DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 27C: The Saint of Chaos

Now that the half-orc was more of a curiosity than a threat, the crowd that had been scattering in a rapid retreat instead began to draw closer. But just as it seemed as if they had successfully calmed the situation, another man suddenly grabbed at his eyes. Bolts of blue lightning shot out of them, striking several people in the crowd. The thick stench of ozone filled the air. At least a half dozen people collapsed.

Panic erupted once again. In the midst of it, Tee was suddenly struck by the sight of a dark-cloaked man striding boldly down the street and seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him…

Crowds.

In an urban campaign, you find them cropping up all the time:

• on the street
• in a busy market
• at the local tavern
• storming the necromancer’s castle with pitchforks

Handling dozens or hundreds (or thousands) of NPCs individually would, obviously, be a hilariously bad idea. So you generally want to figure out some way of handling the entire crowd as a single entity.

Often, of course, a crowd is just part of the set dressing: You’re in a shopping mall and it’s filled with people. That’s pretty straightforward. At most you’ll want to think about what effect the crowd might have on the actions of the PCs and significant NPCs in the scene. (For example, the PCs might need to make a DC 10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to race through a thick crowd; on a failure, the crowd is treated as difficult terrain for them.)

But sometimes the Green Goblin comes swooping in on his glider and starts throwing pumpkin bombs around. Now combat has broken out and the crowd is panicked.

What often seems to happen is that the crowd is described as running and shouting (while having little or no effect on how things play out), and then they completely clear out as quickly as possible to simplify things even more.

But where’s the fun in that?

When I was preparing the riot scene in Session 4 of the campaign, I prepped a full set of rules for handling crowds and mobs in D&D 3^rd Edition. After some refinements from playtesting them, I posted them here on the Alexandrian way back in 2007.

Those rules are useful (with advanced options that help when the crowd is the focal point of the scene), and you could use them as a basic structure for fashioning similar rules in other games:

• What is the effect of moving through a crowd? (A moving crowd?)
• What happens when a crowd panics?
• How can the PCs manipulate crowds?
• What happens when the crowd turns into a mob? (i.e., a crowd that can take focused violent action, whether directed or random)

If you want to keep it simpler, though, I have a few quick rules of thumb for handling crowds.

First, give the crowd some basic characteristics so that it “exists” in the scene. I recommend:

• Making the crowd difficult terrain (or whatever the local equivalent is in your current RPG). As mentioned above, let the PCs make an Acrobatics check as part of movement to ignore this (by deftly weaving through the crowd).
• Having the crowd offer cover to anyone in it.

Design Note: These two factors have a nice balancing effect — the cover encourages a character to move into a crowd; the difficult terrain imposes a cost for doing so.

Second, put the crowd on your initiative list. In D&D, I like putting them at initiative count 10 (so that PCs might go before or after the crowd, depending on their initiative check). This is, if nothing else, a great way to make sure you don’t forget to include the crowd in the scene.

Whenever the crowd’s initiative count comes up, the crowd does something. This might be:

• Just a colorful description (which will help make sure that the crowd is a consistent part of the scene and doesn’t get forgotten about or glossed over).
• A bystander in the crowd being placed in jeopardy.
• A random character needs to make a saving throw or take damage.
• Make a saving throw or get knocked down.
• The crowd moves.

And so forth.

Make sure to have the crowd affect (or potentially affect) both NPCs and PCs.

Third, create a short list of crowd actions. These work like legendary actions in D&D 5^th Edition: The crowd has actions or reactions they take after another character’s action, and they can take X of them per round. (Let’s say three, by default.) The things they can do will be similar:

• Knocking people down
• Interfering with attacks (the jostle the archer’s arm, inflicting disadvantage on the attack roll)
• Making an attack against a character
• Moving

Et cetera.

Keep in mind that the crowd is not a bad guy, so these actions are a choice you’re making as the GM to model the crowd’s behavior. This also means that some crowd actions might actually be detrimental to the crowd. For example, a crowd reaction might be “1d6 bystanders get caught in the crossfire.”

