(A) Pointcrawl your Hexcrawl
This is archival material from previous blog
In OSR movement there are two most often used ways of designing travel between locations. It’s either pointcrawl or hexcrawl. From these two the hexcrawl is way more prevalent, way more elaborated on and has duckton of materials to use. A lot of maps is based on 3-, 6-, 8-, 16- or 24-mile hexes, there are even projects of making maps of real world divided in such hexes. Awesome stuff.
Despite the overwhelming push towards hexcrawl, being the default traveling mode of games I have to admit I don’t really like it. I’ve tried it, I’ve run it, never once I felt excited for it. You can present hexcrawl twofold – either you have prepared map already or you roll it on the fly. The flaw of already established hexcrawl comes to me from one notion – lack of mystery. If any person at the table has direct map of a place or the whole world it is driven out of mystery. Have you seen how maps looked like before modern era? How people thought there were only three continents, equal in size? How over and underestimated were some parts of the world? There were WHOLE CONTINENTS missing, not to mention all islands, peninsulas, mountains and whatever geographical term you come up with. It’s weird to me to long for mystery and discovery and wild unmapped places on one hand and on the other – having it all mapped out.
But hexcrawl gives us something important to play with. Modern notion of knowing what is there in the world. The lack of mystery, the world which is measurable and familiar. Sometimes it’s restricted only to GM, sometimes players also have access to it. Mystery is part of the small things in such setup, it’s the adventure in a town and exploration roll in a given hex. And despite all my aversion it’s working. It’s working fine, considering how much people play it and create materials for it. People feel control when they know how world looks like. Or even just illusion of it.
Pointcrawl can be different. The simplest pointcrawl is – you have city A, city B and village C. You can go from either one of them to any other. GM explains “you traveled for 3 days, you’re there now, what do you do?”. Sometimes GMs think the “untamed, dangerous wilderness” should be incorporated but rarely any system has ingrained travel/exploration mechanics – it ends up being 1 random encounter per travel. But there is a functioning, climactic and ingrained system for pointcrawl travel in one modern system. Adventures in Middle Earth for 5e has Journey rules.
Journey’s in middle earth are seemingly hexcrawly. You get the map in hexes. But it is only to know how long the Journey would be. You just choose the point on the map you like to travel to, count the hexes, check how hostile is the road and then voila – roll and check the journeying procedure, you may run out of food, have hostile, neutral or friendly encounters, deal with some challenges or discoveries, be hit with exhaustion or Shadow (it is connected to the setting as I said before). You formally don’t explore each hex, just roll at the Start, roll all the Events and the Finish of journey. From point A to point B.
Why designers decided to make it vital part of their system so even class abilities are connected to it? First, from Lord of the Rings and Hobbit inspirations we know most adventures don’t happen in one place. Hobbits move form Shire to Bree. They invite ranger to the party and go to Rivendell. Then they hire wizard, additional ranger and two warriors and again choose point to get to and travel. The exact exploration of every 6 miles (~10 kilometers) is not included as it would be boring. The only time you have exposition is when something interesting happens in interesting location. Dwarves and Hobbit are attacked by three trolls to be eaten. Hobbits have to hide from black-robed figure. Hobbits with ranger hireling are attacked by black-robed figures on an awesome looking rock. Interesting things happen when they happen. They are points in the overland travel.
Overall this is just an example on how to Pointcrawl your Hexcrawl. I know awareness of how the world really looks like is important for our brains. I love having world maps too. Designing them, making them, adjusting according to events in adventures or your own head. We like to romanticise uncovered wilds but we really fear them. And if you don’t like these blank spots, if you’re terrified not knowing what is between the points or how long is this road you can still make it to the point. Through known hexes.
What adventures happen to travelers going a known road? Not every part of it is going to be interesting. Some will be boring or used for exposition. Change of atmosphere if you’re traversing to blighted lands. The interesting parts are reactionary – either travelers see something interesting “Let’s explore these ruins!”, meet someone interesting “Greetings travelers and gimme all yo money!” or they make a great mistake “Let’s start cooking food, what bad could happen”. There is no point in setting up boring camping scene “you arrive and camping place and it’s evening, what do you do?” unless there is something interesting. Not even to wait for the hobbit players to come up with lighting a fire. You can just make players roll their travelness and set up a scene in the middle of it happening. If they failed survival tell one of the responsible players “As you’re laying in your sleeping bag you smell something. It’s a smell of burning wood, quite unusual on a desolate ground you set up your camp in. There is also a smell of something else. Like a cooked carrot” and then change of tone “Your friends who failed survival test are making stew. Light and smoke will certainly attract enemies!” It’s a way to make fun with your Merry and Pippin players.