IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 27D: THE MAW OPENS

September 7th, 2008
The 15th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

AT THE CITADEL OF MIGHT

Dominic and Agnarr, however, had continued on to the Citadel of Might. At first glance the Citadel appeared to be a rather intimidating fortress, but a closer inspection as they drew near revealed most of the apparent fortifications to be nothing more than a façade.

Entering the building they found a rather confusing scene: Various pieces of furniture had been broken and a half dozen or so unconscious bodies had been leaned up against the nearest wall.

Agnarr grabbed the nearest upright person. “What happened?”

The man shrugged. “They just went crazy. We had to knock ‘em out.” He finished propping up the last of them. “Now, what brings you to the Order?”

“I received a letter. I’m here to confirm that I’m still alive.”

“That’s definitely better than being dead,” the man grinned. “What’s your name?”

“Agnarr.”

“Ah. Right. I remember sending that letter this morning.”

“What was the last job I got here?”

“You having problems getting paid?”

Agnarr shook his head. “I’m just curious.”

“You don’t remember? Did you take one too many blows to the head?” the man laughed. Agnarr laughed with him.

The man checked the guild’s records. “Actually, it looks like you never took a job here. But you’re all paid up. And your locker’s squared away. And you’re alive. So you’re good to go.”

“Locker?”

The man showed Agnarr to a locker in a small side room. Agnarr waited until he left and then smashed the cheap lock.

The first thing that caught Agnarr’s attention was his original greatsword – the blade that had been given to him by the people of his clan. He lifted it with a grin, feeling the familiar weight settle comfortably into his hand.

Putting the sword aside for a moment he looked through the rest of the locker’s contents. There was a suit of padded armor (suitable for practice sessions), a sheaf of blank parchment, and several charcoal sticks suitable for writing. These latter items seemed to confirm that Agnarr had been literate during their period of lost memories.

“You know,” Dominic said. “If you learned it once, you could probably learn it again.”

Agnarr grunted noncommittally. He put the padded armor on and found it to be a perfect fit. And since he’d already put on the armor, he decided to go sparring for a bit. But this left him vaguely unsatisfied as he easily gained the upper hand against the cheap hired muscle making up most of the crowd there.

After an hour he put the armor away, secured the greatsword in his bag of holding, and then returned to the front desk.

“The lock on my locker’s broken. Can you get that fixed?”

“Huh. It must have gotten busted up during the brawl. We’ll get that fixed right up for you.”

THE SHORTEST INTERROGATION

Once Dominic and Agnarr returned to the Ghostly Minstrel, Tee gathered all of them – except for Elestra who was still out prowling the streets somewhere – in her room. Once there, she and Agnarr revealed the identity of the dark elf and reminded the others of the prophecy they had seen in Pythoness House:

The Saint of Chaos shall return and the Banewarrens shall ope their maw. And the name of doom shall be Tavan Zith.

“What does that mean?” Elestra asked.

“I don’t know,” Tee said. “Let’s ask him.”

She pulled Zith out of her bag of holding. Tor bound him securely. Tee blindfolded him. And Dominic healed him.

As soon as Tavan Zith awoke, however, they all felt a sickening, bursting feeling erupting in their chests. Agnarr instinctively smashed the pommel of his sword into the dark elf’s nose, breaking it and sending him plunging back into unconsciousness.

But it was already too late. Dominic’s skin was toughening into a thick, fibrous, sickly grey substance. Tee, meanwhile, suffered a quivering pulsation starting somewhere in her ribs – she felt uncontrollable power surging through her limbs, trying to tear its way out of her.

Then, suddenly, she felt Tor’s hands on her shoulders. “Fight it, Tee! You can fight it!” His voice was strong and reassuring. They were an anchor. She found herself focusing on those words and pulling away from whatever was fighting to tear itself loose from inside of her.

The moment passed.

Agnarr looked at Dominic. “Is that another sign of Vehthyl?”

Ranthir examined Dominic and determined that the effect wouldn’t persist for more than an hour or so.

But now they weren’t sure what to do. Zith was clearly dangerous. And he seemed to bring with him grim tidings. (“Although our saint did kick their saint’s ass,” Agnarr said, patting Dominic on the shoulder.) But they didn’t have any way to control him. Or even to question him, apparently.

The best idea they could come up with was to perhaps toss the entire thing into Lord Zavere’s lap, although Tor pointed out that they had often done that before. Perhaps too often.

While they were mulling the issue over, however, a knock came at the door. Tee quickly gestured for Tor and Agnarr to get Zith’s body hidden out of sight behind her bed.