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 27D – Running the Campaign: Trigger & Stitch
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 27C: THE SAINT OF CHAOS

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

Tee didn’t argue with Ranthir. They returned to the Ghostly Minstrel and reconvened with the others, quickly describing what they had seen.

Elestra was more than happy to let the cultists fight amongst themselves. Agnarr, on the other hand, was still urging them to charge in the front door. “We’ll catch them by surprise!”

Tee was convinced that the insectoid creatures were going to be used in some sort of an attack on the Commissar, and their discussion turned to what their primary goal had become: Was it to shut down the project? To protect Iltumar? Or somehow do both?

Tor talked about his plans to take Iltumar out the next day. “If he’s looking for something more exciting, maybe we can offer that to him.”

“But isn’t tit possible he’ll just think we’re trying to control his life?” Ranthir asked.

“That’s right,” Elestra agreed. “Tell a boy not to do something and he’ll do it just to spite you.”

Tee, reflecting on the fact that Elestra was scarcely older than Iltumar, shook her head. “I got the impression that, if I left, I’d be hunted down and killed. Even if we could somehow convince Iltumar to quit, just pulling him out could still be dangerous.”

In the end, they decided to wait until the next day. Tee would take her shift in disguise at midnight. And if Tor could pull Iltumar away so that they could be sure he wouldn’t be on duty, they would try an assault on the complex.

“Without Tor?” Dominic asked.

“I’d prefer to have his sword,” Tee said. “But we need to make sure that Iltumar isn’t the line of fire.”

“Aren’t we worried about the giant insect things?” Dominic asked, clearly worried about the giant insect things.

“They were afraid of a moving curtain,” Tee said. “I’m not too worried about them.”

“If they’re easily startled, I’ve got a cantrip that can make dancing lights,” Ranthir said.

Dominic laughed. “Ah! Lights! Lights! Look out for the lights!”

Tee grinned. “Agnarr! Get away from those lights and hit those things!”

They all laughed. Even Agnarr.

MISSIVE FROM THE MIGHTY

There was a knock at the door.

Elestra answered it and found Tellith standing in the hall.

“Oh, good. Master Agnarr is with you,” Tellith smiled. “I have a message for him.” She held out a piece of folded parchment.

Agnarr came to the door, grabbed the letter, and grunted a thank you. Elestra thanked her as well and then shut the door.

As soon as the door was shut, Agnarr passed the parchment to Tee. She read it aloud to him.

Master Agnarr—

As we have not received word from you in several weeks, we are urgently seeking confirmation that you are not, in fact, dead. If this letter should reach your hand, please send us a couriered response indicating your continued good health.

The Order of Iron Might

Agnarr had no idea what this Order might be, but Tee was familiar with them. They were a guild of warriors based out of the Citadel of Might near the Arena in Oldtown. Tee had never been there, but she understood it to be a hiring hall of sorts for mercenaries, guards, and sellswords. She had some impression that Dorant Khatru, the Merchant Prince of House Khatru, served as the Order’s guildmaster.

“Do you think you joined them… before?” Elestra asked. “You know, when we lost our memories?”

Agnarr shrugged. “It’s possible.”

Links to their missing past had proven few and hard to come by. Tee was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of following up on this one. She and Dominic both agreed to accompany Agnarr while he paid a visit to the Citadel of Might.

A KNIGHT’S TRAINING

Tor, meanwhile, had training to attend to. He headed into the Temple District. Sir Kabel met him at the entrance of the Godskeep and escorted him to the training field just outside the southern gate. There he was introduced to Sera Nara – a lithe and attractive woman with dark, copper brown skin. She wore her dark hair in a long braid down to her waist. The entire braid was tightly bound with bands of gold, and the tip was capped with a sharply-edged blade of mithril.

