Make Your Hexcrawls Smaller

 This is a sequel to this post. I'd also recommend reading this post.

A 6 mile hex is 31 square miles, give or take. 31 square miles is a lot. A lot of my complaints with hexcrawl design relate to this size being massive, in that it leaves worlds feeling big and empty and devoid of anything outside of the couple of preplaced things the GM has decreed exist.

My argument is simple: Make your hexcrawls smaller. You do not need 200 hexes. I promise you that you do not, in fact you could have a full, complete, and exciting game in a single hex. Hell, you could have a full, complete, and exciting game in a single building, though perhaps said building would have to be the House of Leaves.

Perhaps that's an unfair thing to say, a lot of us want a big grand adventure. We want to explore open untamed wilderness. To that I say, you underestimate the amount of wilderness in 31 square miles.

In my last post, I talked about the idea that hexcrawls are essentially megadungeons and presented two ways to interpret that: site as dungeon level and region as dungeon level. Something I think I didn't realize is that region as dungeon level implies a big area, but like, a region could easily fit into 1 six mile hex, and if you think about hexcrawls like that then how many six mile hexes do you need? One for each level, so somewhere between 10-12.

Side note: If you're going to do this, and I recommend that you do, then feel free to blend things a bit. A hex is not a hard barrier, it's just that each dungeon site should take approximately one hex of area.

One of my real complaints with most hexcrawl's design is that being big doesn't make them better, it makes them emptier. It kills verisimilitude for each 31 square mile area to consist of exactly one thing worth engaging with. Perhaps you don't care about that. I do.

Part of this is the fact that 6 mile hexes are just too big to be useful, but I'm not sure things improve if you change from one thing per 6 mile hex to one thing per 1 mile hex, still with 200 odd hexes. Part of it is simply that there's too much content to explore, and too much to design, and way too much to keep track of if you want hexes to interact. 

Second side note: I can't remember where (probably Reddit), but I saw a comment about Wolves Upon the Coast where there was an idea brought up in one hex that was only useful in another hex like 8 hexes away, and I think that helps prove my point. 99.99% of players are never going to experience the content of going to hex A, then going to hex B with the thing from hex A, and recognizing that's what the thing from hex A is from, so why is it even in the game? This isn't a knock against Wolves Upon the Coast in general, I have not played it or read it, just an example of the failings of hexcrawl design in general.

Basically: make smaller hexcrawls that are more dense. I know I will.