Enchanted Nimbus #1
The Hex Crawling Edition!
Welcome!
Welcome to the very first issue of Enchanted Nimbus, the Earthmote monthly newsletter! I’m working on the newsletter in complement with my YouTube Channel. While it make take me some time to come up with a consistent format my hope is to share interesting articles, videos, products and my own custom content about in this newsletter that I believe the reader will enjoy! My focus will mainly be on tabletop RPGs, particularly those of the OSR variety. Regardless of your preferred system, I hope the information within is useful for you.
Some issues might be “theme” based like this first issue about hex crawls, while others might be more generic. I haven’t fully decided yet, but please write me if you particularly enjoy one way or another.
New to Hex Crawls?
Hex crawls are a way to play an exploration-based sandbox style game. We segment our maps into hexes which allow us to track the party’s progress as they move around the map and explore different areas.
The hexes allow us to delineate what content is in which area of the map. This helps us know what the party are going to discover as they explore different parts of the map.
Hex crawling is a tradition as old as OD&D itself, taking its roots from the hex map found in the 1971 Outdoor Survival game by Avalon Hill. While it has fallen out of style with more modern styles of play, it has seen a resurgence with the OSR scene.
I have enjoyed building my own hex crawls because they fit nicely with the sandbox approach I prefer. They also encourage exploration across the game map but the direction and choices are left to the party’s ambitions.
Below are some resources I have found invaluable as I’ve worked on my own hex crawls.
Articles
The Alexandrian’s series on hex crawling is a classic, and one that helped me out when I was first learning.
Completely new to hex crawls? Chicagowiz details how you can start your campaign with just 3 hexes!
W.F. Smith of Prismatic Wasteland developed a comprehensive checklist for hex crawling in a two part series (Part 1, Part 2). His posts are well cited, and offer many more works to check out on hex crawling.
When it comes to scaling the size of your hex, the Hydra’s Grotto’s post detailing the virtues of the famous 6-mile hex is most often cited. It remains a standard many people still adhere to. They later proposed the 3-mile hex as they felt the 6-mile hex has some short comings. That information never took off like their original praise of the 6-miler did.
Videos
Of course, check out my video on the essentials of Hex crawling if you haven’t already!
Daniel at the Bandits Keep put together a nice video on creating a sandbox campaign with a focus on hex crawling maps.
GFC’s DND video walks through how to set up your Hex Crawl notes and procedures. He uses good old fashion paper and binders, but you could copy his format with digital tools easily enough.
Products
Supplements for Filling out your own Hex Maps
The Sandbox Generator offers tons of great material and tables to help populate your hex crawl campaigns.
Worlds Without Number offers a ton of great random tables and a unique tag system to help design ruins, wilderness and factions that occupy them! Free PDF, Offset Print, or Deluxe PDF.
Filling in the Blanks is a series of tools to key up areas and elements of interest for your hex crawl.
New Big Dragon Game’s D30 DM Companion (PDF) and D30 Sandbox Companion (Print or PDF) are full of useful d30 tables to add areas or interest, NPCs, and items to your game world!
Hex Crawl Premade Settings
Dolmenwood is a highly detail fairy woodlands setting by Gavin Norman of Necrotic Gnome. Its available for pre-order now.
Gods of the Forbidden North by Pulp Hammock Press is a setting designed for Old School Essentials (B/X). It features an extensive overland hex map. They are currently working on two additional parts to the campaign setting, an underworld for the players to explore and a forthcoming megadungeon. Part 1 is available now on DriveThruRPG. Part 2’s Kickstarter recently funded and will be delivered late in 2024.
Jacob Flemings sandbox modules all feature a hex crawl component.
The Dark of Hot Springs Island is a densely packed jungle crawl with dynamic factions and a powder keg of explosive conflicts waiting to happen. Print or PDF.
If your a 5th Edition GM consider checking out Andrew Kolb’s Neverland, a setting based on the public domain material of Peter Pan. Neverland features a jungle island hex crawl with a lot of fun and imaginative material. Print or PDF.
The Evils of Illmire is another well regarded “mini-mega” dark fantasy hex crawl. PDF.
Tools
Hex Map Generators:
Hex Describe is a generator that spits most of its output on in text format, so you can easily copy and paste it into another document.
Hexroll 2nd edition lets you create interactive hex maps that you can drill down on to find the details of the hex or the dungeon maps contained within the hex.
Azgaar’s Fantasy Map generator lets you overlay the hex grid on top of the detailed fantasy maps it creates. In the “Layers” section toggle the grid option on.
