The hexcrawl is a game structure for running wilderness exploration scenarios. Although it was initially a core component of the D&D experience, the hexcrawl slowly faded away. By 1989 there were only a few vestigial hex maps cropping up in products and none of them were actually designed for hexcrawl play. That’s when the 2nd Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons removed hexcrawling procedures from the rulebooks entirely.
It wasn’t until Necromancer Games brought the Wilderlands back into print and Ben Robbins’ West Marches campaign went viral that people started to rediscover the lost art of the hexcrawl. The format has returned to prominence in recent years through releases like the Kingmaker campaign for Pathfinder and Tomb of Annihilation for D&D 5th Edition.
BASIC HEXCRAWL STRUCTURE
Hexcrawls are only one way of running wilderness travel (see Thinking About Wilderness Travel for some other options) and there are actually many different varieties of hexcrawls and schools of thought on how they should be designed or run. “True” hexcrawls, however, share four common features.
- They use a hexmap. In general, the terrain of the hex is given as a visual reference and the hex is numbered (either directly or by a gridded cross-reference). Additional features like settlements, dungeons, rivers, roads, and polities are also often shown on the map.
- Content is keyed to the hexmap. Using the numbered references, some or all of the hexes are keyed with locations and/or encounters.
- Travel mechanics determine how far the PCs can move and where they move while traveling overland. After determining which hex the PCs are starting in, the GM will use these mechanics (and the decisions the players make) to track their movement.
- When the PCs enter a hex, the GM will tell them the terrain type and determine whether or not the keyed content of the hexmap is triggered: If so, the PCs experience the event, encounter the monsters, or see the location. (There is often a 100% chance that the keyed content will be triggered.)
Around this basic structure you can build up a lot of additional features and alternative gameplay. For example, mechanics for random encounters and navigating (or, more importantly, getting lost in) trackless wastes are quite common. Hex-clearing procedures were once quite common, too, as an antecedent for stronghold-based play.
THE ALEXANDRIAN HEXCRAWL
In 2012, before 5th Edition was released, I wrote Hexcrawls: This series discussed hexcrawl procedures and laid out a robust structure for prepping and running hexcrawls in both 3rd Edition and the original 1974 edition of the game.
The Alexandrian Hexcrawl had several key design goals.
First, I wanted a structure that would hide the hexes from the players. In my personal playtesting, I found that the abstraction of the hex was extremely convenient on the GM’s side of the screen (for tracking navigation, keying encounters, and so forth), but had a negative impact on the other side of the screen: I wanted the players interacting with the game world, not with the abstraction. Therefore, the hexes in the Alexandrian Hexcrawl were a player-unknown structure.
Second, the structure was explicitly built for exploration. The structure, therefore, included a lot of rules for navigation, getting lost, and finding your way again. It was built around having the players constantly making new discoveries (even in places they’d been to before).
Third, the hex key features locations, not encounters. It’s not unusual to see hexcrawls in which encounters are keyed to a hex, like this one from the Wilderlands of the Magic Realm:
A charismatic musician sits on a rock entertaining a group of Halfling children. He sings songs of high adventure and fighting Orcs.
While the Alexandrian Hexcrawl system could be used with such keys, my intention was to focus the key on content that could be used more than once as PCs visit and re-visit the same areas. (This is particularly useful if you’re running an open game table.) In other words, the key is geography, not ephemera, with encounters being handled separately from the key.
Fourth, the system is built around the assumption that every hex is keyed. There may be rare exceptions — the occasional “empty” hex, for example — but if this is happening a lot it’s generally an indication that your hexcrawl is at the wrong scale. This tends to create two problems in actual play: First, it results in very poor pacing (with long spans of time in which navigational decisions are not resulting in interesting feedback in the form of content). Second, the lack of content equates to a lack of structure. One obvious example of this is that hexcrawls with vast spans of empty space lack sufficient landmarks in order to guide navigation.
(You run into similar problems if you have lots of densely packed hexes featuring multiple locations keyed to each hex: The abstraction of the hex stops working and your hexcrawl procedures collapse as the PCs engage in lots of sub-hex navigation.)
THE (MANY) RULES OF 5th EDITION WILDERNESS TRAVEL
Since the release of 5th Edition, I have been frequently asked to update the Alexandrian Hexcrawl to the new system. Unfortunately, there have been a couple impediments making this more difficult than it might first appear.
First, 5th Edition is not designed for hexcrawls. 3rd Edition didn’t feature hexcrawl play, either, but its rules were fundamentally grounded in a mechanical tradition that had originally been designed to support hexcrawl play, and it was therefore fairly straightforward to graft those procedures back onto those mechanics.
5th Edition, ironically, reintroduced hex-mapping to the core rulebooks, but mechanically trivializes or strips out essential mechanical elements that make hexcrawls (or, more generally, the challenges of wilderness exploration) work in actual play.
