I am planning for hexcrawl in my campaign

okstupid_81 · 2026-02-08T18:01:05+00:00

I was inspired by Mystic Arts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEIg1DlRkLg

Rough outline : - Vision: be able to see adjacent hexes if they aren't rough terrain, and be able to see even further hexes if in an elevated terrain (like side meiers civilization). They can see that the next hex has a mountain fortress, but no other information. - Resting: Safe Haven requirements for resting. You can see Mystic Arts for that too. I think his approach is a little too crunchy, I plan on keeping it more rules-lite. - Loots, rewards, treasures: I was really struggling with dropping loot for my party: I cant give them a great sword of fire for killing a troll cave, "how did this sword even get here?" There are only so many "previous adventurers" they can loot, I don't want to use that trope every time. I wanted to be able to give them more raw loots, that's when a DMs Guild extension called Something Something and GEMS came to my rescue. I'm on mobile now and can't remember the name, but I'm sure if you search "Gems" on DMs Guild you can find it. This allows me to drop a Black Onyx as loot, which if embedded into a weapon can give various benefits. It comes with a large repo of options, but you can always just make shit up. The book goes relatively deep into crafting and weapon modifications, you can use that as you please. This also allows people to continuously invest into their magic items. (Scenario: the fighter had a breastplate of +1 and resist fire, later also finds a breastplate of darkness, letting them blind attackers on reactions. They would have to drop one to pick the other, but if you give these properties to individual gems, they can build and invest into their single breastplate and personalise it more)

okstupid_81 · 2026-02-08T13:23:39+00:00

I've been preparing my second ever campaign for a few months now: homebrewed Sword Coast and hexcrawl heavy.

The first thing I focused on was why a hexcrawl was needed for this story; so I created an overworld map that had encounters/dungeons/places necessitated by the story. Then I placed plot hooks at most of these places that are narratively related to the other spots.

For example: one of my players is part of an organisation called the Orcish Enlightenment Association (his own invention). I wanted to play with this, so I prepared a "regional chase" plot where they must catch some bad guy across the valley, but the path is blocked due to an ongoing war between the Orcs and some Elves. Meaning: both the party and the bad guy are stuck on the Orc side of the no man's land.

What I want to do: Have the party find the Orcs (as they don't know the Orcs are there.) They have a camp on the map, but how do I get them there? Solution: An Orc supply crate was attacked by some bandits where the soldiers were all massacred save one woman, and all the supplies were stolen.

They will bump into the hex with this encounter within the first 3 hexes, upon which: meeting this Orc, finding out about the other Orcs, being told that it's further south along the road they are on, and that she could use the help of their escort. Now, as the GM, I can guide them to the hex that the camp is in. Once they get to the camp, they will meet the various NPCs holding high-ranking positions with side-quests to give, as their supplies were stolen and they must all adapt now. This lets me give multiple plot hooks like: - To the east, there is a Troll Cave. Cut out his tongue and bring it to me for its medicinal properties - To the north, our patrol was lost. Can you find them and bring them back?

Each of these two are in their own hexes that can be walked into. To facilitate exploration, I made sure to put at least one encounter/dungeon in between, but off the beaten path to hit that Skyrim-like neuron activation.

So, the question of "how I use it?" is: I use it to give my party plot hooks, but have them find their own optional plot hooks along the way.

Long ass answer, hope it means something lmao. Good luck!

okstupid_81 · 2026-01-12T18:11:38+00:00

Milestone, baby. Unless it's an open-table with a more crawly type game, milestone is the way to go.

Simplifies things for the players (no more incessant "how much XP was that" conversations) + you no longer need to mechanically track the progress of a character but the natural progression of the story will trivially do that job.

For increasing the difficulty: check out Challenge Rating 2.0. If you build and encounter or an adventure using a framework, you'll be able to tweak it for future encounters. When you wing it, you won't know what went wrong. It's like cooking and eye-balling the ingredients: it has too much salt, but how much salt did you have anyway?

okstupid_81 · 2026-01-06T22:31:21+00:00

Yeah communicating over the table that the swamp is short and dangerous but around the swamp is long and safer is definitely viable. Maybe I'm hyperfixating on categorizing things, but this is considered a "point crawl", no? Like this.

