Hexcrawls in Cairn
The standard method for wilderness exploration in Cairn is the pointcrawl, typically converting from whatever module or setting you’re currently playing. The following is an adaptation of those procedures for use with Hexcrawls.
Wilderness Travel
Travel is measured in watches. A day is divided into three watches: morning, afternoon, and night. However, as most parties elect to spend the third watch of the day resting, one can use “days” as a shorthand for travel time.
Weather
Each day, the Warden should roll on the weather table for the appropriate season. If the “Extreme” weather result is rolled twice in a row, the weather turns to “Catastrophic”. A squall becomes a hurricane, a storm floods the valley, etc.
Weather Type
| d6 | Spring | Summer | Fall | Winter |
| 1 | Nice | Nice | Fair | Fair |
| 2 | Fair | Nice | Fair | Unpleasant |
| 3 | Fair | Fair | Unpleasant | Inclement |
| 4 | Unpleasant | Unpleasant | Inclement | Inclement |
| 5 | Inclement | Inclement | Inclement | Extreme |
| 6 | Extreme | Extreme | Extreme | Extreme |
Travel Duration
To determine the expected length of travel between a set of connected hexes, consider each individual hex between the beginning and end of the journey.
When entering a hex, determine both its path and terrain Difficulty. Use the higher of the two Difficulties rather than adding them together. Then apply any weather, nighttime, or situational modifiers.
For travel via waterways, refer to the surrounding terrain Difficulty. For routes crossing multiple terrain types, use the dominant terrain or apply the most significant obstacle along the route.
The weather, terrain, darkness, injured party members, and other obstacles can impact travel or even make it impossible. In some cases, the party may need to add Fatigue or expend resources in order to sustain their pace. Mounts, guides, and maps can increase the party’s travel speed or even negate certain penalties.
Especially vast or hostile hexes may require an additional watch.
Difficulty
| Difficulty | Examples | Travel Time | Odds of Getting Lost | Factors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | Roads, plains, plateaus, valleys | 1 Watch | None | Safe areas for rest, fellow travelers, good visibility |
| Tough | Trails, forests, deserts, hills | 2 Watches | 2-in-6 | Wild animals, flooding, broken equipment, falling rocks, unsafe shelters, hunter’s traps |
| Perilous | Wilderness, mountains, jungles, swamps | 3 Watches | 3-in-6 | Quicksand, sucking mud, choking vines, unclean water, poisonous plants and animals, poor navigation |
When a rule increases travel Difficulty by one step:
Easy → Tough → Perilous
Weather Difficulty
| Weather | Effect |
|---|---|
| Nice | No penalty |
| Fair | No penalty |
| Unpleasant | Add 1 Fatigue or +1 Watch |
| Inclement | Add 1 Fatigue or +1 Watch. Increase travel Difficulty by one step |
| Extreme | Add 1 Fatigue and +1 Watch. Increase travel Difficulty by one step |
| Catastrophic | Travel is usually impossible |
Wilderness Elements
Night
- The party can choose to travel during the night and rest during the day, but night travel is far slower and more treacherous!
- Traveling at night is always more dangerous. The Warden should roll twice on the Wilderness Events table.
- Some terrain and weather may be easier to traverse at night (desert, for example). The Warden should balance these challenges along with any other.
Sleep
- The last watch of the day is typically reserved for the Make Camp action.
- Characters typically need to sleep each day. Anything beyond a minor interruption can negate or cancel the benefits of sleep.
- If the party skips the Make Camp action, they each add a Fatigue to their inventory and are deprived. Additionally, traveling while sleep-deprived increases travel Difficulty by one step.
Light
- Torches and other radial sources of light illuminate 40ft ahead of the party, but beyond that only provide a dim outline of objects.
- Characters without a light source may suffer from panic until their situation is remedied.
- Environmental conditions (sudden gusts of wind, dust, water, etc.) can easily blow out a torch.
Light Sources
- A torch can be lit 3 times before degrading.
- A lantern can be relit indefinitely but requires a separate oil can (6 uses).
Wilderness Actions
Travel
- The party journeys toward another hex. Obvious landmarks, terrain, and nearby features are revealed according to their distance and visibility. This action is typically taken by the entire party as one.
- When traveling through Tough or Perilous terrain, the party rolls 1d6 to determine if they become lost. This risk can increase or decrease depending on the current travel Difficulty, maps, party skills, and guides.
