Go to Part 1

On that note, let’s take a closer look at the practical techniques I use when stocking my hexes.

#0. HAVE A MAP

Our primary focus here is stocking hexes. But before you can do that, you need the map you’ll be keying.

First, figure out how big you want your map to be. For the reasons we discussed above, I recommend a 10 x 10 or 12 x 12 map. 100 or 144 hexes should be more than enough to get started.

Second, place the home base for the PCs in the center of this map. (This way, as noted, they can go in any direction without immediately riding off the edge of your prep.) The home base might be:

• A small town or city
• An expedition’s base camp
• A keep
• An outpost
• A dimensional portal
• A crashed spaceship

There’s no limit here except your imagination. The key thing is that the PCs need to have a reason to keep coming back to this location. (This usually means some form of resupplying between one expedition and the next.)

Third, grab some hexmapping software. Current options include:

• Worldographer
• Tiled Map Editor
• Hextml

You can also use other world-mappers and then just drop a hex grid on top of your map, but I recommend creating a true hex map with one clearly defined terrain type per hex. (It will make travel modifiers a lot clearer.)

I also suggest large blocks of similar terrain, which can then immediately double as your regions. (Remember that any individual hex is huge. Just because you threw down “forest” as the predominant terrain type, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of local variation within it.)

Finally, I recommend having two or three different types of terrain immediately adjacent to the home base: If the PCs go north, they enter the mountains. If they go west, they enter the forest. If they head south or east they’re crossing the plains. This gives a clear and immediate distinction which provides a bare minimum criteria that the PCs can use to “pick a direction and go.”

Fourth, throw down some roads and rivers.

You’re done.

#1. BE CREATIVE, BE AWESOME, BE SINCERE

Before we get into any tips, tricks, shortcuts, or cheats, first things first: Do some honest brainstorming and pour some raw creativity onto the page.

The neat ideas you’ve been tossing around inside your head for the past few days? Everything your players think would be cool? Everything you think would be cool? Everything you wish the last GM you played with had included in the game?

Put ‘em in hexes.

Then think about the setting logically: What needs to be there in order for the setting to work? For the stuff you’ve already keyed to work?

Get ‘em in hexes.

Bring your creativity to the table. And make sure everything you include is awesome, because life is too short to waste time on the mediocre or the “good enough” or the “I guess I need to do that.” If there’s something that feels mundane or generic, give it a twist or add something extra. (The Goblin Ampersand can be a good technique here.)

Finally, throughout this entire process, be sincere. I think it’s really important to stay true to yourself when you’re doing design work: You have a unique point of view and a unique aesthetic. Even when you’re bringing in material or inspiration from other sources, apply it through your own perspective and values.

#2. JUMP AROUND

It can be useful to start at Hex A1, go to Hex A2, and then systematically proceed on through the A’s before starting the B’s.

But if you’re working on A3 and you get a cool idea that belongs on the other side of the map, don’t hesitate: Jump over there and key up Hex F7.

That is not only useful from a practical standpoint: It also feels great when you get to column F and discover three-quarters of the hexes have already been filled.

#3. STEAL

Okay, you’ve filled a couple dozen hexes, but now you’re starting to run out of ideas. What next?

Steal.

If you’re reading this blog, I’m guessing you’ve got a stack of adventures that you’ve collected over the years. Go pull your favorite location-based adventures off the shelf and start plopping them down into your hexes.

For example, consider the 5E adventure anthologies. Tales From the Yawning Portal has:

• The Sunless Citadel
• The Forge of Fury
• The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
• White Plume Mountain
• Dead in Thay (The Doomvault)
• Against the Giants (Hill Giant Stronghold)
• Tomb of Horrors

All of these locations could be dropped directly into your hexcrawl, although you might want to push the last three into hexes beyond your initial map as long-term goals for the PCs to work towards.

Next, flip open your copy of Candlekeep Mysteries:

• Book of Ravens (Chalet Brantifax)
• A Deep and Creeping Darkness (Vermeillon)
• Price of Beauty (Temple of the Restful Lily)
• Zikran’s Zephyrean Tome (Zikran’s Laboratory)
• Zikran’s Zephyrean Tome (Haunted Cloud Giant Keep)

And just like that, we’ve keyed twelve more hexes.

Old school editions featured a lot of these “here’s a cool location” adventures, so if you’re willing to adapt material you can unlock 50 years worth of cool options. In my Thracian Hexcrawl, for example, I used:

• Caverns of Thracia
• S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
• B3 Palace of the Silver Princess
• Temple of Elemental Evil
• L3 Deep Dwarven Delve
• Return to White Plume Mountain
• Touched by the Gods

And more.

