Create a DnD Hex Crawl
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- čas přidán 22. 04. 2024
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Hexcrawl Products Discussed:
Jacob Flemings Modules (Print + PDF): gelatinouscubism.bigcartel.co...
In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe (PDF): tinyurl.com/yh9h42ja
In the Valley of the Manticore OSE (PDF): tinyurl.com/2767vvjv
In the Valley of the Manticore 5e (PDF): tinyurl.com/59rdp3hn
The Scourge of the Northland (PDF): tinyurl.com/4pzazkeu
The Dark of Hot Springs Island (Print + PDF): shop.swordfishislands.com/the...
The Dark of Hot Springs Island (PDF): tinyurl.com/ytn8t3cv
Dolmenwood Pre-order: dolmenwood.backerkit.com/host...
Gods of the Forbidden North (PDF): tinyurl.com/2zxtwxny
Neverland: amzn.to/4din1Z0
Tomb of Annihilation: amzn.to/3Up1eHs
Hexcrawl Blogs:
The Alexandrian Traditional Hexcrawl Structure: shorturl.at/eoq46
The Alexandrian 5e Hexcrawl: shorturl.at/mtwOV
In Praise of the 6 Mile Hex: shorturl.at/gpX05
Siena's 6 Mile Hex: tinyurl.com/2hr5w7je
Hexcrawl Building:
Rob Conley's How to make a Fantasy Sandbox Series: shorturl.at/jBEO9
Trollsmyth's Hex Mapping Series: shorturl.at/vwMP5
Make your own Hex Maps!
Worldographer: worldographer.com/
Hex Kit: cone.itch.io/hex-kit
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#dnd #osr #sandbox #ttrpg #dungeonsanddragons
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Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statue that might otherwise be infringing. - Zábava
Ton of links in this video!
Hexcrawl Products Discussed:
Jacob Flemings Modules (Print + PDF): gelatinouscubism.bigcartel.com/products
In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe (PDF): tinyurl.com/yh9h42ja
In the Valley of the Manticore OSE (PDF): tinyurl.com/2767vvjv
In the Valley of the Manticore 5e (PDF): tinyurl.com/59rdp3hn
The Scourge of the Northland (PDF): tinyurl.com/4pzazkeu
The Dark of Hot Springs Island (Print + PDF): shop.swordfishislands.com/the-dark-of-hot-springs-island/
The Dark of Hot Springs Island (PDF): tinyurl.com/ytn8t3cv
Dolmenwood Pre-order: dolmenwood.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Gods of the Forbidden North (PDF): tinyurl.com/2zxtwxny
Neverland: amzn.to/4din1Z0
Tomb of Annihilation: amzn.to/3Up1eHs
Hexcrawl Blogs:
The Alexandrian Traditional Hexcrawl Structure: shorturl.at/eoq46
The Alexandrian 5e Hexcrawl: shorturl.at/mtwOV
In Praise of the 6 Mile Hex: shorturl.at/gpX05
Siena's 6 Mile Hex: tinyurl.com/2hr5w7je
Hexcrawl Building:
Rob Conley's How to make a Fantasy Sandbox Series: shorturl.at/jBEO9
Trollsmyth's Hex Mapping Series: shorturl.at/vwMP5
Showing the actual size of a 6 mile hex was extremely eye-opening for me. I hadn't even considered the actual area of a 6 mile hex before now.
I literally just thought "I wish Earthmote would make a video about hex crawl sandboxes" and this video showed up a minute later. Perfect timing
Glad its useful, and I have more to come!
As you search the 32 square mile hex-shaped grassland, you find one pine tree.
Technically a point of interest?
@@Earthmote yep, a plain nondescript Coast Douglas Fir tree 🙂. What do you do?
@@lexington476I climb the tree to see what the neighboring hexes contain.
@@lexington476 Now what would a Coast Douglas Fir be doing out in the Grasslands? Hmmm...
@@diregnome4898Breath of the Wild, the hexcrawl
For what it’s worth, I took Tomb of Annihilation, stripped the story from it, and plunked its locations and some characters down in The Isle of Dread, along with The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, The Lost City, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and just about everything from Trilemma Adventures. I’ve been running it as an open table hex crawl campaign for the last three years, and it’s been a blast.
Great way to build out a hex crawl is to just take modules or components of modules and use them in the different hexes. Happy gaming!
