Emulating exploration without the hexcrawl

Having a bit of a thought exercise here, looking for ways that other GMs have solved this problem before.

I'm planning an adventure path right now, and parts of it involve some exploration over rather large areas. Problem is this: Our group doesn't meet very often, and we meet for a limited time (about 4 to 5 hours). The traditional "Hex Crawl" representation of exploration suffers from two problems:

1) It's monotonous in spots, with lots of areas without much going on
3) It's time-consuming, eating a lot of time that the more role-playing players could spend interacting with NPCs

However, hex-crawling does have the "sandbox" advantage -- namely, the players look at a map, they see a ravine, a swamp, a cave, what have you, and they say, "Ooh, let's see what's in there." and they go find out.

Compare this to traditional "railroad" plots, which cut out the "boring" parts of exploration, and promote Combat or NPC interactions, but remove the "sandboxiness".

So, I'm looking for some mechanics that invoke the feel of hexcrawl-exploration, but can still distill down to the "important" encounters without just being obvious "these spots are the special ones on the map.

The only thing I can come up with is something like the chase cards from Paizo -- lay out a series of cards face-down, a 5 x 5 array or something, maybe with the map printed on them, and whatever they want to explore they turn over - but that has its own problems, you might as well just show 'em the GM copy of the map.

Has anyone else worked out alternative means of representing exploration, without resorting to "hexcrawl"?

I use something similar to the cards (ie big map boxes) with each of them having a list of random events that might occur in that space

eg Space B1: Geothermal Badlands
This area is covered in hardened lava from recent volcanic activity. The stink of sulfur lingers in the air as does the steam of hot pools and boiling mud.
1. A thick yellow fog rolls towards you over the ground, stinking of sulfur and obscuring your view
2. A Geyser erupts to the left of you (Rflx save)
3 PCs come across a rope leading into a bubbling hotpool, pull up the rope they will find a boiled goblin carcass
4. An ogre and four goblin slaves clamber over the rocks towards the hotpools intent on fetching their lunch
5 Ambushed by 3 ogres
6 You spot six goblins apparently running away

that sort of thing

Something that I wanted to try is using large exploration 'hexes'
so that you would have area movement with perhaps 2 hour 'turns'
I also wanted to use this for combat for supers using a whole city as the battleground

Henry said:

I'm planning an adventure path right now, and parts of it involve some exploration over rather large areas.

Click to expand...

What's the goal of this exploration?

It's clearly not exploration-for-the-sake-of-exploration (since you essentially listed that as a problem). Without knowing what the actual goal is, though, it's difficult to offer alternatives.

For example, if you came in and said: "Any way to handle dungeons without using dungeoncrawls? Dungeoncrawls can get monotonous and they're time-consuming." I wouldn't be able to help you. But if you said, "Because the real goal of the adventure is to successfully navigate from one side of the Misty Mountains to the other through the Mines of Moria", then there are several possibilities.

I once used an alternate 'wandering monster' method that had large scale hexes that the PCs could dash through on known trails/roads or dig into and explore. Research or clues could lead them to a explore a particular hex.

Within the hex, similar to Tonguez, there are encounters and events. The twist was that the PCs would use Survival to search the local area and depending on the results could be surprised by any 'encounter'... or they could be on the other end and be able to sneak up to or sneak around the encounter.

With 3x it broke down due to my group having a Druid and Ranger whose Survival skills were pumped way up and they rapidly got to the point of avoiding whatever they wanted.

The nice thing about this approach was that you could have various CR of encounters, with the higher level set-piece encounters giving of a 'stay away' vibe. At higher levels the PCs get to encounter the big nasties out hunting as well...

This approach has the advantage of allowing for cutting to the chase, or letting the PCs dig into that ravine that was created by a recent earthquake and the odd man-made looking wall that was uncovered



and you could leave the drawing of the map to the players


If I were to buy a product that did this, I would prefer to see a macro level map that shows large geograpic areas and massive landmarks and terrain types {deserts, temperate, etc}, Then smaller scales maps for regions of interest, and then sets of cards for each region. Some cards would be one of a kind {Pyramid of Set} while others could be used multiple times {Oasis, small village, farming community, etc..} and others would be the generic and used for the majority of the region.

If each card covers a days worth of travel to cross without going off the main roads, that would work pretty well.

To make it entertaining, each table that runs the adventure could randomly roll for what the next card/hex contains

Rogue Agent said:

What's the goal of this exploration?

It's clearly not exploration-for-the-sake-of-exploration (since you essentially listed that as a problem). Without knowing what the actual goal is, though, it's difficult to offer alternatives.

Click to expand...