Having 30+ years of collecting to fall back on is nice, of course. But even if you don’t have that kind of gaming library, you can find a ton of great stuff online for free. For example, the One Page Dungeon Contest is basically an all-you-can-eat smorgasboard for this sort of thing; I’ve already mentioned Dyson Logos’ maps (only one of many free map resources); and so forth.

#4. STEAL MORE

No. Seriously. Go steal stuff. Pillage and loot with wild abandon.

Not every adventure can be dropped straight into a hex, but even adventures that aren’t explicitly location-based will often feature cool locations that you can ripped out and easily adapted.

And the more you’re willing to adapt, the more you’ll be able to use. For example, “The Joy of Extradimensional Spaces” in Candlekeep Mysteries features Fistandia’s Mansion, an extradimensional sanctum accessible from a magical book in Candlekeep.

• Drop the extradimensional component and you can drop the whole building into a hex.
• Change the extradimensional access point to a statue or shrine or giant magic rune carved into the wall of a box canyon and you can drop that into a hex.
• Give the mansion multiple magical access points and you can drop them into multiple (And you might as well toss the original magic book into a dungeon’s treasure horde somewhere, too.)

Grab any non-urban 5E campaign book you’re not interested in running and you’ll be able to continue harvesting. From Hoard of the Dragon Queen, for example, you could grab:

• The village of Greenest as the campaign’s home base
• Raider Camp (p. 16)
• Dragon Hatchery (p. 23)
• Carnath Roadhouse (p. 41)
• Castle Naerytar (p. 43)
• Hunting Lodge (p. 62)
• Skyreach Castle (p. 76)

As you’re harvesting material like this, you may start to notice patterns. For example, we’ve got a bunch of giant-related content now:

• Hill Giant Stronghold (from Tales of the Yawning Portal)
• Haunted Cloud Giant Keep (from Candlekeep Mysteries)
• Skyreach Castle (cloud giants from Hoard of the Dragon Queen)

How could we hook the lore of these locations together?

Also, when you’re harvesting material from a campaign book, you’re jettisoning the original connective material between the locations (which was probably some sort of linear plot), but the lore connections are still there. You can go one step further and strip those out, too. (Usually by adapting or genericizing them into something else.) But you usually don’t have to: By plopping them into a hexcrawl, you’ve effectively remixed the original adventure. In fact, you can use node-based scenario design to diversify these connections. Check out How to Remix an Adventure to trivially add even more depth to your hexcrawl. (You can, of course, use these same techniques to link up other hex keys, too.)

Another resource I love for this are back issues of Dungeon magazine. Sadly these are harder to come by these days, but each issue usually had a half dozen different adventures. Some could be dropped directly into hexes; others could be easily harvested for locations.

For example, let’s flip open Dungeon #65:

1. “Knight of the Scarlet Sword.” This adventure details the Village of Bechlaughter and the magical silver dome in the center of the village which serves as home to a lich. Use the whole village or just use the dome.
2. “Knight of the Scarlet Sword” also contains the Caves of Cuwain — the tomb of a banshee. Another location that can be used as a key entry.
3. “Flotsam” is a side trek featuring a couple of pirates who pretend to be legitimate merchants; they lure people onto their ship by offering legitimate passage and then rob them on the high seas. It doesn’t seem immediately appropriate for a forest hex key, but what if the PCs found this ship — and its weird, seemingly crazy crew — just sitting in the middle of the forest? Maybe it’s a witch’s curse or a strange haunting. Or just crazy people.
4. “The Ice Tyrant” is a heavily plotted adventure, but we could start by ripping out the fully-mapped Lodge and placing it along any convenient road that needs an inn.
5. “The Ice Tyrant” also contains a map for a Sentinel Tower occupied by evil dwarves. This can also be dropped straight into a hex. (Could it be connected with the dark dwarves from “The Forge of Fury” that we used earlier?)
6. “The Ice Tyrant” finally features the Keep of Anghanor — guarded by a white dragon and containing a bunch of bad guys. (Could this dragon be related to the dragon cults from the Hoard of the Dragon Queen locations?)
7. “Reflections” is another side trek, this one involving a cavern where a will o’ wisp has imprisoned a gibbering mouther. That’s another hex done!
8. “Unkindness of Raven” is a location-based adventure triggered by stumbling across Crawford Manor while wandering through the wilderness. This is easy!
9. “The Beast Within” is a location-based adventure triggered by stumbling across a werewolf’s cottage in the wilderness. Plop it in!

