Exploration with Hexcrawls
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- How to Hex Crawl!
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#dmtips
I really enjoy longer form content, not pontification but frank elaboration. You walk this path perfectly. Thank you BK, you scratch an itch real good!
I appreciate that! 😊
@@BanditsKeep what he said! Don't ever feel like you're rambling
Literally the only video on youtube I could find that actually explains how to hexcrawl.
Thanks!
This is timely. I just created a new hex map last week, and started writing up random encounter tables today. I've never made travel or resource management an important part of my game before, but I've taken a lot of interest in the old school mentality, and your channel's an excellent inspiration. Thank you!
Thank You! Travel can be a fun part of the game
to speak to your point at 5:45 --
most vinyl battlemats have a dry erase hex grid on the back. and this is perfect for having the players keep their own maps
For sure
This is why I have been following (loving your content) for for years now!
I wanted to learn, understand and create that a similar document so that I could play a more hex crawl solo game. It is crazy that there are so similar ideas in my document as yours….. your a great teacher!!!
I have been loving it.
At the start I was drawn to a physical board and used Outdoor Survival, Runebound, Battlelore, Folklore and Legends of Andor which all gave me a different narrative and experience.
Now I mostly use this document and draw the hex’s as they emerge (I added a geomorphology table).
Again, I love your content, you’ve taught me a ton and I am loving my play sessions!!
Thanks
Awesome
Any chance you could share your geomorphology table? Sounds very helpful!
Always enjoy the hexcrawl and classic content.
Started running a hexcrawl not knowing what it was(found the worldographer program).
The insight into how much can be done with ot is much appreciated.
Awesome, thanks
Free League’s Forbidden Lands does all of that and more. It’s the best survival fantasy rpg
I did that Kickstarter, but sadly have yet to play the game. It looks beautiful on my shelf though.
Hey crawls have always interested me but they seemed so complicated but this video showed me how easy it could be so I might add it to my next campaign thanks for the help
Excellent
It's a combination. Non civilization areas goes wilderness, bandit groups and such while the builtup areas (towns, villages) are much more same race encounters.
Nice
Hey! This seems *much* more approachable than I thought. I always stayed away from this kind of thing because it felt like a lot but this is light. I'm going to try this with my high school group tomorrow or maybe next week, if they make it out of the disused fane they're in and decide to pick up some breadcrumbs. It's a way to introduce the BX-level homebrew druids one player asked for-- through NPCs they might encounter, too! Minor question: where did you get the Moldvay font from? I want to make my materials match the system they go to.
Cool, let me know how it goes. The font is “soutane” and “Soutane black” - I picked it up a while ago, but it should be easy enough to find on any font site.
I’ve enjoyed running a few smallish hex crawls using Foundry. When they got lost I rolled a random direction and reset the fog of war. it worked WELL, and people felt like they were in the middle of nowhere. Were I using minis I think I’d use the OD&D method as well, it’s more simple and clean.
Oh cool, that is something VTTS really have going for them
@@BanditsKeep yah, it’s a plus. I use a vtt for in person, too. If I tried to used minis…things would end up being embedded in walls just because of my spazziness.
I've been using 10 mile regional hexes, with each hex divided up into 1 mile hexes. The characters explore the 10 mile hex mile by mile, if they wish, or they can move on the regional map to travel faster and further. There is a chance of getting lost on the regional map if they move through a hex they haven't explored a path through on the 1 mile hex level.
The players are currently enjoying sandboxing within the first 10 mile hex.
I've had games running in Dolmenwood and Forbidden Lands. Not too deep into either but a decent bit. My dilemma with both is that on one hand is like to share the beautiful maps but on the other hand there's more sense of discovery of players make their own hex map. I've tried other approaches as well. In Dolmenwood it makes more sense narratively for the players to have a hex map without secret contents but I think the main question is what's more fun. I really like your idea of using the map kind of like a board in a boardgame. I've also considered Foundry VTT and it's fog of war functionality.
Now I'll again consider using the physical map and letting the discovery be about discovering various sites not marked on the map and stories emerging from random encounters etc. It's just that my own experience of hex crawling comes from playing the Isle of Dread back in the day and drawing the contents of each hex one at a time.
Oh yes isle of dread was super fun
@@BanditsKeep Yeah. Maybe just not the only way to run hexcrawls. 😅
Hex crawls are a hoot...