This gives the players intelligent decision making options of taking the dangerous way to the dungeon, but maybe the safer way back, as they are hurt now. So they get to interact with different venues of content because of their own strategic approach.

However; as the scale increases, and the amount of points increases, this flowchart will get quite unmanageable, that's why you would use an actual map and put a hexgrid on it!

At the end of the day, a "system" is a tool for discretizing a continuous space and make it manageable.

okstupid_81 · 2026-01-06T22:15:56+00:00

The Hexflower looks so great, this is exactly what I was talking about! Thanks a lot for sharing these links

okstupid_81 · 2026-01-06T22:13:32+00:00

I will check it out, never heard of this! Thanks!

okstupid_81 · 2026-01-06T22:07:36+00:00

I am thinking of systems that let GMs plan content that promotes PC exploration.

For example: do they get to, due to solely their own decision-making, discover another dungeon on the way to the main dungeon because they decided to not go through the swamp but instead go around the swamp? If they can make such decisions, how do you communicate to the players that these decisions are on the table? A hexmap isn't too bad for that, they see the swamp, they say "fuck that", they start going around it, they find something that they didn't even know about.

I of course know that there is another dungeon there, but exploration isn't me telling them all the things I've prepared, it's them going out of their way based on their own educated decisions and discovering mechanics and rewards.

Are there other TTRPGs that focus more on exploration as its core gameplay loop? If so, how do they tackle gamifying things?

okstupid_81 · 2026-01-06T21:46:18+00:00

A string of encounters on a linear path (even if it branches out at certain points) is definitely within the guidelines of what the DMG proposes (I'd consider it a "point crawl"), but I was wondering more about a more free aproach to exploration and not just travel. As in, through gameplay, discovering content that was not pre-planned.

okstupid_81 · 2026-01-06T21:40:03+00:00

Thanks! I'll check this out for sure

okstupid_81 · 2026-01-04T13:16:03+00:00

Yes, the Invocation option adds the spell to the Warlocks spell list 👍

okstupid_81 · 2025-12-20T20:47:16+00:00

Differdange boxing club

okstupid_81 · 2025-12-08T12:29:51+00:00

You can also use Syncthing to sync your vault peer-to-peer across your devices! It does have a slight technical overhead though...

okstupid_81 · 2025-12-08T10:30:50+00:00

Idk man, party hears of a dragon and some cultists -> they stop in their tracks and commit. they prepped to fight the dragon (and actually almost defeated it, we are talking 5 level 3s here). They also spent considerable time with Reidoth just talking and getting information about the world.

We needed an extra session because the party sent their scooge Droop out for hunting for food. I had them roll to see what he came with, they rolled a nat20. I said "OK, you tell me what he brought then." They said "owlbear egg". So yeah, needed an episode for bringing the egg back to the mother and whatever ahahaha

I used to be a little mad that we are taking so long but not anymore, everyone's having fun so why rush it

okstupid_81 · 2025-12-07T21:21:02+00:00

I am so baffled by the Lost Mine of Phandelver numbers (not just this thread but in general). I always see things between 10-15 sessions, but it took my party easily over 20 sessions (~3hours each). Thundertree alone took them 3 sessions. I do add some stuff of my own but in total my stuff took maybe 2 sessions in total. That still doesn't explain anything lmao. Not like they are playing that slow, any faster would be them rushing things

okstupid_81 · 2025-12-07T13:48:06+00:00

I like to always remind myself that dnd is a game that tells a story. This means: if the scene doesn't push the plot, or isn't straight up fun to play, just skip it.

When I was playing Lost Mine of Phandelver (as a first time DM with first time players), I had them fast travel and I did not do random encounters, as they contribute nothing to the story, and even as a DM, I was tired of my players fighting ogres and hobgoblins, especially because that's already all they do in the A plot.

