Before we get into it, I should warn you that the above title isn’t entirely accurate. Technically we played Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC, henceforth). DCC is Dungeons & Dragons doused in gasoline and running around with a lit match. It’s gonzo and trippy and deadly.
Or, if you prefer a visual, DCC is like this:
I used D&D as shorthand in the title because almost everyone has heard of it and it’s very similar to DCC, and the things I’m going to discuss apply equally to either one, or most other fantasy RPGs for that matter.
What in tarnation is a Hex Crawl?
I’ve always been interested in hex maps, ever since I found one in the back of my D&D Red Box set when I was 10. I’d never actually explored a hex map — mostly I filled in the blank hexes with maps of my own design. More recently, I’ve used hex maps to get a sense of my RPG world and to narrate the travel experience for my players. But I’d never truly used a hex map to its intended purpose until this past weekend.
A Hex Crawl is a game in which players explore the world one 6-sided hex at a time. Ideally the players have a reason for exploring, but the experience largely becomes one of emergent gameplay, driven by player decision and assorted random tables.
My group is playing DCC’s Peril on the Purple Planet, which is basically John Carter of Mars by way of The Hills Have Eyes. The players find themselves transported to a dying alien world and must discover a way home before the hostile planet does them in. Rayguns and hoverskiffs and giant sandworms are the order of the day; this ain’t your daddy’s D&D.
Here are the main takeaways from my first-ever Hex Crawl.
1. Nothing is more boring than an empty map
If you want to see unengaged players, give them a map with little context and tell them to go explore. Worse yet, one in which most of the map is almost entirely blank.
Fortunately, I knew this going in and had something primed. The adventure is predicated upon the players discovering green gemstones to power their trip home. Literally the first thing I did was show the stones in operation as a nemesis escaped through a portal, consuming a green gemstone in the process. The players then realized they would need to find such stones for themselves.
That was their Why. Where was an open question, and this is where I made my first mistake. As the players stood atop a pyramid, I described all they could see: hills and mountains to the west, a lake to the south, a strange mushroom forest to the east, and beyond the forest, faint smoke on the horizon.
The players then did what I suppose anyone would do: they went toward what seemed most interesting or notable. East, to the mushroom forest. Through the forest, and then toward the smoke. I think they felt like that’s what they were supposedto do, as though I was sending them a literal smoke signal.
Looking back, I wish I had done more to dangle adventure hooks at the start. A crumbling mountain fortress. Clustered huts in the hills. The glimmer of metal in the dunes. All of those things are there, waiting to be discovered. But relying on random encounter tables to reveal them shortchanges the entire adventure. We are drawn off the beaten path in Skyrimspecifically because we can see interesting stuff nearly everywhere we look. Peril on the Purple Planet has a few encounters and locations keyed to specific hexes but mostly relies on the random tables. Which is fine, but it results in passive, retroactive worldbuilding.
To make a Hex Crawl really come to life, seed your map with cool shit. Especially your starting location.
2. Hex Crawls live and die by their random encounters
As mention above, Peril has only a handful of encounters tied to specific hexes. Everything else that happens to the players is a result of a roll on the random tables. I was excited about the possibilities going into the game — after all, I would discover the story alongside the players. But I felt a little nonplussed by the result.
Each hex represents 6 miles, and for every one that players entered, we rolled on a random encounter table to see what happened. They battled wild beastmen in the mushroom forest; stumbled upon an abandoned camp and discovered a cache of supplies; came upon the bloated corpse of a giant worm and decided to crawl inside in search of treasure because of course they did; fought lizard vultures and a tribe of beastmen and an enormous sand worm from a floating skiff; and had at least another five or six encounters. It sounds pretty exciting now that I write it down, and maybe it was — I’ll have to ask my players. But from my perspective, it felt a bit meh.
The random tables could’ve used more color and variety, frankly. For instance, the entry for Raiders essentially just lists their numbers and some vague tactics. Missing is all the color: what are the raiders physically doing, and why? This was a huge missed opportunity to bring the strangeness of the planet to life.
3. Improvisation for the win
I think most long-time Dungeon Masters are probably pretty good at improvisation. You kind of have to be — you can plan all you’d like, but there is just no accounting for the mad schemes of your players. Leveling up as a DM is less about rules familiarity than it is becoming comfortable with ambiguity.
I have run entire sessions with zero prep and no material, straight off the dome. I can’t say those were great games, but I know they were memorable — one of my friends still talks about one such game. Improvising a Hex Crawl isn’t that different, as long as you don’t assume the tables are going to do the work for you.
What do you do when your random encounter roll brings up a second abandoned camp two or three hexes after the last? Using the same description from the random table is a terrible idea — don’t do that. Instead, we need to determine what makes this camp different from the last. Is it burnt down? Are there bodies strewn about? Is it actually a trap?
Per point #2, having better tables is a must. But in addition, the DM needs to be prepared to veer away from table results as necessary, and to embellish them properly. Otherwise the world will feel uninspired.
4. Bookkeeping reigns supreme
By its very nature, a Hex Crawl is largely concerned with travel and all that entails. Resource management — encumbrance, food, and other consumables — is something I’ve usually hand-waved because frankly it’s not all that fun compared to adventuring and derring-do. But in a Hex Crawl, resource management becomes a large part of the game.
Dungeon Masters always have a lot to keep track of during games, but crawling through hexes increases the administrative odds & ends substantially. Things I tried tracking during the Hex Crawl, to various degrees of success:
- if the players got lost, and if so, in what direction
- how fast they can travel, modified by terrain
- how far can they see, modified by terrain
- time of day
- rations consumed every day
- the weird sun’s hit point draining effect
- gemstone shards, which powered the sci-fi relics the players discovered
It got to be a bit much and I constantly felt frazzled and unprepared, despite reading through the materials twice and highlighting relevant bits. Literally every new hex found me shuffling papers in an effort to find the one I needed. Next time, I’ll lean completely into the procedural aspect and make myself a cheat sheet I can refer to for each hex the players explore.
5. Don’t be beholden to the crawl
In my experience, D&D usually comes in one of two flavors:
- go into a place — likely a dungeon — fight the things that live there and take their things
- follow plot crumbs around the world on an epic adventure
Most anything else is a variation on these two themes. Any map-spanning exploration was always narrative-driven, and thus, a bit loosey-goosey in execution. Hex Crawls apply rules and procedures to travel. It’s a good thing, but if you aren’t careful the game can completely become those procedures and assorted bookkeeping.
Sometime after the midway point of the game, I sensed the game was missing some vital juice. I decided to dangle something I knew the players wouldn’t be able to resist: a proper dungeon. No table had called for it and it wasn’t keyed to their current hex. I just felt the group could use something more concrete than more procedural-generated content. So I pulled a dungeon from Peril’s extended material and literally dropped it in their path. And it was probably the most memorable part of the entire session.
In summary, five takeaways from my first Hex Crawl:
- Pepper your starting area with locations and things that beg to be explored.
- Random tables are the lifeblood of a hex crawl. Spend time fleshing yours out (even for a published product). Add color, motivation, and above all, variety.
- Be prepared to embellish random encounters to make the world come alive. Ask how it ties into the ongoing fiction and if there are plot threads you might start or pay off using the result.
- Prepare a cheat sheet of everything you need to track by hex and day.
- Don’t marry yourself to procedures and bookkeeping. This is supposed to be an adventure. If you sense the game is lagging, drop something exciting in front of your players: a strange NPC, a wondrous location, a dungeon to delve.
