Dungeons & Dragonsshares DNA with age-old tales of exploration and adventure. Heroes travel the world, following maps or cryptic clues, to explore the world before facing evil. So why do a lot of D&D campaigns go directly from the dungeon to the town and back again?
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Well, D&D’s core mechanics are meant for dungeon crawling. Kick down the door, slay the orcs, kick down the door, slay the dragon, repeat. But D&D has a set of mechanics designed to cover exploration– and they’re quite elegant once you get the hang of them. Everyone say hello to the dungeon crawl’s big brother: the hexcrawl.
What Is A Hexcrawl?
Ahexcrawlis tooverland travelwhat adungeon crawlis todungeon travel.
During a dungeon crawl,players movein a slightly abstract way througha grid made up of squares. They choose which door to walk through, which hallways to check for traps, and which chests to loot.
During a hexcrawl,players movein an abstract way througha landscape made of hexagonal shapes, or ‘hexes.‘They choose which rivers to ford, which caves to duck into for shelter from the rain, and which thickets to forage.
History of Hexcrawls
Hexcrawls have been part of Dungeons and Dragons since the beginning– they’reolder than the Forgotten Realmsor Dragonlance! But D&D changed over the years, becoming less a game about the logistics of schlepping treasure from Point A to Point B and more about telling stories.
Hexcrawls slowly became less and less important until 3e, when they were cut from the official rules altogether. Buthexcrawls have been making a comeback. More and more DMs are waking up to the idea thatyou don’thaveto just skip over exploration.You can make it as much a part of the story as any dungeon or heist.
If you want to run a premade adventure but still want to play a hexcrawl, you have options. The 5th Edition remake ofTomb of Annihilationhas a long hexcrawl section, for example.
If you’re willing to branch out to unofficial content, fanmade remakes of 1e adventures often include the adventure’s original hexcrawl, and D&D fans have createdhexcrawl-centric remixesof some iconic adventures.
Designing A Hexcrawl Map
If you want to dip your feet into running a hexcrawl, you can always pick up a published adventure. But designing a hexcrawl yourself can be incredibly rewarding, and we’d recommend every DM give it a try at some point.
To design a hexcrawl, you’ll first need ahex grid. You can gethex grid paperor abattle matwith a hex grid on it fairly easily from your local hobby shop. If you prefer anonline tool,you can check out a free website like HexTML or HexFriend.
Hexcrawl Scales
Each hex is a certain size,and you’ll need to know what size they are to map your landscape. The Dungeon Master’s Guide lays out three possible scales for hexes in Chapter 1, under “Mapping Your Campaign”: Province, Kingdom, and Continent.
One hex = One mile by one mile
Small-scale adventuring– venturing out from village for the first time
Kingdom
One hex = Six miles by six miles
Medium-size adventuring– map is about the size of California, good campaign map
One hex = 60 miles by 60 miles
Grand-scale world mapping, not recommended for play
While each size serves a purpose, you don’t need to use all three. You could run an entire campaign with a Kingdom-sized hexcrawl if you wanted to. Even the Dungeon Master’s Guide says that the Continent size might bea bit impracticaland recommends sticking with a Kingdom scale map.
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Biome Design
Once you’ve decided on your map size,draw out the landscape. Where are your coastlines? Where are your mountains and rivers? Take the time to placebiomeson the map– figure out which areas are mountains, which are forests, which are plains, and which are jungles or ice sheets.
Make sure you have a good mix of biomes– you don’t want the entire map to be the same boring forest.
If you get stuck, turn toChapters One and Five of the Dungeon Master’s Guidefor advice, ortake inspiration from real-world geography.Most people don’t notice if you take a map of Antarctica and flip it upside-down once you’ve filled it with jungles and swamps. You can be as realistic or as fanciful as you want.
If you like spending a lot of time figuring out weather patterns and rain shadows, go wild. If you don’t care about any of that, fill the landscape with things you think are interesting.
Your players’starting locationshould be in the middle of the map. This way, they can travel in any direction they want and still find something to do. For most DMs– especially new DMs– it’s a good idea tohave your players start in a village or small town.They need a “home base”– somewhere they can come back to to restock supplies, ask around for information, and craft items.
Resist the urge to make their home base too big.If you start your players in Waterdeep or Neverwinter, they’ll want to explore the city, and all of your hexcrawl prep will be wasted. Start with a small village or fishing hamlet; they can always find a bigger city later.
Finally, you want aboundaryaround the edge of your map so that your players know where they can and can’t go. Giant, impassible mountains, a deep ocean, an endless fog, or a magical barrier all make for a good boundary. The important thing is that it’s clear and legible. You need to be able to say “You can’t go that way,” and mean it.
Once you’ve got the map down, it’s time to populate it!
