One more tip, from a DM who wishes he did this months earlier in his run of a hexcrawl: keep a record of the various objectives the PCs have shown interest in, learn relevant mechanics for if/when they pursue those goals, come up with some ideas to make it more interesting if they pursue those goals, and also maybe remind the players of the things they showed interest in when appropriate. My players get sidetracked from their sidetracks off of sidetracks, and I find it helps to mention "hey, just a reminder, a month ago you expressed an interest in taming and riding the giant pterandons that live on this island," when I know that they now have the magic, skills, etc. to pull that off. (Of course, ideally the players would keep track of their own personal goals, but some people are more organized and goal-oriented than others.)
Good point! To build on that, if you have a lull in a campaign, you can always just plant the equivalent experience in that area. The characters are after that flamethrower sword of lore? GREAT NEWS! A devil has actually been using that exact sword to clear out a nearby castle! Gets the players a nugget of accomplishment, and allows you to have a filler episode if a campaign quest is getting stale.
Well it depends.. when you have already said that this sword would/could/should be in a specific area and If they would get the Chance to remember this Fact, so Low this Chance might be, they could blame you for rushing or ruining the fun to hunt this sword. I've experienced it more than once in several Situations and i felt Bad for 2 months straight, that i didn't get the thought of it.
Can't emphasize enough after running a ton of hexcrawls - tables that provide context for random encounters (what are the monsters doing?) Is invaluable. An encounter with two giants catfishing enables the brain much more than 1d2 giants.
One of the best compliments I got from a player recently (semi-hexcrawl sandbox campaign) was when I said that their rolls for encounters are genuinely random selections, and they responded with "DM, that's amazing! The world feels so lived-in, it's like, we're only level 5 the world doesn't revolve around us. These other factions have their own things going on, and we aren't even the biggest part of that." Context: Neverland - one of the beach hexes around the island. The party had some weeks ago rescued one of their members who was captured by the pirates - and without much in the way of combat either. The party rolls for an encounter and it turns out they have come across a large pirate group on the beach, along with Captain Hook. At this point I have to determine "Why are the Pirates there?" - so I decide they're having a meeting with the mermaids to talk about recent attacks from Elphame/Fairy Land. They see the PCs before the meeting and decide that they would rather not have the PCs to deal with as enemies too. They demand a parley, and the Face of the group goes to talk to Captain Hook. They agree on a truce, and go their separate ways.
I think one thing people forget is that if travel by road between two settled areas takes more than one day, inevitably someone is going to build a place for travelers to stay each night. So if it's two days travel on the road between town A and town B, there's probably an inn about half way between the two of them.
I just learnt a fun fact about my country. In medieval times there used to be a law that dictated that there must be an inn (or something similar) every 25km (roughly) by the main roads.
Yes, I have just such a place in my campaign. It is run by the pirates to lure in travelers which are then drugged, Shanghai'ed and pressed into service either on a ship as a crew member or if they prove deficit at that, as a slave in their iron mine.
@@digitalspecter This kind of thing has something to do with why we in Sweden (confusingly) call 10km a "mil", that was the mandated distance for waystones (milestones, if you will), and then every 2nd or 3rd I think was the "inn distance"? EDIT: the inn distance was "1.5 to 2 mil"
Depends on how heavily traveled it is. You need a good 7-12 humanoid travelers a week to support even a small inn. Any less than that and there’ll probably be only a campsite built by previous travelers but left empty most of the time, and with highwaymen likely watching it for likely targets.
I think that's the first time I've heard a hexcrawl explained in a way that would make my 5e group interested in playing one. really well done! Thanks for the content :)
@@jmass4207 The moment they learn about the system that they are living inside of, they will attempt to exploit the system. Bracketing a hex-based map is basically as uninteresting as just doing adventure of the week in sequential order
@@DungeonMasterpiece OK this makes sense, my DM has the whole 'overworld' map as a hex crawl - which we can all see and choose where to go, and I have been finding it kind of dull and lifeless like a computer game. I think using it for your own benefit as the DM has some merit.
@@commandercaptain4664 Some of my most creative moments have come from smashing together two things that don't normally go together. It really gets the mental juices flowing when you need to make those two elements make sense together.
I really like the approach of the Kingmaker Pathfinder campaign with it's hexploration system. Also, the kingdom building rules and resources scattered throughout the map are excellent to motivate players to explore and great quests enablers.
I would love to learn more about this. I've always wanted to run an intrigue or kingdom-sized campaign but I don't feel like I am good enough of a designer to tackle what that would involve.
@@harrison3207 intrigue style games don't do well with 5e dnd. You need to have a very different ruleset that doesn't make your players out to be super heros. Check out god bound and worlds without numbers. Both have lots of tools for the kind of game you might like, as well as a fresh perspective on game mastering to assist in that kind of game
One of the best homebrew ideas for GMing I've ever run across. Thank you! Now instead of trying to find the perfect location for that encounter I want, I let the dice decide so I can focus on fleshing it out. And I can use it as either a non plot forwarding device or as one. My humanoid tribes, snake cult, slavers and monster of the week now will quickly have homes! PS Ankhegs make for a great encounter ala the creatures from Tremors in a barren valley with only scattered boulders and an abandoned, ancient open air temple occupying it
Gotta get rid of as much mental load as possible so you can focus on the things that matter to you most in your world building. Also, ankhegs are terribly underated.
My first hex crawl was Isle of Dread way back in the ancient days but it taught me so much. The 1e Wilderness Survival Guide also taught me a lot about hex crawls So I think I was lucky because today’s campaigns fail miserably at hex crawls Look at Tyranny of Dragons that was the perfect campaign for a hex crawl and it failed to deliver Enjoyable topic Cheers
@@scottplumer3668 I use a number of my old books because the information is useful still in play and we never got updated version of it. I hope you have a great campaign with the 5e version of Isle of Dread Cheers
Excellent presentation of the challenges and solutions to approaching the Old Skool style of play. I'll be referring back to this one as I flesh out my next hex crawl campaign.
