How To Play Through a Hexcrawl in Your D&D Campaign

You've set up and prepped the hex map for your Dungeons and Dragons hex crawl campaign, so now what? How do you dungeon master a hex? What do the players do? I've got the answers. Let's talk.
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[@williamlee7482]

Growing up in the late 70s playing D&D basic and expert rules then moving on to AD&D and also playing Gamma World 1st edition hexcrawling was a normal part of adventuring in those days . Many of the modules had overland maps with minor adventuring locations along with the major . One such excellent example of hexcrawling is Gamma Worlds 1st edition Leigon of Gold , in it the players have to find out where and why villages are being attacked by beings in golden armor and the overland maps has so many places to explore that even after they complete the adventure there are still many minor adventure locations fleshed out on the map . It's how I run my games , the players have the choice to investigate then or return at a later time or just ignore it all together . I'm not one of those Dm's that gets mad that the players ignore adventure locations I took the time to create because it's always easy to turn those things into major adventuring sites at a later date . D&D without some kind of hexcrawling is rather boring and I have seen videos where the adventure is a six part series of about 2 to 3 hours long per video and the start went something like this " After travelling a week you a ride at the temple and spot 3 gnolls , one spots you and runs to alert the others , where are you setting up your character on the map ? " To me that's boring and not very creative but that's just my opinion on the game and someone else might not like the exploration aspect of hexcrawling

[@Motavian]

Great video as always. Because I have players that aren't big on exploring for its own sake (kind of contrary to the spirit of the crawl) I usually compartmentalize my hex crawl prep into three different categories listed from most intensive to least: 1. The primary adventure (usually a dungeon with a background, setting, hooks, npcs/factions, map, key, etc) 2. Secondary/background/procedurial material 3. Hex map features I find that with my secondary material I can devote 10 minutes at a time making an interesting table to introduce variance and meaningful choices into my scenarios and floating scenarios that can be plugged into the game when I roll a lair % chance on my monster table, a random encounter table for a region or if I need a floorplan for whatever reason. My feature prep is usually just a line of text describing a large dominating feature within the hex, because they are simple I usually have 3-5 per hex but I don't bother keying specific situations to them until I need to and usually if I have a robust enough procedure the travelling surprises me without the feel of exhaustion from improvising everything. The other thing I like about this is that I have a line of site procedure where a hex feature may not be visible until the party throws time (which means resource dwindling, possible random encounter checks, etc) climbing up obvious features so that they may have a clear line of site to a feature that is maybe nestled in a valley. As presented in old school play, hex crawls are really just dungeon crawls where the dungeon rooms always have 6 exits and features but prepping this is exhausting and if you're like me you're obsessed with things being "meaningfully positioned" in the world and being consistent. This method of mine runs kind of contrary to the spirit of the crawl but it allows me to have this big interesting thing in between settlements and dungeons without having to prep situations that will most likely go uncovered by my group.

[@HexedPress]

Ultimately, the goal of any sort of prep is that it gets you to where you need to be in terms of running your game. You should always go for what works for you, first and foremost. Thanks for sharing your prep steps! I’m sure there are plenty of GMs out there who will find that style speaks to them.

[@colbyboucher6391]

Love that you made this video, because I always wondered... A "6 mile" hex is 30-something miles square. It's the size of Skyrim. It's hard for me to get in a mindset where I can kind of abstract that away.

[@yesfredfredburger8008]

I've spent weeks watching great vids about PREPPING a hex crawl, but this is the first one that actually helped me understand where the rubber meets the road in a real game

[@HexedPress]

Glad that I could be of service!

[@twistanturnu529]

Great guide, thank you. I'm still a pretty green DM and looking to incorporate more random elements and deeper exploration. Gonna hopefully incorporate this into an ocean hex crawl segment, thanks!

[@HexedPress]

Glad you found it useful! Good luck!

[@Tysto]

If the party just wants to get from place to place, they should be on a road. It's faster, and there should be few monsters (but more bandits and lots of tiny villages). Also, there should be virtually no monsters in a settled area. The serfs of the manor would be all over the fields, pastures, and woods, which would be managed (coppiced to grow poles & wattle) & used as a hunting ground by the lord. This sort of play is for a deliberate venture into wild lands.

[@HexedPress]

Assuming a road exists, absolutely! Regarding encounters, it really depends and context is important. Maybe somewhat less monster encounters (depending on the road) but not necessarily less encounters overall.

[@mistergoats4380]

A well made and run hexcrawl is goat tier DnD

[@greggiggle]

Criminally underrated channel.

