into hexes. To me in this scenario, the hex doesn't represent shape or distance, so much as it represents TIME. It's a day to do it, no matter how wide the hex or whether you start from a corner or whatever. A hex could be a five-mile stretch of thorn bushes and irregular terrain, and a hex could be a fifty mile stretch of open, well-maintained road - in both cases, they take a day to cross. In both cases, they are a single hex on a map.

The shape and distance of the hex is irrelevant - your party isn't going to whip out a measuring tape and check for hex consistency across the borders. They're not going to peek at the DM map. The borders of the hex are representative of a time measurement - 1 day's journey. If you were to directly translate this into distance hexes, sure you'd get some weirdly oblong hexes, but that's why you're using them to measure time and not distance.

But the hex only represents a unit of time, not distance, simply because I decided that it did. It could represent anything - units of supply, measurement in walking miles, days of water required, etc. point is, the lines of the hex are metrics we can set ourselves, and so long as we maintain the baseline metric of what a hex even "is", then consistency is easy to maintain.

 

[The Heretic]

(drat, where'd I put that glue trap...)

Hexes vs squares, corners vs. sides.... it's all just semantics...I will never understand why people let the game bog them down so much. You're the DM - the world is as you say it is.

Lol. I agree with you. I am more aghast that anyone would do the measure from corner to corner. That just seems barbaric.

 

[grodog]

Some recent hex design work I've done in Greyhawk, using our Black Blade hex pads: https://grodog.blogspot.com/2020/02/renovating-the-monastery-in-greyhawk-part-1.html

Allan.

 

[squeen]

@grodog : I was going to say how cool your blown-up Verbobonc-Dyvers regional maps are, but embellishing on topdichvu's elegant prose would just be gliding the Lilly.

Seriously, I think that is the most interesting region on the Greyhawk map because of the ToEE history. (I had integrated the B2 map a bit to the south, on a road through Gnarley for my home campaign.) Very cool. It will be fun to watch your work unfold. Someday, when we figure out how to get city-products right, Verbobonc and Dyvers need a fan treatment.

Sounds like a lost Crosby/Hope movie: "Road through Gnarley"

Happy New Year all.

 

[Osrnoob]

Trang tổng hợp top dich vu uy tín.

OH GOSH A ROBOT

 

[The1True]

This is actually pretty useful and enlightening:

 

[Beoric]

This is actually pretty useful and enlightening:

This is really excellent. I think it would work best on small maps, where the hexes aren't very wide, so relying on vision makes sense in-game. It would require modification to plausibly use it for, say, 6 mile hexes. Crossroads, signposts and NPC-fed rumours would probably be necessary. Large area maps often have a few main roads that only intersect, if they intersect at all, with other main roads. Side roads marking points of interest ("world's largest ball of yarn, etc.) would be useful, as well as rumours at the inns that are likely to be present at crossroads.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I think it would work best on small maps, where the hexes aren't very wide, so relying on vision makes sense in-game. It would require modification to plausibly use it for, say, 6 mile hexes.

Just an FYI, the average human is capable of seeing about 3 miles away, which is why 6 miles hexes are ideal (among other reasons) because if you're in the middle of the hex you can see to the edges. It also means that if you're in the middle of the hex, you supposedly can't see any part of the adjacent hexes (barring huge towering things like mountains).

 

[Beoric]

Just an FYI, the average human is capable of seeing about 3 miles away, which is why 6 miles hexes are ideal (among other reasons) because if you're in the middle of the hex you can see to the edges. It also means that if you're in the middle of the hex, you supposedly can't see any part of the adjacent hexes (barring huge towering things like mountains).

That's my point. Even under ideal conditions (hex is in Saskatchewan), you can only see what is in the hex if you are in the middle, and you can see some of what is in adjacent hexes as you move towards the edges. If the map granularity is "6 mile hex," you will need something other than just seeing landmarks to notice all of the cool stuff. And the cool stuff is generally just 1 item per hex, although you could increase that if you wanted.