They opened the door cautiously… and found Tellith standing on the other side.

“Jevicca Nor is waiting downstairs. She’s asked to speak with you. She says its urgent.”

“We’ll be right down,” Tee promised.

Agnarr looked down at his acid-stained clothes and panicked. He couldn’t let Jevicca see him like this. He headed to his room to change. Tor and Dominic stayed in Tee’s room to watch over Zith. Which left Tee and Ranthir to head downstairs and meet with Jevicca.

As they came down the stairs into the lobby, however, they were taken by surprise at the sight of her. Jevicca looked imperious and stood taller than they had ever seen her before. There was a palpable difference between this Jevicca and the Jevicca who came to enjoy the camaraderie of the common room.

“What is it?” Tee asked.

“I’m here on behalf of the Inverted Pyramid. We should speak in private,” Jevicca said.

They took her back up to Ranthir’s room. Agnarr joined them on the way. Once the door was safely shut behind them, Jevicca began to speak…

… AND THE BANEWARRENS SHALL OPE THEIR MAW

“Those who know the true history of the world speak of five ages: The Age of Stars, the Age of Gods, the Age of Sorcerers, the Age of Dragons, and the Age of Man.

“In the dawning years of the Age of Sorcerers – countless millennia ago and long before any written history you have ever read – the Great Sorcerer Ptolus founded the first city of Ptolus. Little is now known of the sorcerer Ptolus, but Ptolus had an apprentice named Danar.

“In time, Danar eventually became a Great Sorcerer in his own right and near the city of his master he built a fortress named Mosul Pearl. The world was troubled then, and Danar became distressed at the great evil that seemed to be growing in its strength. And so Danar sought to rid the world of its corruption. He studied the secrets of  evil artifacts, objects of dark power, trapped essences of vanquished fiends, demonic relics, and even the last vestiges of particularly horrible diseases. He named these “banes”, and he began to gather them from all corners of the world.

“Danar did not seek to destroy them, however. He believed that, if destroyed, the evil of the banes would be released back into the world and manifest again in some other form. Destroying banes would only begat new banes.

“Instead, Danar constructed a vast catacomb beneath the fortress of Mosul Pearl. He named this place Tremoc Korin – the Banewarrens. Within its well-warded vaults he sealed the banes, locking them away from the world for all time.

“But Danar’s goal was folly. Concentrating so much raw hatred and despite – so much darkness and evil power – in a single place was a terrible mistake. The earth itself, no longer able to tolerate the concentrated evil that the banes represented, thrust Tremoc Korin away from itself – creating a tall, impossibly high and narrow spire atop which Mosul Pearl still stood.

“Danar, however, was undeterred. And, in time, the evil he had gathered seeped into his soul. Danar was corrupted himself and his soul turned to darkness. He became the Banelord, transforming his castle to the dark keep of Jabel Shammar, and using the banes he once strove to keep out of evil hands to spread his own evil across the land.

“Ptolus and his city were destroyed by the Banelord. And then, having succored his strength, the Banelord attacked the civilized lands for thousands of leagues in every direction, raining destruction down upon the world and all its inhabitants. In the end he was defeated by an alliance of Great Sorcerers and god-touched heroes who were marked by the Sigils of the Pantheon. From this alliance the First Conclave of the Sorcerer-Kings was born.

“But the Spire remains. Jabel Shammar remains. And it has been long believed that the Banewarrens remained… sealed and impregnable beneath the surface of the earth, but still filled with ancient evils. Many – including Ghul himself – have come to Ptolus seeking a way into the Banewarrens so that they might claim that power for themselves. But they have always failed. The terrors of the Banewarren have remained lost.

“Now, however, we believe that has changed. We detected the surge of wild magic you encountered in Oldtown earlier today and our subsequent divinations reveal that a path has been opened into the Banewarrens. We don’t know how and we don’t why, but we desperately need to find out what’s happening. And we’d like you to do it for us.”

Running the Campaign: Trigger & Stitch – Campaign Journal: Session 28A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Go to Running the Hexcrawl

The Thracian Hexcrawl was an open table I ran using the original 1974 edition of D&D. The example below is an abbreviated, annotated record of actual play from that campaign, which I’ve adapted slightly to be consistent with the mechanics and procedures detailed in 5E Hexcrawls.

BEGINNING THE SESSION

As the players arrive, I pull their character sheets out of the appropriate folder. Since this is an open table, the players may be choosing which of their active PCs they’re going to be playing. (After which, I’ll return the other characters to the folder.)