“Nara will be your instructor,” Kabel said. “I’ll have to leave Tor in your capable hands, Sera. I have to meet with Gemmell regarding the tourney rosters.”

Kabel went off about his business and Nara got down to hers. She adopted a practical, no-nonsense approach, but was clearly impressed with Tor’s ability with the blade.

“I practiced for many years,” Tor explained. “But these past few weeks it seems as if all that training suddenly makes sense.”

“Of course,” Nara nodded. “Your life has been at a risk. When the blood boils, the blade and body become as one. The heat of battle has made you a warrior. Now we will hone that ability into the skills of a knight.”

They worked hard. The session lasted for nearly two hours. Tor proved to be a fast learner, quickly mastering the rudimentary elements of the Order’s martial training.

“We perceive the world through sight and sound and touch,” Sera Nara said. “But all of us share a deeper connection with reality, as well. If you listen with your soul you can hear the Song of the World – the divine melody which links us all, man and god alike. Through the motions of his blade, a warrior’s body can harmonize with the Song. You will see your opponents without sight; hear them without sound; strike them without thought.”

When the training was nearly complete, Tor became aware that Kabel had returned. The knight stood a goodly distance from the practice field, but his attention was clearly focused on them.

Nara eventually finished. She complimented him again and told him to return to the field in two days. As Tor was gathering up his armor, Kabel made his way over to him.

“Master Tor. How was your training?”

“Exhausting.”

Kabel laughed. “Sera Nara is a demanding teacher. But these are demanding times. I think it’s more important than ever that you become a knight as quickly as possible.”

Tor smiled. “I would like that very much.”

“As would I.” Kabel returned his smile. “Now, a question. Do you know if Dominic has met with Rehobath again?”

Tor shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

“That’s to the good,” Kabel said. “Hopefully this dark chapter can be put behind us soon. If all goes well, I will have much to tell you when you return.”

Kabel made his farewells. Tor was curious about his enigmatic parting, but all he could really do was wait.

THE COMING OF TAVAN ZITH

Agnarr, Tee and Dominic, meanwhile, had entered Oldtown on their way to the Citadel of Might.

They had just turned off Dalenguard Road onto Four Fountains Street when their ears were assaulted by sudden screams. They were crossing the mouth of Whipstone Street, and turning that way they could see the tightly packed crowd of the merchant road suddenly surging towards them. There were shouts of “Fire!” and “Run!”

Moments later, a half-orc tore into view. He was completely engulfed in flame, but – despite his own screams and the look of terror in his eyes – the flames didn’t seem to be hurting him. However, when the half-orc grabbed onto a woman near him – in what looked like desperation – the flames did burn her. Badly.

Their crisis instincts kicked in. Dominic threaded his way through the crowd, trying to reach the woman who had been burned. Agnarr, meanwhile, hurled a waterskin at the half-orc. This, however, simply burned away in a cloud of steam without having any effect on the fire.

Tee kept her distance, but shouted at the half-orc to stop. “How can we help? What’s happening?”

But the half-orc didn’t seem to hear her. “What’s happening to me? I’m burning! Help me! For the love of the gods, someone help me!” His voice was tortured with panic.

And then, suddenly, the half-orc’s flames pulsed brightly. Dominic, having drawn near in his efforts to help the woman, was scorched.

Agnarr, seeing Dominic hurt, lost his patience with the situation. He tried to knock the half-orc out. Unfortunately, his efforts only succeeded in making the half-orc even more panicky.

Tee could see that the situation was getting out of control. She ran down the street – getting close to the half-orc and practically shouting into his face. “Stop it! We’re trying to help you, but you have to stop it! You’re hurting people!”

Something in her sharply spoken words – or perhaps the sudden appearance of a lithe elfling directly in his path – shocked the half-orc out of his panic. He looked around the street, seeming to see the scene around himself for the first time. Then he sagged to his knees, his face taut with pain. “It hurts…”

But the flames still weren’t hurting him. Dominic, laid a soothing blessing on the woman who had suffered burns, and then – at Tee’s signal – moved in to examine the half-orc (albeit it from a safe distance).

