Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Hello everyone,
I have recently started running ToA for my party.
We haven't gotten to the jungle hex crawl yet.
I am struggling to wrap my head around how to best make travel work in the hex crawl
Does anyone have any tips or even like a guide on how to run this successfully?
Let me know, thank you all for your time :D
Best video I’ve seen on running hex crawls is from Mystic Arts https://youtu.be/hEIg1DlRkLg?is=l-iI1Va8cvnodmOw
Isn't there pages on pages of random encounter tables and advice for travel in the book?
(not trying to sound arrogant or anything, just confirming)
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
"When are we gonna take a snack break?"
The players are starting in Port Nyanzaru. Their destination is Omu. The most direct route requires them to traverse 39 hexes. Sadly, the party won't know where Omu is. They need to find that out. So in order to find it out they need to locate the various settlements and points of interest on the map to encounter NPCs who do know where Omu is. Below is how I run the adventure.
In Person
I have the hex map behind my DM screen. It contains information that the PCs do not know. I give the party a version of the map with no hex grid and a single meeple to dictate where the party currently are. I use settlement pieces from Catan to highlight known settlements or points of interest to which the party may wish to travel.
The party are told that they can reasonably explore 2 hexes per day as they cut their way through the jungles.
Assigning Roles - The party are asked to nominate two roles: a navigator, and a spotter. The navigator makes the survival checks as they lead the party through the jungle. The spot makes perception checks as they pass through. The perception checks will reveal any nearby trails that could lead to a point of interest, or if high enough give advanced warning of a random encounter/ambush.
DM Rolls - The main thing you as DM need to do is to keep track of what kind of terrain the party are passing through. This is important because then you know which of the random encounter tables to roll on. If they party are in a hex with a beach, you roll on the Beach table. If they're traversing a mountain tile, then you roll on the mountain table.
Pattern of Exploration
You repeat this pattern basically until the party arrive at Omu. If at any time the party move into a hex occupied by a location or point of interest, then you switch gears going from the hex map to the location. This can actually be done as the DM narrates the exploration of the terrain, or you can decide that they don't discover that location until later in the journey across the hex.
Online
If playing online, I tend to have a hex grid but unmarked image of the map for play so that the party have an idea where they are and a visual to keep focus on. I'll also have a ready supply of generic jungle/mountain/beach battlemaps ready to go for the various different random combat encounters.
The only other thing I haven't mentioned here is pace of travel. If scaling a mountain you might decide that the party can only traverse a single hex per adventuring day. This can get arduous, but it's a call you make as a DM to try and keep the pace and excitement of the adventure up.
If all of that sounds like too much
Pre-roll or pre decide what encounters are going to be in which hexes. This is a common tactic for some DMs who like to keep the pace faster. You can even just preplan a route for the PCs and have an NPC in the port town give the party a map pointing to the obvious settlement where they can get hold of some information on the location of Omu. I don't recommend this one obviously, but I've seen it done before.
The route went:
It missed off a lot of content which kinda sucked. I'd say though that the point is not that players will see all points of interest in chapter 2. It's more about giving them the opportunity to explore, get lost, find a new place, discover loot, build levels.
Final Note
Kobold Press published an exceptionally good Guide to Hexcrawl. It's primarily for those wanting to design their own Hexcrawl adventures, but as usually they do this kind of information a lot better than WotC does in my opinion. https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product/book-of-hexcrawl/
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Thank you so much for this!
My main concern has been on the mechanics of each day, and specifically if I do role play for each day individually or do it in blocks (i.e. the party travels 5 day south, and I narrate in blocks)
I have been prepping to do it all individually, so literally role play every hex, what they see and what they go through, but I am getting a bit complicated with the mechanics of water, food and foraging and stuff like that
I want to make the experience to be a proper survival, but also the mechanics of it all are confusing me deeply.
Any advice on this?
Let the players take the lead there. Let them know they need water, food, and to forage stuff for setting up a camp and ask them how they plan to go about it. Predetermine for yourself Easy, Medium and Hard DCs then based on what the players come up with determine if it sounds reasonable and how difficult that would be in the terrain they are currently in and use the respective DC to determine success. Allow them to spend more time doing an activity to reduce the DC to prevent them completely running out of supplies.
I would predetermine the encounters on each hex they are likely to traverse in a given session so you have maps & stat blocks ready.
I see a lot of posts that say real world aka life is not relevant, then I read the above.
I know nothing about this campaign except what I read on this site. But it seems that real world experience comes into play. What is the chance someone under the age of 18 actually can do the above? What about a young adult that has never left school and only lived in suburbs/urban areas?
How does a party with no outdoor experience and/or a DM actually figure that stuff out? I see in my country that many young adults are 100% clueless how to do any of this, so asking a DM to determine Easy, Medium and Hard DCs is a bit futile.
Hexcrawl is a specific thing, so I'd advise against letting the party take the lead. If they've never done a Hexcrawl before it can be overwhelming to get them into the swing of things. What specific mechanics are tripping you up?