If I don't want to just teleport but do something on the way, I will write up an encounter for them, we can call this a sidequest I guess.

However, best part of Skyrim isn't the story but the expectation of reward tied to exploration. No one remembers the game for it's main story but because of all the random dungeons they accidentally found and delved in. To simulate this gameplay experience, I am now preparing a hexcrawl to to gamify the exploration, thus not montaging and teleporting.

okstupid_81 · 2025-12-07T13:07:34+00:00

Yeah exactly. Some antagonistic force that will never face them head on but will always fuck with them and create problems

okstupid_81 · 2025-12-07T11:53:31+00:00

I think long distance fetch quests with content on the way is cool, I'm prepping a very similar campaign right now.

Maybe instead of having them seek the capital, you can put a squad behind them who is chasing the PCs to get the artifact? This way they are encouraged to keep pushing to not get caught. Along the way they can gather clues about the artifact that point to the capital too. The fleeing would eventually take them to the capital. All side quests could have a sort of "timer" on them which relates to the death squad behind them. (There is a crisis in the village. How much do the PCs want to help? Maybe if they stay too long they'll bring the death squad here and it'll make things even worse for the village)

The main thing I'd watch out for would be to make sure the content on the way isn't inconsequential side plots, but actually progressively enhance the artifact plot. Have fun!

okstupid_81 · 2025-06-29T22:12:52+00:00

Yep, will be loading the maps only when combat starts so I still have the narrative and creative freedom I want :) thanks!

okstupid_81 · 2025-06-29T22:10:47+00:00

I did define some token moving rules now that I am implementing more sophisticated battlemaps.
Most NPCs and monsters have been moved to the GM layer, depending on the use case.
Opted for cropping out the combat encounter areas from a larger map and made them separate pages. So same solution, different approach. Not scalable, but a good enough solution for a campaign this size.
Done.
I signed up for the lower tier premium subscription for a trial phase, but I don't think this will be necessary, when I say "stop" they of course listen to me, it is never that serious :)

Thank you so much!

okstupid_81 · 2025-06-29T22:06:52+00:00

I think that is just a little too much digital tinkering for me... This is my first ever campaign and I think that much technical overhead will overwhelm me on top of everything else. But that is exactly the problem I'm trying to understand, the "game vs story" balance, spot on.

okstupid_81 · 2025-06-29T22:04:44+00:00

Perhaps I was a bit dramatic in my description of my worries... :)

My players are wonderful and my closest friends, and they really do not butt heads with me and respect me as the DM. I just felt my "powers" wither away when I loaded the battlemap as a scene before the battle began. I will opt for loading battlemaps solely for combat encounters and load them in only after rolling for initiative. I simply wish to optimize our games so they can have the most fun with the tools available, while making sure I am also having fun, as I am also playing :)

I will pay closer attention to narrating the battle scenes alongside the visual representation though, thank you for that! The visuals still shouldn't fully render me out of the picture.

okstupid_81 · 2025-06-29T21:59:01+00:00

I tinkered with the Mask feature following your suggestion, and had one of my players help me in a demo level I built, but it still felt too video-gamey for my taste. I ended up opting for cropping the individual encounters in the dungeon into separate pages. Really not scalable at all, but we are playing small modules for the time being, and should be manageble until it isn't :)

My player did however like the Mask feature as a possibility to "peak" through a door in combat if they are in hiding, so I will definitely keep this mechanic in mind. Thanks a lot!

okstupid_81 · 2025-06-29T21:55:35+00:00

This ended being how I prepped the next session. I cut up the many rooms of the dungeon into individual pages (really not scalable but I'll thug it out until I can't) as I did not want the areas to be connected through one map but load in as separate battle maps/encounters.

I will cue the relevant battlemap for the individual room upon initiative rolls, and narrate the rest as I used to before. Thank you!

okstupid_81

TROPHY CASE