Where I started
Hexmap was at 77% completion vs target of 88% - however sufficient hexes to make target *have been created* just not within the bounds of the actual challenge.
My players wandered off the south east corner and threatened to wander West, North, East and South West necessitating that I put at least some effort into the broad strokes of those directions.
However, that cuts no mustard against the challenge in hand so we need to spot our gaps and fill them pronto. Check progress since mid-year here if you like.
Happily, no hex has nothing in it, all have at least the four or so sub-hexes that their core faction inhabitants account for.
[see faction hex populating technique]
Otherwise I need to
- do 'bleed over' for more of the remaining hexes but I fell into a slightly too elaborate process for doing that - making a grid, rigorously marking out the hexes I was going to work up, figuring out all the relevant neighbours and then working down those columns. This works but is a bit time consuming and maybe we are past time to just work directly onto the map.
- fill a bunch of 'holes' left even in quite old sections of the map which are just off the beaten track that I need to fill in.
- I am going to ruthless stuff 'harbinger' hexes into all the border hexes on the edge of the map, letting me squeeze some credit for the off-map work I did
Hexfilling in a hurry
To try and catch up I focused on the ten hexes of the western side - AB, A9, A2, AC, A3, A1, A10, A4, AD, A11 - and looked at each of them in turn, looping through the three steps above.
I did this in a question format - is there an interfering neighbour who should be accounted for here? After that, are there holes within here that make sense to fill with something that has been mentioned in game or ties sensibly to other local things - troll lairs, haunted barrows, a fishfolk village, rivers to feed a waterfall, etc.
Doing a concerted effort to sweep across the map, first I looked at 'bleed over' - checking I had all the different edge hexes put onto the same map and spotting a few I had missed (F9, C6); C6 was relevant to this work on the west so the faction there was dubbed the Circle of the Unbroken Octagon, a bunch of relatively orthodox monks of the Lake of Answers; good enough for influence on AC.
Then I went around the edges of the map and filled all those edge sub-hexes with harbingers.
Next I went through the hexes which were least filled and 'completed' them - AB, AC and AD were the three in this case, done in reverse order. AD was completed by figuring what sort of self-enclosed community an isolated baronial castle would have around it and chalking those in. For AC it turned out that hydrodynamics helped me out because there was a waterfall that had been rolled up that had no source - I needed a source, which then implied a very strong climate effect against the western face of the plateau in that hex which gave me a bunch of eternal rain, perpetual gloom type features. Lastly was AB which I knew were toad-rider goblins but little else - except the contrast with the now in-game established sneaky blowpiper goblins and mercenary spider-rider goblins made them the brash 'waaaagh' goblins - them and their toads. This needed clearings to challenge the spider-riders, arenas to train, shamanic huts to work their frenzies, mask workshops, crags being carved into glorious effigies, and so on. Once their 'attitude' sprang into focus, the hex filled itself.
Usefully this approach got me to ten completed hexes, some good fodder for upcoming bits of the map and brought me bang up to schedule in a single focussed sitting. The campaign is going well in the background - the terrain is becoming familiar which is great. We will probably get in two more sessions this year and then probably run on into spring 2026.
For the Hexcrawl25 challenge I have just six hexes left to finish along the eastern side which is probably one or two more similarly focussed sessions ahead, eminently doable.
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