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As requested, here’s how I run a sandbox hexcrawl in Pathfinder 2e. This post is also a follow-up to one I made last year on reddit, so it reflects refinements that I have made since then. Background My game got its start in 5e, and before that the setting got its start in Open Legend. My players have been wanting to do an exploration-based game for a while, and PF2 has really enabled us to do that. Prior to switching systems, I was using a procedure based on Justin Alexander’s hexcrawl procedure. That procedure has remained influential, but I’ve blended some ideas from Old-School Essentials and even the hexploration from the GMG. One might ask: why not just use hexploration now that it’s been published? The truth is it reminds me a lot of the exploration rules from Kingmaker and Ultimate Campaign. Kingmaker is easily one of my group’s favorite APs, but its relationship to the hex map and the role it served is different from what I want in this game. I don’t like that the players are aware of the hexes (Justin calls this a player-known structure), and I don’t like that hexes can be exhausted (explored, reconnoitered, etc). One of the backbones of my current campaign is the use of tables (random encounters, wandering monsters, etc) as content generators. Let me provide an example. Several sessions ago, one of the exploration parties decided to head south to see if they could find food in the jungle for their expedition. They’d started with a month’s worth of supplies, so they needed to find more or establish a way to keep their expedition (~40 people) fed going forward. This is what I have keyed for the jungle.
Ryada’s one of the five nymphs that exist in the setting. She doesn’t leave her forest, but if the PCs encounter her, she can answer any questions they have. The party did eventually meet here (and learned some more about the setting, local goings-on, and prior expeditions to the area), but a lot more happened in that session that wasn’t keyed. It came from my random encounter tables. They encountered stegosauruses, which smashed their way through the dense jungle, followed their trail, found a banana grove, learned that water can be dangerous (yay crocodiles), found a shambler’s lair (that they made a note to avoid), and hatched a crazy scheme involving raising velociraptors for food. The velociraptors thing is particularly interesting because it was almost completely random. I mean that both literally and figuratively. The velociraptors situation was the result of rolling velociraptors on my random encounters table. The party found a nest, and after dispatching the adults, they decided to take the eggs back to their camp where one of the druids could help take care of them until the eggs hatched. I expected them to eat the eggs or do something with them, but I didn’t expect them to do that. However, that’s cool, and that’s one of the nice things about running a proper sandbox — you sometimes get to be just as surprised as the players when stuff happens. Anyway, I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that I’m not just using a hex map and key as a way to let players decide how to go about doing things (to paraphrase the GMG) or to serve as beats in the story. There really isn’t a story beyond the one that emerges through play. That’s why I don’t think hexploration is a good fit. It’s a means rather than the end itself. With that said, I think if you try to do some of this stuff in a story-based game (vs. exploration-based), you stand a good chance of taking things completely derailing whatever you might have had planned. Running a Sandbox Hexcrawl in PF2 You’re going to need an initial hook to get the PCs out into the wilderness and exploring their environment. For my campaign, that hook is they’re part of a generational expedition into a region called the Shattered Remains. They’re supposed to explore and report back regularly via spanreed on their progress. Whatever hook you decide, it just needs to be enough to give the PCs a reason to explore. As I alluded above, don’t try to plan out story arcs or much beyond the initial hook because you have no idea where things are going to go from there. However, there is another big piece of initial prep: your hex key. If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend reading Justin Alexander’s article on running a hexcrawl. One of the key components of his system is that you key every hex on the map. That may sound like a lot, and it is, but a hex doesn’t need a lot of detail, and if you’re careful, you can limit how much you need to key before you start. In my hexmap, I started the campaign in D1. I’ve keyed most of the content on the peninsula and have some ideas for other areas, but that’s all I’ve done so far. Because of the constant content generation, they’ve spent all of their time in the brown region (called the Dino Savannah in my notes). I’ve pulled my exploration procedure out from my house rules. I’m not going to recap it here, but I’ll be talking about some of the things it does and how those are used. Once the PCs have a reason to head out to explore, you need a procedure to determine what happens next. Exploration mode in Pathfinder 2e gets you about 90% of the way there. If you just follow the exploration activities in the CRB, things actually work pretty well. This is what I did for a while and was the focus of my reddit post. This is one of the areas where hexploration has been an influence, and that’s group activities. Group exploration activities are what the whole group is doing while exploring. When the party heads out to explore, they describe basically what they are doing. Are they just trying to get from point A to point B? Are they looking for