How To Do A Hexcrawl

a practical guide to crawling hexes

2025-07-26

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Speed, Distance, and Time
3. Supplies
4. Weather
5. Keying Hexes
6. Watch Procedure
7. Terrain Type
8. Overtable
9. Proximity
10. NPC Reaction
11. What Are They Doing
12. Drawing a Map
13. Conclusion
14. Resources

Introduction

The adventurers decided to answer their summons and travel overland from Blue Harbor to Beartown.

So I decided to do something I have never done before. I decided to do a HEXCRAWL.

I have never done a hexcrawl before. Neither as a player nor as a DM. The closest I have come is playing a couple games of Barbarian Prince. And that experience informed a lot of what I know about crawling hexes: hexes have terrain, different terrains have different chances of getting lost and different travel speeds, and there are random encounters.

So this is what I came up with to emulate some of that and run a hexcrawl for my table.

Speed, Distance, and Time

First some mathy preliminaries. There’s really no way to avoid it.

Group travel speed = Slowest PC speed / 10. My slowest character has a speed of 30 so the group travel speed is 3 mph.

Units:

• 1 Watch = 4 hours
• 1 March = 8 hours

Distance:

• Distance per Watch = Speed x Watch = Speed x 4 hrs. In our example, 12 miles.

• Distance per March = Speed x March = Speed x 8 hrs. In our example, 24 miles.

• Day = 2 Watches of Travel + 2 Watches of Activity + 2 Watches of Rest. That’s 8 hours of travel; 8 hours of foraging, eating, repairs, etc; and 8 hours of sleep.

Supplies

Optional food and water rules: each player character needs 1 pound of food and 1 gallon of water per day. It is helpful to assign one character the role of quartermaster to keep track of all the provisions. At the end of each day, have them update the group supplies.

It seems fair to me that characters can go 3 + Con Modifier days without eating, or 3 days without drinking, before taking Exhaustion. We didn’t get into this because the players stocked up on plenty of food and water.

Weather

At the start of each day roll d66 (2d6 and read them left to right) for weather on the “HOT AND WET” weather table: any 1s are Hot and Wet, respectively. Any 6s, opposite. (Relative to the expected weather for the season.)

This procedure was created by Sean F. Smith.

Keying Hexes

I don’t key hexes up front. Mostly. I mean, I know where the two settlements are. But otherwise, I let the random encounters and landmarks establish what’s in each hex. And then I write that down, and that becomes the map key through play.

Watch Procedure

The four-hour Watch is the fundamental unit of time.

Each Watch, you will roll for an encounter and a landmark. You will need to six-sided dice that you can tell apart. Or two identical ones and just read them lift to right. I will refer to them below as light and dark. The procedure below is what I ended up doing at the table to try to prevent doing lots of re-rolls.

• Roll 2d6, one dark (Encounter) one light (Landmark)

• Consult the Chance for Encounter + Chance for Landmark for the current terrain type

• If Encounter, total both dice and use that on the combined Overtable + Terrain table. Use the OTHER die for Proximity. Total dice (or roll again) for NPC Reaction. Optionally roll What Are They Doing

• If Landmark, use the OTHER die for Terrain Landmark

I haven’t introduced the terrain type tables, or the overtable yet. Let’s remedy that!

Terrain Type

Here is my current “Forest” terrain sheet.

FOREST

• Encounter: 2 in 6
• Landmark: 1 in 6

ENCOUNTERS

2d6	Result
3	Giant toad sitting on a giant egg
4	Bush brats racing some pixies through the forest
5	Lumbering Honeybear
6	Awakened Shrubs blocking the path

== Unused ==

• Shardik / The Biggest Bear

== Used ==

• Path is flooded because a dire beaver dammed up the river
• Fauns guarding a concrete slab

LANDMARKS

1. Waterfall
2. Cave / Dungeon Breach
3. Big Tree
4. Eerily Silent Meadow
5. Crystal Lake
6. Collapsed Bridge

I have one of these for every major terrain type including grasslands, hills, mountains, forest, etc. They don’t take much work. You need 4 possible encounters (plus maybe a few extras to bank) and 3 or 6 possible landmarks.

