Hexcrawls Kinda Suck

 Hexcrawls kinda suck, don't they? 

Or at least, the best hexcrawls are never as good as the best dungeons. You can probably name your favorite dungeons, but can you name your favorite hexcrawls? 

What makes hexcrawls different from dungeoncrawls?

• In dungeons, exploration is typically my goal. Exploration and gold. It's fun to clear out dungeon rooms because those rooms have interesting rewards and interesting risks (and interesting choices). In hexcrawling, I'm usually going from one point to the other. Hexes often don't have interesting risks that are as concrete as dungeon rooms.

• Specificity. Dungeon rooms are frequently customized. Many hexcrawls use random generation as an exclusive method of stocking, which tends to create less cohesive stories between the hexes. Because of this, there's little intrinsic incentive to explore the hex map.

• Surprise. Dungeon rooms connect to each other in surprising ways. Hexes rarely surprise (except in the sense that there's more swamp tiles in this direction than I was expecting). True, there might be something on the random encounter table, but when you're walking overland you can typically see things coming from a lot further off.

• Size. The root cause with a lot of these issues is size, with dungeons commonly having less than 20 rooms and hexcrawls commonly having more than 100. It makes it hard to have a specific challenge. I might think of a way to make a vertical ascent challenging in a dungeon (ghost spiders!) but if I think of an interesting way to make a mountain hex challenging (living waterfall) then I either have to put it on one hex (where the players might miss it), make it a random encounter (where the player might miss it) or make it a quantum encounter (where I put it in front of the players no matter which hex they go into. . . but of course they are usually free to go pick a new hex to cross the mountains).

• Meaningless choices. In a well-written dungeon, all (or nearly all) choices should be meaningful. If you come to a T-intersection, there should be some difference between both directions. Maybe a smell. Maybe the players know the approximate direction to the treasury. Maybe they can listen at the doors before they pick which one to open. But when hexcrawling, you usually just pick blindly, oftentimes between two

• Engagement. Most of the stuff in a hex is skippable. You notice a dragon on a hill in the distance--you better go way around it so it doesn't see you. Spooky tower? Skip it if you don't think you can take it. Hexes are skippable in a way that dungeon rooms aren't. Dragon in a room? Sneaking past it is a much trickier proposition. Dungeon rooms force you to engage.

• Resource management. The primary resources in dungeons are HP, rations/healing, and torches. When one of these runs low, it's time to leave the dungeon. They run low often, so I'm always paying attention to them. When I'm hexcrawling, the resources are similar: food, money, HP--but they rarely feel limiting. Lost HP is recovered quickly, and I can usually stash enough food that it never feels critical, just like empty bookkeeping.

• Homogeneity. Every dungeon room is unique, and my players can often remember their favorites. Hexes are often similar (and often identical) and blend together.

• Challenge from the location. If a hex is too difficult, I can almost always go around it. If a dungeon room is too difficult, I usually need to find a way through (although there may be alternate routes, its not as likely).

Remember: good gameplay comes from interesting and meaningful choices. If your hexcrawling is just empty bookkeeping, then it's not good gameplay.

I stopped tracking ammunition a few years back for the same reason. It just felt like bookkeeping. I never had a situation where someone was running low on arrows and had to make interesting decisions about when you use them. Resource management is only fun if there are interesting limitations and scarcity risks--arrows didn't have either, in my experiences.

"You cannot have a meaningful campaign unless strict time records are kept" is only true if there is some benefit to keeping time records--it leads to interesting limitations and scarcities.

Luckily, all of these things can be fixed. Here are some guiding principles:

Gameplay > "Realism"

Yes, we've both watched a lot of videos about how much food Roman soldiers could carry and researched how far a horse can travel in a day.  That doesn't mean that we have to base a game around it, or that those metrics will be fun.  (Yes, our game has to follow real world rules to a point, in order to let the players make informed decisions, but it doesn't need to be our first priority.)

Smaller Hex Maps

This is a root cause for a lot of these issues.  It makes the next few items easier to accomplish.  This might mean that there are more miles in your hex, but that's okay.

Directional Constraints

Let's consider the three basic types of movement that your players will make when they're hexcrawling:

1. Fixed Route.  Well, that's just a pointcrawl, isn't it?  A collection of scenes that the DM throws at you.  Random or not, you either go forward, rest, or go back.  Not a hexcrawl.

2. Fixed Destination.  Now the players need to make choices.  Which route do I take?  There usually isn't a meaningful choice here.  Either they have a path that they know and trust, or they have to choose between two similar options.  The constraints (HP, money, time) usually aren't limiting.  You might have the players choose between a fast route or a safe route, but those are rare.