Make your own Hex Maps!
Worldographer has a free version of the software and a pro version that has a one-time license key purchase.
Hex Kit is another tool for creating hex maps, it has a one-time purchase for use.
Feature: Keying Your Hexes
When it comes to keying your hexes, it can feel like a lot of work. If you are like me, you don’t like blank hexes. Its okay to have the occasional empty hex. But, if you are using the standard 6-mile hex, then ~31.2 square miles is a lot of space to have nothing in it. In general, I try to aim for 1-3 keyed features on each hex.
So first things first, start your map off small (See Chicagowiz’s 3 hexes above). My end goal is to try to keep my map in the range of 10x10 to 12x12. That’s 100-144 hexes you need to key, so that that seems like plenty of work. But you can build that out as you play the game. Not everything has to be done ahead of time.
Hex Keys are for Locations
Your hex key should focus on locations that reside within the hex. In general, I do not recommend keying specific encounters or events on your hex key. The reason being that the events will start to feel premeditated. For example, if you decide to key up an encounter with an orc warband in a hex, does that make sense? Does the warband never travel, go raiding, or head home in the winter? They are just going to “sit around” and wait for the party to stumble into it? In my opinion, put encounters and events on your random encounter tables! that’s what they are there for and your players can encounter those different denizens in multiple locations if you’re using the same encounter tables for multiple hexes (you definitely should).
With your focus on locations only, this does help restrict our focus in a useful way. We can chose what locations and terrain elements make sense within a hex and focus on keying those.
Lean on Previously Keyed Hexes
This tip works better the more elements you have keyed already, but I think that’s fine because most people can come up with several good ideas before their creative well starts to run dry.
Once you feel like you are struggling to come up with any more ideas, I recommend reviewing the ones you already have in place. Look at the different locations you have created. What other locations would make sense to be nearby?
Have you developed any lore for your current locations? If so, are there any gaps or holes that could be plugged? For example, say that you keyed an old castle ruin that fell into disrepair after its lord was imprisoned and thrown in the king’s dungeon. Well, does the King’s dungeon exist on the map already? If not, you got yourself a free location to place where you wish. These history elements help make the game feel more connected as you have these different locations that start to become a bit more connected by things that have happened in the past or are currently happening as the party explores the world.
Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Anne over at DIY & Dragons devised a clever framework known as Landmark, Hidden, Secret. I also learned more about it from W.F. Smith’s Part 1 series as mentioned above.
Landmarks are obvious features in your hexes. These are elements that are obvious and given away freely to the players. Things like, a large plateau that serves as a useful vantage point, or the keep that resides close to the main road that cuts through the hex. When you start keying your hexes, think about what landmarks might make sense to add to your key for each of your hexes. Even though they are titled landmarks, that doesn’t mean they all have to be large in nature. Just something that the players will come across easily as they travel through the hex.
Hidden features are not automatically obvious to the players and they are not freely given. The players need to incur some sort of cost (usually the time it takes to search for hidden features). But if they are willing to pay that cost, then they will find the hidden feature without fail. So for example, if the players are willing to repel down into the dark gulch, then they find an entrance to a cavern deep. When we are keying dungeons, it can be useful to think about elements that are hidden from the players but can be found if they look for them. Things like dungeons, monster lairs, or caches of valuable materials (iron ore, special woods, etc.).
Secret features have no guarantees, but they are always costly. These elements have a chance that the players will never find them (it comes down to a die roll on top of taking time to search). These could be features like dungeons that have a secret door as the entrance.
Anne and W.F. Smith recommend every hex has a landmark feature, 4 in 6 have a hidden feature and few have secret features. I personally would not make many secret locations. Its fine if your players never find a secret door or room in a dungeon. But if you are keying up a whole location and they never see it, that can be a lot of wasted prep work. I’d recommend keeping wholly secret locations to 10 rooms or fewer, that way, its not too much work if they never show up in your game.
Borrowing Content for your Keys
When it comes to filling out hexes, you can and should borrow content! If you have published modules, borrow the different locations and put them in your hexes. You can rip them wholesale and just run that part of your module as-is when your players encounter it. Or you can chose to make modifications to better fit your custom world. The choice is yours, and depends on how much time and energy you have to do so.
I really like browsing Dyson Logos’ maps. You can easily drop these into your different hexes and sometimes the different blog posts will have some creative lore snippets you can borrow to make the location come to life.
Great info; I’m considering a hexcrawl as one of the possibilities for a new campaign with my young-adult children. (BTW, it’s “rappel” down into the dark gulch, not repel.)