Having re-read ToA, for the survival element set the DC to 15 as the books say (or a 20 if you want a harsher terrain square like an undead area in ToA) for the daily forage for food. Don't forget that the party can forage for water, but that all water must be boiled. Needing 2 gallons per day, per character, that's a lot of water. Roughly, that's 16lbs of weight so the party can't carry a lot of water with them. This means there's no chance of just pushing on and not short resting. A character with capacity of 200lbs (STR13), has a starting equipment roughly of 40lbs, then it's 18lbs per day for the food and water needed. So maximum of 8 days of food and water can be carried with them at any one time.
I'd forgotten, but have since gone back through ToA so here's an updated process with some emphasis on survival.
Day Start
Night-time routine
I run a watch system for night-time camping. Taking a watch does not interrupt a long rest unless they get involved in more than just sitting, tending the campfire, and keeping lookout. Assuming a party of 4, the party can pass the 8 hours each taking 2 hours watch and getting 6 hours sleep or trance.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Thank you so much for this! This is great!
I am still struggling to wrap my head around tracking water and food usage, as well as foraging.
Here's some of the mechanics I kinda adjusted for the hex daily exploration:
Morning. Roll weather live: 1 storm (0 gal per catcher) · 2–7 misty (1 gal per catch) · 8–20 regular (2d4). Everyone has a catcher, the take is pooled. Players choose pace.
Day. Three encounter checks at 16+ on the card; only one ever runs. 16 of 30 days have something.
Evening. One pre-rolled Wis (Survival) check covers navigation and camp together — Qawasha +5, ±5 pace, advantage if the destination is on their map.
15+ on course, good camp · 10–14 lost, say nothing, camp fine · 9 or less lost, no fire, no boiling, no long rest.
Players report water (2 gal each, DC 15 CON if short) and rations. PC can take turns to remain up for watch when they can long rest, though they will lose their long rest.
I have also decided that because they chose Qawasha as a guide, foraging food will automatically succeed as him being a druid and well versed in the flora and fauna of Chult, he can immediately tell what's good and what's not.
Because of that I am focusing more on the water aspect of survival rather than the food aspect.
I changed the resting rules because it felt too easy for them to rest. I will tell the PC that every night will be counted as short rest, though only some nights can they long rest.
It made sense in my head because when in an unknown and dangerous jungle, you don't really camp and rest every night peacefully.
I also don't want to keep asking them to stop if they want to forage and stuff cause I don't want the hex crawl to be super repetitive and then become boring.
That's ultimately my main concern: repetitiveness.
Keen to hear all your thoughts though! And again, thank you for taking the time to help out with this!
There's a reason Qawasha's stat block does not include Goodberry. It would make the journey too easy. Similarly, consider that Qawasha is not proficient in survival for a reason. He's not there to be providing food and water for the party. I'd strongly advise making the party take care of their own food requirements. Not only will it push them toward settlements for the exploration, but it'll also assist the survival theme.
For water catchers, I made it even more simple. The average tropical rainforest receives around 150 inches of rain per year (0.5 inch per day). So players can catch a maximum of 1 gallon per day of rain, or a full 8 gallons on a tropical storm day.
Don't forget the tropical storms. Those environmental effects are really punishing and do add to the oppressive feel of the setting. Don't forget that missing a long rest bestows exhaustion. So if a tropical storm rolls in (25% chance remember), a player character could literally die from the storm. On storms players automatically gain a level of exhaustion and need to roll a CON check to prevent a second. If they haven't had a long rest they're already working with one level of exhaustion and in one very unlucky roll of two dice they could jump to three levels of exhaustion. It's a short distance from there to character death.
In short, allow them the suspension of disbelief and let them long rest. Just make them take watches.
Hexcrawl is generally one of the styles that requires a lot of a DM. You need to be able to generate interesting moments, or know when to montage, or skip past the more boring bits. This is why so many DMs pre-roll and pre-arrange the encounters that the party are going to come across. To keep the journey interesting. With Hexcrawl, the journey is the point. What makes Hexcrawl really come alive is in how you narrate the journey. How you reveal the encounters.
Your party's guide of choice is going to be leading them through undead areas, so the possibility of rolling the same random encounter twice is higher. Let's say you roll a 74 and 76 for two different Hexes. That's Skeletons for both random encounters. So it's in how you narrate these encounters which is going to matter.
Encounter 1 - Your guide stops still a moment, he lifts a finger to hips lips prompting you all to be quiet. As you all come to a stop and settle, he cautiously pulls back a branch to offer you a view of the scene beyond. An ancient graveyard, tombs cracked and ruined lays ahead. Shuffling through the ruins you spy creatures made of yellowed bones wearing rusted helmets and scraps of armour. Your guide replaces the branch, blocking you view once more before joining the party in a whisper he asks what the party want to do.
Later in the next hex you roll for skeletons again, here's an opportunity to emphasise how you can shake it up.