Now that the half-orc was more of a curiosity than a threat, the crowd that had been scattering in a rapid retreat instead began to draw closer. But just as it seemed as if they had successfully calmed the situation, another man suddenly grabbed at his eyes. Bolts of blue lightning shot out of them, striking several people in the crowd. The thick stench of ozone filled the air. At least a half dozen people collapsed.

Panic erupted once again. In the midst of it, Tee was suddenly struck by the sight of a dark-cloaked man striding boldly down the street and seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him.

He seemed so incongruous that Tee’s suspicions were immediately tweaked. She headed in his direction and hadn’t gotten far before she saw him brush past an older woman in her fifties. The woman almost immediately started floating up into the air. “Help! Help me! The demons have me! They have me by the arms! Help!”

“Agnarr!” Tee called back over her shoulder. “The man in black! I think he’s doing something!”

Agnarr tried to push his way through the crowd, but didn’t seem to be catching up. Finally he lost his patience and bellowed. “OUT OF THE WAY!”

The crowd parted before him, allowing Agnarr to abruptly catch up to the mysterious figure and swing away with his greatsword.

“Oh!” Tee gasped. “But I’m not even sure if he’s actually causing… Never mind.”

With some preternatural sense, the man barely managed to duck out of the way of Agnarr’s blow. Then he whirled, revealing a muffled face, and cried out in an imperious voice, “You dare to molest me, miscreant?”

… but then he caught sight of Agnarr’s imposing figure and apparently decided that flight was the better part of valor. He whirled away and took off running down the street, displaying an amazing agility at slipping through the now near-riotous crowd trying to escape from the chaos in the street. An elf he passed suddenly screamed and collapsed to the ground.

Agnarr was momentarily startled at the abrupt flight. He was even more startled in the next instant to find himself beginning to secrete acid through his skin. It burned sharply, but he gritted his teeth through the pain and ran after the man, ducking narrowly to avoid one of the blasts of lightning scorching through the air with the scent of ozone.

Dominic, meanwhile, was studying the half-orc. The flames weren’t burning him, but there was no denying the pain that the half-orc was feeling. In fact, the flames seemed to be feeding on him in some way – consuming his fundamental vitality in much the same way that a soul-thirsting undead might.

Tee was having some success in following in Agnarr’s wake, but she was losing ground. In frustration she pulled up short, notched an arrow in her bow, and took a shot.

It clipped the dark-clad figure’s shoulder as he ducked around the corner at the far end of the street, still desperately trying to escape from Agnarr’s blows.

Tee renewed her pursuit. As she neared the corner herself, she came upon a dwarf staring at the wall. Globules of black energy poured from his eyes… and a giant octopus appeared half-embedded in the wall, its long tentacles thrashing limply. Tee cursed silently, but decided it was a problem she’d have to deal with later.

Dominic, meanwhile, had figured out how to sustain the rapidly deteriorating half-orc… but his efforts weren’t actually curing his condition, only alleviating it. While he was trying to figure out a more permanent solution, several members of the city watch came running up from Four Fountains Street. Spotting Dominic’s robes, one of the watchmen approached him. “Have you got that under control?”

Dominic looked up. “Umm… More or less.”

Agnarr finally caught up with his quarry. At the last possible instant, the dark-clad figure whirled in an effort to defend himself, but Agnarr’s blade cut too fast and too strong, viciously slashing through the figure’s chest.

Grasping at his bleeding torso, the man doubled over. “You would dare the wrath of Tavan Zith?!”

And then Tee’s arrow took him in the throat. Zith collapsed to the street, his breath gurgling and blood bubbling from his wounds.

THE AFTERMATH OF TAVAN ZITH

But the chaos he had wreaked did not abate: The half-orc still burned. The lightning-eyed man was still firing randomly in all directions.

