Oh HEX! Hex Crawls Part 2: Hex Map Design in 5e Dungeons & Dragons & TTRPG

[@WebDM]

Thanks for watching! Want more Web DM in your life? Check out our Patreon for our podcast, bonus vids, and more! Patreon.com/webdm Or our Twitch channel for live streamed ttrpgs every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday! Twitch.tv/webdm Or our live play archive on KZbin: KZbin.com/webdmplays

[@chrisporter2912]

Great vid as always, never let down

[@shawnkuhns2187]

Web DM, are you guys planning any Save or Dice sessions with Will Jones, Dave Friant and Cody?

[@WebDM]

@shawn kuhns we're not a part of save or dice anymore, but we wish them the best!

[@ThePorkchoppers]

Ok so a week ago I asked for this. Now, do I either have magic powers or was it pure coincidense? Im just gonna test it: When are we getting something about resting and healing?

[@RyanW1019]

Hi guys, where did those two massive figurines behind Pruitt come from? Are they from a specific game/product line? I'm looking for minis large enough to stand in for Tarrasques, Primordials, Titans, etc. and those are the biggest figures I've seen anywhere.

[@NamelessFacelessWhoa]

You should make a hex map of Texas and call it Hexas.

[@Xomage999]

Day after day you tirelessly work at hexing out the ginormous state. Each hex has subhexes, each subhex has their own subhexes. Finally the day arrives to unveil your grandest of crawls, the culmination of your blood sweat and tears. Then, moments after you begin, one of your players comments "You know, maybe we should explore Kansas instead..."

[@NamelessFacelessWhoa]

SovietOmega oof ouch owie

[@eros5420]

All my Hexes are in Texas

[@johnsnow9210]

Shout out to Hexus from Ferngully, great elemental villain.

[@AwkwardlySatisfying]

Don't know who you are, but damn glad you are.

[@comradeshmoo]

After that intro, Pruitt is now legally required to inform his neighbours that he is a Registered Hex Offender.

[@Geeko170]

I like the idea that a ranger can always find their way through wilderness, but a local guide can tell the party all the flavor of the local wilderness. Like the ranger can lead the party through the forest to the next village, but a local guide can do the same, and also show them where a nymphs pond is, or possibly tell them about the local goblin warren where they make an amazing local beverage.

[@YOOTOOBjase]

I love your explanations six times more than other channels. There are so many sides to the conversation. And your approach just fits so well as a repeated series, I go over each video with a fine tooth comb. Honeycomb. It's a pun.

[@WebDM]

Thank you!

[@graventhered]

Knights could ride about 20 miles in a day. So a keep could control a 10 mile radius in good terrain . With 6 miles hexes, that's a set of 7, all under one baron.

[@jimdavis141]

Graven The Red sounds reasonable.

[@MrSuperpat]

Outposts

[@AllegoryGar]

I’ve walked 23 miles in a day through some mountains I think they could do more than that tbh

[@joshjames582]

@@AllegoryGar Yeah but they're actually patrolling, not riding/walking for their health. They have objectives and they stop to talk to people/check stuff out, etc. They'd be going at a slow pace in D&D travel terms.

[@AllegoryGar]

Josh James makes sense

[@DanDare2050]

Hey guys. I started playing D&D in 1974. Every game was sandbox with dungeon crawls and some wilderness. We rarely played publish modules except at tournaments. Getting high enough level to set up your keep was a thing with us, and we went through the "clear terrain" process about 5 times leading up to 1980.

[@irontemplar6222]

I agree their should be more villages but my interpretation the only reason we were able to populate France like that was because humans were the most dangerous things out their. add in griffons, Romming bands of orcs, goblins, etc I dont think it would be as dense of a pouplation

[@Amrylin1337]

Well it certainly wasn't that way through every Century...just dial it back 1000 years and you can arrive at a different feel. It's more nuanced than just one explanation.

[@Tysto]

But settled lands are always going to be at least that dense. You create farms side-by-side, with some managed woodland mixed in. But yes, in a fantasy world there would be miles of open land that is untamed prairie, forest, etc. between settled lands.

[@nivolord]

I like to put travel obstacles on the edges of the hex, and destinations inside the hex. So a river or the peaks of a mountain range will follow the outsides of a hex, and islands or valleys will be the inside of the hex. This way, you can assign DC's to travelling from one hex to the other. If the hexes are connected by a (guarded) road, no DC check is necessary.