And there you go. One random issue of Dungeon and you’ve got another nine hexes keyed. Pick up a dozen issues and you could probably key a full 10 x 10 hex map entirely from the magazine.

Go to Part 3: Further Inspiration

One of the principles of the Alexandrian Hexcrawl is that you key geography. In other words, your hex key features locations, not encounters. (Encounters are handled separately.) The distinction between a “location” and an “encounter” can get a little hazy if you stare at it for too long, but in practice it’s usually pretty obvious: If your key reads “an ogre walking down the road,” then the next time the PCs pass along that road the ogre will presumably be gone (particularly if they’ve killed it). If your key instead reads “an ogre living in a shack,” then even if the PCs kill the ogre, the shack will still be there.

Of course, one might argue that the PCs could do some quick demolition work on the shack and make it disappear, too. (That would be an excellent example of staring at the distinction for too long.) But the general point remains: You’re looking to key permanent geography, not ephemeral events.

Another key principle is that every hex is keyed. This can be a daunting prospect. When I created my Thracian Hexcrawl, for example, I started with a 16 x 16 hex map. That meant I needed to key 256 individual hexes.

My experience with that hexcrawl taught me that you can (and almost certainly should!) start with a smaller map. I generally recommend a 10 x 10 hex map, for a total of 100 hexes, with the PCs’ home base in the center of the map. The key thing, though, if you’ll pardon the pun, is that you want enough hexes so that the PCs can head in any direction and NOT fall off the edge of your map in the first session. Based on my practical experience, that distance appears to be roughly 5 hexes.

In the Avernian Hexcrawl, for example, I used a 10 x 6 map. I could get away with this because:

• There were mountains on the northern and southern edges of the ‘crawl, acting as natural obstacles that would tend to focus PCs on the large valley between them; and
• This hexcrawl features a map of the region which is given to the PCs. Although the PCs are not prohibited from moving beyond the edge of the map, such maps tend to also focus the PCs’ explorations.

The advantage, of course, is that I only needed to prep 60 hexes.

Similarly, Ben Robbins’ West Marches campaign featured an explicit limit: The home base was located on the western edge of civilization, and the PCs could go anywhere they wanted… as long as it was west into the unknown. If you used a similar set up for your campaign, you could effectively halve the number of hexes you need to key.

But whether we’re talking about 50 or 60 or 100 or 256 hexes, that’s still a lot of hexes. How can you get all of them prepped? It seems like a lot of work!

First, to be brutally honest, it is a lot of work. The prep for a hexcrawl is frontloaded: It’s a structure that requires you to put a lot of work in up front, with the pay-off that it requires very little prep to keep the campaign in motion once you start playing. (For example, with my Thracian hexcrawl I spent 2-3 intense weeks prepping the hex key, but then ran dozens of sessions with no additional prep beyond 5-10 minutes at the beginning of each session. Your mileage may vary.)

Second, because of that frontloaded prep, you should make sure that a hexcrawl is really the right structure for what you’re trying to do. There is a perception that “wilderness travel = hexcrawl” and that’s not really true. The hexcrawl structure is designed for exploration, and is really only appropriate if you expect the PCs to be constantly re-engaging with the same region. (This can make them ideal for an open table, where you’ll have multiple groups engaging the same region.) If the PCs are only traveling through a region or exploring it once or twice, then you’re going to end up prepping lots and lots of hexes that never get used, and that’s not smart prep.

Third, with all that being said, it may not be as much work as you might think. There’s a couple secrets to that.

The first secret is that, when you’re prepping material for yourself, polish is overrated. (Details are also overrated, with the proviso that essential details and awesome details should always be jotted down.) For example, if I were writing up a dungeon behind a waterfall for someone else to use, I’d probably take the time to mention how wet and slick the stairs leading down into the dungeon are; the damp moistness in the air of the first chamber (providing a slight haze that can be burnt away dramatically by a fireball trap); and the way the dampness gives way to a chilled condensation that hangs in glistening drops from the rough hewn walls as you descend into the dungeon.

But since I’m prepping this for myself, I don’t need to write that down.

Trust your own voice as a GM. During play, based on your intrinsic understanding of the scenario and the environment, it will provide the logical and evocative details you need to flesh things out. And by placing trust in yourself, you can save yourself a ton of prep time.

The second secret is that the amount of detail required to key a hex can vary quite a bit. You can use minimal keys. Just because something is geography, it doesn’t mean that it has to be elaborate. Something can be brief without being ephemeral. There can be a perception that every hex “should” have a 20-room dungeon in it. But remember that ogre’s shack? Your key doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. Some times, it can be even less complicated!