In my Thracian Hexcrawl, two things happen at this point:

1. I make a rumor check for each primary PC (not for hirelings; although it’s possible for a hireling to be the vector by which a PC hears the rumor). There’s a 1 in 3 chance for each PC that they’ll receive a rumor. If they do, I roll on the rumor table.
2. I make a morale check for each hireling employed by the active PCs. On a success, the hireling continues adventuring with their employer. On a failure, I use a system based on the OD&D reaction table to determine the hireling’s action: They might automatically leave the PC’s service or demand an additional bonus of some variable amount. (Usually nothing happens, because the players have learned to keep the morale of their hirelings high.)
3. I make a check to potentially generate new hirelings who are available for hire in the home base.

Based on these checks, and their outcomes, I update the campaign status sheet appropriately.

While I’m doing this, the players are generally getting prepared for the adventure. This may be creating new characters if they’re needed. For established characters, it includes:

1. Discussing what their expedition is going to be.
2. Buying equipment.
3. Hiring hirelings.
4. Any other business they might need to attend to while in town.

The players may, of course, have questions for me while they’re doing this. It’s generally pretty easy to juggle their requests while simultaneously taking care of my bookkeeping.

STARTING OUT

While the players are wrapping things up, I’ll grab my 6d8 and roll them. This represents a full day’s worth of encounter checks (since there are six watches in a day). By reading the dice left-to-right as they fall, I can rapidly determine which watches in the day have an encounter. Since I don’t know yet where the PCs will be on those days, I can’t generate the specific encounters (which are region-dependent), but I can use my worksheet to jot down the Day/Watch when encounters will be happening. By generating three or four days worth of encounter checks up front, I can simplify my workflow once the PCs hit the road.

Note: If I do, in fact, know that the PCs are going to be heading in a particular direction and will likely be traveling through a given region for a lengthy period of time, I can also go ahead and generate full encounters at this point.

In this case, the PCs are in the city of Maernath, located in Hex O6. Maernath is an old city-state in the setting. It was here long before the Duchy of Thracia began pushing east in recent years (establishing the Keep on the Borderlands and the logging village of Caerdheim to the south) and the City Fathers occasionally chaff against the “authority” of the newcomers. Although the early adventures of the PCs were based primarily out of Caerdheim (which was near the Caverns of Thracia), an increase in interest in the Palace of Red Death to the north led to an increased number of expeditions being mounted from Maernath. Those expeditions resulted in various PCs gaining a lot of lore about the area surrounding Maernath and that, in turn, spurred even more expeditions there.

The PCs leave town along the road heading south. They choose to travel at normal pace. Because they’re following a Road/Trail through Plains hex, their movement modifier is x1, which means they move at their normal expedition speed of 12 miles per watch. (We’re not using the advanced rules for determining expedition speed based on the speed of the expedition’s slowest member.)

Maernath’s position in Hex O6 is biased, so it only takes 4 progress to exit the hex in this direction. They’re aiming for the river, which is on the road right at the border of the hex (so they obviously have no difficulty finding it).

Their goal is to follow the river into the Old Forest (Hex P7), so now I’m going to look ahead: Their course along the river takes them through the near side of the hex (6 miles away) into Hex P6 and, from there, they will then pass through another near side into Hex P7 (another 6 miles). Although they’ve left the road, they’re still traveling through Plains and the river provides enough of a track that they’re still traveling at 12 miles per watch. Total it up:

4 miles (Maernath to River/Hex O7) + 6 miles (O7 to P6) + 6 miles (P6 to P7) = 16 miles

Which means they’ll arrive at the edge of the Old Forest a little over an hour into their second watch. This is notable because, looking at my worksheet, I can see that the second watch of the day has a wandering encounter (I rolled 1 on the 1d8 when making the encounter check). I can determine the time in a watch by rolling 1d8. The result is a 3, which basically means the encounter is scheduled to take place just as they’re reaching the edge of the Old Forest.

This is a border hex, and I’ve listed a 50% chance of border encounters for the Old Forest. So even though we’re still in the Plains, there’s a 50% chance that I’ll roll an Old Forest encounter instead.

1. I roll a 13, so that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
2. I flip to the Old Forest encounter table and roll. The result I get is “Slimes,” which has a sub-table which generates Gray Ooze.
3. Gray Ooze has a 25% chance of being a Tracks encounter, but I roll 46 (so it’s not).