The titular Tomb aside, the Tomb of Annihilation campaign is primarily a hexcrawl exploration game. The first two thirds of the game is essentially wandering around in the jungle looking for the location of the Tomb. It's a great survival and exploration campaign and setting that can stand on it's own without needing to use the infamous dungeon and related story.
A warning to all who see this in the future. Tomb of Annihilation has some major issues that need to be fixed to get to the juicy stuff. DON’T start with a time crunch/main quest. It squashes exploration. Let the death curse be discovered organically after a little while or do away with it altogether. (Your players will need to find some other reason for being in Chult.) Rework the random encounters. Another bunch of velociraptors just attacking becomes very unfun after a while. Make sure that the marked points of interest on the map have something interesting. It’s crushing to fight your way through a jungle to get to the ruins of a coastal town and find….nothing. It’s got some cool stuff, but it’s broken out of the box.
Outstanding. I just found these videos. I am 64 and I miss playing D&D so much. I even graduated dungeonmaster school at GenCon in Milwaukee so many years ago. I played the original D&D when it first came out.
Fantastic video! I'm definitely going to implement some of these tips in my next hexcrawl. I personally don't go into a hexcrawl with an overarching plot in mind, but I do stock the sandbox with factions that have individual interests they are pursuing. These interests often collide with each other and create more interesting events within the setting, and the "main plot" as it were, arises out of the way the players choose to interact with the various factions. The story is directly tied to player interaction with the world, what they choose to pursue, which factions and NPCs they choose to help or hinder is what creates and drives the story.
That Guild Wars Factions nostalgia hit me so hard I literally whined aloud as if I just saw someone hit the jackpot off the slot machine I left moments ago.
A lot of what you are describing has been done pretty well by Sine Nomine - they have a lot of tools for generating factions, conflicts between them, modelling their goals, etc. Heck, there is even some interesting stuff about mercantilism in Suns of Gold if players want to be traders, or just to use as a flavouring of what a given place produces and so on.
Interlinking plot points scattered about the map transform a sandbox into a network of railroads that all lead to the same place. That is brilliant. The players can go where they want, and the choices they make matter, but the DM can still develop the same (or similar) story.
This is an exceptionally helpful upload. I have often struggled with 'random' encounter tables even though my game has numerous, well fleshed out factions all with their own goals, as well as a detailed map. I had never really thought about making the encounter tables for the wilderness between these locations be inspired by the factions themselves and how the space between them would influence the encounters. Exceptional.
IMV the suit detracts from the entire video because it's ironic to wear when talking about games. It reeks of taking yourself too seriously, which is ironically an expression of anti-fun. Luckily the content is good and he is enthusiastic enough to show everyone he's still fun despite it ;) Nothing wrong with wearing what you like, ofc. It just seems odd when talking about games we play to relax :P
Thank you so much for giving the size comparison for the standard 6 mile hex thing. I'm floundering with thinking about how much map to put in one area and all that. This method will work wonderfully.
This is exactly the content I didn't know I was looking for. I've been trying to wrap my head around the reality of running a hex-based game (Twilight 2000) and you've pointed out several "duh" points that seem super obvious now that I've heard them. Great content!
Well you changed my mind about hexcrawls, great video and excellent ideas. I've thought about having multiple encounter tables interact, but never thought of having the aftermath of such an encounter, very cool.
Thank you! I’m running a one piece style campaign soon where the players are searching for the equivalent of “the grand line”. This will help so much with traveling far distances.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to implement something like this but it hadn’t really clicked until watching you explain the process here. Well done, and thank you, this helps so much.
Clicked on the video because you look like Washburn from Firefly. Watched a second video to see if the quality was consistent. Now you have another subscriber. Keep up the good work.
This is why I always loved the fleshed out and interesting Forgotten Realms campaign settings of 2nd and 3rd edition. Local areas were given factions, leaders, etc. Adventure sites were given a basic outline as examples. There were usually regional factions as well as local factions - like the Zhentarim, the Lord's Alliance, the Harpers, etc. You could build an entire campaign based on travel and interactions with the Zhentarim/Harpers conflicts.
For generating key locations, instead of rolling a d20 for each hex (500 rolls for a 20×25 hex grid), here's a method that only requires about 50 rolls and 50 coin flips: 1. Start in the top left corner. 2. Roll a d20 and count off that many hexes in a row, wrapping to the next row if you get to the end. 3. Flip a coin. On heads, place a key location on that hex. 4. Repeat steps 2-3 until you get to the end of the map. It should generate roughly the same number of locations. The distribution will be different though. Alternately, take 25 dice (faces don't matter) and roll them all on the hex grid. If any rolls off the grid, reroll it. Each hex that has a die on it becomes a key location.
Two great tools: Tablesmith and Worldographer. Use worldographer to generate the hex mapped world, and use tablesmith to generate encounters. You can even use Tablesmith to randomly select hexes for your encounters and key locations.
Your video was super helpful, I needed to make encounters and rumors last-minute for my game and you saved my session. I took your adviced and expressed the tensions and factions of the area through them. Thanks!
I've been running an Isle of Dread campaign for 9 months now using the old BECMI rules. The highest level party member is now level 9 (well above the original max level of the module), but I keep updating the threats and having different locations interact with each other to create interesting hooks. (For example, the party most recently decided to protect the Phanton village from the werejaguars. This lead to them taking the fight to the werejaguars and discovering the jaguar temple where they defeated the evil cleric that had been leading them.)
12/10 video, i usually avoid hex crawls because it always seemed like too much additional prep work for something that would distract players from the main plot. I’ll try to implement your teachings next campaign
Clicked this video expecting to hear a reiteration of tips I’ve heard before that offer no real guidance. But this was a great video. So great I’ve left this comment recommending any content reader to watch this video in its entirety before clicking away, a true dungeon masterpiece of hex crawl advice!
