D&D 5E What Book -- WotC or 3rd Party -- Has the Best Hexcrawl Support

[Reynard]

Tomb of Annihilation is an adventure of course, but it has excellent support for the hexcrawl contained within. I think you might find it a very helpful model for how to run your own hexcrawl.

To be clear (and I thought I was above) I am not looking for information on HOW to run a hexcrawl, I am looking for resources that support it in 5E.

 

[Mistwell]

To be clear (and I thought I was above) I am not looking for information on HOW to run a hexcrawl, I am looking for resources that support it in 5E.

It's a resource that supports it in 5e. I understand you know how to run it. I am saying it's a helpful resource which focuses on it for 5e. If you have not read it, I think you'd find it useful.

I will provide some examples. Tomb of Annihilation has backgrounds specifically for a hexcrawl setting. It has more advanced hexcrawl weather rules. It has a city setting which is focused as a starting point and returning point to support a hexcrawl around that city. It has a series of sidequest rules for hexcrawls. It has travel distance issue rules, navigation issue rules, dehydration rules, disease rules, rules for varying wandering monsters depending on broader areas of hexcrawls on a map, etc. all of which is focused on 5e and hexcrawls.

 

[Stormonu]

Closest to an “official” hexcrawl I can think of for 5E is Tomb of Annilihation. It’s premapped, but part of the adventure involves exploring areas that to the PCs, are unknown with lots of opportunity for random encounters. Hope this helps with what you are looking for.

 

[Malmuria]

Hot Springs Island is fantastic, just a really well made product and excellent example of how to build and organize a hexcrawl, sandbox adventure. You have factions, locations, and encounters but not overarching plot, so how things go will really depend on what the PCs do and what their goal ends up being. It also does random encounters in a really interesting way where it builds in the activities and motivations of the things you are encountering, so that not everything is combat by default. It is system-neutral, but someone made stats for 5e. That said, it relies on your system of choice for a lot of the exploration mechanics (exhaustion and such). I also just saw this exploration-themed kickstarter project for 5e, which looks interesting.

 

[Reynard]

It's a resource that supports it in 5e. I understand you know how to run it. I am saying it's a helpful resource which focuses on it for 5e. If you have not read it, I think you'd find it useful.

I will provide some examples. Tomb of Annihilation has backgrounds specifically for a hexcrawl setting. It has more advanced hexcrawl weather rules. It has a city setting which is focused as a starting point and returning point to support a hexcrawl around that city. It has a series of sidequest rules for hexcrawls. It has travel distance issue rules, navigation issue rules, dehydration rules, disease rules, rules for varying wandering monsters depending on broader areas of hexcrawls on a map, etc. all of which is focused on 5e and hexcrawls.

Thanks. I will see if I can wrangle a copy.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Maybe try using Hexcrawl Basics? It's billed as for Old School Essentials but I think you could totally use it for other systems and it goes into detail on a lot of the minutiae of Hexcrawling. Not too long a read, either.

My book Filling in the Blanks (I know, I know, it's written for OSE) deals almost exclusively with populating hexes in a (relatively) system-agnostic fashion. It deals mostly with features (rivers, caves, weird magical effects, resources, etc.). It's designed for use with 6-mile hexes that are broken into smaller subhexes, but provides an alternate method for using hexes that aren't subdivided. A number of people that I've spoken with have used it for 5e or Pathfinder; there's little that needs to be converted system-wise.