something? How are they doing that? That helps you determine the group exploration activities. This is pretty much how exploration works normally in exploration mode, but the wilderness exploration activities are focused on helping you (as the GM) determine progress and figure out what happens next. For terrain-based modification to speed, I just use normal/difficult/greater-difficult terrain. For some of the group exploration activities, I do use percent-based modifiers. I tried to keep things reasonably easy to calculate without needing a calculator or computer, though rolling six checks for random encounters (six watches in a day) can take up a bit of time if you’re not careful to hide this during downtime in the session (e.g., when the PCs are discussing what they want to do). I’ve used a script to automate my rolls, but I lost the one I had and need to rewrite it. It’s not necessary to use something like that, but it can help. When you get to the point where an encounter is likely to occur, switch to “regular” (or “dungeon” as I label it in my procedure) exploration mode. The PCs declare how they are going about things, and you resolve those like you normally would in a dungeon. The paladin can keep her shield raised, the rogue can sneak, and so on. This lets them benefit from any investments they’ve made in those things, and it provides a familiar framework for when it’s time to focus on their exploration activities as individuals rather than as a group. I follow Justin Alexander’s procedure for tracking time. The day is broken into watches, and I make a random encounter check every watch. I’m using flat DCs instead of a d8, but you can use whatever works for you. The DCs in my document are still a work in progress. I’m still getting a feel for whether they are too high or low. Since you are rolling them more frequently, they are higher than the DCs in hexploration, but you can use those if you want (a lot) more random encounters. When you get a random encounter, you then determine what it is. This is one area where I deviate from Justin’s procedure. Instead of rolling up to four or five times to check the various types, I have a single table (see below) that I roll, and then I roll the corresponding column on my random encounters table. Regardless of the type, I drop the group into “dungeon” exploration mode and go from there. As an aside, I have also changed the labeling of the types of encounters from Justin’s article. To map terminology back: a “discovery” is an “exploration encounter” in Justin’s article, and a “wandering monster” is a “non-exploration encounter”. This just feels more intuitive. d20 Type
Eventually, I want to roll all encounters into a single type and roll on one table, but that will probably require a tool or spreadsheet to produce the final result. This also works well enough, so I haven’t bothered to write that yet. Overall, I lean pretty heavily on Justin’s procedure with a number of modifications to flavor it for PF2. When the PCs explore, they describe what they do from their perspective. When the party last session wanted return back to their base camp from Orctown, they had to figure out in the world how they would do that. They ended up deciding they could head west using their compass until they hit the coast and follow the coast north until they made their way back to their camp. This helps make wilderness exploration feel very similar to dungeoncrawling, and your tools help keep the wilderness exploration interesting because they never know what’s going to happen next. Closing Thoughts My group has been wanting to do an exploration-based game for a while. PF2 has been a really good fit for that. You can almost do it out of the box, but with some adjustments, it works really well. I’m not sure it’s even fair to call these adjustments per se since I’m just building on top of the framework that’s already there. Of course, my players have found a megadungeon, so we’re probably going to spend the next dozen+ sessions in there instead of exploring the wilderness, but that procedure will always be available when they decide to leave town to go do something else. Addendum A: On Urbancrawls The exploration procedure I linked above has some stuff for exploring urban environments. That’s meant to built on Justin Alexander’s urbancrawl ideas. I’d consider my procedure a work-in-progress for that since my PCs are always on the cusp of getting into things in town but then get distracted by something else, so they’ve not gotten a lot use at the table yet. Also, I still need to map out Orctown, so we’ve just been winging it. I expect it’ll come in handy at some point. Addendum B: Proficiency without Level We had a TPK early in the campaign when the party went up against a level+2 creature and engaged in some really bad tactics. It was an gray ooze, which they had successfully kited before, that they decided this time to get into a slugfest with it. The fighter also used slashing weapons, so it made more oozes, and they all eventually died. We regrouped (hence why the expedition is large), but that eventually prompted me to switch to the Proficiency without Level variant when the GMG was released. If you’re creating random encounters tables with a range of monsters, or you’re stocking dungeons with things that make sense to be there (regardless of the PCs’ levels), then you’re eventually going to encounter a situation where things are just too dangerous. The Proficiency without Level variant helps make these situations less dangerous by increasing the range of creatures the PCs can safely encounter. It also lets you have parties with characters of different levels (lower level ones can still contribute as long as they’re careful). — Exploration Procedure download: here |