Second, the rules for overland travel and wilderness exploration in 5th Edition are a little… fraught.
- The rules are scattered haphazardly throughout the rulebooks and difficult to pull together into any sort of cohesive procedure.
- The rules actually change from one book to the next: The exploration procedures and travel distances in Tomb of Annihilation, for example, are just slightly different from those in the core rulebooks for no apparent reason. And the ones in the Wilderness Kit are different once again.
- The rules are vague in bafflingly inconsistent ways. For example, there is a specific rule about how many pounds of food you need each day. And there’s a specific rule about how many pounds of food you get while doing the Forage activity while traveling. It seems like those would link up, but the rule for how often you make a Forage check is “when [the DM] decides it’s appropriate.” Which could be every hour, every day, every week, or literally anything else.
- Most of the wilderness rules are not actually found in the SRD, making them inaccessible for projects outside of the Dungeon Master’s Guild.
Although these factors have largely stymied my efforts in the past, I’ve decided to more or less embrace the vague chaos of it all: If there is no coherent set of rules in the first place, then no one will probably care if I change them.
So my final design goal is to maintain the large, macro structures of 5th Edition wilderness travel that tie into other elements of the game – like how various classes modify your travel pace, for example – but otherwise tweak and change whatever needs to be altered to make things work.
Go to Part 2: Wilderness Travel
5E HEXCRAWLS
Part 2: Wilderness Travel
Part 3: Watch Actions
Part 4: Navigation
Part 5: Encounters
Part 6: Watch Checklists
Part 7: Hex Exploration
Part 8: Cheat Sheet
Hexcrawl Tool: Rumor Tables
Hexcrawl Tool: Spot Distances
Hexcrawl Tool: Tracks
Hexcrawl Addendum: Sketchy Hexcrawls
Hexcrawl Addendum: Designing the Hexcrawl
Hexcrawl Addendum: Running the Hexcrawl
Hexcrawl Addendum: Connecting Your Hexes
Hexcrawl Addendum: Special Encounter Tables
Yeah okay, kinda excited for this.
Yep, waiting with bated breath for this too. A good hexcrawl scratches every RPG itch I’ve ever had.
Yep, i spent a year trying to make consistent rules for 5e.
Interesting thing: human need 1 lb of food but standards ration has weigt of 2 lb.
Rules about harvesting food from corpses are in oota
Yep, me too, especially how to present it to the players, what the player-facing map looks like, how they declare their travels – practical stuff.
This is a good excuse to say this:
Your Alexandrian Hexcrawl has been incredibly, immensely influential and inspirational to me. It’s given me an entire solid base on which to do my own stuff, and in general your structures (such as NPC sheets, campaign document, etc) have been very useful.
I’ve even recently adapted the rules for PF2e, adapting and expanding the existing “Hexcrawl” rules from PF2e’s Gamemastery Guide into a new kind of “scale”. Pathfinder 2e has the very elegant Encounter Mode > Exploration Mode > Downtime Mode, so I added the “Travel Mode” in between exploration and downtime, or as a more structured form of downtime.
I’m still trying them out in-game with my group, seeing how much they match with expectations and if I need to tweak them.
Here it is, if you’re interested! (https://scribe.pf2.tools/v/37MQWdB9-grym-s-hexploration)
For what it’s worth, The One Ring has a heavy emphasis on wilderness travel using a hexmap, and I believe those mechanics were transferred over to the D&D5 version, Adventures in Middle Earth. We didn’t use them in our campaign because the GM got bored of them, which is probably not a recommendation…
I agree it’s preferable to have the players interact with the world rather than the map, but when I hid the hexes and tried to have them free-hand map, it got really tedious trying to describe their surroundings, especially when they would (very reasonably) go up on a vantage point to be able to see more (the mountain range in the distance goes from about 5 o’clock to 10 o’clock, the nearest part to the south is about 20 miles away, but it gets farther away as it goes west…). I quickly retreated to letting them see the hexes and fill them in, which was less immersive but vastly more convenient in play.
How do have your players map in your GM-facing setup?
Palikhov:
It’s possible that there’s excessive packaging. MREs, for instance, have a lot of bulky packaging that tend to get stripped as soon as soldiers start packing for missions. And “weight” in D&D has always been *sort of* abstracted to include bulkiness and other encumbrance factors.
But probably you’re right and it’s just an oversight.
Looking forward for that!
I’ve been trying for a while, but hexcrawling in 5e is very strange indeed.
Curse of Strahd’s map is drawn like an hexcrawl for no apparent reason; the hexes aren’t numbered, and you’re supposed to count hexes but you’re are mostly using roads (some roads have obvious shortcuts if you’re hexcrawling), so a point-crawl would be better.
In addition, food and water are strange – you get a ST to avoid dehydration but not hunger (I think 3.x had the same rules).