SAMPLE HEX KEYS

We’re going to take a look at some actual hex keys I’ve prepped for my own hexcrawls. The goal here is to demonstrate the range of different key types that I use, so let’s start with the shortest:

B4. RED RUTH’S LAIR (Descent Into Avernus, p. 107)

Red Ruth has a heartstone.

This one is pretty simple: I’ve grabbed a location from a pre-existing adventure (in this case, Descent Into Avernus) and plugged it straight into the hexcrawl. If the PCs encounter this hex, I can just pull out the appropriate book and start running it.

In this case, I’ve also included a short note modifying the original adventure. (The NPC named Red Ruth has a heartstone.) You may not need such notes at all. In other cases, you might have several such notes. Whatever works.

Here’s another simple one:

K13 – RUINED TEMPLE OF ILLHAN

See hex detail.

This location was too detailed to include in my primary hex key. (Generally, I’ll bump anything longer than a single page out of the primary hex key. In my experience, it keeps the hex key cleaner and much easier to use.)

Much like the published adventure, I’m telling myself to go look somewhere else for the detailed adventure. In this case, it’s an adventure I wrote myself.

I keep these detailed adventure notes in a separate file folder, labeled and organized by hex number. For shorter published adventures, I’ll keep print outs of the adventures in the same file folder.

The details of the Ruined Temple of Illhan were previously posted here on the site. They can be found here. (The presentation there is slightly more polished than what would have been found in my original notes, but is substantially similar.)

B5 – BONE CRATER

A large meteor impact formed by a huge skull (more than ten feet across) that’s partially embedded in the center of the crater.

This is an example of what I think of as a landmark. Sometimes these landmarks are more involved or have hidden features to them, but generally they’re just single points of interest distinct from the surrounding wilderness. Regardless of their other characteristics, they’re almost always useful for PCs trying to orient their maps.

N15 – RECENT FOREST FIRE

Landscape is scorched. No foraging is possible in this hex.

Another short one. This is basically similar to a landmark, but it covers a vast swath of territory. (In this case, an entire hex.)

C2 – WYVERN SHAFT

60 foot deep shaft that serves as the lair of a wyvern. The wyvern has dug an escape tunnel that emerges from a hill a quarter mile away.

Wyvern: Has a large scar on its left side from a spear wound; has preferred to stay away from intelligent prey ever since. (MM, p. 303)

Treasure: 7,000 sp, 5 zircons (50 gp each)

A simple monster lair. I usually don’t bother with maps for this sort of thing: It’s easy enough to improvise a cave or shack or, in this case, a shaft. In fact, many smaller complexes with a half dozen rooms or less can also be managed without difficulty. (Assuming there’s nothing radically unusual about them, of course.) Alternatively, you might use a random floorplan generator or similar tool.

(Note the page reference. I know Wizards of the Coast is terrified of page numbers on the off-chance that they get changed in a future printing, but why not make life a little easier for your future self?)

F15 – SKULL ROCK (on river)

A rock shaped like a skull thrusts out of the river. Crawling through the mouth leads to a crypt.

AREA 1: Mummified red dragon’s head (huge). Breathes flame that fills most of the room (fireball, DC 14). Secret entrance to treasure chamber lies under the head.

AREA 2: 5 wights, 50% in lair (MM, p. 300). The two rooms off this area have been pillaged.

AREA 3 – BURIAL OFFERINGS: 3000 gp, 3 golden spinels (200 gp each)

AREA 4: Trapped hallway. Arrows shoot from wall and alchemist’s fire from nozzles in the ceiling. (Chamber to the left has an incense burner in the shape of a squat, fat man worth 70 gp.)

AREA 5: Wight (MM, p. 300), no life drain but can detect magic, life, and invisibility. (Sniffs out magic and lusts for it.)

AREA 6: Bas relief skull. Insane. Asks incredibly bad riddles. (“What flies in the air?” “A bird.”), but then blasts those who answer with 1d6 magic missiles regardless.

AREA 7: Slain wights.

AREA 8: Staked vampires.

AREA 9: A lich (MM, p. 202) has been chained to the wall. Arcs of purple electricity spark off him in eternal torment. (Stripped of spellcasting and legendary actions.)

Notice the “on river” designator next to the key title here. That indicates that this location is on the river flowing through this hex on the map: If the PCs are following the river, they’ll automatically encounter this location.