3. Searching / Exploring.  Now this is where it feels like dungeoncrawling.  You want to make sure that they have meaningful choices to choose from.  It's easier to have two choices feel meaningful than to have six.  In this case, having fewer directions to choose from feels better.

So give them limits in which directions they can go.  The average hex map shouldn't just be a hive of rooms with six doors in them.  Create interesting connections between hexes, e.g. the only way up to the plateau is through the Stairs of Leng. 

Think about how much the "Obvious Door, Hidden Lever" type of secret doors drive player ingenuity.  They know there's a way up to the Plateau of Leng, but they've walked around the whole thing and haven't seen any path up.  So now they have to search.

Your two big forms of barriers here are water and verticals.  (Elden Ring uses this to great effect, turning an open map into a huge dungeon where you're often asking yourself "how do I get there?").  Other forms of barriers include hostile people (who can chase you off from horseback), giant prehistoric walls, forcefields, poison swamps (DO IT), and cold places (like mountaintops).

Give your players fences to push against (and peer over).

More Information

Tell players more about what's in the hexes ahead.  It shouldn't be blind guesses.  They've been in taverns a lot--I'm sure they've heard about what sort of thing is beyond the hill that looks like a lobster.

More Unique Hexes

Give each hex more details.  Not just "Grasslands.  Wild horses."  but "Ratwind Plains.  Wild horses."  Give them more connecting details.  Bespoke.

Meaningful Resource Depletion

I've come to believe that the resources that are typically depleted during hex crawls (time, money, food) aren't very good constraints--they don't affect people's plans often enough to be worth the time tracking them.

You'll have to come up with your own solution.  (I'll attempt my own below.)

Strong Hooks

Strong hooks force players to interact with them.  A random encounter is a strong hook.  So is the king announcing that you are the people he's been seeing in this nightmares.

Soft hooks are things you can walk away from.  A beggar in the street.  A dire slug noticing you from a mile away.

You obviously don't want to only have strong hooks.  You want your players to have some freedom engage/disengage, but hexcrawls tend to have only soft hooks scattered on the map.  (The only strong hooks tend to exist as random encounters, and even those tend to be easier to run away.)

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You'll notice that the stuff above is really a mix of "hex map design" + "hexcrawling mechanic".  I jumbled them up because they overlap in some places, but really you need a good hex map alongside your mechanics.  

Anyway, let's try to make some hexcrawl rules that don't suck.

Design Goals

1. Simplicity.  Too many people are driven away by the complexity of hexcrawling.  What's the minimum amount of complexity I need to hit my goals?

2. Resource constraints.  Money, food, HP, and time are rarely limiting factors.  Food can stay--food can be limiting.  I'm also going to add morale as the second limiting factor.  Hopefully those two are sufficient motivators on their own.

3. Integration with Hirelings.  It seems strange to have your characters be loners (or nearly-so) until they suddenly start building a stronghold and attracting followers.  Shouldn't it be a more gradual process?  Before you're king, you are managing smaller groups of people.  Porters, hostlers, mercenaries, etc.

Hexcrawling Rules for GLOG v19

(This is actually my first time writing this section.  The first two attempts were too complicated.  I'd wager that 80% of system designers have a first draft that is more complicated than their second draft.)

Hexes take a number of days to pass through.  You only count the days when you enter a hex, not when you leave.  A forest hex takes 3 days to enter.  A road hex takes 1 day to enter.  So if you leave a road hex and enter a forest hex, that takes 3 days.  Returning takes 1.  The whole trip takes 4 days.

You can feed yourself for 1 day for every 2 rations you are carrying.

Once you hire porters, you can explore for 6 days.  It doesn't matter how many rations you are carrying.  You have to hire a porter for each PC and mercenary.  A porter costs 10s per trip.

If you swap the porters for donkeys, this turns into a maximum of 9 days.  Donkeys cost 50s up front and cost 10s per trip.  However, you can pasture them in grassy/forest places and they'll forage happily.  Hire a hostler (10s per trip) and you'll automatically succeed at checks made to control them.

Horses are identical except that they cost 200s.  You can also take the bags off them and ride them, plus they can be trained for combat (another +100s).  Untrained horses shun combat.  Like with donkeys, you don't ride these horses when they're covered in packs.  You walk beside them.

Carts costs 100s for the whole party and requires donkeys/horses.  It increases your range to 12 days, but it can only move on roads, paths, and plains.  Outside of those environments, it moves it half speed.  It's pulled by 2 animals.  If you have a wagon, you still need the regular 1 mount per PC.  So you'll have two horses pulling your cart and the rest walking alongside, with packs on their backs.

