Good evening dungeon masters, I’m Baron
de Ropp. A lot of DMs claim they’d love to mimic
the open world exploration found in the Elder Scrolls, Legend of Zelda, or Fallout. But, it’s hard to keep D&D exploration interesting
if the dungeon master isn’t using some sort of inspirational tool. Ironically, the hexcrawl, which is likely
the best tool to enable this exploration, is poorly understood. HEXCRAWL ESSENTIALS
A hexcrawl, in its most distilled essence, is the use of a hex gridded map to help DMs
manage travel time and upkeep consumable resources. Further, this hex-based overland travel structure
facilitates a campaign’s exploration aesthetic. When a DM knows how long it will take a party
to reach a destination because of the subdivided map, the DM can use these distance-as-time
intervals as a reminder for random encounters, changes in weather, and tracking proximity
to interesting locales. Further, stocking a hex map with predefined
encounters, or even whole adventures, keeps players engaged in this exploration process
as they move around in uncharted territory. SIZE MATTERS
There is a lot of debate about what size hex is best, but to facilitate exploration, a
six mile hex hits the sweet spot. A full day’s travel is easily divisible
by this size, and it shouldn't overwhelm the dungeon master with too much prep work. All this being said, a Dungeon Master’s
understanding of the hex is best served as an abstraction of distance, not as a specific
fixed size. More important than the hard-and-fast six
mile measurement is the time it takes to move through the hex. For example, a party can travel 3 hexes of
plains or grasslands per day; 2 hexes through rougher terrain like hills, swamps, or forests;
or just one hex per day when moving through rugged mountains. If the players wish to travel more quickly,
add one additional hex of movement if the players remain on a road for the entire day’s
travel, or if they are force marching, or if the party is on horseback. Lastly, it’s worth discussing how large
your map should be. Obviously it can be as big or small as you
wish, but your goal, as a Dungeon Master, is to find the balance between reducing campaign
prep work while facilitating player exploration. To this end, a 20x25 hex map fits nicely onto
a sheet of US Letter or A4 paper, while still providing characters enough room to meaningfully
explore. If using 6 mile hexes, this map size would
equate to an area roughly the size of Ireland or South Carolina. HEX-ORIENTED EXPLORATION
A lot of people get hung up on what to put in all these hexes, but it really isn’t
that complicated. First, lay out your map just like you would
for any other campaign’s design. Mark the locations of important towns and
cities, roads, and any campaign relevant dungeons or adventure sites. Next, make note of the important factions
or extremely powerful NPCs that influence the campaign's story, and specifically, where
each faction’s seat of power is located. Examples of these factions could be a powerful
despot’s deep state agents, a goblin war band reaving the woods, or a terrifying silver
dragon and her cult followers. Once these locations are noted, you’ll need
some random encounter tables. These tables should be designed to tell the
story of the geospatial gaps between those factions. To do this quickly, ponder what dangerous
creatures live in each region’s wilderness, think about what kinds of business or trades
the region’s people conduct, and what kinds of commerce or industry the proximal towns
rely on each other for. Knowing, for example, that in a dark forest,
there are dire boars, wyverns, and displacer beasts roaming about; that herbalists use
the potent herbs and mushrooms growing in that same forest, and that these herbalists
trade their potions for farming equipment with nearby towns all quickly fills in a dozen
slots on a random encounter table. Next, add an entry to reflect a nearby faction’s
machinations. Knowing what faction activity is going on
nearby the party as that party moves about the map, influences this entry on your random
tables. A faction’s at-the-moment goal during the
campaign should be used to inspire these encounters. This random table entry would enable players
to bump into demonic cult members who are looking for a sacrificial bloodline’s child
early in the campaign. Later on, once the faction finds the child,
rolling this same entry might inspire an encounter with an antiquities dealer, who wants to exhume
a sacrificial ritual ceremonial dagger. It’s even possible the antiquity dealer
might try to hire the party to find it. Additionally, if the party moves away from
the region where the demon cult is active, this entry automatically changes to reflect
