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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.
F2. Ryada’s Lair
>> (hex stats stuff omitted) <<
The dense jungle forest gives way to a clearing around a (pool of water or shallow stream). Several jungle cats laze about near the water. They turn their heads and watch when someone enters the clearing.
- GM Note: If Ryada is in her lair and is aware that someone are coming, she will assume animal form and observe them. If one of them is a mao and appears friendly, she will assume her natural form and glomp the mao.
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
1–2 Lair
3–10 Location
11–13 Tracks
14–20 Wandering Monster
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
Thanks for the feedback. I tried to put something together in rrsponse to The-Magic-Sword’s request, but it’s a little unfocused. I’ll see if I can tighten it up and get something revised up later today.
Thank you for sharing this Kenada. I am running a golarion homebrew campaign that will feature a long hexploration crawl and it is very helpful to see how you did yours. I hope my players have as much fun as yours have.
This is interesting for me too, as the campaign I'm slowly designing starts with a sort of hexcrawl.
I'll have a deeper reading later.
Again, thanks Zapp for pointing out some additional things I could address. I’ve tried to touch on them below. There’s a lot of good stuff in Justin Alexander’s article I linked above. If there’s something I missed or somewhere I can go into more detail, let me know.
General Considerations
Out of the box, Pathfinder 2e gives you almost everything you need to run a hexcrawl. It doesn’t provide the entire procedure, but the exploration mode framework gives you most of what you need. I touched on this a little bit in my previous post. There are some things you should keep in mind when running a hexcrawl in Pathfinder 2e.
If you chose to populate your random encounter tables with monsters based on what makes sense for your regions, then you are going to run into issues with encounter difficulty very easy. The hexploration rules in the GMG also touch on this. They suggest using the chase subsystem to help facilitate an escape. I think that’s a good idea, but this is also why I suggest using Proficiency without Level.
Another issue to consider is rate of progression. For an exploration-based game, you should probably use XP-based progression. The issue with milestone-based progression is that PCs can pivot from one thing to another, leaving threads left dangling until they pick them up again. In my current campaign, my PCs interrupted a dungeon delve to return back to their base camp to move everyone closer but also (finally, in their eyes) take leadership of the expedition from the incompetent NPC who had been appointed. There can be multiple threads, and this can get extra messy if you have multiple parties or a rotating cast of characters (whether running a Westmarches game or not).
The base XP rules work pretty well. You should give out ample XP for accomplishments. One thing I do in my group (regardless of the type of campaign) is have my players nominate accomplishments at the end of the session and decide collectively how big they are. You don’t have to do that, but an ample chunk of the XP you give out should come from accomplishments because it is likely that you will only have a couple actual fights in a session, and it is possible that you won’t have any (our last session had none).
I have found that the default rate of progression feels too slow at lower levels in an exploration-based game. The range of foes, especially if you are using standard proficiency rules, is very narrow, so the PCs can’t really delve very deep in the beginning. You may want to consider changing the rate of progression from the default. I want lower levels to go quickly and higher ones to go more slowly, so I have changed the XP thresholds to be based the next level (200 XP × next level).
When stocking your hex map, you should steal liberally from sources. If you have a favorite dungeon, stick it in a hex. If there’s one you like in an AP, stick it in a hex. Find something online? Stick it in a hex. Et cetera. Dyson’s Dodecahedron is also a great source for maps and inspiration. When you design a dungeon, like your random encounter tables, you need to decide what lives there. If you decide to populate it based on what makes sense, you should again consider using the Proficiency without Level variant.
My recommendation when starting out is to prepare a reasonably sized hex map (I’m using 11 by 11 hexes) but key only the area in the PCs immediate surroundings. In the beginning, things will probably be slow-going as the PCs explore the areas around their starting hex. After a session or two, you should be able to develop a feel for how likely they are to go in a certain direction, and then you can start keying hexes in advance. Justin Alexander has good advice for finding time to key a few hexes here and there (though I’ve tended to batch them up when I think I’ll be needing them).
Lastly, treasure. One of the tricky things about a sandbox is that PCs are likely to get too much or too little treasure. Our primary party went several sessions before finding anything. They just had a knack for avoiding or missing the dungeons that are out there. The CRB suggests placing more treasure than normal for a sandbox game, which is a good approach as long as the PCs aren’t likely to clear or find every single possible thing.
The way I approach treasure is to make very heavy use of the Treasure by Encounter table in the GMG. When I design a dungeon, I decide on a tuning level for the party. That sets the ranges of creatures I use, but it also sets the treasure allocation. In our current megadungeon, the tuning goes up as they go deeper (so floor 1 = 1st level, floor 2 = 2nd level, etc), and the treasure gets better commensurately. My PCs are a bit behind on what they should have, so I’m fine with this. You’ll want to keep an eye on treasure and decide how closely you want to keep to expectations. It’s better to have too much than too little because having too little often means not having the runes you’re expected to have at certain levels.
