WHY hexcrawl?

[JusticeZero]

Trying to decide how to set up my next game. Because there's some overland stuff I was trying to figure out as a part of laying out the starting town, suddenly I am seeing a lot of videos on "How to make a hex-crawl campaign!"

I know WHAT it is, and I have a lot of resources on how I would do so as a focus, but it lacks an explanation as to WHY one might want to set their game up in a way that does that. I'm running into a lot of OSR resources, and I'm not specifically an OSR GM; I tend toward sandbox play and lower, relatively fixed power levels. I'm not sure what role hex crawling actually has within a game.

[gbaji]

I'm not a huge fan of hex crawls personally, since I prefer to have story/plot elements to my adventure games. But some people really do love them. They ensure that the GM isn't railroading the players, and allow for full freedom without a concern that anyone is fudging things (though I suppose the GM could still do this).

You can go all the way to fully randomly generated hexes from some sort of config/charts/whatever, and then just kinda let the game rip and see what happens.

Again. It's not my personal cup of tea (it's a little too much CRPG for me), but I do get why some folks like it.

[Unoriginal]

Trying to decide how to set up my next game. Because there's some overland stuff I was trying to figure out as a part of laying out the starting town, suddenly I am seeing a lot of videos on "How to make a hex-crawl campaign!"

I know WHAT it is, and I have a lot of resources on how I would do so as a focus, but it lacks an explanation as to WHY one might want to set their game up in a way that does that. I'm running into a lot of OSR resources, and I'm not specifically an OSR GM; I tend toward sandbox play and lower, relatively fixed power levels. I'm not sure what role hex crawling actually has within a game.

An hexcrawl campaign is basically "there are blank spaces on the map, if you want to travel through the blank spaces you'll have to explore them gradually".

It's generally a sandbox or semi-sandbox with a few objectives like "BBEG is in X, find where X is", from what I gather.

Tomb of Annihilation is the only hexcrawl I've attempted, personally, and the "explore the map gradually" part was neat (was also neat when I watched a group play it on twitch). But the module is a brutal meatgrinder on top of an hexcrawl, so not for everyone.

To synthetize, the answer to "why an hexcrawl?" is "if you want to explore an area gradually and procedurally rather than just handwave large parts of land".

[NichG]

I personally kind of like the idea of having the risk/reward of deciding how deep you can go into a wilderness (and manage to bring back the loot, escape if stuff goes wrong, etc) - and then having that depth of possible exploration change as you revisit it throughout the campaign. So its not just the gacha of randomly rolling the next hex or something, its when you can get into the mindset of being able to say 'I think we have a good shot at surviving a 2 day trip, but a 4 day trip will deplete our resources enough to make random encounters dangerous'.

But for that to work, you really do have to have stuff that doesn't just recharge on a daily basis. That worked in the (AD&D) campaign I was in because we were low level enough that it took multiple nights to heal from HP damage naturally, we had a group of porters and men at arms who were whittled away by the journey and could only be shored up at town, and also the rules about getting sick are *very* punishing when you're travelling - basically you slow the entire group down, you have to ride on the cart/etc or it gets worse, and you basically cannot act in combats at all. So having a few people get sick in a swamp before we had Cure Disease on tap was like a make-or-break thing and had us plotting alternate routes to get out with minimum encounters or even having the evil party members discussing 'well, we could arrange for an accident for this guy so he doesn't drag the rest of us down with him' .

Its sort of that 'I'm stuck, I don't know if I can get back to refresh or not, and now that I have to figure out how it changes the way I view the character and game' thing that was neat for me.

[LibraryOgre]

But for that to work, you really do have to have stuff that doesn't just recharge on a daily basis. That worked in the (AD&D) campaign I was in because we were low level enough that it took multiple nights to heal from HP damage naturally, we had a group of porters and men at arms who were whittled away by the journey and could only be shored up at town, and also the rules about getting sick are *very* punishing when you're travelling - basically you slow the entire group down, you have to ride on the cart/etc or it gets worse, and you basically cannot act in combats at all. So having a few people get sick in a swamp before we had Cure Disease on tap was like a make-or-break thing and had us plotting alternate routes to get out with minimum encounters or even having the evil party members discussing 'well, we could arrange for an accident for this guy so he doesn't drag the rest of us down with him' .