the activity of other nearby factions. As a follow on, when meeting friendly NPCs
who are rolled up from elsewhere on the table, those NPCs can discuss rumors about these
nearby factions, or tell the party about interesting nearby locations. By keeping the world interconnected in this
way, that mushroom hunting herbalist has something immersive to talk about. Lastly, it’s always fun to roll a double-encounter,
so add a “roll twice” option to your table. Doing this enables players to bump into that
herbalist, backed into a corner by displacer beasts. Creating random tables in this way is useful
because it reinforces the narrative of your game world by using the relevant nearby story
beats to build out the random table. KEY LOCATIONS
So what are keyed encounters and how many of them do we need? To take lead from video games like Fallout
or Skyrim, each predefined key location should be roughly a day’s travel apart from one
another. To determine where to place these key locations
randomly, roll a d20 for each hex on your map. For every natural 20, note the hex as a discoverable
key location. If you are using a twenty by twenty-five hex
grid like I mentioned earlier, this exercise will yield about twenty five locations for
preplanned encounters. This many discoverable hotspots sounds like
a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be. Remember that some of the locations in Fallout
or Skyrim, for example, are nothing more than an abandoned hut, or a cave with a corpse
in it. Discovered a buried treasure’s map, or something
similar, is all that’s needed to sell these locations as interesting. Additionally, all those random table dangerous
monsters need lairs, and these lairs are completely valid key location ideas. The wyverns have to roost somewhere, after
all. Another fun idea is to roll up two encounters,
and think through what the aftermath of these encounters interacting would look like. The byproducts of their interaction is another
fast, but interesting way to quickly create these key locations. If one rolls up a wyvern and a hunter, the
hunter’s ruined hut with a shredded thatched roof, and smattered blood all over the interior
walls is a great way to telegraph these flying dangers, while giving the players a few abandoned
rations and some expensive furs as treasure. That all being said, some of these keyed encounters
should reinforce your faction’s goals. If these goals morph into quests the players
pick up, those quests should send players all over the map. Skyrim’s story from the College of Winterhold
is a great example of this. The story sends the Dragonborn all over Skyrim
in search of artifacts buried in dungeons and long lost textbooks resting in old crypts. By scattering these macguffins, faction goals
can further enable the exploration component of the hexcrawl. By placing interesting locations between the
players and their quest goals, players will organically bump into the various hotspots
scattered around the map. This further reinforces that interconnected
open world feeling. MAIN PLOT
All this being said, one of the largest complaints about using the hexcrawl system is the supposed
lack of main questline or story. But this complaint reflects a core misunderstanding
of the hexcrawl tool. Dungeon Masters can and should have overarching
plots. In fact, the hexcrawl can make a quest line’s
event schedule feel more visceral. Take for example, the first Fallout video
game. Right at the beginning, the vault dweller
is given a pip boy, a gun, and a cold lead for the main quest item. Then, they are told they have 150 days to
save the vault. Interestingly, dungeon masters can more easily
replicate this long term droning pressure due to the hexed based time tracking. This isn’t the only kind of campaign upkeep
method though. Factions can scale their goals as the party
levels. Consider the demon cult, again, for example. When the party is level one and two, the cult
is looking for someone of the relevant bloodline. When the party reaches levels three through
five, the cult is now looking for a ceremonial dagger to sacrifice them with. By level six the cult has built their summoning
circle, and on level seven, a demon army emerges through a hellish portal. Further, when factions have easy to understand
goals, and these goals can be carried out sequentially, these goals can be modified
if the players upset or stop a faction on it’s presupposed path. In essence, nothing about a hex map stops
a dungeon master from having an overarching plot. Hex Crawls just manifests the plot in a different
way. If you’d like to help me create more content
like this in the future, please consider supporting me on patreon or becoming a channel member. Thanks for watching dungeon masters, and until
next time, good night.