A wagon costs 800s.  It increases your range to 20 days, but can only travel on roads.  It's pulled by 4 animals (minimum 2 to move).

How big is this wagon?  How many carts does the party need?  

It's handwaved.  Everyone needs their own horse and donkey.  When you pay 100s for a cart, it's appropriately sized for the party.  When you pay 800s for the wagon, it is similarly appropriately sized.  

Hunters can also be hired.  1 hunter per PC is typical.  When stationary, they can feed themselves and also generate enough food for 2 other people per day.  So if you park yourself in a forest and just hunt for a while, the hunters can feed themselves, the PCs, and allow you to replenish your rations.  Lasts for 3 days in a single location--after that you'll have to move around a bit, even if its just inside your hex.  Hunters can only hunt on certain types of terrain.

Lastly, because I like the idea of the party traveling with a group of hirelings, you can also hire camp followers.  The party can decide if these are cooks, bards, prostitutes, servants, or whatever.  Point is, these are people who make your life in the wilderness more comfortable.  If you travel with camp followers, the PCs wake up each morning with +1 temporary HP (from good cheer and good food).

Streamlined.  This is roughly based on 5 PCs going on a 10-day journey.
You may want to double all of the "Per Trip" costs once they get a wagon,
or if they have a 10-person party.

Morale -- You leave town with a group morale of 8-12, depending on how happy everyone is.  If everyone went carousing and got massages: 12.  If you only at the cheapest food and stayed at the cheapest flophouse: 8.

Every time something bad/spooky happens, the party loses 1 morale and then the DM rolls a d12.  The first time you roll above the hirelings' morale score, they get skittish and there will be some sort of small delay / inconvenience / argument.  The second time you roll above the hirelings' morale score, the hirelings insist that they return ASAP.  They'll leave without you if necessary.  (You can grab your share of the food, but without porters/wagons, how will you carry it?)

Morale applies to horses and donkeys, too. 

Fights don't count as spooky if they go smoothly.  If someone drops to 0 HP it counts as spooky.  Really awful shit (a demon bursting out of someone's chest) causes the loss of up to 3 points of morale.

You can raise morale by paying them money (100s spread across all the hirelings = +1 morale, price increases by 50s each time you use it) or by resting somewhere safe(ish) for a day and eating double rations (this also causes +1 morale).

Discussion

I like the look of it.  I think I got it down to the level of simplicity that I like.

It's kind of gated like a metroidvania.  The Getting a wagon can be a big deal--you could even make it a gated purchase.  Maybe wagons are scarce, and you'll have to befriend the right person before they'll even consider selling you a wagon.  (These are pre-industrial times after all.  No one has a big stock of wagons sitting in a warehouse.)

Hunters also function as a type of metroidvania gate.  Once you get some hunters on your team, you can penetrate into the further reaches of the map, existing there for longer (and maybe indefinitely).

As you gear up, you become able to penetrate further into the hexes.  By yourselves, you can search 1 forest hex at a time.  With a wagon and a full complement of donkeys, you can search 7 forest hexes before needing to return to town.

However, the wagon can't come into the forest with you, so you'll have to park it on the plains, making a temporary camp by the roadside.  Your hunters will stay there and stockpile food for when you come back.  This is good, because you'll eventually have favorite campsites and NPCs.

In a dungeon, HP essentially functions as your risk budget.  If you have 10 HP when you walk in a dungeon, you know that you can take twice as many risky actions as the guy who walked in with 5 HP.  You're allowed to venture 2x as far, really.

HP can't serve this purpose when hexcrawling, since it gets replenished every day, so instead we have morale.  Not sure how well it'll work, but I'll playtest it soon.

Hex Map

Of course, good rules are nothing without a hex map that embodies the same principles.

I chose to rely on rivers and lakes as the primary type of "walls", but you can also see where I have some cliffs (thick red lines) to make certain hexes impenetrable from certain directions.

The roads are accessible for even a new party, but you'll need more people and equipment to penetrate the further reaches of the forest.  I wish the rivers were on the boundaries between hexes, instead of in the middle of them.  They're meant to be boundaries.

You'll need cold-weather gear for the mountains.  (Not readily available in town.)  You'll have to ask around to find someone who will sell it to you.

And some places will require water transport to reach, which is its own separate thing.

And each location needs a strong description and key features.  Bottlenecks between hexes (like bridges) need to have a strong sense of location on their own.  And you'll probably need to have some NPC events on the random encounter chart, and/or risk of your wagon breaking.

Anyway, feel free to disagree with me.  I'm sure lots of you guys love hexcrawls.