That is a big part of why hex crawls are easier these days... too many resources refresh daily, meaning you don't have to worry as much about running out. It's coupled with a generally faster rate of level gain... in 5e, getting to Lesser Restoration (which fixes poisons and most diseases) is pretty quick, whereas 3rd level in AD&D lets you slow a poison, only. You need 5th, or a paladin, to actually cure one. Supplies? Sacrifice a 1st level spell each day to completely eliminate the need for a supply chain for up to 10 people. With a 3rd level spell, you can feed 15 people a day (which, really, is an utter crap spell compared to goodberry).

In 2e, Goodberry is a 2nd level spell, creates 2d4 berries, and they only manage a meal's worth of food, instead of a day. It greatly increases your need for supplies and supply chains compared to a 5e goodberry. 2e Create Food and Water is actually better than the 5e version; it creates the same amount at 5th level, but scales with character level; 5e CF&W doesn't even have the option to upcast, which it probably should. However, with the slower level gain, a 3rd level slot is a pretty significant investment... taking CF&W in 2e means you can't cast Cure Disease, and if you're relying on CF&W, how many days can you go if you need to cast Cure Disease several times?

(This is not "Grrr, 5e bad." It's "This is a specific way in which the mechanics of 5e impact a particular playstyle.")

[Unoriginal]

That is a big part of why hex crawls are easier these days... too many resources refresh daily, meaning you don't have to worry as much about running out. It's coupled with a generally faster rate of level gain... in 5e, getting to Lesser Restoration (which fixes poisons and most diseases) is pretty quick, whereas 3rd level in AD&D lets you slow a poison, only. You need 5th, or a paladin, to actually cure one. Supplies? Sacrifice a 1st level spell each day to completely eliminate the need for a supply chain for up to 10 people. With a 3rd level spell, you can feed 15 people a day (which, really, is an utter crap spell compared to goodberry).

In 2e, Goodberry is a 2nd level spell, creates 2d4 berries, and they only manage a meal's worth of food, instead of a day. It greatly increases your need for supplies and supply chains compared to a 5e goodberry. 2e Create Food and Water is actually better than the 5e version; it creates the same amount at 5th level, but scales with character level; 5e CF&W doesn't even have the option to upcast, which it probably should. However, with the slower level gain, a 3rd level slot is a pretty significant investment... taking CF&W in 2e means you can't cast Cure Disease, and if you're relying on CF&W, how many days can you go if you need to cast Cure Disease several times?

(This is not "Grrr, 5e bad." It's "This is a specific way in which the mechanics of 5e impact a particular playstyle.")

Which is why the jungles of Chult do an interesting slot tax on a Cleric, if you have one in the team.

Being required to spend some slots early in the day or to keep some in reserve all day changes the dynamic, as there can be nasty consequences if you don't.

[falconflicker]

Could you elaborate further on why you think that a Hexcrawl isn't right for your campaign?

I'm in the middle of some amateur game development, and was trying to integrate some old school tools into my game, and would like feedback on why you think this tool to handle overland travel is a bad fit.

[JusticeZero]

Could you elaborate further on why you think that a Hexcrawl isn't right for your campaign?
It is... a way to do overland travel... but so are nonspecific random encounters in any basement. It's a feature, but I have yet to have someone explain to me why it's a *good* feature.

The goal of a hex crawl seems to be... to hex crawl? It's a restriction and time eater that affects a very specific segment of play; after you advance to a certain point and have more permanent resources, you won't be doing it in a way that matters, which seems like a sign of bad design at some level.

It seems to be a matter of measuring your resource drains against the environment. The issue is, once your refresh is good enough, it's just a slog you can do forever. Which is dull, and so then you get ways to circumvent the mechanic.

Most play options of that sort seem constrained to that band of play that people in most systems rapidly graduate out of, and most of the material for the game is usually for later sections.

Very much "Leveling is a trap" vibes.