[@HexedPress]

Glad you think so! 😁

[@gendor5199]

Fairly decent video! It got me doing some research on how far a human can travel vs how wide a wolf packs habitat can be, and if it can take a human 4 days to cross from one end to the other of a wolfs habitat, it is very unlikely you will run into it, as such, a weeks worth of traveling could probably be summed up in less than half an hour, if even that! "You see some small animals and a deer or two but no big threats. You did see the castle on the mountain in the distance so you managed to stay away from the threat everyone knows about, and you found a lake where you could orient yourselves."

[@HexedPress]

“Fairly decent”… I’ll take it! 😆

[@RimeoftheAncientGamer]

I'll see you...on the court!

[@pickpocketpressrpgvideos6655]

Great helpful video, thank you for the detailed overview/approach. I really like how you emphasize that you need to prep for good travel - random encounter/event tables, weather tables, etc

[@HexedPress]

+Pickpocket Press RPG Videos thanks for the kind words! Glad you liked it!

[@kevinm3428]

Stumbled on this and pleasantly surprised to see Judges Guild references! I've been using the Wilderlands campaign maps, modules and Ready Ref Sheets tables since their printing in the 1970's to great effect. I highly recommend them for their completeness and imagination. I've written up quite a few towns and villages, using the JG information and style, around the City State of the Invincible Overlord and City State of the World Emperor. I'm curious to know what you've done and I'll go check out more of your videos. Great hex crawl information in this one!

[@anathema1828]

Brilliant!

[@HexedPress]

Glad you enjoyed it! 😁

[@al2642]

The one ring... masterpiece :)

[@christofrochel496]

These videos are great! Preparing to do my first hex crawl and these help me envision what it can be like. You mention rolling a d6 to determine what quadrant/sub-hex-triangle a random encounter lives in when the party enters a hex and rolls an encounter. Do you do this instead of rolling encounter distance? Or do you do both? Sometimes one, sometimes the other? The rolling to see what quadrant idea is new to me, and I’d like to hear more about your choice to do that rather than encounter distance

[@killfear]

9:40 ... how fun! whatever role is missing is where the trouble comes from.

[@ravensrealmtabletop]

Great video! Can't wait to dive into the rest of this channel

[@HexedPress]

Glad you liked it! Hope the rest of channel won’t be a letdown! 😁

[@ItsMrDon]

ive made my own adaptation from this vid for travvel i tried to make one for months and thanks to u and this vid i finally got it ty very much dude

[@HexedPress]

Wow, so glad it helped you out! Thanks for letting me know!

[@FluffyTheGryphon]

This is some solid gold content here. One thing I want to find more about is how to build a compelling system of random encounter tables.

[@HexedPress]

Thanks for the kind words! Stay tuned! Going deeper into random encounter generation is on my to-do list!

[@williamlee7482]

When I run hexcrawl my encounter tables includes things like weather , random terrain , ruins , small villages , lairs , patrols ( both friendly if near a town or city and hostile in the wilderness ) to things like earthquakes and the like . I keep a notebook that's filled with encounters by both level and terrain and a folder with maps for what ever I might need and when I have the time I create more maps just so things don't repeat

[@Gashren]

Could you make a short (10-20 minutes long) video with an example of playing through a hex crawl? There is a lot of lengthy videos on the topic, but so few actual examples of play, and I really need one to get how it's done.

[@HexedPress]

I’ll see what I can do!

[@krystal2423]

Good advice, great video.

[@HexedPress]

Thanks! Glad that you liked it!

[@rpgquestboard]

Eeeeeeeeeradicatorrrrrrrrr!

[@dylanknight1237]

How do I get the ready ref sheets?

[@HexedPress]

Last time I checked, digital copies can be had drivrthrurpg. However I can’t recommend it as the current owners of the content are not nice people. if you must, here’s the link I had for it: hxpr.to/os3zqi (I see that they’ve pulled it now… interesting.) What I can recommend that is similar Is the D30 Sandbox Companion which is also on DTRPG here: hxpr.to/naopzp I’ve done a couple of videos on the D30 content if you’re interested.

[@HexedPress]

To add, you might be able to track down a physical copy on eBay. I don’t know what the pricing is like these days but it used to be pretty reasonable.

[@dylanknight1237]

@Hexed Press nice super cool! I'll watch a few of those videos. Yeah, I've watched like 6 videos about hexcrawling and they all say "the ready ref sheets are perfect and awesome", but then I cant find them ANYWHERE other than for like $100 on ebay/amazon.

[@HexedPress]

@@dylanknight1237 ah, yeah, that stinks. The prices didn’t used to be too bad but I guess that supply/demand thing has finally caught up to them. Check out the D30 stuff, it fills very much the same niche as the RRS.

[@StabYourBrain]

This guy looks like a character from Beavis & Butt-Head