WHY hexcrawl?

[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!