[@Comred22]

Thank you guys for posting this! I’m running a hex crawl for my Numenera game and really try hard to breath life into the map and feeling it full of crafting material, great npc, and quest.

[@fredmclovin194]

First, great vid, very helpful! Second, a "well actually"... Actually, skill challenges were printed in Star Wars Saga Edition June 5th, 2007. D&D 4th Ed, wasn't released until June 6th, 2008. I just want Saga Edition for SW to get some acknowledgement! 😅

[@ochrow]

So glad part two is out. Been prepping for a hex crawl and just rewatched Part 1 yesterday and was sad to find that there was no Part 2.

[@Galen876]

These Hexcrawl videos always make me want to run a game like one. Y'all are awesome. I did also wanna say that it was incredible meeting Pruitt at PAX last weekend. You guys are all just amazing people

[@crossthreaded6867]

I really appreciate the 3 passes idea, and talking about the setting not as a source of lore, but as a space to play in. I really want to incorporate these ideas into my game, thanks for talking about this.

[@matthewconstantine5015]

What you're saying about villages and how close they might be hit home for me when I was in France, having lunch with a friend. She was talking about the village she lived in, and how it only had 90 people in it. She would take her daughter in a stroller and walk 3 villages over to hit the grocery store. Coming from Maine, where you can easily go 40 or 50 miles on a highway between settlements of any note, it was really mind-blowing. Definitely changed the way I look at my Medieval-style Fantasy lands.

[@christopherpatterson4084]

This is a really great video on this topic. I actually made a hex crawl style campaign for my current group, its about a lost island that they will explore. I did a combination of a hexcrawl and pointcrawl, using the 3 things in each hex and rules for how far they can travel in one day. I used the book Hot Spring Island as a huge inspiration and guide, and made it bigger than that. Which is kind of crazy. Took me a long time to develop my random encounters and sites of interest, but the players are really enjoying it so far.

[@MAK2846]

GUIDES!! Guides are the key to a more fluid and entertaining hex crawl. Want to navigate rivers, lakes or swamps? Use a river pilot! Want to cruise the seas? Sea Captain! Need to pass through a forest? Use a local hunter or woodsman or a ranger! Need to find an ancient well hidden in a field? Hire a ranch-hand! My best and favourite guides I’ve ever used were a trio of mountain dwarves I used as Sherpas to cross through a mountain range. It was awesome, two brothers and a son with 2 pack mules. These guys bickered, they argued, they were surly, they got drunk, they’d run and hide during an orc raid, they wanted their guide fee plus a cut of the treasure. They yelled at the mules, the mules refused to move, they argued how to get the mules across a ravine, they built a barge to float the mules across a lake. They set up the camps, cooked, gathered fire wood, hunted, fished, took watch shifts and handled all the menial tasks while the party did the “adventurers thing”. They brought so much flavour and fun to a mundane wilderness adventure. Plus, no one got lost and the party kept wondering - will they abandon us? Will they betray us? Will they lead us into a trap or ambush? How can we trust these crazy drunken fools!? The perfect DM tool. Think of the possibilities...a necromancer who uses zombies to pole-paddle a barge through a swamp, summon a spirit to guide you through castle ruins or tell you where the treasury used to be, capture a kobold to guide you through a cave system. In addition, the guides could show the PCs new skills, my Sherpa dwarves showed the party how to use climbing ropes and spikes to rappel and make rope bridges, where to find food in the mountains, how to hunt and fish, use caves for shelter, navigate with sun and stars etc etc.

[@DrakusLuthos]

Commenting so I can find this later.

[@VanillaJoe]

Ooooo, hexting in the modern age, and all the unsolicited d6 pics you can handle. 🎲Great video, dudes. 😁👍

[@nickbuell9729]

Just started watching you guys a buddy recommended you guys and I have learned so much from you two as a brand new dm and player these videos rock !

[@TheBreadPirate]

Thanks for these tips!! I'm absolutely going to use these in my next game.

[@TakManSan]

When I started playing D&D, when it 'just' transitioned from D&D to AD&D I intuitively found grid-movement inefficient. I've been playing now for almost 40-years and I still prefer a Hex map over a grid! Keep this coming gentlemen and I'll keep watching! Love the show!