They have no chance of being a Lair encounter, so I can skip that step.

Given the confluence of factors involved, I’m going to have the Gray Oozes appear just as the river passes beneath the boughs of the Old Forest. They’ll be draped across the tree branches above the river like some kind of horrific Spanish moss.

INTO THE OLD FOREST

After the PCs have dealt with (or avoided) the Gray Oozes, they’ll be able to continue along the river. It’s a Medium Forest and the trail has disappeared, so their speed is going to drop by ½. They had 8 miles of movement left in their second watch, so they’ll be able to gain 4 progress through Hex P7.

Three miles along the river, however, they come to a tree on the south bank of the river with the Dwarven letter “mu” carved into its trunk. They’re familiar with it. In fact, one of the PCs left it here as a marker: Gordur, a powerful orc stronghold, lies several miles due south from this spot.

This, however, is not their goal. They continue along the river for another mile and then make camp for the night. The next day, they continue another two miles until they find a similar tree with the Dwarven letter “thod” carved into it. This marker was place due north of the Crypt of Luan Phien. The crypt is their ultimate goal, so now they turn south, away from the clear navigational landmark of the river, and into the depths of the Old Forest.

At this point, they need to start making navigation checks. Epicaste, a hireling rescued by the dwarf Aeng from a thousand-year slumber in the Caverns of Thracia, is the group’s navigator, so she steps forward and takes point.

1. It’s a Medium Forest, so the Navigation DC is 16.
2. Epicaste blows the check. (Possibly because Delmhurst, another hireling, keeps second-guessing her.) I roll 1d10 to determine the group’s veer. With a roll of 8, I determine that they’re veering to the right. Instead of heading due south into Hex P8 (which is where they want to go), they’re going to end up southwest in Hex O8.

LOST IN THE OLD FOREST

When does that actually happen? Well, they entered Hex P7 from due north. Whether they’re leaving into Hex P8 or Hex O8, they’re still existing through the far side of the hex. So they need to rack up 12 progress to exit the hex.

• They’d gained 4 progress in the hex during their second watch. They don’t want to do a forced march, so they stop traveling after the second watch.
• During the first watch of the next day (their third watch of travel overall), they’ll gain another 6 progress. That’s a total of 10 progress, which is not quite enough.
• Therefore, they’ll enter Hex O8 about midway through the second watch of their second day of travel.

Checking my worksheet, I can see that I generated a location encounter for the second watch of the second day, so once again I generate a random time and determine that they’ll encounter the hex’s keyed location AFTER they’ve entered Hex O8. (If the encounter had happened earlier, it would have been with the keyed location in Hex P7.)

I flip to the key for Hex O8:

Me: Towards the waning hours of the day, you enter a small clearing. Criss-crossing branches grow into what appear to be houses with walls of woven moss.

Aeng: I don’t remember this.

Delmhurst: I think the thousand-year dummy has gotten us lost again.

It turns out the strange houses are empty and abandoned. It’s getting late in the day, so the PCs decide to make camp here for the night. They’ll try to backtrack the trail the next day and figure out where they made the wrong turn.

And that’s basically all there is to it. With a strong key and a clean procedure, the hexcrawl will flow naturally in response to the explorations of the PCs, drawing them deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the wilderness.

Next: Example of Play – Avernian Hexcrawl

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This will be a detailed look at the actual process of running a hexcrawl at the gaming table: How I organize my tools, what I’m thinking about during the game, the decisions I make (and why I make them), how I play with and exploit the tools, and so forth.

I’m not entirely sure how useful this will be, but I’m hoping it will provide some useful insight and practical advice into using 5E Hexcrawls.

THE FOUR DOCUMENTS

What I’ve found over the years is that no two campaigns ever use exactly the same methods of documentation, but when I’m running a hexcrawl I generally find that I’m maintaining four “documents”:

• THE HEX MAP. Printed off on a single 8.5” x 11” piece of paper that I can lay flat on the table in front of me.
• THE BINDER. This contains the campaign key. It includes background information (historical epochs, current civilizations, custom terrain types, environmental conditions, etc.), random encounter tables, and the hex key.
• THE FOLDER. Each document in this folder details a single location. As described in Designing the Hexcrawl, any location that requires more than a single page to describe gets bumped out of the hex key and placed in its own document. (This keeps the hex key clean and easy to use; it also makes it easier to organize and use these larger adventures.) Each adventure location is labeled with and sorted by its hex number for easy access when needed.
• CAMPAIGN STATUS SHEET. This document is updated and reprinted for each session. It’s responsible for keeping the campaign in motion. In my Thracian Hexcrawl, for example, the campaign status sheet included: A list of current events in Caerdheim and Maernath (the two cities serving as home base for the PCs); a list of empty complexes (which I reference when I make a once-per-session check to see if they’ve been reinhabited); the current rumor table; details about the various businesses being run by the PCs; and the master loyalty/morale table for PC hirelings. I talk about campaign status sheets in more detail over here.