Great explanation, that helps so much. My group does not like dungeons, so I have been working on finding campaigns that are more open to world exploration. Your channel is giving me some much needed confidence to start working on a homebrew for when we are done with the current adventure.
I had ran a hexcrawl once for my westmarches post-apoc campaign. We had a blast, even if it was a mess to write up at the time. If I could revisit that campaign with the tips I learned here. I did have a faction that helped drove exploration, it was a merc trading town that was the area's only neutral zone. So different factions had to get along while there, and they would sometimes submit requests for macguffins. And if I had enemy factions submit requests for the same one, I had rolled up an npc advesary group for the players to compete against
Baron, I cannot express how grateful I am for your channel!! Every single video is succinct and poignant. I can't think of something I've disagreed with. Thank you so much for uploading. DMing doesn't need to be as hard as I think it does with your vids!!
Ah this video was the last imsperation I needed to finally build out the Classic Grand stragey Wargame mode in my Universal Wargame/RPG! It's something that I've been stuck on for 3 years! Pretty much the thing I need to do is treat it like a hexcrawl mixed with a hex based turn based 4X or really other stratgy game or even a board game like Scyath... It's going to be insaly hard to do still but now I have a diraction thanks!
This is brilliant. Just what I needed for my Hyrule setting campaign. I like your presentation format and your content. Thank you for the game changing tips. Subbed.
I had a thought for a portal into a new world: the wizards who discovered/created it are looking for explorers to search the new land and settlers to inhabit it. At level one, the original settlement is a rough frontier town that looks more like a movie set than anything (wood facades with oil cloth sides, none more than 2 stories tall), but as they're leveling up the town grows. Meanwhile, they're filling in the map, which is divided into 5 regions (because that's the number of chromatic dragons and the number of Magic: The Gathering colors, sorry for the WOTC references), but you could do 6 regions. In the immediate surroundings are small quests: Gnolls are attacking farms! Undead are coming down from the mountains! Animals are going missing at the edge of the swamp! There's something sinking boats in the lake! It's dangerous in the forest, but we need medicine! There's ruins of a previous civilization that need to be explored! Let the layers decide what they latch onto and work outwards from there.
I realy like this idea. I though about something similair. They portal 1000 in to the future the portal is still active. Somehow the portal managed to steal the mana from its seroundings over the course of 50 years and it exploded. Mutating everything on the planet. They find old ruins that lead back to the history of 1000 years ago. Are they in time to stop to deactivate portal or is the cataclism unaviodable. Strange dungeon portal spawn to the south. To the west random green creatures have been spotten. To the north the river is running out of water. To the east fishing boots are gone misssing.
Thank you so much for this! Generally I like the aesthetic of a non-hex map much better, but you've opened my eyes to how this can help judge distance / travel time between points, space encounters / points of interest and help keep track of where players are when they are ambling around the countryside. I'll now probably have one in world 'pretty' map, and one hex based to hlep me run the game better!
This is brilliant dude. I don't imagine going as granular with travel in my campaigns, but you've given me a massive insight into running travel in a general sense, which I'm eager to deploy now. Thank you kindly for the great ideas
You've come a long way, sir Baron. You managed two wyverns out of three, only one came out a "wirven". 😅 This is one of my favorite DM-help videos on any channel, and probably one of my favorite Dungeon Masterpieces. Looking forward to more hex crawl tips whenever you have them! Now let me get back to prepping a Dark Sun/Forbidden Lands mash-up hexcrawl.
The early Mystara stuff was great. Such as the bits in Isle Of Dread. You got a map with interesting kingdoms, but only short and vague descriptions of them. You could fill out the world however you wished from the inspirational bones provided, making it easier to do and with less prep.
Thanks for this simple approach and explanation. I've read articles dedicated to calculating how to determine when a party leaves one hex and enters another that to my mind makes the hexcrawl redundant.
I love using Hex crawls as well as not.......sometimes it is about switching things up. I've had good and bad experiences with both hexcrawling and just "crawling", if you catch my meaning. Both have their place and both are not only valid but should be used when the inspiration strikes. GREAT VIDEO ONCE AGAIN!!!
A DM can assign a number value to a hex. Having both the adventure party and the tracked target roll dice to discover if the adventure party finds the tracked target. So a hunt can happen over a character week or two, but still be expedited during game play in a few hours.
Great video! I just bought a really good example of a hexcrawl with a good quest line, Barkeep on the Borderlands! I haven't run it just yet, but I'm reading through and it looks really nice.
@6:35 I just want to nerd a bit: that wyvern is a Rathian, whose mate Rathalos can be seen in the distance. It was only a matter of time before the Monster Hunter games bled into D&D! Those games provide great inspiration for interesting D&D monsters.
ooof, that was really fast... I need to watch it again. great video though! my thursday night game just finished our first dungeon and one of my big complaints is i really felt like i was abstracting the world too much in such a way that the players knew that all that existed in the world was the dungeon i had purchased..... I'm gonna try this and combine it with some of the overland exploration rules i found.
6 miles is alot of ground to cover when 1. You're carrying a load. 2. You're not traveling on a road. 3. Elevation and inclination are out of favor. 4. There's straight up an obstacle every few miles.
One of my fav concepts for HexCrawls are a change on the random encounters. - The DM prepares a short deck of cards depending on how travel heavy your campaign might be, which align with a series of mundane to exciting events that might occur while traveling. With the idea that the DM focuses on most of the mundane events that will exist in the deck, perhaps have 1 out of 10 cards be an exciting or bonus plotpoint event. - Each session, the DM adds Half the amount of player's of extra events. Then each player then gets to create their own event, within reason of course with DM caviates, but this allows for players to add things that might intrest them. - For each day of Travel the party makes across the hexcrawl, a card is drawn for the next day's travel. And in extra draws for locations which are dangerous, refine the deck as the game goes on and so forth.