And the dwarf Tee had passed before was still summoning fell creatures into their midst: A massive hound – standing taller than a man’s shoulder (although perhaps not as tall as Agnarr’s shoulder) and wreathed in living shadow – appeared suddenly at the corner of Whipstone Street. Directly behind Tee. The crowds started running in a new direction.

Tee cursed and ran down the street towards Agnarr.

Before she could get there, however, Agnarr had reached down and grabbed the dying Zith by his hair. Hauling him up he was shocked to discover the features of a dark-skinned elf – just like Shilukar. But the shock didn’t stop him from cutting off his head.

Tee came skidding to a halt next to him. “Agnarr! What are you doing?”

“It didn’t work!” Agnarr, gasping in pain, held up one of his acid-coated hands.

“We needed to question him!”

“And we will.” Agnarr took off the iron collar from Ghul’s Labyrinth and snapped it around the dark elf’s neck. “Dominic should be able to heal this.” He grimaced again at the pain from the acid. “I think you might need to kill me… Maybe that would stop it.”

“It’s not that I wouldn’t love to do that,” Tee said. “But—“

“But I have work to do.” Agnarr nodded. Then he grinned. He turned down the street and ran back towards where the hound of shadows was spreading panic.

Tee, meanwhile, grabbed Zith’s body and stuffed it into her bag of holding.

Meanwhile, back by Dominic, the city watchmen were spreading out. They formed a perimeter around the lightning-eyed man and – before Dominic realized what they were doing – shot him dead.

“For the glory!” Agnarr charged through the panicking throngs. The suddenly flaming sword had a less than calming effect on the crowd, but it caught and tore at the insubstantial flesh-stuff of the shadow hound.

The beast – in terrible pain – threw back its head and howled. It was a sound born from the stygian pits of utter darkness, carrying in its very note a primal terror. It echoed off the buildings of the city. At its passing, a wave of supernatural fear swept over the entire block. People began scattering in complete panic. Even Tee couldn’t resist its effects, joining the screaming throngs in mindless flight.

The dwarf responsible for summoning the strange creatures suddenly leapt onto Agnarr’s back. “No! Leave it alone you! You mustn’t hurt it!”

Agnarr managed to shrug off the frenzied dwarf. Then with a final swing of his greatsword he finished off the shadowy hound. He twirled back towards the dwarf— And found an axe swinging at his head.

He narrowly turned the blow so that it only cut lightly into his armored side and then slammed the flat of his own blade into the dwarf’s face. The dwarf slumped into unconsciousness, his face badly scorched from the flames of the blade.

Back at the other end of the street, the city watchmen had thrown a rope around the floating woman and were pulling her back down to earth. Once her feet touched the ground, her condition seemed to pass. But the half-orc was still burning and his condition was deteriorating rapidly.

Dominic, however, had seen that death seemed to have stopped the lightning-bolts being hurled from the eyes of the other man. He was able to heal the man’s wounds and return breath to his body. And when he did, the condition didn’t reappear.

As he was finishing, the commander of the watchmen approached him. “I know you… You’re the Chosen of Vehthyl.”

“Umm… Yes.” Dominic was already uncomfortable with this conversation and it hadn’t even properly begun.

“What caused this?”

“I’m not… really sure.”

Agnarr came trotting up. “I am.” He quickly explained about the “sorcerer” who had been responsible for releasing these dangerous abilities.

“And what happened to him?” the commander asked.

“He escaped,” Agnarr said without missing a beat. “He ran that way.” He pointed in a plausible direction.

Dominic thought that the only way to cure the half-orc might be to kill him and then bring him back from the dead. The half-orc was terrified by the idea, but agreed. Before Dominic could say anything else, Agnarr thrust his flaming sword straight into the half-orc’s chest—

And a massive explosion ripped its way out of the half-orc’s chest and gouted its way down the length of the entire block!

