How to Prepare and Run Hex Crawls for D&D

hex crawls are probably often viewed as an old-school way of running d d or other RPGs however a good hex crawl can be tons of fun especially for a group who loves to explore poke their noses around strange places and discover cool things now if you're not sure what a hex crawl is it's basically when you have an Overland map like this one right here with hexes on it and then in each hex there is something interesting for players to discover then as the characters travel across the region they come across all these cool things exploring and interacting with them so today we're going to Deep dive into how to create a hex crawl and then how to run a hex crawl at your game table but first a message from me the Barbarian and I promise I will not threaten or control you at all today instead I'm gonna use logic are you sure this is a good idea hey this is the message from the Barbarian not the wizard go away well I'm just saying you're a Barbie Marion you should lean into what you do well leave logic and reason to the rest of us that's a really good point anyway I'd like to tell you about describe's new Sonic library now if you've ever played Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega yeah well it's nothing like that and besides that was a really hard game I much prefer Super Mario but my mom wouldn't buy me a Nintendo anyway back to Sonic Library it's a really cool feature that described recently released that gives you nearly 2 000 awesome ambiances music and sound effects that you can use in your RPG game now Bob the World Builder did a video that explains the Sonic library in eight minutes well at least according to the thumbnail but but the but the video is actually 8 minutes and 57 seconds so that's false advertising Bob wait you're going to criticize Bob World Builder a fellow RPG content creator and a rather nice fellow for that matter in a sponsored message yeah well you should have thought about the consequences before you told me to lean into being the Barbarian and and describe also has a compositions tool that allows you to search store and play sound it is a robust play and prep tool or a prep and play tool it's something like that but but it's designed for game Masters looking to take their games to the next level you can check out describe for free at the link below also I put a link to Bob's video there too if you could go on over there and let him know that his video is longer than eight minutes and that he needs to update his thumbnail that that would be awesome oh and make sure you tell him that the Barbarian sent you two this is one sponsor that won't be calling us again when to use a hex crawl although hex crawls can be rewarding and dynamic experiences and add much to a game hex crawls are not intended to be used any time the party needs to travel from point A to point B especially on established routes instead they should be reserved for significant Overland travel when the region the characters are moving through is unexplored or otherwise unknown if the characters are exploring a wild area of a continent searching for a legendary site or item without a clear destination or perhaps searching for someone hiding or who has been taken by hostile forces to a secret location a hex crawl could be just what you need on the other hand if your group turns out to love hex crawls you could use them as frequently as you all like preparing a hex crawl number one create a map with hexes first you get yourself an Overland map like this one right here you can make one yourself using a tool like incarnate or get a pre-made map such as this one which is a available in Endeavors and exploration the March 2023 issue of Lair magazine which features an entire hex crawl next you're going to add hexes to the map those are the hexagons that overlay the map itself now each of those hexes is going to represent a certain scale now for our map we decided that each hex would represent 24 miles if one were to travel straight across it however other popular distances for hexes to represent are 6 miles and 12 miles that way if you assume a standard traveling Pace each hex could represent a quarter half or full day of travel for large regions I find it easier to use 24 Mile hexes personally and a strong argument could be made that eight mile hexes are actually ideal more on that later finally you're going to key the hexes that is just put labels on each of the hexes this will come in handy in the next step when we're putting cool stuff in the hexes and we need to keep track of what is where by the way if you're finding this in information useful please give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below let YouTube know that I don't suck number two populate the hexes with cool stuff for characters to encounter basically for each of your hexes you're gonna create something interesting for your players to find there when they travel through that hex and there are lots of different types of things you can put in hexes first you can place encounters with creatures and NPCs and hexes these might be combat encounters or they might be pure social interactions you want them to be engaging and entertaining for your players of course but you also want to make sure that each encounter has some sort of challenge for the party to overcome if it's a combat that's fairly self-explanatory but for social interactions or non-combat encounters it might be something like acquiring an NPC's trust to gather information avoiding a stampede or hiding from a band of hundreds of ravenous Knolls on the March next you can place locations or sites to be explored these can be your typical location education-based Adventures often referred to as dungeons or other interesting and or mysterious sites for characters to explore these could be anything really but here are some examples ruins native Villages wizards towers abandoned mines isolated temples mysterious palaces mythical Springs and fairy circles just to name a few now these specific sites could be structured much like an adventure you design and have a set number of encounters built into them but never more than a standard adventuring day's worth