So I am trying to find what it's good for other than "for its own sake", reasons to do it that are good for the party, and I'm... just not sure how that even works. It's a very CRPG grindhouse kind of mechanic in ways, and modern CRPG game design seems to have moved away from it in ways that are probably just as annoying really.

My attitude toward the mode of play has ended up in the neighborhood of "You have my attention... now keep it." If I want to keep it, it has to be an explicit design goal to hold characters in a state where hex crawling is meaningful — instead of having characters quickly graduate out of the state where it's a meaningful activity instead of a pure time sink — and I feel like I need it to make its case for why I should or should not do that.

[The Glyphstone]

When I made a hexcrawl game, it wasn't about resource management or overland travel - it was actually a Warhammer Rogue Trader game, so neither of those could really be a concern. At best there was a time management concern, requiring periodic returns to deal with administrative and diplomatic issues.

What it let the players do was have near-total control over where they went and what they did, based on the options they'd found or uncovered in previous expeditions. Very deep into the sandbox style of play, and if 'give the players maximal choice freedom' can be reducted down to 'good for its own sake', I don't know what can't be.

What it let me do as GM was prep a massive amount of material in advance before the game ever started. With very limited free time outside of work and other RL concerns, I'd have been constantly rushed keeping up with generating new plot and adventures each week. Instead I had the master map and could just consult it to see which of the dozens of side quests or minor encounters I had tucked away in that particular hex, if there was one. No risk of quantum ogres, accidental or otherwise.

[stoutstien]

Exploration and logistical play fulfillment

Unknowns and discovery

[Thrudd]

Why? You use it when exploration of uncharted wilderness is a component of your game. That's part of the story...the PCs are explorers looking for stuff in new regions of the world, setting off from borderlands into the unknown. Maybe they're looking for a location/dungeon they've heard rumors of, but nobody knows exactly where it is and there are no maps of the region. Maybe they've been stranded on an unexplored island or continent, and need to look for settlements or resources. Even when the resource management part is trivialized, they could still get lost, they can still run into new dangerous creatures, they still need to find that dungeon or cave or lost city or whatever.

It needs to be worked into the premise of the game. If it's just about overland travel between well known sites, it won't be relevant for long. Some games do move out of the hexcrawl phase of the game. That the game can transition into a different phase doesn't mean the hexcrawl phase won't be fun while it lasts. How long it lasts is really up to you, depending on the premise of the game, how many places there are to find and what rules you use (or don't use) to facilitate it.

It's "good for the party" as long as the party's goals involve finding places and stuff that are in uncharted regions.

[Grod_The_Giant]

(This is not "Grrr, 5e bad." It's "This is a specific way in which the mechanics of 5e impact a particular playstyle.")
It's very easy to circumvent that, thankfully-- limit long rests to towns and other safe locations. That alone reintroduces a hard limit on how long the party can explore without having to return to base to rest and resupply, and helps turn "spend a spell slot to avoid X annoyance" spells like Goodberry into more meaningful tradeoffs.

(Heck, I kind of like to use such rules even when I'm not running a particularly exploration-themed campaign, since it lets you put parties through the expected 6+ encounters/long rest without having to cram everything into a single in-game day.)

[Vahnavoi]

@JusticeZero:

There are two halves of your question: "why do a crawl?" and "why use hexes?"

For the first half: any kind of a "crawl" is fundamentally a hidden map game: the players start from position of little or no knowledge and gradually learn more as they advance in the game. The learned information itself serves as indicator of game progress and can then be used to build various puzzles. To experience this in action, forget everything you think you know about more complex games and go play several rounds of Minesweeper. See how it works: you start with no knowledge where the mines are. If you manage to pick a tile without instantly dying, you gain hints for where the mines could be, which allows for deduction and more informed decisions. Now realize that in addition to searching for and sweeping mines, the basic ideas works for all search-and-destroy and search-and-acquire goals.

For the second half: hexes have some useful mathematical properties (https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/spatial-statistics/h-whyhexagons.htm), such as better representing curvature of a spherical world (such as Earth) when used to map geography, compared to a square grid.

