Troll Lord Games

Ok, I'm working on setting up my next game, (I'm about 1/2 way through my current campaign, and eager to make the switch to Castles and Crusades for my primary group, (already sold my secondary group). Anyhow I am working up a hexcrawl setting and was wondering if anyone had any tips, suggestions for the hexcrawl, which I've never heard of until a month or so ago.

I've got my base map designed.
I'm working on an overall distinction of what is going on in the area, basically the area was a kingdom about a thousand years prior before it was decimated due to a large meteor impact. The surviving folks fled south, and the area was left uninhabited by humans & Demihumans, but during that time became a home for orcs, goblins etc etc.

I've placed several main locations on the map, 40*30 hex, each hex = 6 Miles.

I have a fairly decent background, Wandering Monster charts, 4- 5 different power groups in the area, a few ancient city ruins, several sets of natural resources some magical resources, some magical bad mojo, Division in the ranks of what will probably be the primary enemies.

My thoughts are on what I need on the ruins need to come up with description, possibly some dungeons there, only other thing I need to do is come up with random charts to generate what happens when they enter a new hex I think..

I'm open for suggestions on what else I should prep as I have never played in a hex crawl, nor run one..

Thanks!

Have you heard of "dice drop tables" or "dice maps"? Google them and you'll find lots of different ideas; basically you drop dice on a sheet of paper with charts and stuff on it, and the numbers on the dice and where they fell end up generating several things at once. It's sort of hard to explain, but it's probably faster than leafing through a book.

You don't sound like you are looking for more products, but if you are there are the Judges Guild Ready Ref sheets, the D30 Dungeon Companion, The Dungeon Alphabet, Vornheim (good for making cities without actually having to make a city), AEG D20 Fantasy Toolbox, 100 Exciting Encounters, 100 Type 1 Treasure Troves, Bands of Orcs, Unusual Roadside Encounters, and billions of similar things; basically lots of things to open a page to and grab something with no prep. Most of these are available on RPGNow. Extraordinary Book of Names or something like it is handy. I have this list of Flemish archers I got from somewhere I use for on-the-fly names; anything helps, as long as you can find it when you need it. I noticed from a picture I saw that Gary Gygax kept a birdwatching book nearby. Whether it was because he wanted to describe birds or because he was watching them out the window I don't know, but either way sounds good.

Besides those, anything to rattle something loose in your brain when you are on the spot. A phone book or a Robert Howard omnibus for bibliomancy purposes, a deck of tarot cards, a bag of runes? Sit across from an interesting window? And listen to your players and riff off of them, if there's no reason not to, make the things they say real. "Oh, I'm from Flooberton!" Bang, now you can roll a random hex and put Flooberton in it.

Have you ever heard of the "West Marches" campaign? The GM blogged about it and provided a fair bit of information about how he set it up. You may find something useful here:

http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/7 ... t-marches/

Thanks guys, I was more looking for advice like the article, and any other suggestions for Hex Crawls in general. I do have a random name generator I always keep handy on my phone, all good suggestions

I'm sort of in the same boat as you , Valens. I'll try to post some links I have when I get a moment.

Here is a site that has a number of links, check the Bat in the Attic one for some really heavy details...

http://www.gnomestew.com/tools-for-gms/ ... -resources

For some help with random dungeon generation, see the tool I created here http://trolllord.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... 5750ce339b, I haven't been able to get back to it for a bit, but have some vacation time coming up where I will get some additional features built in. It is based mainly after the 1st Ed. DMG appendix system. I will be adding outdoor hex generation that will have the option of being totally random, or require some small amount of input such as the content of the surrounding hexes, including setting empty ones.

Still a work in progress, but here is something I am working on for a hex crawl randomization...

The scale can be as you wish, but the whole page is one hex in a larger map of a particular "Master" terrain type (Plains, Marsh, etc.), this is broken into 7 hexes whose master type is randomly determined on charts for the parent's type. Each of these hexes is broken into 7 hexes that break into greater detail on the terrain.

Note that I will have drop downs to select the Climate and Terrain Master types in the future. Right now only Marshland and Plains are fully populated with climate types, and Temperate Forest is as well. One large hex, and all of the smaller "hexes" in it shows Hills, in the future when all hills climates are populated this will be broken down to different types as well.

OpenOffice.org file v.0.0.2
Sample output

koralas wrote:Still a work in progress, but here is something I am working on for a hex crawl randomization...

The scale can be as you wish, but the whole page is one hex in a larger map of a particular "Master" terrain type (Plains, Marsh, etc.), this is broken into 7 hexes whose master type is randomly determined on charts for the parent's type. Each of these hexes is broken into 7 hexes that break into greater detail on the terrain.

Note that I will have drop downs to select the Climate and Terrain Master types in the future. Right now only Marshland and Plains are fully populated with climate types, and Temperate Forest is as well. One large hex, and all of the smaller "hexes" in it shows Hills, in the future when all hills climates are populated this will be broken down to different types as well.

OpenOffice.org file v.0.0.2
Sample output

This looks cool! Keep us posted.

http://www.welshpiper.com/hex-based-cam ... gn-part-1/

Dont get caught up in actual distances, time to get to a certain point is more important than actual miles/km etc... I basically just tell my players how long it takes them to get places in my sandbox. They never see the hex map anyhow, that's just there as a guide for me.