finally you could put events in hexes events are a special kind of encounter that may incorporate creatures or sites usually events Advance The Adventurous plot or include some wondrous element into the world if the hex crawl involves territorial goblins and Cobalts living in close proximity an event might include the character stumbling upon a battle between the two factions if the characters need information about a region to complete a quest they might encounter a legendary beast that carries key to that knowledge or perhaps the character stumble upon a field of geysers that only erupt in a perfect Unison once per century and they happen to just arrive on that day usually every hex contains something but depending on the scale you use maybe they won't for instance if you use a 24 Mile hacks I would definitely have every hex contain a pre-mating counter location or event however for a 6 or 12 mile hexes not everything need contains them for any hexes that don't contain something pre-made you can just roll for Random Encounters and of course it doesn't mean a random encounter will happen sometimes you just travel and nothing happens number three create or find random encounter tables to use the final step of preparing a hex crawl is to create some random encounter tables to use you see just because you're pre-planning lots of different stuff for the hexes you're still probably going to be using some Random Encounters now I always recommend putting context around Random Encounters and not just existing numbers and names of creatures furthermore make sure you include non-combat Random Encounters as well oh and by the way if you'd like to grab some free Random Encounters that you can use we have several of them over on the dmlayer.com I'll throw a link to them down below and all of them contain context around the encounters like I mentioned they are not just names and numbers of monsters and by the way if you'd like to get all of this information about hex crawls in a written format for easy reference we put the information in this video into our hex crawl rule set navigating the hexes also if you'd like to get a ready to run hex crawl that includes encounters events sites locations and full-length Adventures Plus all the maps that you need you can find that in Endeavors and exploration the March 2023 issue of Lair magazine if you've never run a hex crawl before and want to try it out those two resources might be just what you need both are available now for Dan similar patrons and in May they'll go up on the DM layer store running a hex crawl number one provide a blank hex map for players yeah you're going to want to give your players a version of the hex map that doesn't have the labels on it that way they can mark their current location decide where they want to go and Mark where they've already been that sort of thing number two the characters decide where to go travel begins and stuff happens once your players decide which direction they like to travel they progress into the hex that lies in that direction they basically just choose which hex they want to go to now you do want to break travel up into increments I suggest breaking each day's travel up into three segments generally speaking a group will travel 24 miles in a day though the terrain will make that different at time so we'll break it up into eight mile segments what that means is that after every eight miles of travel you the game master will check to see if a random encounter happens or if they come across a pre-made encounter location or event in that hex you see this is why eight mile hexes can be very good because they naturally break a day's travel up into three hexes personally I think that 24 mile or eight mile hexes are probably the best though if you want to split travel up into four segments or just two segments each day then Six Mile and 12 Mile hexes are better it really just depends on how you want to do things now if there is a pre-made encounter location or event in a hex they will always find it when they travel through the hex you can just have the group come across it during any of the travel segments or you could roll a D3 to decide which one and then for the other segments of travel there may or may not be a random encounter you could just roll a D12 and then have a random encounter occur on a one two or a three for instance somebody's gonna be like well if it's a one two or three which is a one-fourth chance on a D12 why don't you just use a D4 well because I hate d4s I I really hate them they don't roll they just drop that's no good number three time tracking now just in case in case you didn't notice keeping track of time is going to be important during a hex crawl so yeah you're going to want to consider doing that number four weather tracking I also recommend tracking weather during hex crawls this can add some cool flavor to the hex Crawl Experience and even be mechanically impactful the easiest way to do this is just roll on a random weather table once each day and then describe the weather to your players and don't forget that the weather might impact that day's travel and or the encounters they might come across the exact mechanics of that impact depend on the details of each of course perfect you and your group are now running a hex crawl and having tons of fun as you Traverse the local region however how do you make the world feel alive to your players as they move from hex to hex and discover unique locations and new people watch this video right here to learn how to create a living breathing world that your players will love I seriously do not like d4s I wish they were expunged from the game I want my dice to roll you know

Channel: the DM Lair

Views: 40,375

Keywords: d&d, d&d 5e, dnd, dnd 5e, dnd 5th edition, dungeons and dragons, dungeons & dragons, rpg, role-playing game, roleplaying game, dungeon master tips, DM tips, dungeon master advice, DM advice, the dm lair, luke hart, d&d for beginners, playing d&d, running d&d, game master tips, pathfinder, pathfinder 2e, game master, GM tips, dnd hex crawl, dnd hexcrawl, dnd 5e hexcrawl, dnd 5e hexcrawl rules

Id: m7z7WUShSWo

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 28 2023