As additional commentary: A lot of your confusion and criticism stems from noticing that a complex game can change phase, but not realizing this is not a flaw and is usually intentional. It is common for complex games, such as multi-session roleplaying games, to include entire simpler games as subgames. You can think of a crawl segment as a subgame of Minesweeper in a war scenario: the player search an area for mines, either succesfully or not. They then proceed to do something else. This one activity doesn't have to last forever. You can certainly make crawling the basis of a complex game or a campaign, but it doesn't have to be that - it can just as well be something only done on occasion, or only done once when required. The common progression seen in old school D&D and numerous strategy games both on the tabletop and computer, is this: search the terrain, mark the threats, secure permanent foothold, plan offense, destroy the enemy. Each new phase builds on information acquired in a previous one. In D&D-like games, player characters getting abilities that would bypass or trivialize a crawl segment is the game interface telling you to not spend time on that anymore. Move on to the next thing with what you've learned. Some editions are just bad at telling you this.

[Atranen]

The point is to add specific mechanical rules that affect travel and resources expenditure. If you're playing a game where the main thing that happens on point A to point B is "maybe a random encounter", it's not that useful. If you want to seed a world with many unexplored locations, and have resources management, transporting treasure, etc. be relevant, then it's useful to have a method for adjudicating that.

[icefractal]

For me the resource management aspects are secondary - the primary draw is the sandbox nature.

And why sandbox is a draw? It gives a lot of "delta" (real difference in resulting events based on choices) for free.

Like for in-game choices, it's not a huge difference (although it does lean higher, IME) but for char-gen choices mattering or levels mattering it's got a serious advantage.

[J-H]

I ran a level 13-20 hexcrawl campaign and had fun - although it was a LOT of work to prep. Link in my signature.

It gives a lot of player freedom of choice, and nobody knows what they are going to find or how it's going to work. It's about as far as you can get from a railroad and still have pre-prepped material.

[Pauly]

Why Hexcrawl?
1) Player initiated plot development.
2) Exploration can be fun. Especially if there is an element of unravelling a mystery.
3) Survival is a different challenge that some people like, at least for a while as a change up
4) It can reduce the burden in the GM for running the campaign.

Caveats based on my experience playing/running hexcrawls.
1) There needs to be some overarching goal the players can hook into. Without a goal the game becomes a grind. There are several ways to create an over arching goal, but the ones that have worked best in my experience are the ones the players chose to engage. I’d recommend laying the seeds for 3 or 4 possible overarching plots and then let the players pick the one they respond to. The last hexcrawl I ran the players could choose to investigate the fall of an ancient civilization, get involved in preventing a war between the city states in the area, or defeat the ork king who was amassing an invasion force. Once the players made their choice I just let the other plot threads fall away into sub plots.
2) once a hex is ‘pacified’ let it be a safe place for the players. Don’t make them fight through the same hex over and over again.
3) the GM has to do a lot of prep before the campaign starts for it to run well. I highly recommend using published materials to lighten the load.
4) there needs to be a variety of challenges within a hex, not just combats.

[Easy e]

RPGs have three pillars of game play (at least) integral to them:

1. Combat
2. Social
3. Exploration

The Dungeon highlights pillar 1, with a lighter emphasis on the other two pillars. The Mystery/Politics game highlights pillar 2, the Social pillar with lighter emphasis elsewhere. The "Hexcrawl" highlights pillar 3 with a lighter emphasis on the other two pillars.

Therefore, a Hexcrawl works really well for players who WANT to highlight that aspect of the RPG experience. Not all players do, and more often you have a mix of tolerances for it. Therefore, the Hexcrawl exists for focus with a preference for exploration in their games.

That's it. If your players and you do not fancy exploration a great deal, then DO NOT DO A HEXCRAWL!

[Beelzebub1111]

I just ran a paired down hexcrawl in PF2e. The concept was the players had three days to explore an island to find 10 magic feathers. in a race against other parties who were trying to aquire feathers as well. it was sort of the qualifying round to a fighting tournament. They had 32 actions per day if they wanted to sleep and could spend those actions to traverse a hex, explore a hex, look for other parties to fight for their feathers, and so on. It worked out really well, So maybe if your story has your players on a quest to find some McMuffins to defeat the villain or stop some great evil you could start with your players actually having to track it down.