@@DungeonMasterpiece standard deck of cards can be used. Sometimes it can also be a draw from a hat. Or heck. If your a tgc player just grab some proxy cards with slips. It really depends on how hard your willing to go.
Wish I saw this video when I was running my West Marches campaign (e.g. made my map too big, and too spread out)! Great ideas and video! I'm going to need to put a lot of this to the test, thank you!
This video is amazing and it bought me into your channel. I'm honestly addicted now. One thing I am really curious about, as it is the situation I currently find myself in, is how you would suggest running factions in a West Marches type of game, therefore set in an "unexplored wilderness" setting.
🤭 just like to give a big shout out to the Baron-thanks buddy for your gifts , of well ,YOU KNOW:) lol ! Ah,yea thanks for letting me in on It-its so easy to miss this type of play,for years..and so simply put... But if it had been a snake -it would have bit me! Right before my eyes
"Oltrée!" is a TTRPG centered around hexcrawl, players are part of an organisation half legionaries half rangers aiming to secure the wilderness for civilization to flourish and thus gameplay is set around you base camp from which you explore and secure the surrounding region. Part of the system use cards with keywords and short description as a tool for the GM to improvise location, encounter dungeon and whatnot, but the fun part is that players have some cards too and can use them to add details present on them to the ongoing scene. There is a lot of on the spot improvisation that can make for memorable session and even campaign if the style resonate with the players and GM, it's not a good fit for everyone though and those with affinity for more crunchy or less open handed game will probably not like it.
Was gonna mention something like this. In Advanced Fighting Fantasy it has a 'bucket of d6s' toss for generating dungeons. However, with types of encounters & locations tied to each d6 result, you can do the same for an outdoor map. Roll a big handful and place them in similar spots on the hex map, or just link them on a quick point-to-point map, at relative distances from each other. The empty hexes between the hot spots are mainly there for regulating time traveled and the occasional random encounter so no need to roll for every hex.
@@DungeonMasterpiece ❤️ Full disclosure: this idea came to me because I remembered the wasd20 channel showing how to create random continental shapes for world building. He put piles of beans on a blank sheet and then draw their outline!
great video....i play 2nd edition ad&d and have tonnes of these map which i use . this vid has given alot to think abow ....new subscriber....now to go through your back catalog....cheers
One more tip, from a DM who wishes he did this months earlier in his run of a hexcrawl: keep a record of the various objectives the PCs have shown interest in, learn relevant mechanics for if/when they pursue those goals, come up with some ideas to make it more interesting if they pursue those goals, and also maybe remind the players of the things they showed interest in when appropriate. My players get sidetracked from their sidetracks off of sidetracks, and I find it helps to mention "hey, just a reminder, a month ago you expressed an interest in taming and riding the giant pterandons that live on this island," when I know that they now have the magic, skills, etc. to pull that off.
(Of course, ideally the players would keep track of their own personal goals, but some people are more organized and goal-oriented than others.)
Good point! To build on that, if you have a lull in a campaign, you can always just plant the equivalent experience in that area. The characters are after that flamethrower sword of lore? GREAT NEWS! A devil has actually been using that exact sword to clear out a nearby castle! Gets the players a nugget of accomplishment, and allows you to have a filler episode if a campaign quest is getting stale.
Well it depends.. when you have already said that this sword would/could/should be in a specific area and If they would get the Chance to remember this Fact, so Low this Chance might be, they could blame you for rushing or ruining the fun to hunt this sword. I've experienced it more than once in several Situations and i felt Bad for 2 months straight, that i didn't get the thought of it.
Can't emphasize enough after running a ton of hexcrawls - tables that provide context for random encounters (what are the monsters doing?) Is invaluable. An encounter with two giants catfishing enables the brain much more than 1d2 giants.
Check out my random table video!
Are there any collections of random encounter tables
@@capl6609 I plan on making a massive master random encounter table in the near future and posting it for download on itch.io
One of the best compliments I got from a player recently (semi-hexcrawl sandbox campaign) was when I said that their rolls for encounters are genuinely random selections, and they responded with "DM, that's amazing! The world feels so lived-in, it's like, we're only level 5 the world doesn't revolve around us. These other factions have their own things going on, and we aren't even the biggest part of that."
Context: Neverland - one of the beach hexes around the island. The party had some weeks ago rescued one of their members who was captured by the pirates - and without much in the way of combat either. The party rolls for an encounter and it turns out they have come across a large pirate group on the beach, along with Captain Hook.
At this point I have to determine "Why are the Pirates there?" - so I decide they're having a meeting with the mermaids to talk about recent attacks from Elphame/Fairy Land. They see the PCs before the meeting and decide that they would rather not have the PCs to deal with as enemies too. They demand a parley, and the Face of the group goes to talk to Captain Hook. They agree on a truce, and go their separate ways.
@@capl6609 hot springs island has some of the best tables for a sandbox hexcrawl. It's quality design and as a product.
I think one thing people forget is that if travel by road between two settled areas takes more than one day, inevitably someone is going to build a place for travelers to stay each night. So if it's two days travel on the road between town A and town B, there's probably an inn about half way between the two of them.
Indeed, but I suppose that's just for places with more traffic
I just learnt a fun fact about my country. In medieval times there used to be a law that dictated that there must be an inn (or something similar) every 25km (roughly) by the main roads.
Yes, I have just such a place in my campaign. It is run by the pirates to lure in travelers which are then drugged, Shanghai'ed and pressed into service either on a ship as a crew member or if they prove deficit at that, as a slave in their iron mine.
@@digitalspecter This kind of thing has something to do with why we in Sweden (confusingly) call 10km a "mil", that was the mandated distance for waystones (milestones, if you will), and then every 2nd or 3rd I think was the "inn distance"?