So unless you want to map out the interior of every 6 mile hex to put a bunch of cool stuff in it, you need some other way of informing you of what direction you should be going. And if you do map out the interior of every 6 mile hex, you really aren't dealing with a 6 mile hex anymore, you are dealing with a 1/4 mile hex (or whatever).

So with a six mile hex you need other things to let the players know there is stuff out there. Like hitting a crossroads with a sign like, "12 miles to the Shrine of Dol Arrah, the Lady of Light and Honour," or some dudes in a tavern talking about someplace they visited, or raiders coming from the west, etc.

I'm saying you can't literally apply the technique to a 6-mile hexcrawl, you need to look at why the technique works in a granular 3D environment that players can literally see in, and think of what you could do to create a similar effect in a macro 2D environment, where the distances between landmarks are vast, and you are relying heavily on imagining the environment provided by verbal descriptions or map symbols.

You need to think about how to create more than one viable route to the destination, where each route has pros and cons and reasonable players could choose any of the options for one reason or another. And you probably need to do it procedurally, or at least have it helped along with procedural methods, because D&D maps can be huge and you really can't expect to be detailing four different routes when only one of them is going to be used. Nintendo is creating content for millions of players, so every option is likely to be chosen at some point. Unless you are publishing, you are usually only creating for one party.

It's actually kind of a difficult problem, now that I'm thinking harder about it. You would need to make a point of making major destinations on the other side of some sort of obstacles, so players would always need to decide whether to go around, through, over or under them, as the case may be. And there would need to be reasons why the obvious easy/safe way wouldn't just be the default.

 

[The1True]

What I did with the Irradiated hexcrawl is, based on terrain and elevation, I noted in each (3 mi) hex whether the neighbouring hexes were visible. So players can often choose if they want to continue on through the mountains, or head down into a nearby forest, or investigate and intriguing tower on a distant hilltop.
As has been discussed at length by the pathcrawl people (sorry, no receipts at this time), there are numerous ways to broadcast the existence of interesting features hidden within a hex. Trails leading off the road, signs of monster activity, trail markers, etc. The Zelda method of creating pyramidal landforms to obscure vision and then poke brightly coloured objects up from behind them is also fully portable over to ttrpg: A banner flutters in the breeze above a distant copse of trees. A second look at the rocky hillside spots crumbling ruins. A trail of smoke trickles up from between the looming cliffs of canyon you are crossing. etc.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Whenever my players are in the wilderness, I only ever give them the sense of adjacent hexes - "There are the Diamond Mountains to the North of you, and the great black forest continues to deepen as it grows East. South and West are grasslands; you are at the fringes of the Desolate Plains", etc.

It also helps if they have a map, because then they don't need to "spot" anything on the horizon - they already know it's there! Or they know the swamps carry on for another 15 miles, the forest is seven hexes in size, etc.

 

[Beoric]

What I did with the Irradiated hexcrawl is, based on terrain and elevation, I noted in each (3 mi) hex whether the neighbouring hexes were visible. So players can often choose if they want to continue on through the mountains, or head down into a nearby forest, or investigate and intriguing tower on a distant hilltop.
As has been discussed at length by the pathcrawl people (sorry, no receipts at this time), there are numerous ways to broadcast the existence of interesting features hidden within a hex. Trails leading off the road, signs of monster activity, trail markers, etc. The Zelda method of creating pyramidal landforms to obscure vision and then poke brightly coloured objects up from behind them is also fully portable over to ttrpg: A banner flutters in the breeze above a distant copse of trees. A second look at the rocky hillside spots crumbling ruins. A trail of smoke trickles up from between the looming cliffs of canyon you are crossing. etc.

I think it's easier with a 3 mile hex. I use a 6 mile hex because easy math (which is probably why you use 3 mile hexes), but also I'm dealing with very large maps, and (a) the amount of content I would need to generate is inversly proportional to the square of hex size, and (b) with a continent sized map, Worldographer and/or my computer strain to deal with that many more hexes.

