In its most basic form, of course, the hexcrawl is a collection of hexes. Each hex contains some form of keyed content, and the PCs move from one hex to the next, encountering whatever each hex happens to contain.

Insofar as it goes, this basic functionality is just fine. Essential, really. It’s what makes the hexcrawl a fundamentally robust structure in which the players can never truly become stuck, because they can always just choose another hex to explore.

But if this basic functionality is the only thing a hexcrawl has to offer, then the hexcrawl becomes like a game of Memory with no matching tiles: You just select a tile at random, flip it up, and collect it. In order for a game of Memory to become interesting, there has to be a connection between the tiles (i.e., the pairs you’re trying to match). By learning these connections, the choice of tile in Memory becomes meaningful.

Similarly, for a hexcrawl to truly come to life at the gaming table, the players need to be able to learn meaningful information about the hexes and use that information to guide their exploration of the hexmap.

• “Those bandits told us their main camp was located in a cave three miles west of the waterfall. Let’s head there and shut them down for good.”
• “Do you want to go back and check out that weird tower with the bleeding walls we saw sticking out of the Sepulchral Holt?”
• “I don’t know where this map leads, but there must have been a reason that demon was carrying it.”

As the PCs gain information like this, they transcend random wandering and are able to set goals. Aimless curiosity is transformed into purposeful searching and true exploration is achieved.

There are a number of ways that the PCs can get this information. Rumors, for example, can either be freely distributed or gleaned from urban locations. Tracks can turn almost any random encounter into an information source. (“We can follow these goblin raiders back to their village.”)

But one of the most powerful technique is to connect your hexes: By exploring one hex, the PCs gain information that leads them to another hex. In this way, the random hexes of aimless curiosity are transmuted into purpose, and that purpose becomes self-perpetuating as each additional hex the PCs explore teaches them more and more about the area they’re exploring.

CLUES & LEADS

At a basic level, you’re including leads in your hex key that point to other hexes.

• The goblins are working for the necromancer, so if you raid their village you might maps or correspondence with the necromancer; or you might interrogate them or follow their tracks to the necromancer’s tower in the Sepulchral Holt.
• Conversely, if you go to the Sepulchral Holt you’ll find goblins from the village serving there (offering any number of opportunities for planting leads). Also, the necromancer is trying to help the goblins wipe out the bandits in the area (to eliminate the competition), so there’s a map indicating the location of the cave where they make their lair.

And so forth.

Since we’re talking about clues and leads, your thoughts might naturally lead you towards the Three Clue Rule:

For any conclusion you want the PCs to make, include at least three clues.

When it comes to hex connections, however, this is not strictly necessary. Remember that the hexcrawl structure itself provides a default method for discovering keyed content, so it’s okay if the clues for a location “fail.” So it’s fine if you only have two or one or even zero clues pointing to a location. (For the same reason that you don’t need three clues pointing to every room in a dungeon.)

Nevertheless, in keying your hexmap, you might want to keep a revelation list of your hexes to track how the various locations are being connected to each other. This may be particularly useful if you haven’t designed a hexcrawl before and want to make establishing hex connections a point of emphasis.

As a rule of thumb for your first hex key, for example, you might just make sure that every keyed location has at least one clue pointing to another location. That will likely result in some locations have lots of clues pointing to them and other locations not having any clues pointing to them, but it does make sure that the PCs are likely to quickly find specific information they can pursue if they’re currently without a specific goal.

TREASURE MAPS & RANDOM GENERATION

An interesting feature of the original 1974 edition of D&D is that its random treasure tables featured treasure maps. Lots of treasure maps. (25% of all “magic item” results, for example, would actually result in a map.)

This is a very interesting mechanic, because it systematizes the injection of hex connections (or to similar effect in a megadungeon). Rolling to generate a monster’s treasure would periodically prompt the DM to provide a clear-cut (and very tantalizing!) lead to another location.

(A similar system was that monster treasure was, by default, only found in the monster’s lair. So if you encountered a monster as a random encounter, you would need to track them back to their lair — which would likely have other encounters in it — in order to get your pay day.)

These systems were removed from the game, most likely because being randomly prompted to provide a full-blown treasure map to your players was daunting for many DMs, but I take a couple of lessons from this.

First, literal treasure maps are awesome. Include them in myriad forms. (Tattered parchment. Scrawled in charcoal on a ruined wall. A small blue orb that vibrates when you head in a particular direction.)

Second, some degree of randomization can be an excellent prompt to challenge ourselves and seek creative solutions that might otherwise have never occurred to us.

You can play around with this in all kinds of ways. For example, a fun exercise might be:

• Roll 1d6-2 for each keyed location to determine how many leads should be there pointing to other locations.
• For each lead, randomize the hex that the clue points to.

Trying to figure out how/why these connections exist will likely enrich your game world in fascinating ways.

(And if not, just ignore it. It’s a fun prompt, not the dice gestapo.)

VISIBLE LANDMARKS

As a final note, I’ll point out a form of hex connection that might not occur to you even though it’s in plain sight. Literally.

Landmarks which can be seen from a great distance — i.e., in another hex — are technically connected to all of those hexes from which they can be seen. (In a very literal, but nonetheless significant, way.)

Conversely, a high vantage point that allows you to spot is also a form of hex connection, allowing PCs to learn information that they can use to guide their navigation and exploration of the wilderness.

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