An unnatural pressure wave preceding the blast threw Agnarr clear of it. He sat up and shook his head. “What happened?”

Fortunately the street had already been virtually abandoned and the members of the city watch had been far enough away that they weren’t injured.

The only thing left of the half-orc, however, was a desiccated corpse… Which, thankfully, no longer burned. Dominic had to work for several minutes – stitching sinew and regrowing skin through the sheer lifeforce of his faith – but he was finally able to restore some semblance of life to the half-orc’s pain-wracked body.

Agnarr, meanwhile, was stripping out of his armor in an effort to prevent it from any further damage. The acid-scarring hadn’t caused any structural damage yet, but his clothes were already badly scarred in many places.

“We’ll have to get you some new clothes,” Dominic said.

“Why?” Agnarr said. “There’s just a few holes!”

“It’s… umm… more about where the holes are located.”

Like the half-orc, Dominic only saw one solution. In a controlled fashion he stopped Agnarr’s heart, killing him. Then he immediately used his skills and divine gifts to revive him.

It worked. The acid stopped oozing from Agnarr’s pores.

TEE RETURNS TO THE SCENE

By the time her head cleared, Tee found herself on High Road, looking down off the Oldtown cliffs towards the sea. She cursed under her breath.

After a moment’s thought, she set off at a running pace towards the Ghostly Minstrel. Once there she barged into Ranthir’s room.

“Mistress Tee?”

Without saying a word she pulled Zith’s corpse half out of her bag of holding and then stuffed it back in. He was on her heels as she turned and headed back out into the street.

They were able to grab a carriage in Delver’s Square. As they rode back towards Oldtown, Tee filled him in on what she’d seen. “We’re not sure what we’re dealing with. I’m hoping you’ll be able to figure it out.”

“I’ll do my best.”

By the time they reached the ramp leading up into Oldtown, however, the watch had sealed the upper city.

It turned out that the bay of the shadow hound had affected a wide swath of the city. And in the tightly-packed confines of Oldtown the effects had been devastating: Riotous crowds and madhouse conditions. There had even been some reports of people throwing themselves out of windows in blind panic.

Tee, however, managed to identify herself as an associate of the Chosen of Vehthyl. Fortunately the guards stationed on the roadblock had apparently heard reports that Dominic had been helping them at the source of the disturbance. They let Tee and Ranthir through the blockade.

When they arrived back at the scene, they discovered that Dominic and Agnarr had already left. Everyone who had been directly affected by Zith’s attack had been quarantined on Whipstone Street. Things were firmly under control, but the watch commander was more than glad to accept Ranthir’s mystical expertise.

After examining those affected, Ranthir identified the effect as an uncontrolled explosion of sorcerous potential. “We all have a connection to the same arcane forces that I use in the casting of my spells,” he explained. “In some that connection is stronger than in others. It appears that in these victims that connection has been exploited. In layman’s terms, it’s been ripped open – power flows through it in a completely uncontrolled fashion.”

This meant little to any of them, but Ranthir was able to confirm that all of them had been fully cured.

But the dwarf kept screaming about the voices whispering in his ears. And the elf who had collapsed was now babbling in what appeared to be glossolalic tongues.

“So what’s wrong with them?” Tee asked.

“There’s no lingering effect of a mystical nature,” Ranthir said. “But whatever happened to them must have broken their minds. Killing them won’t help.”

The commander of the watch nodded sharply and then turned to one of his men. “We’ll send them to Mahdoth’s Asylum, then.”

Suddenly, out of the elf’s mad gibberings, Tee’s sharp ears caught a meaningful phrase: “The lance… The lance is coming…”

She had said something like that herself once, as her mind emerged from madness. The similarity struck her to the soul.

There was nothing else to be done there. Ranthir and Tee returned to the Ghostly Minstrel, hoping to find the others there ahead of them.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Playing to the Crowd – Campaign Journal: Session 27D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

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.)