This sort of fully-keyed “mini-dungeon” represents pretty much the upper limit of what I’ll handle in a hex key entry before bumping it into a separate document.

The map here is taken from Dyson Logos’ website. His site has repeatedly proven invaluable to me when stocking hexcrawls.

Go to Part 2: Stocking Your Hexes

Go to Part 1

Finding locations during a hexcrawl — including locations that you are specifically looking for — is handled primarily through the navigation and encounter rules.

SIMPLE EXPLORATION

In the simplest form of hexcrawling, expeditions will automatically encounter the keyed location in a hex when they enter that hex. Therefore, finding a location you’re looking for — e.g., the Tomb of Sagrathea — is simply a matter of finding the correct hex.

This may be slightly more difficult for the PCs to pull off reliably if you’re running with player-unknown hexes, but the procedure remains the same: The expedition will want to navigate to the area they suspect the location to be, then move through the area in some form of search pattern until they find what they’re looking for (by entering the correct hex).

Following roads or trails, of course, may make it much easier for the PCs to hit the right hex.

BASIC ALEXANDRIAN EXPLORATION

The Alexandrian Hexcrawl includes a number of optional and advanced rules that can add complexity, challenge, and choice to exploration.

As described in Finding Locations, above, Visible and Familiar locations can be automatically found by any character passing through the appropriate hexes (just as with simple exploration). Other locations, however, are found through encounter checks, so the expedition must be in the correct hex and generate a location encounter there.

Choosing the exploration travel pace — during which the expedition is assumed to be trying out side trails, examining objects of interest, and so forth — will significantly increase the likelihood of finding the location you’re looking for by (a) reducing your speed of travel (so that you’ll spend longer in any individual hex) and (b) doubling the chance of having an encounter. Compared to moving at a fast pace, for example, the exploration travel pace makes it six times more likely that you’ll find a location.

Optional Rule – Focused Search: If the expedition is traveling at exploration pace and looking for a location that they have specific information about, the DM may allow a third encounter check per watch for that location and only that location. (Any other encounters that would normally be indicated by this check are ignored.) Obviously if the location they’re looking for isn’t in the current hex, the DM can skip this check — they are, after all, looking in the wrong place.

Design Note: It may seem unreasonable that you can pass through a hex and not find a location within it. But hexes are, in fact, very large. For example, the entire island of Manhattan could fit into a 12-mile hex more than five times over. If it still feels unreasonable that the PCs could move through a hex and NOT find the location they’re looking for, you might want to consider the possibility that this location should be classified as Visible.

BASECAMP EXPLORATION

If an expedition wants to perform a dedicated exploration of a specific area, they can establish a basecamp. There are two basic watch actions associated with a basecamp: Make Camp and Area Search.

BASECAMP ACTION: MAKE CAMP

As an active watch action, a character can establish a camp suitable for 4 creatures if they have tents or similar equipment to shelter them. (Horses and similar creatures do not require tents, but must still be accounted for in camp preparations.)

If the expedition does not have equipment for shelter, the character can only establish a camp suitable for one creature (either themselves or someone else) per watch action.

Optional Rule – Camp Required: Characters without a proper camp require an additional Resting action to gain the benefits of resting. (It takes three Resting actions in a row to gain the benefits of a Long Rest. If using the advanced rule for lack of sleep, it takes two Resting actions in a row to avoid the consequences for not resting.)

Optional Rule – Favorable Site: A character can perform an active watch action to make an Intelligence (Nature) or Wisdom (Survival) check against the Forage DC of the terrain. On a success, they have identified a favorable campsite. Characters performing the Forager action in a favorable campsite gain advantage on their forage checks.

The check to identify a favorable site can also be attempted as part of a Scout action.

BASECAMP ACTION: AREA SEARCH

As an active watch action, a character can search the wilderness in the hex cluster around their base camp. Multiple characters performing this action simultaneously can form a search group (or multiple search groups if they split up).

Encounter Checks: Make a normal encounter check for the base camp, even if no characters remain in the camp. (An encounter would indicate that the base camp has been discovered.) Make an additional encounter check for each search group. (The search counts as a travel watch for the purpose of making this encounter check.)

Search Area: The hex searched by a search group can be determined:

• Randomly. Roll 1d8 on the hex cluster chart below.
• Directionally, if the search group indicates the direction they are searching. Roll 1d8, with any roll other than 7-8 (the base camp hex) indicating the hex in the selected direction.
• By Hex, in which case the search group indicates which specific hex in the cluster (including the hex of their base camp) they wish to spend their time in.