One approach you may want to consider is the Automatic Bonus Progression. That will let you keep treasure as cool things to find (possibly very irregularly) while still keeping the PCs capable in combat. We’re not using it, but I think it’s a valid approach. There’s no particular reason why not. We’re just a bit conservative in what we change, and my players are hesitant to change more unless they see a major benefit (and I don’t want to do the bookkeeping on their behalf).
Goals in my Approach
Something I want from a hexcrawl procedure is to limit the amount of prep I have to do in advance. While it’s true (as noted in my original post) that putting together your hex key does require a lot of up front work, the amount of work you have to do to prepare for a session is very limited. Essentially, you set the stage, and the PCs do all of the driving.
This is one of the things I like about Justin Alexander’s hexcrawl procedure, which was very influential in the procedure I adapted to PF2. One of its central ideas is using random encounter tables as content generators, so that traveling through a hex is likely never to be boring. There’s a good chance you will discover something new along the way. We have had several examples where the PCs got lost, wandered around, and found something new.
Another important element is that the players experience the game and navigate the world as their characters do. I touched on this a little in my discussion of hexploration previously, but let me go into more detail.
When I ran Kingmaker for our group, we used the exploration rules that were available at the time. Travel and exploration was defined in terms of hexes, and that’s how we engaged with the system. Players would decide which hexes on their map they wanted to explore, we’d go take care of that, and then they’d fill in their map, effectively checking them off like a checklist.
This kind of approach is problematic because it exhausts content. There are random encounters, but they’re not positioned as content generators. There’s nothing stopping you from treating them as such, but I like having that intention expressed in my procedure. The way that random encounters generates discoveries and wandering monsters helps keep things fresh. From an aesthetic perspective, I simply dislike having the players treat exploration like going through the checklist. It’s much more immersive when they’re discussing how to get home by following various landmarks they’ve discovered.
Ultimately, the goal is for exploration to drive the game. The hex key and the content generators let you respond with something interesting based on almost anything the PCs do. Every time you start a session is a chance to find out something new about the world, meet someone new, or go somewhere unexpected. If exploration isn’t the driving force, you may want to consider just using the hexploration rules. This approach can work, but you need to be comfortable with the possibility that the PCs will find and pursue something more interesting than whatever they were doing when they went into the wilderness.
This is interesting for me too, as the campaign I'm slowly designing starts with a sort of hexcrawl.
I'll have a deeper reading later.
Thank you for sharing this Kenada. I am running a golarion homebrew campaign that will feature a long hexploration crawl and it is very helpful to see how you did yours. I hope my players have as much fun as yours have.
Hope it’s helpful. Let me know if you have any questions or if there’s anything I can clarify.
Thanks for posting this! It's a super great resource, I was curious how you were handling a lot of this stuff, my players love the idea of a hexcrawl but at least one of them is fiercely opposed to proficiency without level, so I'm going to have to think very hard about that.
Yeah, Proficiency without Level is not strictly required, so if you want to continue doing things the standard way, you’ll definitely need to be mindful of the level differential when the PCs are likely to get into a fight.
One thing you can do, taking a cue from West Marches games, is structure your environment such that it gets more dangerous the farther you get away from town. That would give the PCs appropriately dangerous areas to explore, and as they get stronger, that becomes represented by the greater distances they are able to trek and deeper they can delve.
Building on that, you could have a hex clearing procedure whereby PCs can render hexes less dangerous, which would allow lower level parties to start exploring them. Before it was definitively rendered moot last session, I had given some thought to how I would handle hex clearing but not a whole lot. One of the PCs had wanted to secure and build up their base camp, so I was considering how they might go about doing that. What I had been considering was a VP-based subsystem for tracking progress clearing the hex, but I have no specifics to proffer beyond just the idea.
Speaking of VP, the influence subsystem is excellent for handling situations where the PCs need to convince someone to do something for them. I found improvising DCs not too bad, and the subsystem itself worked great for giving all the PCs a way to contribute.
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You suggest XP-based progression above milestone-based. Yet you also suggest accomplishment-based. To me, that's contradictory.
The way I allow players to nominate accomplishments is not RAW, but gaining XP for accomplishments is RAW. Per the CRB, you’re expected to give out XP for several minor, a few moderate, and one (if any) major accomplishments.
First, I don't see the difference between milestone- and accomplishment-based. It's all "quest xp" as opposed to "monster xp", just quests chosen by the players rather than the adventure writer.
As it’s generally understood, milestone-based leveling does not award XP. You gain a level when the GM says it’s time to gain a level. It can be good for a story-based game where you want to make sure everyone is the right level for the coming challenges, but I’m not talking about story-based games. I’m talking about exploration-based ones.