A few things I learned from running mine:
Populate your hexes, Make sure your hexes have stuff in them so even if your players don't find what they are looking for they can at least see something interesting like a monster lair, some hidden træsure, a hint on where the thing they are looking for is, some outpost/inn/shop. Make exploration useful.

Have planned timed events. In case things get a little stale make sure you have things that happen on timed intervals regardless of where the players are to remind them that the world is moving without them. To either light a fire under them or encourage them to take in the world around them and immerse themselves.

Have a time limit. Your players should not have enough time to explore your entire map to make their goal. Yes some stuff you planned won't be used but if anything you really want you can add clues and hints they should check out those particular hexes (see lesson one). Your players may feel like they missed out but that's a good thing. It will make their choices matter as to whether they rough it through the mountains at a huge delay for a shorter distance or walk along the river for faster travel but end up exploring more out of the way locations. Make it feel like these things matter and are exclusive even if all re viable.

[Vahnavoi]

The point is to add specific mechanical rules that affect travel and resources expenditure.

Not quite. The point is to set up a gameplay activity and challenge for the players, the specific rules are the instrument for doing that.


If you're playing a game where the main thing that happens on point A to point B is "maybe a random encounter", it's not that useful. If you want to seed a world with many unexplored locations, and have resources management, transporting treasure, etc. be relevant, then it's useful to have a method for adjudicating that.

Juxtaposing a hexcrawl with a game where "maybe a random encounter happens between point A and point B" is profoundly odd. Let's break this down:

- in a hexcrawl, the hexes are points of travel, or A and B
- encounters are typically sorted by hex, so the trigger for most encounters is moving from hex to hex, so movement from A to B
- when hexes are hidden, a first-time player cannot distinguish a hex with set contents from a hex with randomly selected contents
- as corollary to above, a possible and common way to generate a hex map is to draw from a shuffled pile of tiles
- any interesting content can be put on the tiles
- as corollary, the order of a shuffled pile serves as the randomized seed of a game

So, this shows that a hexcrawl isn't in any way mutually exclusive with a game driven by random encounters... and a game driven by random encounters isn't in any way mutually exclusive with seeding a world with interesting stuff. A random or pseudorandom function is how you would seed a game.

[Beelzebub1111]

Juxtaposing a hexcrawl with a game where "maybe a random encounter happens between point A and point B" is profoundly odd. Let's break this down:

- in a hexcrawl, the hexes are points of travel, or A and B
- encounters are typically sorted by hex, so the trigger for most encounters is moving from hex to hex, so movement from A to B
- when hexes are hidden, a first-time player cannot distinguish a hex with set contents from a hex with randomly selected contents
- as corollary to above, a possible and common way to generate a hex map is to draw from a shuffled pile of tiles
- any interesting content can be put on the tiles
- as corollary, the order of a shuffled pile serves as the randomized seed of a game

So, this shows that a hexcrawl isn't in any way mutually exclusive with a game driven by random encounters... and a game driven by random encounters isn't in any way mutually exclusive with seeding a world with interesting stuff. A random or pseudorandom function is how you would seed a game.

In the abstract I see what you are saying. But in practice it gives players individual agency to learn things about the lands they are exploring and directions to go. In what's meant by "Point a point b" advenuring if players have to get to the other side of a mountain or swamp, the players don't have to using a hexcrawl subsystem, they have the option to take a little more time to scout an easier way around or if time is of the essence they can decide to try and trudge through the bog and risk bootrot. With a hexcrawl system you, as the gm, don't have to make up a way around on the fly or use fiat to say "there's a swamp in your way and you have to go through it to reach your goal". That's where the benefit of map exploration comes in, it's all there in system and all prepared.

[Atranen]

Not quite. The point is to set up a gameplay activity and challenge for the players, the specific rules are the instrument for doing that.

Uh, sure? I find this pedantic. Like, I could say "not quite, the point is to have a good time with your friends. Setting up a gameplay activity and challenge for the players is an instrument for doing that".