Notable features include:

• There is a 1 in 6 chance of a Landmark (roll on Landmarks at the bottom)

• There is a 2 in 6 chance of an Encounter (roll on the combined Overtable + Terrain table; more on that below.)

• I try to keep a few ideas in “Unused” to slot into the encounter table after moving an encounter to “Used”

Also note: every terrain has a travel speed modifier. I currently have these in their own table, but probably ought to include them in each terrain type page.

So if normally you can travel 12 miles per Watch, in the forest you can only travel 6 miles unless following a trail or road.

Overtable

The overtable creates an overall cohesive feel for the world while also providing local flavor: 8 - 11 are four “world encounters” that can happen anywhere, 3 - 6 are four local encounters provided by the current terrain type.

7 is always a recurring NPC, 2 is always a dragon, and 12 is always a wizard.

This format is taken from Structuring Encounter Tables, Amended & Restated over at Papers and Pencils. https://www.paperspencils.com/structuring-encounter-tables-amended-restated/

2D6	RESULT
2	Dragon
3 - 6	LOCAL
7	Recurring NPC
8	Moleman looking for escaped animals
9	Bitebats
10	Mollusks
11	Underworld Denizen
12	Wizard

== UNUSED ==

• Lesser Griffin
• Bards

== SPENT ==

• Bejeweled Snails collecting taxes for the Gilded Gastropod
• Starving dire bear escaped from an abandoned moleman zoo deep underground

I keep a table of recurring NPCs, and tables to roll up weird wizards and terrible dragons.

Proximity

NPC Reaction

NEEDS

1. Sustenance (water/food/air).
2. Shelter.
3. Rest or recovery (includes being injured).
4. Security.
5. Stability.
6. Friendship.
7. Acceptance.
8. Respect or status.
9. Recognition.
10. Creativity or achieving self-defined potential.

What Are They Doing

Unintelligent creature, roll d12. Intelligent creature, roll d30 (d6/2 * 3 + d10).

1. Lost
2. Hurt
3. Trapped
4. Sleeping
5. Eating
6. Sick
7. Tracking Prey
8. Lying in Ambush
9. Mating Behavior
10. Starving
11. Returning Home
12. Fleeing
13. Plotting
14. Holding Captives
15. Scavenging
16. Building a Camp
17. Demolishing
18. Doing drugs or drinking
19. Artistic pursuits
20. Spying
21. Committing a crime
22. Searching
23. Religious ritual
24. Setting, putting out, or fleeing a fire
25. Weeping
26. Excreting
27. Bathing
28. Socializing
29. Gloating
30. Something that isn’t on this table.

Source: I stole this from somewhere but didn’t write down where. So, sorry! I’ll update this if I find it.

Drawing a Map

I used HexKit by Negative Cone of Energy (https://cone.itch.io/hex-kit) to draw the map, with the Fantasyland tile set (https://cone.itch.io/fantasyland).

While drawing the map I tried to present options: a safe route that will take longer, or a shorter route that might be more dangerous. They chose danger!

I used gimp to colorize it and glitch it up a little bit because that’s my jam.

Conclusion

Okay I think that’s everything I used to run the hexcrawl! It allowed me to feel pretty prepared without feeling as though I had to do tons of prep.

It took 2 sessions for the players to make the trip. We had some memorable encounters along the way. The “recurring NPC” entry on the overtable made for some fun when a sleazy city goblin showed up miles from town to collect on a debt. “You owe me a bag of teeth!”

In summary:

• Draw a map with some terrains and roads and stuff. Decide on a scale, typically 6 or 12 miles.

• Come up with a few encounters and landmarks per terrain.

• Use your tables

• Have fun!

Resources

• https://dwarfstar.brainiac.com/ds_barbarianprince.html
• https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/blog/hexcrawl-checklist-part-two
• https://www.paperspencils.com/structuring-encounter-tables-amended-restated/
• https://viridianvoid.bearblog.dev/d666-tables-for-triangle-agency/
• https://blog.d4caltrops.com/2018/03/wilderness-hexes-version-10.html