[@m34nb34n]

Thank you for these. Ive only just found hex crawl games for solo. And just watching these are giving me SO many ideas to help build story and some good "how to's" and instructions i can incorporate. You guys are awesome.

[@freeinformation9869]

Also, try to look in the Wilderness Survival Guide. There are some good ideas in that book on how to pep up travel and wilderness time without resorting to the random encounter tables all the time. How to cross a river, climb a cliff, traverse a bog, how to forage in different environments, rules for hunting, etc.. It also includes weather stuff and how it affects play directly. Hail, wind, showers, humid jungle air, drought, merciless sun and heat, fog, cold, ice storm, wading in snow, floods. A particularly fun thing is how the book unfold how to roleplay "beasts of burden" (ie horses, mules, camels, elephants etc and also flying mounts).

[@bettsdn]

So much fantastic advice in this episode. Even if you’re not doing a hex crawl, a ton of this is still applicable when doing overland travel.

[@Uphold-your-Rights]

I just sent my players into the High Forest to meet with the Grandfather Tree and wanted to create a memorable journey and not gloss over the travel. Great timing on this video.

[@lijesewell764]

Wow you guys made two hexcrawl videos in the middle of me creating my 2nd edition hexcrawl. I really appreciate the help, the first video helped me move faster than a slog and this second one is giving me some ideas.

[@emccoy]

This is great timing for me. One of my players contracted Sight Rot, and is going to need some Eyebright to heal it. I think a hex crawl would be a good way for them to find the plant and make it interesting.

[@CaspianTheMad]

You guys are awesome and I really appreciate your videos (as do my players most of the time). Keep up the great work.

[@WebDM]

Thank you, Zeus!

[@TheNerdySimulation]

I could listen to you guys talk about Hex Crawling for hours... And I think now I have lol

[@merlinmeurer5339]

I am using the square system, qnd your advice really helped me create some good stuff! The Faerie Dragon Hunting some Kobolds would not have been possible without you!

[@fontofspont2769]

A Distant Mirror is my fav book of all time. My heart leapt at the shoutout 🙌🙌🙌🙌

[@muttonhammer7284]

Wait so hexes give dnd that open world vibe? Well damn shoulda been doing that this whole time

[@MrThewalkingdead]

Planning a campaign that will (ideally) feature a Heart of Darkness arc which will largely take place as a hex crawl down a river system to the target (a mad warlord who controls all the large diamond mines in order to maintain his immortality with constant revivification and the like). This should be helpful.

[@osmium6832]

Excellent timing! I was going through the list of videos and opening them in a new tab without refreshing the Web DM page and noticed that part 1 was released a few months ago, but there weren't any more entries in the hex series. I just finished part 1 and saw at the end that the most recent post was part 2. I appreciate you accommodating my viewing schedule but am a little creeped out about the video cameras you must have in my apartment.

[@Ufo757]

At 17:44 you mention older editions of D&D that have secondary tables for distance, disposition, what they are doing. What edition could I find those tables? The Rules Cyclopedia? Thank you

[@villiamkarl-gustavlundberg5422]

I think a dog will recognize a human voice talk at 400 meters. A sharp soldier will hear a human voice at 230 meters. And a unsuspecting civillian will recognize a human voice at 140 meters. The 2nd edition AD&D dungeon masters guide has an encounter distance table but it's not something to get exalted about.

[@LordSephleon]

Damn my love of puns! That pun-tastic intro had me facepalming so hard I practically left a handprint on my face, but I still had to love it! Right... now that I've commented right after the intro, on with the rest of the video... :)

[@kevinm3428]

I've used a Judge's Guild product called Ready Ref Sheets, filled with flora, fauna and terrain random encounter tables, that I highly recommend. Also useful is their product Wilderlands of High Fantasy campaign hex maps that are filled with villages, towns and city states as well as lairs and ruins. I highly recommend doing hex crawls in your games because of the unexpected discoveries that will spur your player's engagement with the game.

[@Arthurgoblin4444]

Yas! I've been making maps for the past week so this is a godsend!

[@RockinBobXYZ]

Love the reference to 'A Distant Mirror.' I agree with Jim that most fantasy worlds are way, way too sparsely populated.