I wrote a couple of posts about this:
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/06/d-5e-fixing-food-and-water.html
http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2020/08/rant-bad-hexcrawl-in-tomb-of.html
I think having a coherent system for 5e would be a great idea!
Not running a 5e game, but still interested enough to see how this turns out.
I agree that 5E has some quite weak rules for hexcrawling. Some of the rules you will end up using are in the PHB while others are in the DMG. If you want random encounter tables by type of region, that’s XGtE…
You can see the change in focus for the game, in the PHB the Ranger has many abilities that interact with the exploration rules of the game (they sort of trivialise many things). But in the latest book, those abilities are replaced for something more streamlined.
I have been trying to use many of this rules, but by level 4 I feel most of this things were trivial for my group. The only thing that I manage to enforce are the traveling times, and pace they use. Supplies aren’t such a big problem, they already have two bags of holding and the rations are rather cheap. Something I struggle with are ENCOUNTERS, I have been using some kind of encounter every day of travel, it’s mostly an interesting landmark or something weird they find while they travel… rarely something they would make them stop
Oh, this has some great timing. I’m currently running a modified version of Lost mines of Phandelver, and some robust wilderness rules will help IMMENSELY. Thank you!
Cool! Just like dnob_nalon I’m currently running LMoP and since I’ve red the Alexandrian Hexcrawl’s post I’ve been wanting to try!
Btw, the Art of Key and Smart Prep made so much easier to run along this adventure
Wow, I was going to start work on something like for my next campaign myself. I’m really excited for this port.
I am literally just finishing up designing a 5e hexcrawl using the principles you outlined in your hexcrawls essay (because I didn’t have anything else to go on except Tomb of Annihilation and…yeah. No thanks). It took me like 6 months to get the damned thing fully stocked and ready to go, but I think it’ll be a lot of fun for my players when we get there.
I’ll be looking forward to your design, Mr. Alexander, since I suspect it will save me a ton of time on playtesting! 😀
Oh boy, I’m so excited for this series. I was JUST getting ready to dive into your 2012 essays for a new 5e campaign where overland travel is paramount. Looking forward to an updated version!
Into the Unknown on Drivethrurpg has 5e compatible, detailed hexcrawl rules. Might be worth considering for inspiration.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/13311/O5R-Games/subcategory/32808/Into-the-Unknown
“The rules are vague in bafflingly inconsistent ways.”
5e in a nutshell. The rulings not rules gets thrown around a lot by the developers, but I would like the rules to be concrete and in one place. This must be what they brought from AD&D!
Really looking forward to this, your articles on hexcrawling helped a lot when I made some sewer crawl systems.
Looking forward to #2.
Just want to second all the positive things about your last hexcrawl series. It’s really been key to developing my own structures and style.
With all of these like minds tinkering with the same ideas, I think we need an Alexandrian forum, or at least a reddit.
What I’ve read so far sounds great – looking forward to seeing more of your ideas/opinions on this.
The timing is excellent too. I’m currently preparing to run a hexcrawl / sandbox using the map from Symbaroum.
Thank you for sharing.
I’m eager to see what changes you have in store for 5e. The generalness of the 5e rules make it practically built for this kind of overhaul.
I’m literally refreshing everyday for this xD
Interesting. I found this from the West Marches link; have been using something like West Marches for on-the-fly gaming at the library. I’ll read the rest of this series ASAP.
Love the hexcrawl articles! I have a question if anybody can answer:
How do you run this in terms of “plot” and character motivations? Do the characters basically think of themselves as “explorers,” and exploring the world is what they do? In other words, what’s the in-game motivation for the hexcrawl?
I love your design work, but I thought I would point out that your 5E Hexcrawl series is not included in either your Gamemaster 101 index or your Dungeons & Dragons index. Your original Hexcrawl series is in Gamemastery 101, but I think it would be really useful for people using 5E if you also put a link to this 5E-specific series there. Thanks for all your hard work!
@CoolMama: That is an egregious oversight. I’ll get those links added!
@Tim: Basically… yes. They’re either just generally “let’s go see what’s out there” types. Or they have some specific motivation (searching for El Dorado, etc.) that drives them.
@Justin – loving this series, and perfectly timed for the start of my first hexcrawl style game back in March.
Any ETA on part 7?
It’s the part of my game that still feels like it needs tweaking – and ties in with some of your more recent articles on exploration in general – having things that are challenging to find within a hex, while keeping multiple watches of “in-hex exploration” interesting. I’m not sure I’ve got the balance right and excited to see how you handle it!
@Justin – I just discovered this article and your wonderful website and love what I’ve been reading. Really miss hex crawls, I’m oldie from the 70’s and would love to try some of this outside if 5E. Have you developed any type of hex crawls for other systems besides the d&d line?