STATUS QUO PREP

The heart of the hexcrawl, of course, is the hex key itself (along with the folder of detailed locations). And because the promise of the hexcrawl is that the PCs can go anywhere they want, it takes a lot of front-loaded prep to get this material ready for the first session of play.

The up-side, though, is that once all that prep is finished, a hexcrawl campaign based around wilderness exploration becomes incredibly prep-light: I typically spend no more than 10-15 minutes getting ready for each session, because all I’m really doing is jotting down a few notes to keep my documentation up to date with what happened in the last session.

What makes this work is that the content of each hex is designed in a state of “status quo” until the PCs touch it. Once the PCs start touching stuff, of course, the ripples can start spreading very fast and very far. However, in the absence of continued PC interaction, things in the campaign world will generally trend back towards a new status quo.

This status quo method generally only works if you have robust, default structures for delivering scenario hooks. In the case of the hexcrawl, of course, I do: Both the rumor tables and the hexcrawl structure itself will drive PCs towards new scenarios. (If all else fails in a hexcrawl, of course, the PCs can always choose a direction and start walking to find something interesting to do.)

The advantage of the status quo method is that it minimizes the amount of work you have to do as a GM. (Keeping 100+ hexes up in the air and active at all times would require a ridiculous amount of effort.) It also minimizes the amount of prep work which is wasted. (If you’re constantly generating background events that the PCs are unaware of and not interacting with, that’s all wasted effort.)

In practical terms, it means that you prep for each session consists of “touching base” on a half dozen or perhaps a dozen “active” hexes. That might mean:

• Updating the adversary roster
• Updating the key to reflect PC actions (although if you keep good notes during play, this is often perfunctory)
• Repopulating an empty location (using your random encounter tables or following your inspiration)

In addition to whatever tasks are necessary around the PCs’ home base.

A key thing to keep in mind throughout this process is that “status quo” doesn’t mean “boring.” It also doesn’t mean that literally nothing is happening at a given location. For example, the status quo for a camp of goblin slavers isn’t “the goblins all sit around.” The status quo is that there’s a steady flow of slaves passing through the camp and being sold.

For a deeper discussion of this, check out Status Quo Design.

SETUP

An hour or so before the game is scheduled to start, I’ll set up the table.

I sit at one end of a long dining room table. I place a TV tray to the left of my chair and another TV tray to the right of my chair. Then I pull out the box that I keep all my hexcrawl material in.

On the TV tray to my right, I place the Binder that contains the campaign key and the Folder that contains the documents detailing individual locations.

There’s a second folder that contains my GM Screen. I use a moduler screen, that allows me to insert reference sheets. (The reference sheets consist of the watch checklist and all supporting material, like terrain modifiers.) This folder also contains several copies of my GM Hexcrawl Worksheet, and I pull one of those out and place it on the table in front of me.

I remove the Hex Map from the binder and also place that on the table in front of me.

Next, the Rulebooks. I place those on the TV tray to my left. If I have additional copies for the players, I’ll place those in the middle of the table.

I also have a folder of Player Supplies, which are also placed in the middle of the table:

• Blank paper (including graph paper and hex paper)
• Blank character sheets (for an open table; I’ll also remove these once we start playing to reduce clutter)
• Communal maps (which have been drawn by the players and shared with the group)

Also in the campaign box are the Characters. I have a folder for living characters in the campaign and another folder for dead characters. These stay in the box: I generally don’t need to reference them during play, so it’s best to keep them out of the way.

I print out a copy of the Campaign Status Sheet for the current session and also place it on the table in front of me.

Finally, I’ll grab my dice bag and lay out the Dice I need: 2d4, 8d6, 6d8, 2d10, 2d12, 6d20.

• 8d6 for fireballs and lightning bolts.
• 6d8 so that I can roll an entire day’s worth of encounter checks in a single go.
• 6d20 because I can simultaneously roll an entire mob’s attack rolls. (These are generally in three pairs of matching colors, so that I can easily group them for mixed types.)

(See Random GM Tip: Fistfuls of Dice for more advice on rolling and reading lots of dice at the same time.)