[@DaDunge]

7:45 Villages in agricultural are such that you can walk between them in at most a single day. That's because a farmer need to be able to get to the market and back home before dark. If there is no village that close one will form from the need of the farmers. If there is no such village then there pretty much need to be a reason why, and your farms will be a lot bigger, almost villages in of themselves because they need to have enough people that someone can stay behind and watch the farm while others take the longer journey to the nearest town to trade.

[@viniciusjp]

Amazing video guys! Congrats

[@havegoals]

Great discussion. Worth looking at Anna B Meyer’s Faerun map. Her level of detail addresses many of the generative and creativity issues raised here.

[@damianlaughlin7063]

These notes are especially helpful, thank you both!

[@F2t0ny]

Seeing the creatures from afar is solid gold advice

[@aaronsmith1790]

I found when it comes to my hexes on world maps, I go by 60 mile integers because I like my world's to be vast. But to compensate for this I go by a modded version of travel guidelines than the book says. Instead of 18 miles/24 miles/ 30 miles a day, dependant on moving a slow, medium, or fast pace. I go by time of day, meaning that the same amount of movement roughly for morning, day, evening, and night and reduce the amounts by half. So every time slot they can choose to go 9/12/15 miles per 6 hours traveled. For me this breaks down movement on such large spaces a little easier and giving players more choice to adjust pace, RP, or give agency. In this way it would take 7, 5, or 4 time slots respectively to move to the next square. If players choose to travel through the night and risk fighting tougher mobs, they can potentially move quicker; but at the risk of the survival checks being a little tougher. Led to some interesting RP moments to my group and I feel smaller numbers are more manageable. Hope this helps someone

[@GarrettKearns]

I'm gonna be running a wild west meets traditional high fantasy setting sometime in the undetermined future (after we finish Curse of Strahd) and a hex crawl might be perfect for that.

[@dicorockhimself]

Strongholds and gallows may also help you with that

[@liammackey961]

so much good content in this video to make travel more interesting. Can't wait to try it out in my game tomorrow!

[@Atsu333]

Oh hey, I was just working on making my map a hex map! Perfect timing once again!

[@freeinformation9869]

Good points! But Europe is pretty crowded! It was also the case in medieval times, even though there were desolate mountain ranges (Carpathians, the Alps, Ural mountains fx) and huge primeval forests (The Black Forest or the Białowieża Forest in Poland). I like to have a lot more wilderness in my world than what Europe had back in the days. I also like to reserve some space for humanoid non-human cultures such as elven societies, dwarven nations and orc hordelands. Villages in those regions are of course different than ordinary human default villages. 15:00 I find that landscape images are very inspiring. Both to me and sometimes directly in-game. Bing! has a ton of beautiful nature and landscape images from around the world, representing all kinds of interesting and inspiring landscapes. Sometimes just looking at these photos, gives me inspiration on who lives there and how it would be for the players to move through these places.

[@TheRabbitman3000]

Great content as always, but a special shout out to Pruitt's rail slide. With moves like that he'll catch those Cheese Thieves in no time!

[@wednes3day]

Very late to this, but on settlements being close .. from what I've heard pre-industrialisation you can get maybe one every five km, basically something you can comfortably walk to and back in a day? Christaller is really interesting to look at for that! It's turn of the century (and a lot of areas were mapped for this in the early 20th C), but still some interesting fundamentals It's also been quite fascinating to see taking a train through the Germany that unless it's forest land it's very rare that you can't see a village if not three

[@SpuneDagr]

You mention earlier editions had tables for encounter distance and disposition. Do you know where one might find such tables today?

[@Alkis05]

12:32 "What is the ground like? Is it sandy, shifting soil? You know, gets in your boots, in your hair and all that?" See, everyone made fun of Anakin, but everyone hates deserts and sand: It is bothersome, coarse and gets everywhere. 🤣

[@TheRacoonGhost]

after that intro i demand a warlock pact of the hex-crawl subclass, make it happen web DM, i know you wan't to!

[@UntoldRelic]

My hexes are 10km. Barring complications, a group can travel 3 a day on a road, 2 on normal terrain and 1 on hard terrain. I do that because I think in metric and I get tired of converting in my head.

[@nick6766]

Yesss I’ve been waiting for more hex crawl!