For sure
Reminds me of the difference between the journey or the destination being the joy of it. If a party, or adventure is about the journey, then you hexcrawl, if one is moving towards a thing, a town or city or locations that offer encounters or treasures, one pointcrawls.
It boils down to how much detail, procedure or crunch goes into the journey itself, the slower, deeper and more full the journey one expands into the hexes. If journey is more abstract or gamey, gloss the hex and connect via more or less detailed paths to the more vital/developed or to be developed points themselves. And I do find your use of Outdoor Survivial to elicit maps a great way to both solo and fast play a hexcrawl. So even the hexcrawl can be done in a less than super detailed manner. So far each video has given great new ideas for how to play!
Excellent
Map exploration is underrated
For sure
Never ran a hex crawl before, but am going to start a new campaign soon(isn) using Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures. The default games uses hex based exploration and I'm excited to use it. The BtW DMG is called Further Afield and it's the best rpg book I've read on doing he crawls. Granted, I haven't read that many books lol
I really like the diea of rolling multiple dice each day to see what's going on. I'll have to take a look at some of those carts. Good stuff, dude!
I should clarify. When I say "the best" I mean the best for someone who's never run a hex crawl before. I'm sure someone who has run a bunch of hex crawls wouldn't find Further Afield all that useful. Seriously though, if someone is an aspiring GM and they want to run an open world, sandbox type campaign, I think Beyond the Wall is the perfect game for them.
Thanks! I’ve not seen that DMG - I’ll have to add it to my list
@@BanditsKeep Here's a question that I'm currently pondering; when using a hex map, do you show the players the entire thing with all the terrain types visible? Sine I'll be running this game online, I could fog of war most of the map except for what's right around the starting village, or I could show them the whole thing. What do you think?
I have always been curious about hexcrawls. Before running with one of my groups, i decided to try a solo version. I find it quite fascinating to play. I cut a videobof my setup, if you want to check it out ua-cam.com/video/1PKHHJawB1I/v-deo.html
Cool. Thanks for sharing
I've done hexcrawls alot of different ways. I had a struggle with what to reveal and what to keep from the players. Almost none of my players wanted to try and map as they went. There is a lot of ambiguity and head scratching. So, l learned through experience. I ether use a pre rendered map, or else draw it for them. I think players really need a map to look at.
A map can help - for overland travel, a journal could also work
This is really really good stuff!
Thank you!
Thank You!
Great exploration (pun fully intended) of hex crawling in RPGs, very much enjoyed the video 🙂👍
Thank You!
I am two sessions into my first hex crawl using AD&D for this campaign. I am learning a lot about adding encounters and how to add stuff to ever hex... almost every hex so thank toy for helping me.
That’s awesome, AD&D is a fun system
Great video! I'm not sure where to get the PDF. The link is locked on your Patreon. Thank you. Just started watching your channel. Great content!
Here you go www.patreon.com/posts/my-hex-crawl-77050945?Link&
@@BanditsKeep Thank you! Your videos are extremely helpful! Keep up the good work. :)
0:57 Basic Hexcrawl
6:25 Advanced Hexcrawl
😊👍🏻
Such a useful system. Hands down my favorite I’ve come across so far. Do you use this same procedure when a party is traveling via roads or a path? Some kind of point-crawl mechanic that involves some level of chance/discovery?
Yes, just less chance of being lost
Hex crawling is awesome. It's funny you mention the Dying Earth as I'm currently making a setting inspired by it to run my sandbox hexcrawl game in. Thanks for the tips!
Sweet!
Really informative video and I also really like the d30 sandbox companion! I actually just got it printed at my local fedex with coil binding last week. Personally I don't think I would want the physical map or game board but I definitely think it would be a good addition to the game for my players. I'm more of a "theatre of the mind" guy but my players really like visuals so I'll have to consider this.
I’m generally the same, but I’ve found the visual can help with understanding distance.
@@BanditsKeep Yeah, I totally get that plus I think adding some visuals helps to keep players engaged. One of the things I like to do is draw magic items on cards and hand them out once they find them, you can even do that thing where you soak them in tea and burn the edges to make them look old.
