That's a small excerpt from Necromancer Games' Wilderlands of High Fantasy box set, still available on pdf I believe. It has 18 huge maps detailed like that.
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A question of Hexcrawling/Exploration
- Thread starter Rechan
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That's a small excerpt from Necromancer Games' Wilderlands of High Fantasy box set, still available on pdf I believe. It has 18 huge maps detailed like that.
JustinAlexander
First Post
You're running a campaign based on large area exploration but you don't even know if the players are interested in exploration?
I suspect this is going to end poorly for you.
Well, if you're serious about not wanting exploration to be a part of your exploration campaign, then you should include everything of interest so that they can go straight to it without needing to explore.
If you're not serious about that, then you should include all the details down to the level immediately above whatever it is you think the PCs would be interested in discovering.
Note that this scale is going to mix poorly with the "you need to explore a hex in order to find things of interest" mechanic you're describing (unless everything of interest is buried). Given where the horizon lies, a human passing through the middle of one 2-mile hex will be able to see the entirety of every neighboring hex. A modest tower will be visible from five or six hexes away.
In addition, 2 miles is only about 10 city blocks in length. That could potentially contain a lot of interest in an urban area, but in a rural area it's only slightly larger than a medieval farming manor. And in the wilderness the vast, vast majority of those 2-mile hexes are going to be devoid of interest.
Thank you for your post, @JustinAlexander however:
Each hex represents such a small area because the geography is dense jungle. This means that travel is very slow. I'd prefer the PCs not spend the most of a day traveling from one hex to the other.
The area is dense jungle, hence visibility is significantly reduced. A tower might poke above the treeline, but lower than that and it would not be visible. Besides, what may be in the hex may not be obvious. Something as simple as special plants would not be clear unless it was thoroughly searched, or a small shrine to a local spirit, or a sacred tree, and so on.
In addition, in the large area around the starting location there are no such large structures, as it is taboo to build anything out of stone, let alone anything overly large, because of the local's interpretation of the continent's history.
Finally, In My Campaign, almost every hex will have something of note; the vast, vast majority will have something in it.
Each hex represents such a small area because the geography is dense jungle. This means that travel is very slow. I'd prefer the PCs not spend the most of a day traveling from one hex to the other.
The area is dense jungle, hence visibility is significantly reduced. A tower might poke above the treeline, but lower than that and it would not be visible. Besides, what may be in the hex may not be obvious. Something as simple as special plants would not be clear unless it was thoroughly searched, or a small shrine to a local spirit, or a sacred tree, and so on.
In addition, in the large area around the starting location there are no such large structures, as it is taboo to build anything out of stone, let alone anything overly large, because of the local's interpretation of the continent's history.
Finally, In My Campaign, almost every hex will have something of note; the vast, vast majority will have something in it.
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This is the hex map being included in my TO SLAY A DRAGON.
As a populated landmass, I'm starting with the premise that the PCs already know or are easily able to obtain maps of the area. So, while it's a hexcrawl, the "exploration" aspect is de-emphasised in favour of "navigation" and choices like "should we cut through the forest, or follow the road around it?"
As a populated landmass, I'm starting with the premise that the PCs already know or are easily able to obtain maps of the area. So, while it's a hexcrawl, the "exploration" aspect is de-emphasised in favour of "navigation" and choices like "should we cut through the forest, or follow the road around it?"
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Somebody lives in a very flat place....
I paid a cartographer, Sean MacDonald, to do it. It's for an adventure I successfully Kickstarted and will be publishing in January. The whole middle section (really, the second adventure in a trilogy of three) is an old-fashioned hexcrawl journey.
JustinAlexander
First Post
Hills just make it worse once you get to the top of them.
A jungle environment, like the one Rechan proposes, is really the only way to meaningfully cut down on typical visibility during an extended overland trip.
Or forest, anything with trees. A flat forest like most of Finland has very limited visibility, the only time you can see far there AIR is when standing at the edge of a large lake.
But the default temperate terrain is forest though, so this is a major point.
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