After attacking a beloved institution last week, the only acceptable follow-up is to describe how it could be improved. It's a graceful and useful transition.
I'm sure that's what your mom said when you told her that her chicken was dry.
So anyway, here are my hexcrawl rules, along with 4 sample hexes.
Option 1: PDF
Option 2: Editable (make a copy, don't ask me for editing rights)
My design goals were
- Simplicity. No bookkeeping unless it leads to #2 or #3.
- Interesting, Meaningful Decisions.
- Interconnectedness. (The hexcrawl should connect to itself. "Random" encounters should still feel connection to the location and events that are happening.)
It's possible that I've missed the point. Maybe I'm focusing too much on treating hexcrawls like dungeoncrawls. Maybe I'm spending too much time on the mechanics and not enough on what makes hexcrawls special, which is the joy of discovery and the journey itself.
Maybe.
Please give me feedback in the comments, especially if you end up using any part of this.
It's funny - Hodag and I were working on a game and created procedures similar to these. As is often the case, yours are a lot cleaner. I like them a lot. Yours are more focused on having retainers and NPCs, which is probably something I'll kajigger. Thank you for making the rules open source! As a note, you call out that the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 starts on page 10. You might mean page 8, since that's where it looks like the encounters start.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good idea. Thank you.
DeleteThanks for this! The deer king in this, plus your notes about hiring hunters in the last post somehow ended up with me watching bowhunting videos and gaining a new respect for just how involved and time consuming it is.
ReplyDeleteYou're doing it right!
DeleteI watched hours of dragonfly videos when I was writing the scarabin post.
DeleteThis is great. I created my own hex crawl rules and lists for encounters and points of interest, but this demonstrates a great way to combine them into a cohesive system.
ReplyDeleteGreat rules.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious what you think of Dolmenwood's hex crawl setup? At a glance it doesn't have the same problems that you highlighted.