This is pretty interesting. I've never ran DnD, only two Hungarian fantasy RPGs and Ars Magica, but they have written two pages of rules for random encounters for one of them, so why not flesh it out a bit more? I designed my own table for the 2nd scenario of a campaign I'm running in a swamp, but the 3rd one will contain a week long steppe journey to a huge monastery in the future, so I might as well complicate it a bit further. Fighting nomadic horsemen get's boring after a while. Hex crawls could cure my occasional GM fatigue.
Good advice vary helpful
Thank You!
Great info. Thank you.
Thanks!
This is really cool! But i dont understand what hex means. Like is it some measurement for non combat terrain?
Yea, that is exactly what it is. The very first Version of D&D suggested you used a map from another game (Outdoor Survival) for wilderness exploration. That game used hexes and from that point on D&D used that as a standard for wilderness.
@@BanditsKeep Thank you very much!
Daniel, I've been watching your solo game with outdoor survival and I noticed in the first video you encountered a dragon and there was a roll to determine if it was a pair or not. What is the roll for that, and is there a rule for it in BX? I don't see it in OSE.
Should be a number appearing - OD&D breaks it down to family groups as well
@@BanditsKeep oops, "LAIR" was autocorrected to "PAIR."
Thanks Daniel. I solo play
Awesome
The best way to run a hexcrawl is to not let the players know that it is a hexcrawl
How will they not know they are traveling and exploring in the wilderness?
The campaign I began with the intention of a good ol hex crawl/dungeon delve I made the hubris driven mistake and shared my map with everyone. So we turned it into a story driven sandbox. But, ugh!
Sandboxes can be fun!
I don't drop parties into a hexcrawl, the prep, risk and planning is part of the journey I think. I do narrative for long distance and more adventures/point crawls they closer they get to the objective.
Cool
Thank you! I've needed something like this for awhile now. I have Fable Tables 1 and 2, but they don't have a these roll tables. Now I have something to work with!
Excellent
Love the d30 resource and the welsh piper resource. Both have been really useful to me! Starting a new campaign that will have hex based exploration! It won’t necessarily be a full crawl based campaign, but that will be a decent part of it.
Nice! I do love a hex crawl - even just a little
To answer your end question on moving PCs through overworld hexes, I have a number chosen at the start of the session(lets say 200).
Someone rolls d100 each hex of travel until they pass the number, then an event gets rolled from a prepared list.(Kuotoa cave, green hag, and ancient green dragon last session).
Cool
Just discovered this channel and I love it. I love Page 121 also. Glad there is excellent old school content available for people like myself who started playing AD&D, but enjoys both new and old versions of the game
Welcome! Page 121 is great, love their dives into AD&D as well
I had my players going on one long journey. At every bridge, there was a hut with a gnome demanding a small fee to cross the bridge...the same gnome. The players never did investigate the huts or question the gnome how he kept ahead of the party so they missed out on a short cut through his portal system.
Nice!
Font?
In the thumbnail?
I use a combination of narration and hex crawls myself
Cool
YOU ARE AWESOME! ❤❤❤
Thank You!
@@BanditsKeep 🥰
The best version of this that I've found is The Alexandrian's ruleset for hexcrawls where you have a navigator, hexes are 12 miles across, rules about getting lost are more specific and where he details 3 or 4 different difficulty levels in running a hexcrawl, recommended. He even has a variant for 5e.
Cool
@@BanditsKeep indeed, thx for keeping interest in hex crawls alive. Now on to West Marches…
Stu and John at Vintage RPG just did an episode on Fantasy Companion, so get it quick!
Cool
@@BanditsKeep why so passive aggressive?
Super cool sound booth!!
Thanks
Concept for an adventure : a bar that keeps it's food constant by cutting off pieces of trolls and adding it to the ground meat mix, give premade characters but allow them their own too. Characters like a paladin, a clerics or great old one warlock who's diety gives them emotions and they have to make their bible, these characters would feel something evil or wrong, maybe an itch at their nose
I'm late to discovering your channel but I have to say that it is THE best RPG I have found on UA-cam. Not only do I love your ideas and information but (this may sound weird) I love the way you speak. You have a great "radio voice" and I just enjoy listening to you. I'm working my way back through your videos but this was my favorite one so far; easily the best hex crawl info I have yet to find.
Thank You!
When the party wants to go for a hike in the woods, it's time for a Hex Crawl.
Yep 😊
I use point crawl these days. I used to use hex.
Cool
Hex crawling is not something I've ever tried, I feel inspired to get into it by this and your mapper series, well done Daniel
Awesome