Juxtaposing a hexcrawl with a game where "maybe a random encounter happens between point A and point B" is profoundly odd. Let's break this down:

- in a hexcrawl, the hexes are points of travel, or A and B
- encounters are typically sorted by hex, so the trigger for most encounters is moving from hex to hex, so movement from A to B
- when hexes are hidden, a first-time player cannot distinguish a hex with set contents from a hex with randomly selected contents
- as corollary to above, a possible and common way to generate a hex map is to draw from a shuffled pile of tiles
- any interesting content can be put on the tiles
- as corollary, the order of a shuffled pile serves as the randomized seed of a game

So, this shows that a hexcrawl isn't in any way mutually exclusive with a game driven by random encounters... and a game driven by random encounters isn't in any way mutually exclusive with seeding a world with interesting stuff. A random or pseudorandom function is how you would seed a game.

I'm comparing a hexcrawl to a game where travel is abstracted and only shown in passing. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html)

[Vahnavoi]

@Atranen: travel is frequently abstracted in hexcrawls just as well. You can easily imagine this: a single game move takes player characters from the interesting part of Hex A to interesting parts of Hex B, with maybe a token check for random encounter on the way, regardless of whether nominal scale of hexes is 10 meters, 10 kilometers or 10 astronomical units. It is in fact possible to set up a hexcrawl with exact traits described in the gag and even conserve scale by utilizing effectively empty hexes.

The actual difference between a classic hexcrawl and the gag is that in a classic hexcrawl, random encounters aren't considered a waste of time or unrelated to the main plot (the entire game map could be randomly generated, as already explained).

You can visualize both versions by playing Minesweeper. Modern Minesweeper doesn't force you to individually click every tile - instead, if there's an extended area that has to be empty, it autoclicks tiles for you. When mine density is low, a few clicks will reveal large chunks of the play area. When mine density is high, more care has to be taken and a player has to proceed in smaller segments. The same principles and same level of abstraction can be used to create different games.

[Duff]

A hex crawl is effectively an alfresco dungeon.
You move to the "room".
You encounter the encounter.
You either make the area safe or don't (with some resources spent and some gained).
Some areas contain plot, others are just interesting (for varied values of interest depending on individual taste)

Edit to add - If you think dungeons are fun, there's no structural reason for a hexcrawl not to be.

The real difference is that the encounters are likely to be different - more flying griffins and packs of wolves, less boulder traps and gelatinous cubes
And large battle spaces. An encounter might start at distances of over a mile

[Atranen]

@Atranen: travel is frequently abstracted in hexcrawls just as well. You can easily imagine this: a single game move takes player characters from the interesting part of Hex A to interesting parts of Hex B, with maybe a token check for random encounter on the way, regardless of whether nominal scale of hexes is 10 meters, 10 kilometers or 10 astronomical units. It is in fact possible to set up a hexcrawl with exact traits described in the gag and even conserve scale by utilizing effectively empty hexes.

The actual difference between a classic hexcrawl and the gag is that in a classic hexcrawl, random encounters aren't considered a waste of time or unrelated to the main plot (the entire game map could be randomly generated, as already explained).

Yes, that is what I said in my original comment.

[Mordar]

A hex crawl is effectively an alfresco dungeon.
You move to the "room".
You encounter the encounter.
You either make the area safe or don't (with some resources spent and some gained).
Some areas contain plot, others are just interesting (for varied values of interest depending on individual taste)

Edit to add - If you think dungeons are fun, there's no structural reason for a hexcrawl not to be.

The real difference is that the encounters are likely to be different - more flying griffins and packs of wolves, less boulder traps and gelatinous cubes
And large battle spaces. An encounter might start at distances of over a mile

And "dungeon doors" that open into an entire new dungeon? Or a village of pixie archers/elvish mushroom farmers/dwarven weavers?

- M

[Beelzebub1111]

@Atranen: travel is frequently abstracted in hexcrawls just as well. You can easily imagine this: a single game move takes player characters from the interesting part of Hex A to interesting parts of Hex B, with maybe a token check for random encounter on the way, regardless of whether nominal scale of hexes is 10 meters, 10 kilometers or 10 astronomical units. It is in fact possible to set up a hexcrawl with exact traits described in the gag and even conserve scale by utilizing effectively empty hexes.