EDIT: the inn distance was "1.5 to 2 mil"
Depends on how heavily traveled it is. You need a good 7-12 humanoid travelers a week to support even a small inn. Any less than that and there’ll probably be only a campsite built by previous travelers but left empty most of the time, and with highwaymen likely watching it for likely targets.
The interactions between encounters is what makes it a living world and not a 'chart crawl.'
I think that's the first time I've heard a hexcrawl explained in a way that would make my 5e group interested in playing one. really well done! Thanks for the content :)
The first rule about hex crawls is that Dungeon Masters should never tell their players they're actually playing in a hexcrawl
Mainly for immersion?
@@jmass4207 The moment they learn about the system that they are living inside of, they will attempt to exploit the system. Bracketing a hex-based map is basically as uninteresting as just doing adventure of the week in sequential order
@@DungeonMasterpiece has that happened before? Did the group just go through row by row?
@@DungeonMasterpiece OK this makes sense, my DM has the whole 'overworld' map as a hex crawl - which we can all see and choose where to go, and I have been finding it kind of dull and lifeless like a computer game. I think using it for your own benefit as the DM has some merit.
I'd never thought of two random encounters and their aftermath as keyed location! That's super hecking cool
Definitely a top tier idea that one.
It's good to break through any GM block.
@@commandercaptain4664 Some of my most creative moments have come from smashing together two things that don't normally go together. It really gets the mental juices flowing when you need to make those two elements make sense together.
I really like the approach of the Kingmaker Pathfinder campaign with it's hexploration system. Also, the kingdom building rules and resources scattered throughout the map are excellent to motivate players to explore and great quests enablers.
I need to look it up! Thanks!
I would love to learn more about this. I've always wanted to run an intrigue or kingdom-sized campaign but I don't feel like I am good enough of a designer to tackle what that would involve.
@@harrison3207 intrigue style games don't do well with 5e dnd. You need to have a very different ruleset that doesn't make your players out to be super heros.
Check out god bound and worlds without numbers. Both have lots of tools for the kind of game you might like, as well as a fresh perspective on game mastering to assist in that kind of game
One of the best homebrew ideas for GMing I've ever run across. Thank you! Now instead of trying to find the perfect location for that encounter I want, I let the dice decide so I can focus on fleshing it out. And I can use it as either a non plot forwarding device or as one. My humanoid tribes, snake cult, slavers and monster of the week now will quickly have homes!
PS Ankhegs make for a great encounter ala the creatures from Tremors in a barren valley with only scattered boulders and an abandoned, ancient open air temple occupying it
Gotta get rid of as much mental load as possible so you can focus on the things that matter to you most in your world building.
Also, ankhegs are terribly underated.
Just found you. First D&D channel in a long time where it doesn't feel like I've already seen all the idea's before.
Love it when a campaign book includes a hexcrawl inside!
My first hex crawl was Isle of Dread way back in the ancient days but it taught me so much. The 1e Wilderness Survival Guide also taught me a lot about hex crawls
So I think I was lucky because today’s campaigns fail miserably at hex crawls
Look at Tyranny of Dragons that was the
perfect campaign for a hex crawl and it failed to deliver
Enjoyable topic
Cheers
I'm going to be running the 5e version of Isle of Dread soon. I never thought to use the Wilderness Survival Guide as a resource!
@@scottplumer3668
I use a number of my old books because the information is useful still in play and we never got updated version of it.
I hope you have a great campaign with the 5e version of Isle of Dread
Cheers
The Isle of Dread, The Chained Coffin, and Peril on the Purple Planet are all great examples of well done hex crawls.
DCC rules
@@carpma11 it really does!
My favorites are Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Land of Nod and Hot Springs Island :) Are all your (except isle of dread) for DCC?
@@Infyra Yes but that's because it's what I've got the most of. But they are fantastic
Excellent presentation of the challenges and solutions to approaching the Old Skool style of play. I'll be referring back to this one as I flesh out my next hex crawl campaign.
The titular Tomb aside, the Tomb of Annihilation campaign is primarily a hexcrawl exploration game. The first two thirds of the game is essentially wandering around in the jungle looking for the location of the Tomb. It's a great survival and exploration campaign and setting that can stand on it's own without needing to use the infamous dungeon and related story.
A warning to all who see this in the future. Tomb of Annihilation has some major issues that need to be fixed to get to the juicy stuff. DON’T start with a time crunch/main quest. It squashes exploration. Let the death curse be discovered organically after a little while or do away with it altogether. (Your players will need to find some other reason for being in Chult.)
Rework the random encounters. Another bunch of velociraptors just attacking becomes very unfun after a while.
Make sure that the marked points of interest on the map have something interesting. It’s crushing to fight your way through a jungle to get to the ruins of a coastal town and find….nothing.
It’s got some cool stuff, but it’s broken out of the box.
Outstanding. I just found these videos. I am 64 and I miss playing D&D so much. I even graduated dungeonmaster school at GenCon in Milwaukee so many years ago. I played the original D&D when it first came out.
Dungeon master school? That's a thing? That's so crazy
Fantastic video! I'm definitely going to implement some of these tips in my next hexcrawl. I personally don't go into a hexcrawl with an overarching plot in mind, but I do stock the sandbox with factions that have individual interests they are pursuing. These interests often collide with each other and create more interesting events within the setting, and the "main plot" as it were, arises out of the way the players choose to interact with the various factions. The story is directly tied to player interaction with the world, what they choose to pursue, which factions and NPCs they choose to help or hinder is what creates and drives the story.
Is this the best D&D video I've watched in the last 6 months? Hard to say. Is it the best hexcrawl video I've watched in the last six months? YES.
That Guild Wars Factions nostalgia hit me so hard I literally whined aloud as if I just saw someone hit the jackpot off the slot machine I left moments ago.