One thing I did to "populate" the hexes of a 12x12 6-mile hexmap was to print out a goodly number of one-page dungeons or a map or five from Dyson's blog. These are "loose" locations that can be placed in any hex. I also sprinkle a few "random encounters" on a table with "Dungeon of XYZ" that can be "encountered" in random spots. This "encounter" has basically three maps associated with it so it's not the same "encounter". These get populated again from Dyson's maps, or I use older references like The Book of Lairs or The Book of Treasure Maps from the JG days.
These are on retainer at the back of my binder and are unkeyed. I pull these in as needed in addition to populated hexes if it is warranted. I'll change up the treasure, rewards and monsters encountered as needed, but pretty much run them as-is with a few additions at the end. I am superficially familiar with these dungeons, and would flesh them out before the game session they might be needed, but in a pinch you can just have them discover these and give at least the appearance that these are meant to be there and make your world a lot richer for having these "Easter eggs" ready to go.
The "encounters" that I put in quotes are designed based on a web article I wrote called "Constructing Custom Encounters - A treatise on interesting encounter creation". Basically, my encounters are complete scenarios that have no dictated outcome (i.e. "Five ogres attack" is a no-go, but I might say "A riderless horse gallops past the party, its saddle marked by claws. It is followed by Wolves." Then just let the PCs do what they do with an open-ended scenario, and possibly use it as a hook into whatever adventure I wish to run for them.
I use Dyson maps all the time for my hex keyed dungeons! They are great.
Hammerfast is a cool product. A mountainous dwarven necropolis has stumbled into a tenuous peace with orcs, though a larger threat looms in the unknown. Has hexes around the city to explore the mountains.
GURPS has well-defined rules for all of this, I'm not sure why I haven't thought to do a Hex-crawl in GURPS but I'll have to work on one
i've never made my players search for keyed areas. if they enter a keyed hex then i just tell them their characters have come across a point of interest. however, i think it would be fun to add secret keyed areas, similar to secret rooms in a dungeon :).
Yeah, I'd definitely have them come across a keyed area for "free" just by entering the hex, something like a landmark or obvious fortification. You can have ones that are more hidden or take time to search for, which makes sense.
I like to think of it in terms of what can be obviously seen from a distance (the falls of Rauros or Weathertop, for example), what can be found through simple exploration (the ford in the River Isen), and what requires either dedicated surveying or some form of specific knowledge to find (Faramir's camp, the Paths of the Dead where Aragorn found his ghost minions, or Shelob's lair).
The obviously seen stuff is part of the general description of the area. The general exploration stuff can depend on what they say they're doing (not going to find many caves in your plan of action is to walk along the ewok bridges) or a low target skill roll. The specific stuff would be a high target roll and/or prior knowledge of where/what to look for.
I feel like I took that from someone else's advice many moons ago, but couldn't tell you where from or how accurate my version is to the original, though lol
hexagons are the bestagons
Love your stuff man, especially the classic cinema clips to illustrate ideas
Thank you!
I am loving these sandboxing videos!
One thing Justin Alexander recommends that goes against some of your recommendations is keeping the hex structure a GM-facing structure only. Hexes are an abstraction, players shouldn't see or talk about hexes; they are there to make exploration manageable for the GM. Have them talk of moving a day's worth of traveling to the west, rather than four hexes. It makes for a much more immersive experience, much like talking about wounds and tiredness is better than talking about hit points when checking out an enemy's condition.
Yeah we differ in that aspect. I don't mind my players thinking in Gamified terms. If it helps them remember where points of interest are and what not, that is fine with me. Nothing against keeping it hidden though! Could be interesting to try.
Holy crap, I'm halfway through the vid and JUST noticed that you just uploaded this XD
Great advice all around! On the topic of empty hexes, I personally think leaving some unkeyed is perfectly fine, especially if you make them a bit smaller - sure, if we look at a modern urban landscape like Siena, it’s going to be densely packed, but in something like Bieszczady on the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands (which is the kind of area I imagine an average fantasy party to be exploring), you might find a single village surrounded by a vast expanse of wilderness. And that’s now, centuries ago that was mostly unpopulated forest! Of course you can have all sorts of points of interest in a place like that, but you get my point. Having some empty areas can also leave space for randomly generated content without making it feel like everything sort of sits on top of everything else. A lot will depend on the vibe you want your land to convey, and it’s certainly a delicate balance to strike.
