HOW TO HEX CRAWL

INTRODUCTION

I want you to think of hex crawling as playing your TTRPG like a board game. On the players turn, they travel a number of hexes and then roll to see what happens, good or bad. Hex crawling is a very simple, rules lite way to explore a portion of the game world as large as a 10s or hundreds of miles. Rules for hex crawling have been explained more clearly in legacy editions of D&D and in retro clones than in current editions, which is one reason why I'm writing this. Hex crawling emphasizes exploration and discovery rather than combat or talking. The risk-reward elements and in essence the "game" elements are in resource management including time and food, avoiding hazards and obstacles, plotting routes, evading dangerous wild beasts or wandering warbands or scouts, and discovering secret locations.

BASICS OF A HEX

Why a hex? A hex represents a circle, but circles do not interlock as neatly as hexagons, so we use hexes instead. A hex assumes you are standing in the very center of the hex, and the boundaries of hex represent your horizon.

A hex represents a distance in miles. That distance is based on the scale of the map. If you look at an entire continent, one hex might be 60 miles, but we don't hex crawl hexes that big. We zoom in so that a hex is more manageable. There are different philosophies about how big a hex can be or should be, but to keep the math at the simplest, we're going to assume all hexes are either 2, 4, or 8 miles. The math below is based on humans being able to marching 24 miles per day which is reasonable. 

Your map will have a hex-grid on top. Hexes themselves come in different scales and sizes. I don't know if there are standard shaped and sized hexes for this practice. I've seen sheets of paper with 15 hexes on the short side and 27 hexes on the long side, 15 hexes on the long side and 20 hexes on the long side, 15 hexes on the short side and 18 hexes on the long side. You could probably do this with square gird paper (graph paper) perfectly well. The goal is to have paper that is a lot of grids across, so it's not too quickly explored.

HEXCRAWL MOVEMENT RULES

• Scales: Maps can show an area or region at different SCALES. Make these assumptions:
• Large Scale or Kingdom Scale: 1 hex = 8 miles. The hex counts shown below are for traveling pace are based on 8-mile hexes.
• Medium Scale (a seldom used in-between scale): 1 hex = 4 miles, double hex counts shown below. 
• Small Scale or Province Scale: 1 Hex = 2 miles, quadruple hex counts shown below.
• Note, province scales are actually1 mile hexes. Using 2 miles hexes simplifies my mini-game.
• Normal Pace: Move 3 hexes per day.
• Slow Pace: Move 2 Hexes per day. Bonus to stealth and perception.
• Fast Pace: Move 4 Hexes per day. Only navigation is possible and possibly penalized.
• Difficult Terrain: -1 Hex
• Encumbered: -1 Hex if movement while encumbered is possible.
• Forced March: +1 Hex per day and roll vs exhaustion. The roll is more difficult in Difficult Terrain or if encumbered.

GENERAL HEX RULES
Note that rules are intentionally rules-lite. GM rulings are encouraged.

• 1 Day = 1 Turn. Players can move a number of hexes per day, and can do one action per turn.
• Players subtract 1 day's rations / provisions at the end of each day. If you are out of rations, make a roll vs exhaustion.
• Hot regions double water requirements per day. 
• Assume you are in the center of the hex. 
• Don't do fractions of a hex.
• You automatically discover any landmarks or locations in a hex you're in.
• You can see for 2 miles in all directions unless obstructed by terrain. This is true at sea level. At higher altitudes, people can see further. 
• Roll 1 encounter per day and 1 encounter per night. 
• Roll more or less encounters depending on the region. 
• Encounters are not always detrimental; they can also be beneficial or neutral. Having potentially good encounters may make rolling for encounters exciting. 
• For the purposes of defining an encounter, an encounter roll may be an event such as weather or anything that may provide an interesting roleplay prompt.

PLAYER ACTIONS
Players can do 1 thing per day:

• Other / Specify: Be creative, I can't think up everything.
• Navigate: The lead player character in marching order navigates. Navigation is automatically successful on roads or in familiar regions. If success is uncertain, make a roll. 
• On a failure, stray off course by one 8-mile hex without realizing. 
• On a really bad failure, end the day in either the same hex or in a random adjacent hex and the party is sure they're off course but they don't know how badly.
• Some terrain and weather may make navigation more difficult.
• Hire an NPC guide who knows the region. Such a guild does not need to roll to navigate.
• Map: This player may make a map of the party's progress on blank hex paper. 
• They must map their progress faithfully to the navigation rolls, even the failures.
• Forage: Search for wild edibles, drinkable water, medicinal plants, firewood and tinder. On a success, add 1d4+Perception Provisions.
• Geography can affect the availability of resources. This generally makes the difficulty higher or lower, but can also make foraging impossible.
• Hunt / Track: Search for signs of wild game or some other quarry. Roll to succeed / fail. On a success, you encounter wild game or track it to its den.
• Scout: You search for enemies, hazards, and other sources of danger. On a success, you detect the danger in time and can't be surprised by it. You may also have a bonus to surprise enemies at the GM's option.