Search Area – Large Hexes: If using larger hexes (or in particularly difficult terrain), it may not be possible for the PCs to reasonable travel to neighboring hexes in a single watch. In such cases, a travel watch would be required both before and after the Area Search action.

If circumstance or hex-size makes it impossible for the PCs to reach neighboring hexes even with a travel watch, then the Area Search action is limited to near-only searches in the base camp’s hex and it will be necessary to move the base camp in order to search other hexes.

Location Discovery: One character in each search group can attempt a Wisdom (Perception) or Intelligence (Investigation) check using the Navigation DC of the hex to find the location (+5 DC if the location is hidden). Additional characters in the group can assist, granting the searcher advantage on their check.

If there are multiple locations, randomly determine which one is found.

Note: At the DM’s discretion, they may assign an alternative DC to specific locations. If there are multiple locations, the DM may rule that an additional location is found for every 5 additional points of success.

Other Group Members: Characters performing Sentinel or Tracker actions can join a search group. (Note that the Wisdom (Perception) checks performed by sentinels detect approaching threats, as opposed to the checks made to find locations.)

Go to Part 1

VESTIGIAL HEXES

The deeper you dig into the play experience of these modules, the clearer it is just how vestigial the hexes had become. You’re left with a very clear sense that the designers are not all that interested in hexmaps as hexmaps, and are really only including them because, as I’ve mentioned before, it was the expected thing to do.

For example, in DL1 there’s a pair region-keyed encounters with draconians where the draconians from one encounter are supposed to call out to the draconians in the other encounter, who can then move up and “close the trap.”

But these encounters are, of course, keyed to the hexmap. So the other draconians are three miles away. There’s no reality in which they’re going to show up to “close” anything until the combat is long over.

Similarly, in DL3 there’s a hilarious bit where an ice shelf in Area 13 is supposed to break loose, causing the PCs to go tumbling down a slide of ice (Area 14) and end up in Area 18:

This is written up as a quick, traumatic event. But, as you can see, the ice slide is 8 or 9 miles long.

(To be fair, this is an unintentional Moment of Awesome because it makes me think of the entire sequence as a Monty Oum video.)

You can see similar Hexmaps for the Heck of It™ in DL4 Dragons of Desolation and DL9 Dragons of Deceit, where cities are keyed to hexmaps to no real purpose.

CAMPAIGN HEXAGON SYSTEM

In DL7 Dragons of Light by Jeff Grubb, the Dragonlance modules actually employ a three-tier system of hex maps. On the region map you can see both 20-mile megahexes and 1-mile subhexes:

But the module also zooms into one of the 1-mile hexes and depicts 260-foot subhexes:

Although the specific measurements used here are different, this tiered approach almost precisely models the method laid out in the Campaign Hexagon System published by Judges Guild, the idea being that you can perfectly synchronize your local and regional maps, allowing you to zoom in (and out) as needed.

GUESS THE HEX

In DL10 Dragons of Dreams, another Tracy Hickman design, we return to the region-based mapping of DL1 and DL3. This particular implementation is fairly perfunctory, however:

The PCs are supposed to hitch a ride with some griffins in Tarsis, but if they don’t the scenario is backstopped with this region-based ‘crawl across the Plains of Dust.

What’s interesting here is that Hickman actually leans into what I generally consider to be the flaw with under-keyed hexmaps: The players have to blindly play a game of “guess the hex” until they find the right one.

In this case, the area is inhospitable and in order to survive the journey the PCs have to find a source of food. To do that, they need to hit one of the hexes keyed to Encounter 3 (which contain bushy plainsfruit plants).

THE WARGAME

DL11 Dragons of Glory, designed by Douglas Niles and Tracy Hickman, is not an adventure module. It is, in fact, a full-blown hex-and-chit wargame. This means, of course, that the board is a giant hexmap, this one depicting the entire continent of Ansalon at a 20-mile scale.

(The DL11 map does not include a scale, but the hexes are isomorphic with the Western Ansalon region maps in DL6 and DL8, which do indicate the 20-mile scale.)

I haven’t fully explored this wargame yet (although I hope to), but what’s notable here is that it’s designed to be integrated with a simultaneous RPG campaign. The common use of hexmaps makes it possible for the events in the wargame to have a direct affect on the narrative of the RPG campaign (and vice versa).

(At leas hypothetically. In practice, this does not appear to work quite as slickly or produce as cool a result as one might hope. But, again, I’m hoping to explore this further.)