Anyway, wish me luck, today’s the first proper session of my hexcrawl campaign ;)
Good luck!
I love how Gavin Norman/Necrotic Gnome developed the hex crawl rules in Dolmenwood from their B/X foundations! I've been running games in that setting for a couple of years but I'm just about to take those rules into the Gods of the Forbidden North with one of my groups that I'm trying to wean from 5e.
Gavin Norman does great work. Looking forward to the printed Dolmenwood Books!
@@Earthmote Oh yes! Going for a change of pace with the GotFN gives me the opportunity to enjoy my OSE boxed sets more which is very exciting but getting the latest Dolmenwood pdf's of adventures and the character sheets are really enticing as well!
This intrigues me a lot. I kind of want to do a sci fi/space exploration version of this.
Stars Without Number would be a great resource for that! Its Worlds Without Number's Sci-Fi version (actually its predecessor). There is a free PDF version on DriveThruRPG you can get if you want to check it out.
My favorite hexcrawl rules are in the WOIN Old book
Thanks for this great video man!
Glad it was helpful!
Great video! I really want to do a seafaring hex crawl, so this is giving me inspiration and motivation!
Best of luck!
This was one of the best videos about hexcrawls I've come across. It was so incredibly informative and really helped me get my head around some things I've been hung up on. Thank you so much for putting all of this together!
Thank you for the kind words! Glad it was useful
Other key elements to keeping some semblance of verisimilitude are time, seasons, and weather. Could you do a video on integrating these concepts, both generally and also specific to hexcrawls?
Its a good thought! I'll add it to my ideas list; have to figure out how to make it interesting enough to watch.
I used Azgaar. It includes a hex grid overlay if you want
Azgaar's is a great tool! I didn't remember it had a hex overlay. Thanks for sharing.
finally, i'm first!!
Darnit!
You did not mention The Isle of Dread? The ur-hexcrawl scenario. Also Kingmaker for Pathfinder is a crawl combined with kingdom building.
I've never played or read through Isle of Dread, so I didn't want to recommend it. But it is the classic, that's for sure!
I think what I would like from you, @Earthmote, is a list of videos that you use in your snippets. I do not recognize a lot of these.
Get the Sandbox Generator Book it will help a lot
Well now you gotta make a point crawl and depth crawl video 😂
Man, I wish I had a static enough group to run a good hex crawl. But I guess it is the most flexible format if players are a no show ?
Wow, those Alexandrian rules are quite crunchy. It'd be a very different game than what I am used to. I think I might find it a bit of a slog.
How would you do this for a nautical pirates game where we would like to really have a sailing ship component heavily featured
Just wanted to ask what's in your library behind you since we seem to have very similar tastes. I also have OSE, Knock, the Monster Overhaul, WWN and the Tome of Adventure Design. I can't recognize the big orange book in the back nor the black book between TMO and the ToAD :)
Cheers! This was a great subject to tackle.
The orange book is Petty Gods, I haven't read enough of it to give it a recommendation one way or another. Lulu hardcover: shorturl.at/nHOY4
The black book is Atlas of Latter Earth the expansionary book for WWN. Should be next to WWN but my organization gets a bit messed up when I take books out to use. Offset print here: shorturl.at/xMPS9 or PDF: shorturl.at/anwTV
@@Earthmote Thanks for the detailed answer! I should have recognized the Atlas ^^"
Hahaha yes I agree fellow bots. Like my comment
I keep seeing and enjoying videos like these but my biggest question is; where do you find games like this to play in?
None of my IRL friends have interest in RPGs and the majority of places i look people are playing super "plot driven" or piblished adventure games whether it be 5e or Pathfinder the two main stream games. Where do you find the niece game?
Having moved across the country five times in my life, I think I can speak to this. The cliche's "If you build it, they will come," and "You've got to kiss a lot of toads," come to mind. Here's what I did:
: Looking for Call of Cthulhu, no one running, offered to run, disaster; came into D&D night, and made some casual friends; made friends with the owner; the next game I ran was the beta of Edge of the Empire, which was fairly fun, albeit impossible to keep up with the errata with a rules grognard at the table; got invited to a couple of private games, cherry picked the best group, and we all share similar values
: Went to local game nights, found a few like-minded folks, went to WashingCon, played in a bunch of games, and found a couple more, one friend from the bar band circuit and I had a supergroup. Oh, somewhere in there was a bad Adventurers League experience in Annapolis.