Your hand gestures are phenomenal. That finger steeple ...*chefs kiss*
I need to rewatch and rehearse the lindybeige video for sure
A lot of what you are describing has been done pretty well by Sine Nomine - they have a lot of tools for generating factions, conflicts between them, modelling their goals, etc. Heck, there is even some interesting stuff about mercantilism in Suns of Gold if players want to be traders, or just to use as a flavouring of what a given place produces and so on.
New DM, checking out these resources now. Thanks for posting and helping the growing community.
Thanks for sharing 😊
Interlinking plot points scattered about the map transform a sandbox into a network of railroads that all lead to the same place. That is brilliant. The players can go where they want, and the choices they make matter, but the DM can still develop the same (or similar) story.
This is an exceptionally helpful upload. I have often struggled with 'random' encounter tables even though my game has numerous, well fleshed out factions all with their own goals, as well as a detailed map. I had never really thought about making the encounter tables for the wilderness between these locations be inspired by the factions themselves and how the space between them would influence the encounters. Exceptional.
I don't know if it's the suit but this video has a feeling of seriousness and formality that's very pleasing.
IMV the suit detracts from the entire video because it's ironic to wear when talking about games. It reeks of taking yourself too seriously, which is ironically an expression of anti-fun. Luckily the content is good and he is enthusiastic enough to show everyone he's still fun despite it ;)
Nothing wrong with wearing what you like, ofc. It just seems odd when talking about games we play to relax :P
Thank you so much for giving the size comparison for the standard 6 mile hex thing. I'm floundering with thinking about how much map to put in one area and all that. This method will work wonderfully.
This is exactly the content I didn't know I was looking for. I've been trying to wrap my head around the reality of running a hex-based game (Twilight 2000) and you've pointed out several "duh" points that seem super obvious now that I've heard them. Great content!
Twilight 2000 is awesome.
Very detailed and straightforward explanation of hex exploration with no goofy nonsense in between. 👍 good job
Well you changed my mind about hexcrawls, great video and excellent ideas. I've thought about having multiple encounter tables interact, but never thought of having the aftermath of such an encounter, very cool.
This has changed the way I think about worldbuilding and game design.
Thank you.
Thank you! I’m running a one piece style campaign soon where the players are searching for the equivalent of “the grand line”. This will help so much with traveling far distances.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to implement something like this but it hadn’t really clicked until watching you explain the process here. Well done, and thank you, this helps so much.
There is so much value in this video, it is incredible! I'll be rewatching this video when I do my next hexcrawl. Thank you!
Glad you found it useful!
Clicked on the video because you look like Washburn from Firefly. Watched a second video to see if the quality was consistent.
Now you have another subscriber. Keep up the good work.
You are now the third person to tell me I look like wash in as many days. Maybe there is Merrit there?
VERY well done! I tried a hexcrawl and I totally biffed it. This would have worked SO much cleaner.
I've never wanted to try running a hexcrawl more than I do after watching this video. Thank you so much!
Glad the video inspired you! Hope you have fun with it!
This is why I always loved the fleshed out and interesting Forgotten Realms campaign settings of 2nd and 3rd edition. Local areas were given factions, leaders, etc. Adventure sites were given a basic outline as examples. There were usually regional factions as well as local factions - like the Zhentarim, the Lord's Alliance, the Harpers, etc. You could build an entire campaign based on travel and interactions with the Zhentarim/Harpers conflicts.
Okay, must admit this is a quality summary on what to do with hexcrawls !
Not sure why, but the mispronounced "wyrvens" (wyverns) cracked me up lol. Great content, keep it up!
Just what I was looking for! I’ve never played in a hexcrawl, but I feel like where my campaign is about to go, I’m gonna need to make one.
This video has me instantly hooked, because of all the Mystara Maps! I love Mystara, and it has the best hex maps out there!
For generating key locations, instead of rolling a d20 for each hex (500 rolls for a 20×25 hex grid), here's a method that only requires about 50 rolls and 50 coin flips:
1. Start in the top left corner.
2. Roll a d20 and count off that many hexes in a row, wrapping to the next row if you get to the end.
3. Flip a coin. On heads, place a key location on that hex.
4. Repeat steps 2-3 until you get to the end of the map.
It should generate roughly the same number of locations. The distribution will be different though.
Alternately, take 25 dice (faces don't matter) and roll them all on the hex grid. If any rolls off the grid, reroll it. Each hex that has a die on it becomes a key location.
Another commenter just said to grab a handful of beans or lentils and toss them on the map. Lentil marks the spot. Lol 🤣
@@DungeonMasterpiece Great idea! I've seen a similar approach for creating land masses too.
Lentils: the world builder's secret weapon. 😆
Two great tools: Tablesmith and Worldographer. Use worldographer to generate the hex mapped world, and use tablesmith to generate encounters. You can even use Tablesmith to randomly select hexes for your encounters and key locations.
Your video was super helpful, I needed to make encounters and rumors last-minute for my game and you saved my session. I took your adviced and expressed the tensions and factions of the area through them. Thanks!
I've been running an Isle of Dread campaign for 9 months now using the old BECMI rules. The highest level party member is now level 9 (well above the original max level of the module), but I keep updating the threats and having different locations interact with each other to create interesting hooks. (For example, the party most recently decided to protect the Phanton village from the werejaguars. This lead to them taking the fight to the werejaguars and discovering the jaguar temple where they defeated the evil cleric that had been leading them.)
12/10 video, i usually avoid hex crawls because it always seemed like too much additional prep work for something that would distract players from the main plot. I’ll try to implement your teachings next campaign
Clicked this video expecting to hear a reiteration of tips I’ve heard before that offer no real guidance. But this was a great video. So great I’ve left this comment recommending any content reader to watch this video in its entirety before clicking away, a true dungeon masterpiece of hex crawl advice!
Great explanation, that helps so much. My group does not like dungeons, so I have been working on finding campaigns that are more open to world exploration. Your channel is giving me some much needed confidence to start working on a homebrew for when we are done with the current adventure.
This is really cool! Haven’t thought of some of these and I’m going to fluff out my maps a little more now.