Next: Example of Play – Thracian Hexcrawl

Go to Part 1

#5. IMPROVISED RANDOM GENERATORS

Okay, we started by filling the map with every ounce of creative thought we had. Then we started recklessly stealing everything we could lay our hands on. But we’re still staring at empty hexes. Now what?

Now we need to get our creative juices flowing again by rapidly injecting fresh ideas that will break us out of the dried-out box our thinking is currently trapped in. There are a lot of ways to provide this stimuli.

For example, I’ve used Magic the Gathering cards to provide inspiration. In fact, you can use the MTGRANDOM website to generate a random Magic card. Let’s do that a few times and see what we get:

(click for large image)

So what I’m seeing here are some incredibly creepy constructs. Let’s say there’s a bunch of them. They’re harvesting spores from a crop of strange flowers that blossomed in the wake of an meteorite falling to earth. How do these constructs work? Well, looks like brains are being sucked out of people and placed into the constructs. Obviously Kjora there is in charge of the whole operation.

Combine that basic set up with an appropriate map from Dyson Logos and you should be good to go.

Alternatively, grab a random map from Dyson Logos first and then use the Goblin Ampersand to help you figure out what’s happening there by flipping to two random pages in the Monster Manual.

Another option is to repurpose random encounter generators. Sadly, this is a tool lacking in 5^th Edition, but older editions include comprehensive generators that can be used (and a variety third-party options can be found).

For example, using the generators found in the 1^st Edition of AD&D:

1. Roll 1d8 to determine a column on the “Sub-Arctic Conditions” encounter table. I roll a 6, so the result is “Mountains.”
2. Roll 1d100 with a result of 65. That’s a giant owl. According to the 1^st Edition Monster Manual, giant owls appear in groups of 1d4+1. I roll and generate a group of five owls.
3. Giant owls have a treasure type of “Q x 5, X.” I roll on those treasure tables and I get 1 miscellaneous magic, 1 potion, and 1 gem. Rolling on the sub-tables, I get a black pearl (500 gp), a potion of human control, and an amulet of life protection.

Okay, the hex I’m looking at is in the Old Forest, so let’s try something like this:

N7 – TREE OF THE ELDER OWL

A giant tree, over 80 feet wide at its base and towering several hundred feet in the air. Around the base of the tree are a number of strange carvings, intermixed with primitive pictures of owls.

CALL OF THE OWL: Anyone performing an owl call near the base of the tree will cause a hidden door to open, allowing passage into the hollow center of the trunk.

COUNCIL OF OWLS: Within the tree, four giant owls sit on perches. For an appropriate tribute, these owls can each cast augury once per day.

UPPER EYRIE: For a much larger tribute, the Council will have the supplicant remove their arms and armor. Then one of the owls will clutch them by the shoulders and fly them to the upper eyrie where they will be placed before the Elder Owl.

THE ELDER OWL: The left eye of the Elder Owl has been replaced with a black pearl (500 gp) and he wears an amulet of life protection. The Elder Owl will answer questions as per a commune spell, but he is also completely enamored with physical beauty: If someone of particular beauty (Charisma 16+) presents themselves, he will use his potion of human control in an attempt to enslave them.

#6. SPIN-OFFS

Regardless of how you’re stocking a hex, you should keep your mind open to other locations that the current hex suggests.

For example, you’ve got a necromancer in a crystalline spire who’s served by a bunch of goblins he’s charmed by writing arcane runes on the insides of their eyelids and then sewing their eyelids shut. Where’d he get the goblins from? Maybe there’s a village of them living nearby. They protect a tree that bears a single, bright red fruit each year. The fruit has magical properties and each year the necromancer comes to claim the fruit and take away goblin slaves.

Or you’re keying a grotto that a bunch of bandits are using as a hideout. Turns out these bandits have longbows of remarkably high quality. This is because they’re trading with a one-eyed troll who lives in a cave that can only be accessed through a green crystal which thrusts up through the forest floor: Lay your hand upon the crystal, say the magic password, and the crystal becomes intangible. The troll is a master bowyer.

#7. WALK AWAY

Finally, be willing to walk away from the project and take a break: Watch a TV show. Read a book. Flip through some unrelated game manuals. Power up the PS5.

Give your brain a chance to breathe and your creative batteries a chance to recharge.

This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a comprehensive catalog or definitive technique for keying a hexcrawl. It’s just stuff that’s worked for me while keying hexcrawls.

Back to 5E Hexcrawls