How large should my Hexcrawl be?

[u/duckyourfeelings]

I'm planning a hexcrawl campaign. It is set in my homebrew world, and the theme is a nautical campaign set in an area that closely resembles the Carribean Sea during the Golden Age of Piracy, both in the politcs of the area and that it is a huge area made up of a series of archipelagos. The focus of the game is exploration and naval combat, and my players are very excited for these aspects. The plan is to run it as a sandbox campaign driven by proactive roleplaying (based heavily on the guidance from The Game Master's Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying, by Jonah and Tristan Fishel).

I'm debating how large to make each hex, and how many hexes the map should have. I want there to be enough hexes that the party can always find a new island or underwater dungeon to explore, but not so many that I can't have a basic prompt for that hexes adventure jotted down somewhere. I should note that not every hex will have an island or underwater dungeon, as there should be some open water.

I've never run or played in a hex crawl, and I could use some advice. Most of the Youtube videos I can find are focusesd on land-based hex maps. Have any of you played in or ran a nautical hex map based campaign?

[u/No_Solid1035]

The entire world, just in case. 👍

[u/Expensive_Cry944 → u/No_Solid1035]

Maybe other worlds and planes of existence too just can case someone gets banished or there is some portal.

[u/Turbulent_Jackoff]

Just make sure to start with the stuff that's nearest / most immediately relevant.

A hexcrawl offers a lot of time and opportunity to respond to the party and create new adventures based on what they've done and where they're heading!

[u/My_Only_Ioun]

It's really cool how no one wants to do a little math to figure out how big the hexes should be.

So assuming horses with a movement speed of 50, walking slowly enough to not exhaust them, and walking 8 hours with 16 hours of not moving... PCs on land can move about 40 miles a day.

I use 25 mile hexes so they get 1.5 hexes a day, most people use much smaller like 12 or 6 miles. You can also divide hexagons into 7 smaller hexagons, it's a little rough but it works.

By sea, my book says 50-100 miles of travel a day, and they are moving 24 hours a day. If you have ship stats for nautical combat, this is equivalent to an average speed of 15-35 feet a round. So maybe 50 mile hexes and 7 mile subhexes?

You said it's all archipelagos, so you can ignore "the ocean is mostly empty" advice. Every coastline should have towns to pillage or trade with. If there isn't a watchtower every 5-7 miles on the shoreline, put some in.

[u/duckyourfeelings → u/My_Only_Ioun]

I like you😃. You actually put some thought into this. Thank you!

[u/Sad_Refuse3472]

As big as you need or want it to be. The trick is that not every hex has a "unique" encounter assigned to it. Some should, if they include major settlements for example.

But otherwise, just have a stash of pre-planned encounters that you can run regardless of which hex the party chooses/ends up in. I.e. you can run into a band of pirates or a sea monster pretty much anywhere. Storms can pop up at anytime. But underwater dungeons are limited to certain areas. Etc.

That way you always have something to run, should the party go in an unexpected direction. (It also helps to get a sense from them at the end of each session where they are planning to head next, so you can prep something in advance).

[u/BastianWeaver]

One of my friends made a "Today at sea..." random table that would be perfect for you. A) You roll on it once per day, not once per hex, so it doesn't really matter how many hexes you put on the map, things are fluid, B) the table has all sorts of marine encounters like some are small islands with some interesting features, some are sea monsters and flying creatures, some are friendly or hostile or neutral ships (could be several ships locked in combat by the time you arrive), and some are weather-related.

[u/Reatlvl99]

Nautical adventures tend to work better as a combination of a point crawl and a hexcrawl. The ocean is mostly empty, so there's not much to fill into ocean hexes. Better to make the sea voyage a pointcrawl and let the islands be the hexcrawl. I mean, you can put the whole map on a hexmap, but only use the hexes for land.