For more detailed maps, my preference if for 1/4 mile hexes, so a detail of a 6 mile hex is 24 hexes across. This is in large part because of the Alberta land titles system; a "section" of land is a 1 mile square, a "quarter section" is a 1/2 mile square, and half of a quarter section is a 1/4 mile x 1/2 mile rectangle. You can see the divisions as you pass them by where fences have been placed. As a result, I have a solid idea of what would fit in a 1/4 mile hex.

Also, the name "quarterhorse" is supposedly derived from the fact that an average main road in a settlement on the plains was about 1/4 mile long, and people would often have races along it. The story goes that it is such a short course , it favoured horses that would could start more quickly, which is why you get these big-assed quarterhorses that are super fast out of the gate, can turn on a dime, but aren't as good as, say, an Arabian on a longer course. Which is supposedly good for herding cattle, where you need to react quickly if a cow starts to stray.

TL;DR, in my head an average settlement fits in a 1/4 mile hex.

 

[The1True]

Yeah, I think I've noted repeatedly on this forum my predilection for smaller hexes. I like a more controlled wilderness area. I think sprawling expanses are somewhere between boring and unmanageable. It's crazy how much you can pack into a small area, and mechanically, it's handy because I can slow outward travel with the travel costs of exploration and bushwacking, and then the return to civilization can be relatively quick and painless since trails have been blazed and distractions can be ignored. -It blew my mind that it took Bilbo almost a year to trudge home from the dragon's lair. In game terms, that's fucking awful. All these old wilderness maps from Dungeon Magazine with 600 mi hikes in them seem crazy to me. Like anyone in the middle ages cared anything about what was over the nearest hill, much less two-month's travel away.

 

[Beoric]

Yeah, I think I've noted repeatedly on this forum my predilection for smaller hexes. I like a more controlled wilderness area. I think sprawling expanses are somewhere between boring and unmanageable. It's crazy how much you can pack into a small area, and mechanically, it's handy because I can slow outward travel with the travel costs of exploration and bushwacking, and then the return to civilization can be relatively quick and painless since trails have been blazed and distractions can be ignored. -It blew my mind that it took Bilbo almost a year to trudge home from the dragon's lair. In game terms, that's fucking awful. All these old wilderness maps from Dungeon Magazine with 600 mi hikes in them seem crazy to me. Like anyone in the middle ages cared anything about what was over the nearest hill, much less two-month's travel away.

Sure, but more detailed maps of smaller have a different function. If you want travel to distant places to not be handwaived, and to provide real choices, you need some way to manage that.

My view on these things is that my ideal D&D map, regardless of scale, should include about the same number of 1/4 inch hexes or squares as you can fit on an 8.5 x 11 inch page with reasonable margins. Certainly not more than that, and preferably not too much less. And should by default include roughly the same number of planned points of interest/encounters as there are rooms in a dungeon of that size.

To your second point, exaggerated travel speed has been baked into D&D since more or less the beginning. Like, AD&D posits a travel pace on foot as 30 miles per day on "normal" terrain. That's just nuts, and I'm a bit amazed Gygax came up with that, since as a avid wargamer I would assume he would be familiar with how slowly armies march.

I sometimes wonder if some of these clearly understated values - like too fast travel speed, too high encumbrance limits, and too high encumbrance values for objects and especially gold - are intended to accommodate dumb teenager math, of the "I can walk 3 mph for 10 hours straight every day, easy," variety. Maybe this is why the danger posed by RL animals in D&D keeps decreasing with each edition starting in 3e; if you have ever seen the graphs showing the number of men who think they could "take" animals like wolves and bears, you know what I mean.



I have to admit, I'm as surprised by the >30% who don't think they could take a house cat, as I am by the ~5% who think they can take a grizzly. Like, how do you think people get their reluctant cats to the vet?

Hmm, that's the wrong chart, it's for all adults, not just men. Imma see if I can find the other one I was looking at.

I think this is the one I was looking for.