Populating A Hexcrawl
Populating your hexcrawl map means figuring outwhat’s where.You want to fill out as many hexes on your map as you can withsomethinginteresting. Not every hex has to include an entire dungeon, but you shouldn’t leave many hexes empty, either. Figuring out what to put where is a delicate balance.
There are a bunch of different features you’re able to include on a hexcrawl map:static encounters; adventure sites; difficult terrain; towns and cities;and, finally,landmarks. Each feature takes up one hex.
Static Encounters
These are places that the players briefly encounter and then move on from.They can be battles, but they don’thaveto be. A wolves’ den, an orc woodcutter in a shack, a small goblin tribe’s camp, or a one-room schoolhouse full of whimsically dressed talking animals could all be static encounters.
Remember that a static encounter is always in the same place; it’s not a random encounter. Even if the PCs kill all the wolves or goblins,the cave or campsite will still be there. They can go back and take shelter from the rain… and maybe meet another monster that’s moved in.
Adventure Sites
These are places that the players will (hopefully)spend more time in and get more involved with. Most adventure sites will be the kind of dungeon you’re already familiar with, whether it looks like a fortress, a cave, an enchanted grove, or a crashed spelljammer ship.
Ever wanted to run a certain dungeon in your campaign but couldn’t figure out a reason to get the PCs to go there? Stick it in a hexcrawl hex, and when they stumble over it, they might just decide to go in.
Difficult Terrain
This is to a hexcrawl what a trapped hallway is to a dungeon. It’s a quick challenge for the players to overcome… or navigate around.A deep trench, a desert of burning sand, a river of lava, or a thorny thicket can all be difficult terrain.
Towns And Cities
These are… well, towns and cities.If you want your campaign to stay focused on exploration, use these sparingly.Remember, players tend to get drawn into City Adventuring, whether you want them to or not.
But your players should always be able to get back tosomewherewhere they can resupply withouttoomuch struggle. A town every handful of hexes means they have to do less backtracking. On a 10x10 map, you should have somewhere around five villages, two larger towns, and no more than one city.
Landmarks
These are places that are large and memorable– they can also be a city, an encounter, or an adventure site, but they don’thaveto be. The important thing is thatplayers can use landmarks to orient themselves on the map.
If the Tower of Eternal Torment is always visible on a clear day, your players will always be able to figure out where they are in relation to the Tower. You need at least one landmark, but you don’t need more than a couple. Just make them memorable enough that your players will be able to use them.
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Make asymbolfor each kind of thing on your map, and make akeytelling yourself what’s in each hex. A lot of people will label the two axes of the map, one with a letter and one with a number– so each hex has a “name” made up of a letter and a number. For example, the top left hex of a 10x10 grid is A1, and the bottom right is J10.
Your key shouldlist each hex by numberand briefly describe what’s in each hex.
Populating a hexcrawl can be atonof work.You have to prepare alotof content in advance. There’s no guarantee that your players will ever see any of it, and that can be really discouraging. But once you start playing the game, you barely have to prep at all– just look at the hexes near where your players left off and verify you know what’s there.
Some DMs - and even the Dungeon Masters’ guide - recommend that you swap around hexes if your players don’t head for something you’d like to show them. However,we recommend you don’t move your hexes once you’ve finalized your map.
As the DM, it’s your job to make a world that’s internally consistent. When you populate your hexcrawl, you’re trying to make a world that feels real, alive, and good to explore. Don’t deprive your players of the joy of exploring that world– even if they don’t do the things you’d like them to.
Hexcrawl: At The Table
Using a dry-erase battle mat, a separate hex grid, or a digital battle mat,make a version of the hex map for the playerswhere most hexes are blank. It’s just like a dungeon map-youhave the whole picture, but your players get to uncover it a bit at the time.
At the table,the players pick a hexto move to, the same way they’d pick which door to walk through in a dungeon.Fill in the hexon your players' version of the map, and let your players engage with what’s there. It might be a location they explore, a town they shop in, a dungeon they delve into, or an ancient evil they awaken.
They explore as much or as little as they like, and then they move on to the next hex.
To keep things interesting, throw in arandom encounterfrom time to time. Use the rules in chapter 3 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide tobuild a random encounter tableforeach biomeof your hexcrawl.
If the players are backtracking,visiting hexes they’ve already been to, or are starting to feel too safe, throw in a random encounter.
If you want to make sure your players have a constant stream of encounters,roll every in-game hour or every in-game day.
Theultimate goalof a hexcrawl is going to be different from adventure to adventure and from game to game.
Some adventures want the characters tovisit and clear out every hex.Some adventures will require the characters tofind and clear out a specific hex. Some adventures will require you tofind objects and bring them to a certain hex.Some adventures will require you tosolve a mystery, going to different hexes to find clues and combining what you’ve learned.
Over the course of the campaign, the players will map out the world, discover its secrets, and– if your players are anything like ours– rob it blind.