OPTIONAL RULES

You could use the standard and more traditional 6 mile hex for kingdom scale and 1 mile hex for province scale. In which case, use the adjusted chart below. 

• Scales: Maps can show an area or region at different SCALES. Make these assumptions:
• Kingdom Scale: 1 hex = 6 miles.
• Province Scale: 1 Hex = 1 mile, sextuple hex counts shown below.
• Normal Pace: Move 4 hexes per day.
• Slow Pace: Move 3 Hexes per day. Bonus to stealth and perception.
• Fast Pace: Move 5 Hexes per day. Only navigation is possible and possibly penalized.
• Difficult Terrain: -1 Hex
• Encumbered: -1 Hex if movement while encumbered is possible.
• Forced March: +1 Hex per day and roll vs exhaustion. The roll is more difficult in Difficult Terrain or if encumbered.

5 Things I don't like about D&D 5e

1. THIS corporation I disagree with. The edge of D&D is gone because of WotC. I can understand making a family friendly product, but omitting the word "savage" to be culturally sensitive, and making different races bland and interchangeable and humanizing monsters to avoid non-existent racism is infantilization and nonsense. I don't think this corporation is taking good care of the game, and I don't want to support them.

2. The game is too easy, or in other words, it's too difficult for a GM to challenge 5e player characters. You can mathematically show how some monsters just don't have a chance against player characters. This is probably why they don't publish the math of their challenge rating (or CR) system.

3. Rulings over rules to me means a rules-lite game that relies on GM rulings in the absence of rules or clear rules. I want a rules-lite game that gives the GM more flexibility. 5e has too many rules I don't like and would like to play without, like furries, skills, monks, and charisma checks to have a conversation. 5e doesn't give the GM clear permission to do what they want to the 5e rules. I think it shows a lack of confidence in the customer.

4. 5e puts talks about three pillars of game play, combat, social interaction, and exploration, but it's clearly heavily weighted towards combat. In 5e, exploration is crap. 90% or more of the books are dedicated towards combat, and 5e combat is BORING. Few rules are dedicated to say, hex crawling. In fact, the core books give no instruction on how to run a hex crawl. Exploration is about tension, mystery, and discovery, but some basic character features allow players to NEGATE the risks of exploration, which eliminates the risk reward aspect of exploration and make it lame. Examples: 1st level Rangers who can negate movement penalties in difficult terrain and can't get lost except by magical means, the Outlander background who can always recall maps and general terrain and can always forage enough food and water for 5 people per day if the biome has food and water, and lets not forget the 1st level Goodberry spell. At least Create Food and Water is a 3rd level spell, geez. There are no rules for running a dungeon crawl either. I challenge you to put together a presentation for GMs on how to run a dungeon using ONLY what's in the 5e core books. 5e even has concepts like passive perception so that the GM can play your character for you and tell you when you notice something even when you don't state you're looking for anything. 

5. Too much like a Computer Game? Video games are a medium of art with their own limitations and conventions, like needing to follow a script, having overly designed character builds, an excessive catalogue of player options, High and easily replenishable HP, and an emphasis on game balance. I don't like that some of these computer game-y ideas are prevalent in my table top RPGs either. One of the advantages of paper and pencil RPGs is DIY! Why are people buying supplemental books when they can just DIY? I don't know. I have my fair share of books I don't need.

Fantasy Adventure Guilds for RPGs

Historically speaking, the entire purpose of a guild was regulation of goods and services.

Diegetically speaking, Elder Scrolls III Morrowind's three Imperial Guilds for adventurers, the Fighter's Guild, the Mage's Guild, and the Thieves' Guild, which were ALL very clever because they were all implemented by the government, yes even the Thieves' Guild, to control the more dangerous elements of the society by channeling their dangerous behaviors rather than just imposing laws to restrict their more dangerous behaviors.

The Fighter's Guild was implemented to control independent mercenaries and give wayward soldiers and vagabonds something productive to do and keep them from becoming brigands. Membership grants you training, an income, work that is productive for society, opportunities for advancement and a good reputation, etc. The fighter's police themselves.

The Mage's Guild is like the Fighters Guild, but there's the addition of what is considered acceptable magic and unacceptable magic. Now your mages are restricted from doing the "bad magic" to keep their membership. The mages police themselves.

The Thieves' Guild is the most clever. The Thieves' Guild is the ultimate government psy-op. Members are given expectations about what crimes are OK, and what crimes are not OK. This means thieves' guild criminals are less dangerous than non-member criminals who have no such rules. Further, if you're in the thieves' guild and you get caught by the law, the guards will accept bribes and let you go to thieve again. If you're not in the thieves' guild, the guards will NOT accept bribes. Independent criminals and competing criminal organizations cannot compete with the thieves' guild. The thieves' guild police themselves and they police other thieves' without even trying. Additionally, by accepting bribes from the thieves' guild, the government just found out how to tax crime. 

All these organizations are incentivized to keep their charter, which is the document from the government that permits them to operate, by operating effectively. If they go rogue or fail to operate effectively, the government does some culling or some quality control for the members and leaders.