I had ran a hexcrawl once for my westmarches post-apoc campaign. We had a blast, even if it was a mess to write up at the time. If I could revisit that campaign with the tips I learned here. I did have a faction that helped drove exploration, it was a merc trading town that was the area's only neutral zone. So different factions had to get along while there, and they would sometimes submit requests for macguffins. And if I had enemy factions submit requests for the same one, I had rolled up an npc advesary group for the players to compete against
Baron, I cannot express how grateful I am for your channel!! Every single video is succinct and poignant. I can't think of something I've disagreed with. Thank you so much for uploading. DMing doesn't need to be as hard as I think it does with your vids!!
Ah this video was the last imsperation I needed to finally build out the Classic Grand stragey Wargame mode in my Universal Wargame/RPG! It's something that I've been stuck on for 3 years! Pretty much the thing I need to do is treat it like a hexcrawl mixed with a hex based turn based 4X or really other stratgy game or even a board game like Scyath... It's going to be insaly hard to do still but now I have a diraction thanks!
This is brilliant. Just what I needed for my Hyrule setting campaign. I like your presentation format and your content. Thank you for the game changing tips.
Subbed.
Glad you appreciate it!
I had a thought for a portal into a new world: the wizards who discovered/created it are looking for explorers to search the new land and settlers to inhabit it. At level one, the original settlement is a rough frontier town that looks more like a movie set than anything (wood facades with oil cloth sides, none more than 2 stories tall), but as they're leveling up the town grows. Meanwhile, they're filling in the map, which is divided into 5 regions (because that's the number of chromatic dragons and the number of Magic: The Gathering colors, sorry for the WOTC references), but you could do 6 regions. In the immediate surroundings are small quests: Gnolls are attacking farms! Undead are coming down from the mountains! Animals are going missing at the edge of the swamp! There's something sinking boats in the lake! It's dangerous in the forest, but we need medicine! There's ruins of a previous civilization that need to be explored!
Let the layers decide what they latch onto and work outwards from there.
Look at the kingmaker campaign for Pathfinder. You might enjoy that
I realy like this idea.
I though about something similair. They portal 1000 in to the future the portal is still active. Somehow the portal managed to steal the mana from its seroundings over the course of 50 years and it exploded. Mutating everything on the planet. They find old ruins that lead back to the history of 1000 years ago. Are they in time to stop to deactivate portal or is the cataclism unaviodable.
Strange dungeon portal spawn to the south.
To the west random green creatures have been spotten.
To the north the river is running out of water.
To the east fishing boots are gone misssing.
I'm working on a hex crawl-based campaign right now, and this has given me a lot to think about. Thanks!
You are quite welcome!
Thank you so much for this! Generally I like the aesthetic of a non-hex map much better, but you've opened my eyes to how this can help judge distance / travel time between points, space encounters / points of interest and help keep track of where players are when they are ambling around the countryside. I'll now probably have one in world 'pretty' map, and one hex based to hlep me run the game better!
You can still use/give players a non hex map. Just drop a hex grid over your already existing map!
The art you flash up though your videos is fantastic! So evocative.
This is brilliant dude. I don't imagine going as granular with travel in my campaigns, but you've given me a massive insight into running travel in a general sense, which I'm eager to deploy now.
Thank you kindly for the great ideas
You are quite welcome
extremely helpful, thank u! ive been looking to homebrew a survival/travel system & this helped me brainstorm a LOT
I just came back to say the table and hexcrawl worked exactly as described. Its exactly how im doing travel, period.
You've come a long way, sir Baron. You managed two wyverns out of three, only one came out a "wirven". 😅
This is one of my favorite DM-help videos on any channel, and probably one of my favorite Dungeon Masterpieces. Looking forward to more hex crawl tips whenever you have them! Now let me get back to prepping a Dark Sun/Forbidden Lands mash-up hexcrawl.
This guy the cleanest DM I've seen in 40 years 👌
Double Trouble fits so well since I am thinking about a Pokémon campaign ^^ Thank you! Really inspires me as a beginner.
I still use the old Mystara hex maps for my world. It works well for our group.
The early Mystara stuff was great. Such as the bits in Isle Of Dread. You got a map with interesting kingdoms, but only short and vague descriptions of them. You could fill out the world however you wished from the inspirational bones provided, making it easier to do and with less prep.
@@NefariousKoel yes that’s what I’ve done
We’ve been using the maps since the 90’s
The intial town of Threshold - now that brings back memories, RedBox edition :)
Wow, great video actually...this is just the sort of thing I've been thinking about for a long time that I'm coming back around to. Thanks!
Thanks for this simple approach and explanation. I've read articles dedicated to calculating how to determine when a party leaves one hex and enters another that to my mind makes the hexcrawl redundant.
You're very welcome!
I love using Hex crawls as well as not.......sometimes it is about switching things up. I've had good and bad experiences with both hexcrawling and just "crawling", if you catch my meaning. Both have their place and both are not only valid but should be used when the inspiration strikes. GREAT VIDEO ONCE AGAIN!!!
Thanks wiz!
This cleared up a lot of misconceptions I had about hex crawls.
I'm glad for that!!
Just recently discovered your channel and its a font of knowledge! thanks for your contribution to the comunity!
Thanks for these videos, they've helped me figure out the direction I'd like to go as a new DM.
A DM can assign a number value to a hex. Having both the adventure party and the tracked target roll dice to discover if the adventure party finds the tracked target. So a hunt can happen over a character week or two, but still be expedited during game play in a few hours.
Great video! I just bought a really good example of a hexcrawl with a good quest line, Barkeep on the Borderlands! I haven't run it just yet, but I'm reading through and it looks really nice.
@6:35 I just want to nerd a bit: that wyvern is a Rathian, whose mate Rathalos can be seen in the distance. It was only a matter of time before the Monster Hunter games bled into D&D! Those games provide great inspiration for interesting D&D monsters.