[@snapdragoncat3752]

Normal Hexagon Mapping Using 3 mile wide hexagon’s for hex crawls as examples but hexes can fit into hexes for scaling up or down. Stable normal hex crawl game is surrounded on all sides by other hexes that don't shift placement but three word descriptions can change over time, usually with the seasons. A hex that is enchanted woods or maze might shift placement or direction of character’s trajectory to enter/exit where they did not mean to go or become trapped. Hex of the land is lay of the land. Smashed Planer System The divides between planes has been destroyed or never existed. • Th_______ instead of separating the planes to divide and conquer in his war against existance smashed them together. • Dragons realized they're being used as pawns between gods and elementals, took out both powers, Fey wilds and or chaos slow infestation over reality and planer order. o Elementals and god's reincarnations come about in wold(s) they have no control over • L.V. 20th P.C.s broke the universe. Occupation of the same space/time paradox. • On a smashed board hexes overlap each other but unless a character is a planes shifter or has acces to a shared pocket space characters can’t travel between hexes overlapping each other • Traveling like normal crawls to a different hex past the boarder on to another hex onto another till crosing over a border onto the objective location that shares the same space as the beginning hex o Such travel can be described as walking up a giant spiral stair case without moving upwards • With changes to the discription of a hex, or a clump of hexes, the hexes overlapping them changes Overlapping hexes can bind to each other by the map maker, chance, or circumstance of the hexes having nearly identical layouts • Layers of other hexes can move or be brought between two horizontally binded hexes by the amout of diffrences between there three word descriptions’ o The same city in fire or flood might have layers between them that requires another flight of stairs travel Large clumps of hexes boardering bound travel to geather by the power of Great ones, Fey lord, or group of strong will linking hexes into territory that all share at least one discription word as a power word • Horizontally bound territory can reject spiral travel with purposeful points of egress or dedicated flat landscapes • What power or figures is keeping all the bound hexagon’s the same power words or remaking the bindings’ to comply o With each power word the drain for binding lessons o With the amount of territory the drain increases o With the variety of bound words the drain increases or requires different sources • A hex lousing all binding words is destroyed or displaced creating spaces filled with nothingness o New Hexagons can be conjured or summoned to fill voids that must match any word bindings surrounding • A key to each word binding is at where the corners of shapes meet together o Multiple words can be reflected at the same eco in the center of a hex that overlaps or scattered across multiple that overlaps a meeting corner o These Eco’s can be in the atmosphere or berried deep where it is harder to stumble upon them if the horizontal binding is sandwiched by other horizontal bindings working in tandem A D.M. only needs to keep track of binded spaces because all other spaces can be easily shifted or changed unless occupied. • Alternate, creatures of the P.C. or D.M. are working to undo the bindings on normal space and/or just travel through it differently o Demons, outer planers, or chaos aligned fey and spirits For a non hex example a shattered planes system could be expressed in small planets of bound spaces like in Kingdom Hearts or shifting areas like the spirt world in Avatar The Last Air Bender and Legend of Kora. The Pretend Wizards pod cast Fey realms and spaces are the D&D inspiration for this system. Alternate Condensed Space Anny space warped by time, bigger on the inside, not in reality, enhancement to discourage P.C.s can use this on a smaller scale with hexagons that represent about 3 feet, or a normal PC. • A hexagon has 12 bordering shapes o Every corner is connected to four shapes • If all shapes are hexagons every shape attached by a corner overlapping border shapes actually shares two of its boarders with it's overlapping neighbors o Corner hexagons point of view puts original hex overlapping on the opposite side's corner of the original hex’s point of view between the two hex that they share planes with • All other shapes and hexagon’s except for the one occupied by P.C.s are over lapping and the further out you look from the central space the denser and harder to tell which plane it belongs to it is • Shapes with more or less corners can be used if you have the software to keep track of that Use on a bigger scale for a plane of existence that P.C.s are made to have trouble perceiving.

[@Covertfun]

"For walk where we will, we tread upon some story" - Cicero

[@Leivve]

Every hex should have a town in it, assuming it has access to food and water. Historically towns were only a couple miles (about 6) from each other.