Thanks,
Chuck
[…] The Alexandrian 5E Hexcrawl Series […]
Love the work so far. I started DMing for my group because no one else wanted to and I’ve enjoyed it, but 5e is my first edition and I’ve slowly started to learn about older editions and other systems to pull ideas from… but desperately need help defining systems like this for my table since 5e really don’t do it for us. Hoping it continues into part 7 and 8 soon. Please and thank you!
I’ve been interested in running a hexcrawl for a long time. Being relatively new to the game (about 4 years’ experience) and a younger person, I don’t have the cultural context for the kind of hexcrawl here discussed, so I really appreciate these posts. I’d love to see it finished, but I’m just glad what’s here is here.
Cheers!
I had this series pointed out to me. Very useful! Please work on “Part 8: Cheat Sheet” as that is exactly what I would need by April 1st, 2022. I’m using your systemless generics, but a D&D 5e specific one would be superior. Thank you!
Love Technoir btw, just as an aside.
Hi Justin, a bit unrelated, but I remember that, in a tweet, you said that 0e, 3e and 5e were your favourite editions, and that they play out differently at the table. How do you think 3e and 5e differ on that respect? I mean, surely the rules are different, but the experience is too?
I’m asking that because I’m learning 3e and I like what I’m reading so far, but never tried to run it. The DMG is very helpful regarding wilderness terrains.
This is fantastic so far, and such a welcome series considering how bare/inconsistent exploration is setup in the core 5e books and its official adventures.
Hoping we see Part 7 soon, great work with this!
I’m running a Paizo adventure path that has a hexploration segment that was, frankly, incredibly lacking in its setup. Loved the idea of the party traveling through a desert with all of its hazards and secrets. Hated that the module’s content consisted of a 32 hex map with 10 locations, two of them dungeons, 8 of them monster encounters, and an additional 4 detailed random encounters.
The party could have easily traveled 7 hexes in a row with nothing besides ‘random table says 1d4 giant scorpions attack’ happening.
I made myself a simpler version of the travel rules and a variation on the random encounter/watch rules, but I managed to redo and repopulate the entire segment with keyed locations and all that, based on what I learned from your series of articles here. Thank you!
Hey, just curious, but would you happen to know the name of the hex tiles in that image at the top of this post? I really like the look of it.
[…] of my brainstorming this week has been based on Justin Alexander’s blog post series on hexcrawls, so for this week’s map, here’s what I drew. This is the players’ version of the […]
I am having a difficult time understanding the unknown player structure of hiding the hexes. What are the players seeing on the table? Is the DM the only person seeing the Hex Map? Do the players have a generic map of the region? Do they know where they are at on the map if not by a landmark? Thanks in advance
@Taylor
The player-unknown structure is supposed to mimic the experience of the PCs, so the players have whatever makes diegetic sense for them to have. So, since a hex map doesn’t exist in-world, the DM is the only one who sees it.
If the PCs have a map of the area, the players also have a map of the area (without any hexes). It might not be super accurate, though, as super precise mapmaking is pretty difficult—we’re used to things like Google Maps, but look at maps from even the 1700s, and they’re full of inaccuracies. You don’t have to really work up these inaccuracies, though. A normal-looking map will naturally not line up perfectly with your hex map.
Or if they’re striking out into unknown parts, they have no map. Accordingly, the players will likely want to make one themselves, placing landmarks only where they think they are. Again, mimicking the experience of the characters, the maps might not end up super accurate. Without a GPS, they only know things like, “We went about 30 miles in a northwesterly direction” (not to mention the possibility they get lost or veer off their intended direction!).
This series, among many others on this site, has been super helpful in establishing my current campaign exploring a section of my setting that until recently existed as a big yawing expanse of I-Know-Not-What. The systems described and detailed make things easy and have enabled a bunch of awesome creativity. The PCs just got themselves entangled with a group of Gnolls that left a tribe to the south because a shaman had an encounter with my goddess of nature and abandoned his former worship. They are preparing a siege to destroy the evil gnoll den coming up soon.
This comment was also inspired by Alexander’s Rule. I wanted to let you know that I appreciate your work on here. I have spent a ton of time reading this blog and it has helped me immensely.
Amazing work! I am really excited to start using this. Everything is ready to go for our next session.
Just wondering, did you ever complete a cheat sheet for the 5E version do the Basic/advance hexcrawl cheat sheets work the same for this?
It would be really helpful to keep me on track and keep the pace moving well in the first few sessions.
I really appreciate all the work that has gone into this &*I am loving your blog, which searching for a hexcrawl system has lead me to. So much helpful content!
Do you foresee putting this together into a single pdf? It’d be very handy!
[…] am running using the phases and roles from the Alexandrian’s Hex Crawl Rules. which I introduced with a good amount of success to the group using the tent cards. They took to […]