- If lost, the party may need to spend a Wilderness Action to recover their way. Otherwise, the party reaches the next hex along their route.
Getting Lost
When the party travels by trail or through wilderness, roll according to the current travel Difficulty. If the party becomes lost, they may enter the wrong hex, be forced to backtrack, find themselves where they do not wish to be, etc.
If the party becomes lost while moving through a hex, the Warden rolls 1d6 to determine which neighboring hex the party enters:
| d6 | Direction |
|---|---|
| 1 | N |
| 2 | NE |
| 3 | SE |
| 4 | S |
| 5 | SW |
| 6 | NW |
These directions assume a flat-top hex design.
Explore
- One or more party members search a large area, scouting ahead, searching for hidden features, or treading carefully.
- A Location (shelter, village, cave, etc.) or Feature (geyser, underground river, beached ship, etc.) is discovered.
- The Travel action is still required to leave the current area, even if it has been completely explored.
Supply
- One or more party members may hunt, fish, or forage for food, collecting 1d4 Rations (3 uses each). The chance of a greater bounty increases with each additional participant (e.g. 1d4 becomes 1d6, up to a maximum of 1d12).
- Relevant experience or equipment may also increase the bounty collected.
- The party may encounter homes and small villages, spending gold and a full watch to resupply.
Make Camp
- The party stops to set up camp in the wilds. Each party member (and their mounts) consumes a Ration.
- A lookout rotation is set so that the party can sleep unmolested. A smaller party may need to risk sleeping unguarded or switch off sleeping over multiple days.
- Party members that were able to rest remove all Fatigue from their inventory.
Wilderness Events
At the end of each travel watch, roll on the Wilderness Events table.
Wilderness Exploration Cycle
- The Warden describes the current hex or region on the map and how the path, weather, terrain, or party status might affect travel speed. The party plots or adjusts a course toward their destination.
- Each party member chooses a single Wilderness Action. The Warden narrates the results and then rolls on the Wilderness Events table. The party responds to the results.
- The players and the Warden record any loss of resources and new conditions (i.e. torch use, deprivation, etc.), and the cycle repeats.
Wilderness Events
| d6 | Result | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Encounter | Roll on an encounter table for that terrain type or location. Don’t forget to roll for NPC reactions if applicable. |
| 2 | Sign | The party discovers a clue, spoor, or indication of a nearby encounter, locality, hidden feature, or information about a nearby area. |
| 3 | Environment | A shift in weather or terrain. |
| 4 | Loss | The party is faced with a choice that costs them a resource (rations, tools, etc.), time, or effort. |
| 5 | Exhaustion | The party encounters a barrier, forcing effort, care, or delays. This might mean spending extra time (and an additional Wilderness Action) or adding Fatigue to the PCs’ inventory to represent their difficulties. |
| 6 | Discovery | The party finds food, treasure, or other useful resources. The Warden can instead choose to reveal the primary feature of the area. |
Conversions
There is no straightforward procedure for adapting hexcrawls from existing modules to any OSR system, because so many of them use unique distances and movement rules! Some adventures will have each hex represent half a mile, while others might say 2, or 6, or even 12 miles across! They may even assume different walking speeds, or simply declare the time to cross in hours, or days.
I recommend first trying to work with the system presented by the module, if possible. For example, in Hideous Daylight by Brad Kerr the hexes are really close together, and only take at most 20 minutes to cross (assuming the party is moving carefully). This means that I could cross the map (five hexes) in an hour! It also asks the Warden to roll on the random encounters table whenever a new hex is entered. There really is no way to amend the current system to accommodate these rules, so I’d just stick with them.
However, if I were to adapt a module’s hexcrawl to a system I’d ignore the “miles per hex” or “time to cross” rules and just look at each hex, accounting for path (trail, roads, wilderness) and terrain. Obviously in extreme cases I’d do my best to account for the author’s original intent!
Examples
Through the Swampland
The party follows an overgrown trail into the marshlands of Black Fen. Swarms of insects choke the air, footing is uncertain, and visibility is poor.
The weather in the morning appears Fair but for heavy clouds above. The party’s route is a trail (Tough) through thick swamplands (Perilous). The highest Difficulty is Perilous, so the hex should take 3 Watches of Travel to cross.