Going from Hex A to Hex B is not really what makes Hex Crawls engaging. It's the choice between going from Hex A to Hexes B through G to devise the best route towards Hex X and discovering things along the way. Increased player agency with decreased improvisation requirements from the GM. It's win-win in most situations.

[Vogie]

Another Interesting use of the hexcrawl is creating a larger collection of what could be considered "encounter" and "loot" than the average session of a D&D-like.

A hexcrawl is a combination sandbox/dungeon, with full use of the adventuring tropes. While there may be overall goals that might have some sort of countdown, every hex could be a new collection of problems or solutions, with a level of ambiguity for each. You're passing what looks like ruins of some sort of large stone structure - Are we checking it out? You hear roaring during the night, and awake to a pride of manticores soaring above you, clearly on the hunt for something. There are traders, merchants and little villages to discover; some of the hexes will interact with each other, while other hexes that are right next to each other are completely independent and unrelated.

One of the issues with dungeon-building is the problem of scouting - player groups often have various abilities to that, but it creates a relatively unfun gameplay loop for everyone else, often referred as the "army presentation" style (I'm going to tell you what I'm about to tell you, then I'll tell you, and finally I'll tell you what I've told you). When it comes to creating dungeons, that's why GMs populate them with patrols and wandering monsters (to kill familiars or sneaky druids), traps (which could avoid notice and not be triggered by something smaller than a small creature) and doors (that a familiar or arcane eye sensor cannot open). Hexcrawls solve the scouting issues with sheer size - most hexes are empty space with their set dressing, and any of the normal scouting abilities can't cover the miles or kilometers in size with any efficiency. However, because of the openness of the map and the different style of encounters mentioned above, your players have new uses for these scouting abilities. They send their familiar to scope out the ruins as they're climbing the hill, or send that arcane eye to follow those manticores, to use the above example. It turns the open-ended question of "Is there anything out there?" into the more-precise question of "What's going on over there?". Another benefit of this is you can drop massively overpowered creatures or ultradeadly encounters every so often, so that the party has to figure out how to get around these obstacles.

The party's concept of what "loot" is, will be challenged as well. The rewards from what the party finds could be entire people or other creatures, either displaced by the events of the encounters, or those who want to follow the party to 'help' them - things that wouldn't make sense if the party was dungeon delving or cleansing ruins, for example, but does make sense if they're just "going west, we think". Instead of some random potions, they gain an alchemist; instead of weapon upgrades, they find a blacksmith and their family, who is happy to perform those upgrades... if you all could just get them to a town that hasn't been burned to the ground. In addition to the loot aspect of it, the added people or animals both assist the party in many ways, as well as drain their resources faster or slow them down. It gives the party meaningful choices that avoid things like quantum ogres because they can respond to such issues with pressing forward, holing up to collect more resources, or backtrack through previously-cleared hexes to return those people and animals to a town they had previously visited.

[Jay R]

It doesn't matter. If a hexcrawl doesn't fit the reasons you want to run the game, then don't run a hexcrawl.

Run the game you want to run, that fits your imagination. If it entertains your players, then you have succeeded, hexcrawl or not.

[Mordar]

It doesn't matter. If a hexcrawl doesn't fit the reasons you want to run the game, then don't run a hexcrawl.

Run the game you want to run, that fits your imagination. If it entertains your players, then you have succeeded, hexcrawl or not.

But isn't the nature of the question "Why do people want to do this thing that I only sort of know about or understand?" and not "Why do I have to do this thing?". What if it had just been phrased "Why do you like hexcrawl games?"

I've learned a lot about them from this thread, so selfishly I find it beneficial when people ask questions like this.

- M

[Vahnavoi]

Going from Hex A to Hex B is not really what makes Hex Crawls engaging. It's the choice between going from Hex A to Hexes B through G to devise the best route towards Hex X and discovering things along the way. Increased player agency with decreased improvisation requirements from the GM. It's win-win in most situations.
That's not what I'm contesting. I'm explaing why a juxtaposition is flawed: Atranen's idea of a game for which a hexcrawl is "not that useful" isn't specific enough to exclude common variants of hexcrawls. Everything Varsuvius says in the comic is equivalent to "when player characters are traveling through empty hexes, they will have exactly one encounter no matter how many hexes they travel, because focusing on empty hexes is pointless". You could have that as an actual rule in a hexcrawl system. Meanwhile, the "main plot"? That would be the non-empty hexes with the interesting stuff in them.

