Ok so the last few campaigns I have ran have been sandboxes, but I have always played fast and loose with mapping and traveling. I just sort of decide distances and make the odd roll on my big table of encounters as the players travel. I want to get a bit more precise and do a proper exploration focused hex crawl. Can some one point me to a hex crawl for dummies kind of thing? I mean really assume I know nothing. I want to learn how to decide distances, how to manage player travel, etc.

I see lots of blog posts about one aspect or another but have yet to come across a primer so to speak.

Make interesting hexes. All of them, but the interesting thing in many hexes could be hard to find, possibly bumped into by chance, but always worth finding. Not "worth finding" in the sense of XP or +X items, but in the sense of "hey this locale is cool", "hey, this NPC is interesting", or "hey, this XYZ made the trip worthwhile"

PCs may wander through many hexes, never randomly coming upon the cool, but that's okay. If they stay in the area, they may cross the same "empty" hex multiple times, possibly finding the cool. Or maybe the cool in the hex will be heard about in tavern gossip, or an old map, etc.

Somebody did an hex description listing for Carcosa. I am sure others exist on the web too.

As for distances, I am not a fan of huge hexes. Look at a modern map and see how much stuff happens in a 1 mile radius, a 3 mile radius and a 10 mile radius. I find that too many fantasy maps believe they need to have massive worlds, but I once heard that Blackmoor in its entirety was only as big as Montana.

People seems to have success with my How to make a fantasy sandbox series of posts.

I would start with a smaller area, perhaps 6 mile hexes at the most. Decide on a dominant terrain for each hex.

The fun part is placing interesting features: dungeons, ruins, shrines, old battlefields, etc. and detailing them. Each area might have its own encounter table too. The type of creatures that inhabit an area will impact the environment differently. There will usually be evidence that large predators are in an area for example.

Once you have the area mapped and keyed, keeping track of travel is as simple as the movement rates of whatever system you are using. Some features may be discovered just passing through a hex, others may require more detailed exploration.

A good way to get the exploration ball rolling is planting a few treasure maps that lead to parts of the wilderness, waiting for discovery. The treasure maps could lead to a whole dungeon or just an actual hidden/buried treasure.

DONE!

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2013/03/more-hexenbracken-how-hell-do-you-run.html

This post has a lot more blather and hyperlinks to other posts (mine and other peoples') but if you're at work and don't want to click, here's the meat of it:

_

"Assuming I never played a hexcrawl before, where can I find advice on how to run such a thing?"

Let me see if I can get the basics down, then tell you where to look...

-The players will be either traveling overland from point to point (moving at traveling speed) and just running into stuff incidentally or carefully searching through each hex individually (moving at "mapping" or "searching" speed--which is slower). Which depends on the kind of campaign goals they have (like this one is all about mapping, while these involve both traveling and searching). Frodo and company were traveling, Lewis and Clark were searching.

-Searching characters are trying to find all the interesting stuff in an area. Traveling characters will only note the obvious stuff (mountains, huge rivers) or things that find them (angry cultists, stirges, etc)

-The key to this kind of thing is meaningful choices and choices require information. There are two traditional ways hexcrawling players can get information: A. They start with a partial map B. They look around.

-In either case, these two options should be jiggered as much as possible to present players with at least two options for how to go at all times. For traveling, the simplest choice is: Fast, dangerous route or slow, easier route. Of course the slow route is also dangerous because it gives more time to run into random encounters.

-If the players just look around (no map), they will see landmarks. Landmarks are super important. These are things PCs can see in different directions that indicate what kinda thing to expect in that direction--mountain? City? Monument? River? Without landmarks the players are just going "Hmm, east or west?" and that's totally arbitrary and boring because there's no information behind it.

-You can see 3 miles to the horizon over flat ground. If you or the landmark are higher up than flat ground and your view is unobstructed you'll see things that are farther away.

-Players walk (or ride) and you keep track of time (figure out movement speeds per hour and per day for whatever method the PCs are using). When you get to a new area figure out what's obvious and (if your players are searching) what's hidden. Tell them about the obvious thing right off "So you ride for an hour and then you see a huge rock shaped like a weasel".

-If there's an encounter, figure out whether the thing sees them or they see it first or whether they see each other simultaneously (just like a dungeon). Remember that since most hex products or maps you make are, of necessity, sketchy, you can and should embroider the hell out of what the PCs see. You do not have to stick to the description. "1047 River, Demon" can be turned into..."You see a bridge with an insect demon eating a giant pink ooze on it, there appears to be no other crossing here".

-Build up the setting around the players as they move. They meet a random cleric? If you can figure out who this is a cleric of and where the cleric's going and what temple the cleric is from you've just added lots of obstacles and resources for the players and added a layer to what's going on.

-At the end of a session, ask the players what they intend to do next session. You can prep more detail around their likely routes. The key to making a hexcrawl more than a bunch of random encounters is building relationships between locations on the map--a good hex map will have these seeded in to begin with, but there's always room for more.

-If your players are searching, remember there's lots of room in a hex for stuff no matter how small. Don't have any ideas? That's what all these goddamn random tables are for.

-A lotta times, if they're just traveling, the PCs will come upon nothing special in a given hex, that's ok.

Cool thanks for the info guys. Estar I was already aware of you excellent series, but I certainly don't mind looking at it again. Zak I was unaware of your posts on the matter, thanks for the heads up, looks like great stuff. Out of curiosity what size hex does everyone here personally prefer? I hear a lot of buzz about 6 mile hexes. I am thinking of doing a mid to small size region, but I figured that really researching the pros and cons of different hex sizes will help inform that decision.

Quote from: Arkansan;696445Cool thanks for the info guys. Estar I was already aware of you excellent series, but I certainly don't mind looking at it again. Zak I was unaware of your posts on the matter, thanks for the heads up, looks like great stuff. Out of curiosity what size hex does everyone here personally prefer? I hear a lot of buzz about 6 mile hexes. I am thinking of doing a mid to small size region, but I figured that really researching the pros and cons of different hex sizes will help inform that decision.

I like 6 because you can see the next hex in every direction over flat ground however, there are other priorities you could have:

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/04/formula-to-figure-out-exactly-how-big.html

Again thanks. I have a few ideas brewing already.

Quote from: Arkansan;696445Out of curiosity what size hex does everyone here personally prefer? I hear a lot of buzz about 6 mile hexes. I am thinking of doing a mid to small size region, but I figured that really researching the pros and cons of different hex sizes will help inform that decision.

Varies wildly for me - for a northern European/British feel of a closed-in landscape, 1 mile per hex is working excellently in my Yggsburgh campaign, but I have half a dozen at least trail maps at that scale. 2 miles/hex is working in my Loudwater Forgotten Realms campaign, letting me cover the core Gray Vale campaign region in two 30x50 mile maps. But I've run 'Western' type games set in the wide open plains of the Wilderlands at 15 miles/hex. I recently used Rob Conley's Points of Light at 5 miles/hex, it worked ok.

As a default, for starting out I would tend to recommend 2 miles/hex as the most reliable scale IME. Big enough you can get a lot of adventure on 1 map, small enough you can place every village, lair etc. But for a 'travelogue' game you can go much bigger, 6 or 8 miles per hex.