Hexcrawl25 and Hex Kit

Returning to the challenge of juggling between scales of hexes and sub-hexes while bringing my Hexcrawl25 map to table, I switched to Hex Kit. I used the Classic, Fantasyland and Travelling Through Dangerous Scenery hex packs.

Azgaars was good for the 10 mile hex scale but now I wanted to get down to 2.5 mile hex scale. The main thing grinding my gears was getting things consistent between levels, marking in the terrain and all that. To start off with I created a layer and just drew in some hexes to help with orientation. THe gray ones are sub-hexes shared between two macro-hexes. Sub-hex A1 is outlined for orientation.

The chunk of the map I am trying to work up is the centre of this hex grid; hexes A1-A7.

After that I blocked in the general terrain so that it matched up to what was on the larger scale in Azgaars - forested hills (SE), hilly wetlands (NE) and swamp/wetland (W). I did this with the colourful Fantasyland and Travelling Through Dangerous Scenery hexes.

Then I created a layer above that and put the sites that were known or visible on it.

Lastly I used the handy 'fog of war' feature to create this player map. This is maybe fit for purpose for use on screens but no good for printing off and handing to people or for me as a DM annotating it. I stuck a copy of this in the campaign document but there is too much going on with the terrain andfog of war for it to be the most helpful to me as a DM or during Hexcrawl25.

Trying to figure out what was actually useful I stripped it back to just sites and the hexes. Strictly, this is the true Hexcrawl25 map - a site per sub-hex with clarity on the hex/sub-hex boundaries. A helpful view but still not the best for use at table.

I went back to the Classic tileset for Hex Kit and redid the hills/wetlands terrain with these much more minimalist tiles and it came out a lot better as a table-tool. The discovered sites pop and there is lots of space for annotating during a session.

The fog-of-war tool even on these more minimalist tiles is unhelpful for actual table play - good for digital but still too dark and busy for table play.

So lessons learned from all this - the sparser terrain Classic tiles are better for creating table aides. Blocking in 'hex references' so you can orient as you move between scales is very helpful. The fog of war feature and more colourful tiles are neat for online campaigns or publications but not for actual table-tops.

As a tool for doing Hexcrawl25 I think it is useful - the ability to shuffle between layers and show/hide terrain or sites or whatever as needed is very useful to me. A next thing I might do is block in some of the Azgaars culture, political and religious layers - effectively I have brought in the Biomes layer already. It is the right level of cartography tool for me, letting me get down a good representation of what I want to show quickly. The bit of the Hexcrawl25 challenge I want to do is coming up with the sites and Hex Kit stops my lack of artistic chops from getting in the way of the challenge.