[Atranen]

That's not what I'm contesting. I'm explaing why a juxtaposition is flawed: Atranen's idea of a game for which a hexcrawl is "not that useful" isn't specific enough to exclude common variants of hexcrawls. Everything Varsuvius says in the comic is equivalent to "when player characters are traveling through empty hexes, they will have exactly one encounter no matter how many hexes they travel, because focusing on empty hexes is pointless". You could have that as an actual rule in a hexcrawl system. Meanwhile, the "main plot"? That would be the non-empty hexes with the interesting stuff in them.

You could run a hexcrawl like that. But then for that portion of the game you're not getting anything out of using a hexcrawl system. You could use a non hex map or structure it as a point crawl and get the exact same result.

The point of doing a hexcrawl is to do things you can't do in those systems.

[Vahnavoi]

You're not getting anything unique out of a hexcrawl system in that specific moment, yes. That's not the same as getting nothing. When multiple tools are capable of doing the same thing, that doesn't make one of them useless - it means they are equally usefull.

That's why I split the title question in half earlier: "why a crawl?" and "why hexes?". I agree any other two-dimensional mapping method is capable of having an equivalent rule. That doesn't make hexes in particular "not very useful" for a game - it means in that respect they are exactly as useful as other methods.The answer to "why hexes?" is the same as "why any two-dimensional mapping method?", while the question "why NOT hexes?" is left entirely unanswered.

[Atranen]

That's why I split the title question in half earlier: "why a crawl?" and "why hexes?". I agree any other two-dimensional mapping method is capable of having an equivalent rule. That doesn't make hexes in particular "not very useful" for a game - it means in that respect they are exactly as useful as other methods.The answer to "why hexes?" is the same as "why any two-dimensional mapping method?", while the question "why NOT hexes?" is left entirely unanswered.

If you're not taking advantage of any properties of hexes, then the answer to "why hexes" is just aesthetic preference. You could run a map with no grid equivalently.

The OP is interested in why you might want to do a hexcrawl. You would because it gives you something that other mapping systems don't. Specifically, the ability to add mechanics in an easily gameable way; traveling through a hex takes so long, searching a hex takes so long, random encounters happen so often.

[LibraryOgre]

If you're not taking advantage of any properties of hexes, then the answer to "why hexes" is just aesthetic preference. You could run a map with no grid equivalently.

The OP is interested in why you might want to do a hexcrawl. You would because it gives you something that other mapping systems don't. Specifically, the ability to add mechanics in an easily gameable way; traveling through a hex takes so long, searching a hex takes so long, random encounters happen so often.

Another feature of the hexcrawl is the ability to "clear" a hex... to declare an area relatively safe, within your standardized borders.

[NichG]

I think this branch of the conversation has been focusing too much on the 'hex' part versus on the 'crawl' part. A map with a hexagonal grid on it alone does not a hexcrawl make.

The reason why having a crawl enables things you don't get with alternatives is that by making mechanics for how the map gets revealed, traversed, and even how random events happen or how things are discovered, that lets you in turn make mechanical and strategic decisions on the part of the players meaningful and informed. Sure in a regular game it might matter if you go on foot or by horseback, what route you take, etc, but the way it matters isn't explicit or legible. So while you could have a mechanic like 'this item reduces the frequency of random encounters by 50% for 8 hours for a group of up to 10 people', the value of such an item would be ambiguous. If on the other hand you know that in the swamp you're rolling 1d6=(1,2) each hex for an encounter and at night thats (1,2,3), the item gives you a reroll, and the sorts of things you've been fighting kill a hireling or two each time, well, you can do the math.

You can even have metagamey things like 'this class ability makes it more likely to encounter a ruin or natural wonder when exploring a previously unexplored hex' that only make sense when the contents of the map are randomized in a player-knowable way.

And yes you could also do that with other map representations. So a square-crawl, voronoi-crawl, whatever - sure!