[@ingram2617]

Depends on the population density of the region. A densely settled and safe countryside might have a village or hamlet every square mile or so. 14th century France, as mentioned in the video, had around 120 people per square mile. A lot of npcs for your hex crawl. One village per hex would probably be fine for D&D, but would actually be a little sparse, population wise.

[@Leivve]

@Jamie Mccormick They would build closer together though. Knowing that the villages only a few miles away can come to your aid, just as you come to theirs is a huge boon to safety.

[@Bluecho4]

When you're building encounter tables for a hex, consider how you can incorporate your campaign's Central Tension into one or more possible encounters. The Central Tension, of course, being the thematic ideas that weave through the campaign and its setting. Watch the videos of Matt Colville, as he goes into that sort of thing. And what he points out is that the best Central Tensions have multiple layers, with the main idea being expressed in a number of different ways. A common Central Tension in his campaigns is Order vs Chaos, which can express itself as Law vs Anarchy, States vs Barbarians, even just Civilization vs Wilderness. It's a thread that echoes throughout his games, a pattern of plot that reoccurs, even if they all aren't directly connected. So if you build encounter tables for your game, it can be useful to consider how the random events the party meets can further these themes. For example, if we're using Colville's Central Tension, you might find barbarians attacking a town or a military outpost. Or you might find angry dryads, commanding blights and other plant monsters to dig up the road, because the imposing of straight lines onto the landscape is _offensive_ to them. I have my own Central Tension, for setting I've been working on, that goes roughly "old wounds still fester, past conflicts continue to create problems in the present". An encounter, then, might be bandits attacking, who used to be soldiers from a war that is now ended and had no other lives to return to. Or the presence of a band of wights on the march, seeking to gather power and become the successors of a great, historical undead warlord. Or the party might cross paths with a fairy Wild Hunt, and the fae lords leading it are still bitter about fairies being supplanted in this world by mortals. Or a monstrosity of some sort that stalks the area, that was originally created centuries or millennia ago as a living weapon by a long defunct empire. Or the party might wander through an empty village, long ago ravaged and depleted by a plague...and the boarded-up cottages still house the unquiet dead that perished to it.

[@Killercrit93]

commenting so i can find this later! =)

[@DrakusLuthos]

Second comment so I can find this later.

[@davidahlberg7017]

Would love to see you guys do an episode on MAGIC!! Love your show!

[@JBRocky007]

Played a game called Space:1889 back in the day that was great for a hex crawl.

[@scottanderson8167]

Medieval villages can be 1-3 miles apart. A six mile hex is about 32 square miles so it’s bigger than a modern town. You could take a week to map it. But one day is probably sufficient to find a main feature.

[@ralanbek95]

The Lads Amity Making my week yet again :)

[@stevenmike1878]

its funny because skyrim map is a 15 square mile area barely even a full hex. and that game is massive with multiple cities and villages lairs, caverns, ruins and temples. so three 6 mile hexes is a massive amount of space.

[@little_isalina]

I would think of creating a hex crawl map the way the open world in Skyrim or Fallout is created. Instead of filling it with random encounter tables, i would place features in most hexes that have a little bit of a story to them. It doesn't need to be super elaborate. But for example in fallout 4 you can come across the ruin of a home and its filled with feral ghouls, and as you enter the cellar, you find the body of non-feral ghoul and their log that tells you that this ghoul spent mot of the last twohundred years trying to care for his family, who have all turned feral in front of him. Having your monster encounters in a context like this makes the world feel real, not constantly running into randomly generated monsters that are just standing around. Basically, give your monsters a reason to be in that location and make it possible for the players to find out what that reason is or to find a strong clue that allows them to make theories.

[@mitchellreid5091]

These Guys are the Best. Keep up the good work

[@toms5402]

Do you know which edition of D&d had the initial disposition, distance, surprise tables, etc.? That sounds useful

[@fitzgeraldlimisella4393]

On a "kingdom" scale map (1 hex = 6 miles), how do you determine the frequency of random encounters? Do you have one per hex? Or is it done by time (one per day) or by distance (one for every 24 miles travelled)? Is there a probability to it (do you roll for these encounters or do you just decide there is one per hex/day/24 miles? Thanks!

[@tankatim13]

Once per tile. Civilisation example. Broken wheel cart stop to repair or continue on Wilderness: party heading north. You spot tracks in the mud heading east. Enemy territory. Ambush or Creature feasting on a corpse

[@DaDunge]

8:45 In such areas you should be able to sleep in an inn every night if you want to.