Encounter 2 - Beads of sweat are rolling down everyone's face. The humidity here is so harsh and high that sweat can't evaporate. The heat feels oppressive and heavy. Familiar with this terrain, and clearly having noticed the party's difficulty coping with the heat, your guide comes to a pause. Taking his own waterskin he swigs a little. Prompting all of you to do the same. Nearby rocks, fallen tree trunks, and even the jungle's floor make for good points to sit and rest should you wish to.
As you're all taking this moment of peace, a moment to catch your breath. To rest your legs from the drudgery of this long hike, something catches everyone's attention.
From out of nowhere the party hears a thump, Player 3 you've been hit by a sword taking 3 points of damage and opening up a minor cut on your shoulder. Turning to see the noise the party sees a small pack of creatures. Skeletons bearing the same kind of armour scraps you saw the day previous, weapons ready to attack.
As you can see, it's about *how* you narrate the experience. That's what you'll need to work on. It requires either improvisation skills or planning that can be played as improvisation.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
It made sense in my head because when in an unknown and dangerous jungle, you don't really camp and rest every night peacefully.
From my experience, if you are tired, you will sleep restfully. Particularly if you have trust in the watch. A bigger problem is light from the canopy. Double canopies are pretty dark, I have only spent a little time in triple canopy and that is basically dark. Night vision did not help as the ambient light was just not there, using IR flash lights was not a good option, nor was the technology well developed as depth perception made not using them much better.
Dark bleeds into day which bleeds back into night. In the heavy jungle time changes due to the lack of sunlight are not quite there.
What you're missing here is the important bit: Exhaustion is a literaly spiral to death
With no long rest, that exhaustion could literally kill a party that would otherwise survive. Suspending that area of disbelief (that they're not going to be able to sleep in the jungle), is as much about addressing the mechanics as it is about the feeling bourne by the setting.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
The solution there is simply to modify the exhaustion rules. There is a whole informal rule set for long-time-scale games where a single night's rest is a short rest and it takes 2 days off (i.e. weekend) with no encounters to get a long rest. Obviously in those games you don't have exhaustion compound every night that they don't long rest. Instead the exhaustion rules are if the party goes 24 hours without 6 hours of sleep. But that sleep doesn't get you the resource recharge of a long rest.
Frankly the time-scale of D&D is completely out of whack with survival / realism as most D&D parties go from level 1 to level 12 over the course of a couple of weeks to months which is pretty nutty if you are trying to make the game realistic.
Honestly, I'm an advocate for running adventures as they are written. It's something too few DMs actually do. What's amazing is hearing back from a group of new DMs I introduced and mentored into DMing, they were all stunned by how much the rules, mechanics, and adventures make more sense when you run them as written.
Yes, there's some handwaving necessary but we call that suspension of disbelief. That's par for the course.
If you're going to alter basic rules of the game however, it's often easier to handwave the thematic stuff than alter the underlying mechanics which can (and often do) have unintended consequences. Yes it might be easier to say 'exhaustion no longer gets applied when missing a long rest', however you are then saddled with that precedent through the rest of the adventure. I've seen it happen too often as a player at tables where the DM sets a precedent like this and then some smug player decides that they can test and push what other rules might be 'flexible'. So, for that reason I'd argue that the most mechanically and low impact appropriate solution for the DM and Players is to narrate the discomfort.
Maybe the player characters wake with cricks in their necks, they had nightmare fuelled sleep leaving them grumpy for the day ahead. These things can all be done without modifying rules. In fact I'd argue that they should be. Altering the underlying mechanics is best done when it is the only option available. This is a problem that doesn't need to be solved with a rule modification, rather it can be done through flavour and narration.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
So do you suggest abiding to the mechanics written in the ToA module?
Honestly, if you've never actually done it before, yes.
If you've tried it before and it wasn't fun for you then no.
A great example of what I'm pointing at is the nonsense internet discourse which had players and DMs convinced a few years ago that there weren't rules for how to handle chases. There are such rules in the 5e DMG and the rules work just fine (to her credit Ginny Di addressed this when she made a video about finally reading the DMG cover to cover, I wish more D&D influencers did this kind of thing). My observation is that a lot of GMs out there who point at D&D 5e (and 5.5e) to highlight 'flaws' often aren't playing the game as written. They've got at least some modification that alters the game's mechanics and play more than they realise.
I don't know what your table is like. I don't know the experience levels or the playstyles. However, I've run more games that I can even care to remember at this point across over 30 different systems. My experience has been that in nearly all cases flavour and narration are a hell of a lot easier that altering a rule. There are a lot of players and GMs out there who like to think they understand game design and then complain when something isn't working because they messed with the mechanics. Flavour is free and has no impact on the functionality of the game. A broken or altered rule can ripple out consequences that you don't see. That is the context of my advice. Flavour and narration will always be better than a homebrewed rule in my opinion.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Was it my badly mark quote or the original poster? I am saying that even in jungles you can get rest to remove exhaustion. But that assumes those on watch can be trusted.