To be clearer, it's Jade Regent Adventure Path -- and there's a LAAAARGE amount of travel in that module -- thousands of miles of it. If you're not familiar with it, it's Paizo's take on the Journey of Marco Polo, but via the North Pole.

I'm trying to avoid: "You make it to Magnamar -- and this happens. You make it to Kalsgard -- and this happens. You make it to..." I'm not planning to run it exactly as stock, because I need to make some modifications anyway to handle the needs of my group -- the "caravan" mini-game I'm planning to reduce or eliminate, and mainly make the caravan simply a mobile base. As players rotate in and out of the game due to real life needs, their PCs will stay with the caravan, and for time constraints, I will likely reduce or eliminate some of the encounters so that we can finish this game in less than a year.

However, my problem is seeking different ways to invoke the feel of exploration that a journey of this type would have, rather than an adventure outline that is linear enough that it could as easily take place in adjoining cities.

Henry said:

Having a bit of a thought exercise here, looking for ways that other GMs have solved this problem before.

I'm planning an adventure path right now, and parts of it involve some exploration over rather large areas. Problem is this: Our group doesn't meet very often, and we meet for a limited time (about 4 to 5 hours). The traditional "Hex Crawl" representation of exploration suffers from two problems:

1) It's monotonous in spots, with lots of areas without much going on
3) It's time-consuming, eating a lot of time that the more role-playing players could spend interacting with NPCs

However, hex-crawling does have the "sandbox" advantage -- namely, the players look at a map, they see a ravine, a swamp, a cave, what have you, and they say, "Ooh, let's see what's in there." and they go find out.

Compare this to traditional "railroad" plots, which cut out the "boring" parts of exploration, and promote Combat or NPC interactions, but remove the "sandboxiness".

So, I'm looking for some mechanics that invoke the feel of hexcrawl-exploration, but can still distill down to the "important" encounters without just being obvious "these spots are the special ones on the map.

The only thing I can come up with is something like the chase cards from Paizo -- lay out a series of cards face-down, a 5 x 5 array or something, maybe with the map printed on them, and whatever they want to explore they turn over - but that has its own problems, you might as well just show 'em the GM copy of the map.

Has anyone else worked out alternative means of representing exploration, without resorting to "hexcrawl"?

Click to expand...

I like hexcrawling, and I wish my players liked it as much as me (but alas, they were usually too much into DRAMATIC CHARACTER ARCS!!! to bother with it).

Use "travel montages". If they cross a territory controlled by aaracokcras, either run a quick roleplaying scene where they converse with the aaracockra (and where you can foreshadow stuff), or run a quick, 4-round combat (which you "cut away" from regardless of how the battle is going... the PCs either flee or force the enemies to retreat).

When passing by "empty" hexes, feel free to throw in mostly irrelevant stuff ("you pass by a rounded hill bordered by the remnants of an ancient stone wall, its builders long forgotten").

And remember the size of the hexes. Old Greyhawk maps had hexes that were over 60 miles across!

I'm not wholly sure where the problem is. Though it might be related to why dungeon crawls are slow. No map.

put the map down on the table, and put a token on the map representing the party.

Refer to where the party is and the goal of getting to China on the other side of the north pole.

Now, ask them where they want to go. They pick an adjacent hex and you tell them what they see or encounter.

I'm familiar with playing in a 4 hour time frame. maps usually cut down some of the befuddlement, because you have a visual explanation of the player's main movement choice already prepped.

Janx said:

I'm not wholly sure where the problem is. Though it might be related to why dungeon crawls are slow. No map.

put the map down on the table, and put a token on the map representing the party.

Refer to where the party is and the goal of getting to China on the other side of the north pole.

Now, ask them where they want to go. They pick an adjacent hex and you tell them what they see or encounter.

I'm familiar with playing in a 4 hour time frame. maps usually cut down some of the befuddlement, because you have a visual explanation of the player's main movement choice already prepped.

Click to expand...

Huh... that theory does explain why my Trav dungeoncrawls were always quick compared to d20 ones. The PCs tended to either do a sensor sweep and get the layout that way, or if they were on a civilized world, a bit of computer hacking to get floorplans.

hollowleg said:

Huh... that theory does explain why my Trav dungeoncrawls were always quick compared to d20 ones. The PCs tended to either do a sensor sweep and get the layout that way, or if they were on a civilized world, a bit of computer hacking to get floorplans.

Click to expand...

exactly.

The map saves a ton of confusion and explaining. It doesn't have to be detailed. Consider it the simplified Player's version of the GM's map.

It should reveal the movement choices of the players. Where's the forest, the mountains, etc. Where's the cities and passes?

This gives clarity of the situation to the players, and that produces decisiveness.