[@gothicsage-2]

Thinking a bout running a hex crawl campaign for my family.

[@BrickInTheHead]

listen I'm just saying that I'd become a patron if I could get access to Jim's random tables...

[@aureliomanalo]

Pru passes acrobatics check!

[@Shnimberz]

What are the older books that he said had all the random encounter tables!! I need that!!

[@tankatim13]

Check out OSR. Plenty of resources. Frostbitten and mutilated. Electric bastion lands. Mork Borg. Vornheim.

[@datalich]

All of the content in Curse of Strahd can fit in a hex and a half. If you're using 12 mile hexes, so not the same, but similar.

[@tannerlebel5167]

Here it is!

[@timkramar9729]

Weather. Rain. Sandstormz. Sandstorm. Dust devils. Tire ask Tornado.

[@Raastoff]

Thanks this inspired me to make a new hex map :)

[@TheHammertime51]

Keep it up, WebDM

[@johnstuartkeller5244]

Nice to see you covering this in multiple episodes. No sense in putting all your hex in one basket.

[@zacksporen]

I'm too Hexy for my chainmail ...

[@mme.veronica735]

Damn. That's a lot of polygons

[@justinduff3384]

So I really enjoy doing hex crawls because it makes it very easy to place things in the story on the map. But I have a question; I want to plan out my big bad but the last time I did that my players just plowed through the entire campaign and didn't really get distracted by any side quests that I didn't tie directly back into the main storyline. How can I entice my players to slow down and take some side quests without railroading them?

[@WebDM]

Tie "side quests" into their back stories is a big way to do that. Try to invite your players to be more of a driving force in your campaign. Or perhaps instead of organizing it into side quest and main quest, try to think of how the players' actions introduce complications that extend the story further

[@skelitonking117]

What do you suggest for smaller Hex Crawls? My party is about to enter a jungle to look for a lost city and i was wondering if you had any thoughts on Hex crawls that only last a few in game days.

[@ScoffMathews]

Nice slide!

[@sisyphusmyths]

I'm late to this party by five years, but... All my exes live in hexes

[@justinlay2092]

Great video dudes.

[@HSuper_Lee]

I'm a new DM with a group that is new to D&D. Myself and my players are all kind of trying to figure out how to do things. I've watched a lot (and I do mean a lot) of your videos, and while they've been very helpful, it seems part of becoming a good DM is just practice and trying new things. I'm not sure how much fun my players would have if every week I was like, "Hey, can I try something new?" So I'm wondering, are there any good ways to practice DMing? Thanks for everything, and your videos have been very helpful.

[@chriskenney5511]

While I'm not a terribly experienced DM, it seems to me you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. Mechanics are something lots of people put tons of thought into so finding resources for that is relatively easy. I would focus on roleplaying. Find some fun voices you like to do, make npcs around those. Descriptions are also an important part of dm-ing (arguably the most important part, it is the majority of what you do) really think about the way you describe things. Painting a clear picture is vital, but noone wants to listen to an exact description of every little thing either.

[@notusingmyrealnamegoogle6232]

I strongly recommend trying out a pre-made one-shot campaign or two. I used “The Wolves Of Weldon” for my group’s first sessions and just seeing a) what was on the page to prepare, b) how the prepared material translated to actual gameplay and c) ways in which my players approached things and branched out from that helped me a LOT in structuring my own campaign.

[@notusingmyrealnamegoogle6232]

Also, you could just ask your players, “are you cool with us trying out something new every time”? No reason you can’t do a couple mini-stories and then discuss as a group what you want to go back to for a larger campaign

[@ZrinNZ]

When it comes to putting things IN your hexes and youre having trouble just coming up with something, I like doing what I was taught at school on how to construct characters and stories. It's similar to the "three pass" Jim talks about. Do it in order: Noun: who or what are they? Adjective: what do they look like? What are they wearing? Verb: what are they doing? Adverb: HOW are they performing their actions? Example: Noun: orcs Adjective: rugged, rough and angry Verb: hunting for a kill Adverb: quietly hunting? or violently hunting and not giving any heed to stealth? That should give you all you need, or most of what you need to figure out how they will interact with the world around them.