- Wilderness Action 1: Travel. The party does not get lost.
- Wilderness Event: Environment. The weather becomes Unpleasant. The party chooses to add Fatigue rather than another watch to the journey.
- Wilderness Action 2: Travel. The party does not get lost.
- Wilderness Event: Discovery. The PCs find an ancient corpse tangled in a reed bed. The body wears rusted armor, but the gold rings on one hand remain untouched.
- Wilderness Action 2: Make Camp. During the final watch the party makes camp under a large weeping willow and consumes a Ration.
- Wilderness Event 3: Sign. Strange lights appear on the horizon, drifting slowly through the swamp. Fortunately they remain behind the party, back the way they came.
- Wilderness Action 4: Travel. The following morning the weather is Fair again, and the party makes their way out of the swamp and into the adjacent farmlands. They do not get lost.
- Wilderness Event 4: Loss. The swamp’s thick air corrodes the Kettlewright’s tongs and a pair of pitons the Greenwise brought along.
Along the Old Seige Road
The party leaves the trading post at Glynmere shortly after lunch, following the ancient seige road toward Fort Ember. Several sections of the stone road have collapsed into the surrounding countryside, but the route remains the safest path to their destination, at least during the day.
The wintry weather is chilly and overcast, but still Fair. The party’s route follows a road (Easy) through the plains (Easy). The highest Difficulty is Easy, so the hex should take only 1 Watch to cross.
- Wilderness Action 1: Travel. Despite its age the road makes for an easy journey. There is no chance of getting lost here.
- Wilderness Event: Encounter. The party stops for an early dinner beneath the ruins of a great machine of war. A short while later a small caravan of traders rounds the bend. Although wary at first, the merchants soon press their wares upon their newfound friends before moving off.
- The party arrive at Fort Ember just as the sun is setting.
Across the Glass Waste
Around midday the party arrive at the pale dunes of the Glass Waste. Heat ripples across the horizon, turning distant shapes into wavering silhouettes, while the dry wind carries sharp grains that sting exposed skin. Enormous boulders dot the landscape like the buried vertebrae of some great skeleton.
The weather is initially Fair, though the heat becomes more oppressive with each passing watch. The party travels through open wilderness (Perilous) across the desert (Tough). The highest Difficulty is Perilous, so the hex should take 3 Watches of Travel to cross.
- Wilderness Action 1: Travel. The party moves across the desert plain, keeping as close to the shade of the great rocks. The party does not get lost.
- Wilderness Event 1: Loss. One of the party’s waterskins splits open after snagging on a jagged stone edge. They lose a Ration, and must share in their comrade’s water supply.
- Wilderness Action 2: Travel. Finally breaking away from the shelter of the stones, the party zigzags across the dunes. They do not get lost.
- Wilderness Event 2: Environment. Hours into the trek a gust of hot desert winds sweep across the dunes and the weather becomes Unpleasant. The party chooses seek shelter beside a half-buried stone fist to wait out the storm, and another watch is added to their journey as night descends upon them.
- Wilderness Action 3: Make Camp. The party shelters and consumes a Ration.
- Wilderness Event 3: Discovery. In the morning the party uncovers a cache of sealed ceramic jars buried beneath the sand. They are heavy with a sloshing liquid. The Mountebank packs them away in her cart.
- Wilderness Action 4: Travel. The party does get lost, and lose another watch retracing their steps.
- Wilderness Event 4: Exhaustion. The day has become terribly hot, and water is scarce. All party members add a Fatigue to inventory.
- Wilderness Action 5: Travel. The party arrives near the edge of this horrid place, but must make camp soon if they do not want to get lost again. The party does not get lost.
- Wilderness Event 5: Environment. The weather shifts, and a light rain begins to fall, cooling the party.
- Wilderness Action 6: Make Camp. The party spends another night in the dunes, and consume a Ration. Food is running low.
- Wilderness Event 6: Sign. To the west a small series of peaks are visible against the horizon. One billows smoke. This is where the party will go on the morrow.
- Wilderness Action 6: Travel. The party begins the final leg of their journey, leaving the Waste for the cool embrace of the Skyridge Peaks.
- Wilderness Event 5: Environment. The weather continues to grow colder, and as the party enter this new terrain they are forced to swap their simple clothes for more robust gear. Like a bad omen, a light snow begins to fall on the party as they continue their journey.