: Went to my FLGS. After seeing nothing but D&D and PF, I asked the person working there (who happened to be the general manager), "Where are all the people who play ?" He said he'd always wanted to start an "Indie RPG night" and couldn't start until January. I said, "Well, let's kick the tires on it; I've got about four games I can run for about four or five weeks each to test it out." So we did, and it's still going. Granted, people have dropped off, shown up for Vampire and left when that was done, had fights, had scheduling conflicts, obstructions from the store, and all sorts of other problems. I also posted my own longterm campaigns in the store and paid their table fees to run things like and a game, and met some great people there. Oh, and a few from an improv workshop one day.
The key ingredient is to stick with it. Give a night about three weeks, get approval and backing from the store, make some flyers in Canva or whatever, massage those Meetups and Discords periodically, and lock in with those players that resonate with you. Get those phone numbers. Not always easy or comfortable, and I will say the jewel in the box is worth having.
If your town is much smaller, or don't have a local store, you may have to post at the library, coffee shops, or your local B&N; run the game you want, and then let someone run the game that they want. Session Zeros ("Sessions Zero"?) aren't just for safety tools; they're also a great place to talk about what kinds of themes and play styles players want to explore, whether that's forever or for a change for this particular campaign.
I hope that helps. Happy to answer any questions and hear feedback.
First like 👍
Wow! This is highly competitive 😆 It looked on my side that I was the first 😎
The argument of always having points of interest in every hex because of how big a hex is, doesn't make much sense in my opinion. If you're traveling through a hex, you're not making a complete sweep over it, you're usually walking in a straight line, so you'd realistically only see a tiny portion of it.
This is honestly a hang up i've been having as a new DM, I don't know how often I should ask for perception checks and such, when my players are for example exploring a forest hex, how would they find a cave entrance or ruin in such a huge area.
Remember it is a game, it shouldn't be realistic (unless you and your group like that style of gamea).
I like how it is done in Dolmenwood: Once the party enters a hex, all the evident features are available to explore and experiment with. There might be hidden features (such as the cave you mentioned) that need to be found exploring the hex, it doesn't need no to a perception check (I guess you're playing 5e) but a whole day searching and exploring into the hex.
Yeah, so like @sekcer9873 said, you should have an obvious feature that the players are able to encounter as they travel through the hex. A landmark or an obvious fortification, something like that.
If you want to have more "hidden" ruins, I would just have them spend time searching to hex to uncover it. No need to call for a roll in this case. The cost is the time spent searching.
Now, if you want something truly secret, so secret that even if they are searching for it, they could overlook it. Then you can call for a roll. If your using 5e, perception, investigation, survival whatever makes sense given the context of what they're looking for. My only caution with keyed areas that are this level of secret is that they could never be found! Which is okay, but just keep that in mind when you are prepping a whole dungeon/ruin that may never be seen. So, I'd recommend keeping them small. Of course you can always recycle unused material. But it is just something to keep in mind with your time and energy for game prep.
Best of luck in your games!
To possibly put some meat to the points the other comments make, I've tried (and failed) to run a Hexcrawl twice for my group. Both times, a major component in the Hexcrawl falling apart was that most of the land my party travelled across was uninteresting and empty. Sometimes they would enter a keyed hex, but not search for something, sometimes they would be just a little off from a keyed hex but still in a completely empty area. Regardless, it started to make it feel like there weren't all that many choices, and they were essentially just waiting for me to make things happen to them via random encounters.
I'm planning to run a hexcrawl again in the next few months, and I think keying every hex is the thing that's probably going to be most important to making it succeed. Even if the players aren't finding new adventures everywhere, giving them things to note and write down is going to be an important part of making the game engaging and interesting.
How do you keep a hexcrawl from devolving into just a collection of disconnected events? Now the party is doing this and now this other thing. People like stories now.
That's where the player-driven-ness of hexcrawls must shine through. Why are your player characters trudging into the wilderness time and time again? Perhaps one has ambitions of becoming a frontier lord and ruling their own stronghold; another may be looking for revenge against a corrupt priest that falsely accused them of colluding with enemies and had them banned from their homeland, and the wilderness is where evidence of the villain's wrongdoings; and a third one may have had their loved one petrified and is looking for a way to undo the curse. Talk to your players, come up with some good motivations, and weave them through the hex keys and rumor tables! You all may be surprised by the stories that pop up when these motivations start to interact with each other.