[@Skyscraper125]

I highly advise people take a look through this PDF ( i.4pcdn.org/tg/1473417948274.pdf ). I know there is a full book out there but it gives a WONDERFUL arrangement of additives one can add to a hex people are moving through during play or just generating content for a hex. It's a fabulous system in which I've had people come upon the following. They wander upon a group of goblinoids licking their wounds from a past battle nearby, tracked by the ranger to the location. They rest about a monument which the wizard notes has powerful magics about it! They don't know it yet, but the mound protrudes an aura of arcane diffusement making spells fail horribly in bouts of wild magic! The Ranger sets up traps in the area and lure some of the hobgoblin guards out, trapping them and sending them on a search for her. . she separates them into groups to be picked off with a fire! After a big battle, the forest fire the ranger starts leads to them doing an emergency teleport which fails dramatically leading to the wizard taking 27d10 force damage by basically flipping a coin 9 times and getting heads every time taking 3d10 force damage each time. After "Sending him to a different dimension" while the rest of the party teleports somewhere unknown for who knows!!! My point is, really, MAKE IT MATTER. Having generic 2d6 orcs attack you isn't fun because it's just 2d6 orcs... where are they? what is the terrain? what are the features of where you're being attacked? Does the fight even matter (super important)? If something dramatic happens like they lose or flee or slaughter them all. . does that mean anything? etc. Nobody likes fight #14 along journey #12 to castle #10 to acquire object #4 for quest #2 in campaign #1. . which is regrettable that's how a lot of campaigns get broken into @_@.

[@Jhakaro]

That slide at the end looked like it really hurt. That last bit where it straightened out and the sudden jarring effect. Say your arse got a proper whack, haha. Oh the rest of the video was fine too I guess. :P

[@Tysto]

The great majority of land in Europe by the high Middle Ages was settled, with a village on every ~1300-acre manor, which is 2 sq miles. Raise that to 3 sq mi to account for rivers, roads, and cities, and that puts 10-12 manors & their village or town in each hex of farmed land. This is still the case today; tiny villages just litter the English roads between proper market towns. Of course, in a fantasy world, there would be large tracts of land that are still wild (untamed forest, moors, brambles, rocky wastes, marshes, bogs, & lakes). That's where the monsters are. Very few would be on farmed land & almost entirely in the lord's (carefully managed) woods. Note that a village would only be about 75 people (tavern, mill, smith, baker, carpenter, cobbler, cooper, church, and serfs & freemen farmers)--just "a wide spot in the road" where you might get a meal and move on. A town was several hundred people and always had an inn and a weekly market and was usually walled. No stores! Shops were workshops. This is not the Old West with a general store. A city was 1000 to 10,000 and usually built around a castle. England's second city, York, was 12,000 people, & London was 40-70,000. Every merchant & apprentice in a town was in the merchant guild, so the guild hall and the town hall were the same place with the same people on both councils, and they took turns acting as the town constable and watchmen (or paid someone else to take their turn). Cities also had individual craft guilds. But most of the people in a town were peasants who worked the fields around the town.

[@XblacklightZ]

Roll a d6: 1-2 friendly. 3-4: neutral. 5-6: hostile. Just good to have for flavor especially in an URBAN environment

[@enation5299]

The sword is awesome

[@richardfortier]

Don't mess with Hexas. Hexcesior!

[@jotagroovy7479]

The comedy gets real

[@bigbalian1751]

Where's that disposition table? (Not hostile, friendly or neutral.) The one that has ideas for what are the characters in the encounter doing? Fleeing a fight? Camping? Looking for a fight? What else?

[@jimdavis141]

Big Balian it’s a tool to help determine how the initial moments of an encounter go. We cover it in more detail in our episode on Encounter Tables from awhile back.

[@bigbalian1751]

Jim Davis I couldn’t remember that but I’ll rewatch that episode. It sounds extremely useful and would like to see the various ideas it uses. Thanks Jim!

[@atlasdm]

+1 for The Sword

[@paragonexperience]

The reason why there aren't dozens of villages in many settings is because not many of them will survive, those who do survive because they can resist monsters. The wilderness is dangerous.

[@HoundofOdin]

Cheese thieves.

[@mikeelarsen1964]

10/10 rail slide.