The interesting thing here is that this very much harkens back to why hexmaps were used in RPGs in the first place: The earliest RPGs were designed to integrate character roleplaying with wargame sessions. In Arneson’s original Blackmoor campaign, in fact, the idea was that characters would earn their fortunes in the dungeon, establish fiefdoms for themselves, and then fight wars for dominance.

In Arneson’s campaign, in fact, PCs belonged to either Team Good or Team Bad, who were opposed to each other in the wargame component of the campaign. (The root of the modern alignment system.) You could actually imagine a daring reimagining of the Dragonlance Saga in which the players were simultaneously playing the heroic Innfellows, the villainous Dragonlords, and a War of the Lance wargame, with all three components dynamically interacting with each other.

THE UNDERDARK

In DL13 Dragons of Truth, another of Tracy Hickman’s designs, we have yet another hexmap variation:

The poster map depicts a dual hexmap: One depicting the wilderness and another, perfectly synced with the first, showing the underdark beneath (here known as the “dark network”).

There’s not much to say about this final example, but it’s a great example of the type of utility you can glean from well-scaled maps and of the varied forms of utility the Dragonlance designers wrung from their hexmaps.

FURTHER READING
5E Hexcrawls
A Quick History of D&D

This article is going to make a lot more sense if you’re familiar with:

• the Dragonlance Saga
• Hexcrawls
• Pointcrawls

Dragonlance was created in 1982 by Tracy and Laura Hickman. Tracy and Laura had self-published several D&D modules, which had resulted in Tracy being hired by TSR, Inc. While they were driving from Utah to TSR’s headquarters in Wisconsin, they came up with the idea of an epic series of modules featuring what were, at the time, all twelve types of dragons.

In 1983, TSR’s marketing department identified a common theme in their survey data: Dungeons & Dragons had lots of dungeons, but where were all the dragons? In response, proposals were requested for a dragon-themed project. Two proposals were submitted – one by Tracy Hickman and one by Douglas Niles – and Hickman’s was selected. Under the guidance of Harold Johnson, an all-star team of designers and artists was assembled.

The result was a series of fourteen modules – DL1 through DL14 – consisting of twelve linked adventures, a setting gazetteer (DL5) and a wargame (DL11). These fourteen modules are the original Dragonlance Saga, which gave rise to novels, comics, calendars, miniatures and more.

Hexcrawls are a method of running wilderness adventures. The wilderness is mapped onto a hexmap and content is keyed to each hex. Travel mechanics then determine how the PCs move through the hexmap and when/how they trigger the content keyed to each hex. You can find more information on hexcrawls in the 5E Hexcrawls series.

Pointcrawls are another method of running exploration and travel adventures. A map is prepped with multiple points connected by paths. Content is keyed to each point, and the PCs can maneuver through the pointmap by choosing one of the paths connected to whatever point they’re currently in. Pointcrawls are often used to model wilderness trails, but can have varied applications. You can find more details about pointcrawls here, and there’s an example of a pointcrawl here as part of the Descent Into Avernus Remix.

Hexcrawls, like dungeons, have been around since the earliest days of the hobby. Even before Dungeons & Dragons was published, Dave Arneson was using the hexmap from a game called Outdoor Survival to run wilderness adventures for his Castle Blackmoor campaign.

During the ‘80s, however, unlike dungeons, hexcrawl play slowly withered away. I believe there were a couple reasons for this. First, hexcrawls are not a terribly efficient form of adventure prep. Because you’re keying content to a bunch of different hexes without knowing exactly which hexes a group of PCs might visit, hexcrawls are best suited for scenarios in which the PCs will repeatedly engage with the same chunk of wilderness (so that they’ll encounter different hexes over time).

This makes hexcrawls a great fit for open tables (like Dave Arneson’s Castle Blackmoor or, later, Gary Gygax’s Castle Greyhawk), in which there are multiple groups of PCs exploring the area. But as play increasingly shifted towards dedicated tables (with a smaller number of players who are all expected to attend each session) and plot-based play, it made less and less sense to prep hexcrawls.

For similar reasons, it was difficult for RPG publishers to print fully functional hexcrawls within the constraints of the pamphlet format used for adventure supplements. Very few true hexcrawls were ever published, and those that did see print were never truly complete. TSR, in particular, would usually only print hexmaps with adventure-relevant locations keyed to them (leaving vast swaths of unkeyed territory for the DM to fill in, assuming it even made sense to do so in the first place). So, unlike a dungeon, new DMs couldn’t just pick up a published hexcrawl and run it. They also didn’t have any fully developed examples to base their own designs on.