How did you know I was looking for this? Doesn't matter. Thank you for making this.
I'm really enjoying your content. This is the 4th video I've watched and it has all been interesting.
Awesome, thank you!
I enjoy all of Dungeon Masterpiece videos
Great video! I predict that your channel will grow very quickly.
This video alone has caused me to shoot up 100 subs in 12 hours, so I suspect you might be correct! Thank you!
It's poorly understood because it's barely ever explained in books.
Thanks for this.
Happy to see this vid doing well 😁 Gotta say, I think I chose the easier wardrobe scheme 😉
You know, I was just thinking about your tie-dye t-shirts and hoodies just last week for that very reason haha. 😂😂😂
ooof, that was really fast... I need to watch it again. great video though! my thursday night game just finished our first dungeon and one of my big complaints is i really felt like i was abstracting the world too much in such a way that the players knew that all that existed in the world was the dungeon i had purchased..... I'm gonna try this and combine it with some of the overland exploration rules i found.
Nice video. 👍 I like that you can see both Outdoor Survival and Hot Springs Island behind you.
I like that you point out those two things. Obviously, we both have good taste. 😃
a TON of useful information in this video..and you didn't draw it out to last forever! thanks!!
Glad it was helpful! I don't like wasting people's time.
6 miles is alot of ground to cover when
1. You're carrying a load.
2. You're not traveling on a road.
3. Elevation and inclination are out of favor.
4. There's straight up an obstacle every few miles.
I love the idea of using encounter tables to populate boxes.
Wow! Never played DnD, (really want to) but this video kinda set the DM bar really high. Hope I can find a group as enthusiastic as this.
You have just inspired an episode. "How to actually get started as a dm, and get good fast"
One of my fav concepts for HexCrawls are a change on the random encounters.
- The DM prepares a short deck of cards depending on how travel heavy your campaign might be, which align with a series of mundane to exciting events that might occur while traveling. With the idea that the DM focuses on most of the mundane events that will exist in the deck, perhaps have 1 out of 10 cards be an exciting or bonus plotpoint event.
- Each session, the DM adds Half the amount of player's of extra events. Then each player then gets to create their own event, within reason of course with DM caviates, but this allows for players to add things that might intrest them.
- For each day of Travel the party makes across the hexcrawl, a card is drawn for the next day's travel. And in extra draws for locations which are dangerous, refine the deck as the game goes on and so forth.
You are the second person to mention cards. Are you using a standard poker deck?
@@DungeonMasterpiece standard deck of cards can be used. Sometimes it can also be a draw from a hat. Or heck. If your a tgc player just grab some proxy cards with slips.
It really depends on how hard your willing to go.
Wish I saw this video when I was running my West Marches campaign (e.g. made my map too big, and too spread out)! Great ideas and video! I'm going to need to put a lot of this to the test, thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
This video is amazing and it bought me into your channel. I'm honestly addicted now.
One thing I am really curious about, as it is the situation I currently find myself in, is how you would suggest running factions in a West Marches type of game, therefore set in an "unexplored wilderness" setting.
Dam this is the information I've been looking for a long time
Thank you
Oh my God! You packed so much in so little time! That's awesome
I don't like wasting people's time.
Love your presentation HexCrawls old style revamp 😁
🤭 just like to give a big shout out to the Baron-thanks buddy for your gifts , of well ,YOU KNOW:) lol !
Ah,yea thanks for letting me in on It-its so easy to miss this type of play,for years..and so simply put... But if it had been a snake -it would have bit me!
Right before my eyes
My favorite three hexcrawls are in chronological order - Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Land of Nod and Hot Spring Island.
I really like your style. I'm glad I found your channel
Great advice, I'm running hexcrawls very similar to this.
"Oltrée!" is a TTRPG centered around hexcrawl, players are part of an organisation half legionaries half rangers aiming to secure the wilderness for civilization to flourish and thus gameplay is set around you base camp from which you explore and secure the surrounding region. Part of the system use cards with keywords and short description as a tool for the GM to improvise location, encounter dungeon and whatnot, but the fun part is that players have some cards too and can use them to add details present on them to the ongoing scene. There is a lot of on the spot improvisation that can make for memorable session and even campaign if the style resonate with the players and GM, it's not a good fit for everyone though and those with affinity for more crunchy or less open handed game will probably not like it.
Earned yourself a sub with this video. Very well done. Thank you for breaking that down so well.
That...was a lot of very useful information in a very short amount of time.
Superb content. Subbed and liked. Looking forward to more content, and going back to watch your catalog of vids.
Good stuff.
Glad you are enjoying it!
Love maps.. never heard of a hex map deelie.. think I'm about this action, thanks bruv.
The single thought of rolling for each hex makes me wanna cry. I guess I'd just row 20 beans over the map and mark bean hexes!
I just roll a fuck ton of d20s at once lol.
@@DungeonMasterpiece 🤣🤣 but then you still need to assign each to a hex. With beans you just mark the hex that has a bean over it! 😉
Was gonna mention something like this. In Advanced Fighting Fantasy it has a 'bucket of d6s' toss for generating dungeons. However, with types of encounters & locations tied to each d6 result, you can do the same for an outdoor map. Roll a big handful and place them in similar spots on the hex map, or just link them on a quick point-to-point map, at relative distances from each other. The empty hexes between the hot spots are mainly there for regulating time traveled and the occasional random encounter so no need to roll for every hex.
@@lpanebr I woke up this morning and was like, "why the hell didn't I think of that." Thank you for saving me 10 minutes next time I do this.
@@DungeonMasterpiece ❤️ Full disclosure: this idea came to me because I remembered the wasd20 channel showing how to create random continental shapes for world building. He put piles of beans on a blank sheet and then draw their outline!
great video....i play 2nd edition ad&d and have tonnes of these map which i use . this vid has given alot to think abow ....new subscriber....now to go through your back catalog....cheers