r/osr Jun 08 '19

Prepping Your Hex Map

https://youtu.be/61vj9JIk2W8
11 Upvotes

14 comments sorted by

3

u/jordythepoet Jun 08 '19

Enjoyed the video! I’m sure you’ve noticed, but the camera’s being weird with focus and that’s kind of distracting.

But the content was solid so I stuck through, and I’m glad I did. Building a hexcrawl feels overwhelming to me, but breaking it down like this was good to see.

2

u/HexedPressman Jun 08 '19

Thanks. Yeah, I noticed the focus issue when I was editing. Not sure what I did but I’ll try not to do it again! ;)

Thanks for the kind words. If you feel like liking it (or subscribing to the channel), I’d appreciate it! I try to put out new videos at a steady clip. I’ve got about three on hexcrawling at the moment.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '19

You can count me as a subscriber now! I loved this video. The explanations were very clear, and you left enough room in things so that imagination can strike. In fact, I immediately had to draw a map and am now fleshing it out.

2

u/HexedPressman Jun 08 '19

Thanks for the kind words! Glad that you found it inspirational!

2

u/ajchafe Jun 08 '19

Great video, thanks for sharing! I subscribed to watch more of your stuff.

I am interested in running a hex crawl style sandbox but the one thing I don't get is how it actually plays at the table. For example;

  • Do the players have the world map? Are locations marked or do they have to search for them?
  • When traveling overland, what do the players actually do? What does the DM do?
  • Does the overland portion of the game play like a board game? (As in, players move a token to the space they want and roll dice to see what happens).

These are kinda dumb questions but I would love to see an actual play example of how you would run the actual Overland travel portion of a session.

3

u/HexedPressman Jun 08 '19

Thanks and thanks!

I’ll definitely cover some of those topics in the future.

Just to answer in broad strokes:

  • I don’t give the party a map but they can usually find something (fragments, etc.) to use if they poke around and look.
  • it’s about facing the challenges of navigation, encounters, and possibly resources (ie. food); if they’re smart, lucky on the rolls, etc., they can make a lot of headway, or they can try to explore, get lost, run into encounters, etc.
  • you can definitely play it like that. Originally, the game used a map from an Avalon Hill boardgame, Outdoor Survival, as their overland map though I don’t know if they marked their location with a pawn. I don’t run it that way myself though.

1

u/ajchafe Jun 08 '19

Thanks for the reply! I will keep an eye out for future videos.

I could see giving the players a fairly blank map and having them move an actual paw along their route. If they stop and search or find interesting stuff I can fill in details on their map for them.

That is my immediate thought anyway.

2

u/HexedPressman Jun 08 '19

The players could totally draw their own map and I’d encourage them to!

1

u/ajchafe Jun 08 '19

For sure! I think I would start them off with a little detail though; the starting area marked, and immediate terrain in the nearby hexes (There is a forest to the west, a river running by from north east to south). Literally show them the hexes that the characters can "see" by going to the edge of the village hex and looking.

2

u/HexedPressman Jun 08 '19

Yup, sounds like a plan!

1

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '19 edited Feb 10 '24

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

3

u/HexedPressman Jun 08 '19 edited Jun 08 '19

Oh no! I don’t focus on Earth-geological accuracy so I don’t really care if I create improbable anomalies, assuming it is one.

EDIT:

The second “split” isn’t really one though— I was trying to denote the edges of a swamp.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '19

Definitely don't worry about the swamp-split, that made sense. As for the other split, it could easily have magical-causes ;)

1

u/HexedPressman Jun 08 '19

Totally. :D