By 1984-86, when the Dragonlance Saga was published, the industry and hobby were already at a turning point. Although TSR would continue depicting wilderness areas using hexmaps until the early ‘90s, actual hexcrawls were more or less done. (They wouldn’t reappear until the early 21^st century.) It’s interesting, therefore, to look at how the Dragonlance Saga was using hexmaps as an example of this transitional period.

This was even more true because the Dragonlance Saga was a radically experimental project. Not only had nothing of this scope been attempted before, but the Saga was also a massive multimedia experience – not only the famous Chronicles trilogy of novels, but also integration with the BattleSystem™ miniature combat system and a full-fledged wargame. All of this was in service of created an epic fantasy adventure for D&D.

That might seem utterly unremarkable today. (“An epic fantasy campaign for D&D? Of course. Eighteen of them get published every month.”) But this was also something new: Del Rey Books had only recently revealed to the world that LOTR-esque fantasy epics like Terry Brooks’ Sword of Shannara or David Eddings’ Belgariad could be hugely successful, and it was this type of story that Tracy Hickman and the Dragonlance design team wanted to bring to D&D for the first time.

This meant that the designers were also trying to figure out how to do an adventure like this. So they were experimenting with adapting existing adventure design techniques and creating new techniques at the very moment that hexcrawls were dying out.

So when we look at the myriad ways that the Dragonlance Saga used hexmaps, we’re peering into an RPG skunkworks that was grappling with something utterly new and fighting with all of their ingenuity to bring players and DMs a grand experience.. Once we do that, I think we can really appreciate these innovations for what they were, and also learn from them.

REGION CRAWLS

DL1 Dragons of Despair features this hexmap:

At first glance, this sure looks like a hexcrawl. It even features sub-hexes. (The larger, 20-mile hexes are made up of smaller, 1-mile hexes.)

But if you take a closer look, you’ll notice that the map is actually broken up into regions using thin black lines. It’s these regions which are actually keyed.

For example, the entirety of region 33 is keyed as the Kiri Valley:

The forest darkens and thickens beside an ancient trail. A cold, dry stillness hovers in the air, and the trees are knotted and bent. Everything seems to watch you.

An evil wizard died here long ago. Only his essence remains.

This technique allows Hickman’s key to cover the entire map without needing to key content to every individual hex.

If I was redoing this or taking inspiration from this, I would probably ditch the hexes entirely. Although they can be hypothetically helpful in counting out movement, they’re mostly getting in the way and badly impairing the legibility of the map.

(The 20-mile hexes do appear to correspond with a larger map printed in later modules, most notably DL11 Dragons of Glory, which we’ll discuss later. So there might be an argument for keeping those.)

JUST THE MAP, MA’AM

DL2 Dragons of Flame by Douglas Niles features an all-new, full color map of the same area which has also been expanded to the south:

(This is only a sample of the large map, which extends down to a fortress called Pax Tharkas. Oddly the map lists the scale as 1 hex = 2 km, but the hexes align perfectly with the DL1 map.)

This map is an extreme version of many hexmaps that would follow: Rendered using hexes because that had become the expected norm for wilderness maps, but completely divorced from any key or structure that would make the hexmap relevant.

SURPRISE POINTCRAWL

DL3 Dragons of Hope, once again by Tracy Hickman, features a large, unkeyed poster map that unifies the previous hexmaps and then adds a big region to the south of Pax Tharkas (where DL3 takes place).

(Sorry for the poor image quality. Unfortunately, I only have a digital copy of this module and when Wizards scanned the PDF they completely botched it.)

This map seems pretty clearly intended for players, but it’s an odd one. Since DL2 didn’t feature regions, the middle of the map just… doesn’t have them.

The new DL3 regions were keyed on a separate inset map, which looked like this:

As you can see, the hex borders were eliminated. This makes the regions much easier to pick out, but obviously obfuscates the hexes.

The more crucial thing is that, although this looks like it’s meant to be run like the region-crawl in DL1, it’s actually keyed to work like what we would now call a pointcrawl. Here’s an example:

3. Southern Road

The broken remains of an ancient roadway glitter with windswept ice. Here and there, old monuments of stone jut from the frozen ground. Their surfaces are covered with snow-filled runes.

To the south, the way branches. The roadway, mostly covered in snow, turns to the east. To the west is a mountain pass that leaves the road. A set of footprints, short of step, follows the southwest route.

You’re not navigating by hex here. You’re choosing whether to follow the road or the pass and then you’re proceeding to the next keyed encounter along the path you’ve selected.

Go to Part 2