Additionally, there’s a difference of scope. Most accomplishment XP is rewarded for things that happen during the session (vs. multiple sessions for a milestone). Major accomplishments are something of an exception, but most of your accomplishment XP should be coming from minor and moderate ones anyway.
Second, I'd say either the sandbox is geographical ("go where you want - choose your own danger level") or it is narrative ("choose your own goals"). In the first case, I believe the point is to stick to monster xp, and treat it as a feature, not a bug, that any session with few and easy fights yield much less xp than any session with many or hard ones. The idea to supplement monster xp with accomplishment xp so the players don't lose the sense of progression directly contradict the original idea behind the hexcrawl sandbox! Put simply: if you get xp at a nice rate anyway, there's no need to seek out the hard targets!
The point isn’t having fights. You seem to be misunderstanding what I’m saying. The hexcrawl, the sandbox, and all the things I am doing are in service to one thing: running an exploration-based game. They’re the tools I use to make that happen. The fact that I’m using a hex map is completely hidden from my players. I could just as well use some other tool, and they would not notice because they are experiencing the game through the eyes of their characters and making decisions from that perspective.
To address your point regarding XP, it doesn’t matter. How you award XP emphasizes the things that you think are important. If you only award XP for combat, then that’s what the PCs will seek out. However, in an exploration-based game, combat is only one of many things you do. In fact, by emphasizing combat and tying rewards to combat, you effectively deemphasize the actual point of the game (exploration) by giving no rewards for a session spent doing entirely that. Moreover, I’d argue that Combat as War is more appropriate for this kind of game, so avoiding or trivializing or cheesing encounters is preferable to having a “good fight” (since the goal is to survive and continue exploring).
While I appreciate the feedback, please don’t act like you’re doing me a favor by providing it. It comes across as patronizing and needlessly antagonistic.
Regarding XP, the very first thing the base XP rules say is that “Experience Points are awarded for encounters, exploration, and progress in an adventure.” It then goes on to discuss awarding XP for overcoming adversaries and hazards as well as for accomplishments. If someone assumes that actually means they only give out XP for killing monsters and overcoming hazards, then that’s their misunderstanding. I address it (to the extent it needs addressing) by pointing out that they should be giving out ample accomplishment XP. Continuing to dwell on it feels like unnecessary pedantry.
I alluded to the player-unknown nature of hexes in my opening post, and I call it out in the exploration procedure document I linked. I’ll add something below that goes into it more explicitly. While I would not describe it as mandatory reading, having read Justin’s series on hexcrawls is incredibly helpful for understanding what I am doing here. My procedure takes a lot of elements from it, a very few Old-School Essentials, and a handful from hexploration. The core ideas build on Justin’s.
Using Your Hex Map
Hexes are a player-unknown structure. That means players are not aware of the structure that you are using to run the game. It’s similar to your random encounter table or any other artifact you use to prep that is not provided to players or presented at the table. When players set out to explore, you start from their current hex and use your hex map to help you determine what happens next. See Justin’s articles on wilderness travel and navigating the wilderness for how to resolving exploration, but make the following changes:
* Substitute group exploration activities for his speed and distance procedures as well as for modes and travels. The group exploration activities handle these things in a way that meshes well with exploration mode in Pathfinder 2e. Use the base speed from the linked exploration procedure and the terrain table for determining modifiers and DCs.
* Have the navigator Sense Direction to determine whether they are lost. The exploration procedure contains additional affects on failure and modifiers for using a compass and navigating when the sun or moon is visible.
* Instead of rolling a d8 (or whatever die) to check for encounters, make a flat check to determine whether there is an encounter per the encounter DC in the terrain table in the encounter procedure document.
* Justin provides an optional procedure for determining actual distance traveled. I don’t use it because it’s not worth the added time calculating the distance, and it’s designed to be easily mitigated by a little skill investment, so it seems almost pointless to bother.
Feel also free to explain what you mean by Combat as War - which is great to bring up in a guide to sandboxing! - that is, how you suggest the reader should tweak the encounter-building guidelines and the awards thereof to achieve Combat as War (as opposed to Combat as Sport, which I take you believe the CRB rules lead to?)
I associate concerns about balance with Combat as Sport, and that seemed to be where you were going. While it seems like a default assumption given the pervasiveness of balance-concerned discourse, I don’t think it’s necessarily true that the rules in the CRB lead to that style of play.
I don’t think it’s necessary to change the encounter-building guidelines. They work very well for what they were designed to do. It’s up to the GM to make use of them when designing encounters or assessing the threat of an improvised one. Going into how to design encounters is way outside of the scope of this post. The GMG has some good stuff on it, so if one’s not sure, read the GMG.
Edit: Since I forgot to include it: what I mean by Combat as War is that combat is not the point in itself. If the PCs can figure out some kind of advantage, then that should be rewarded even if it trivializes the encounter and “ruins” the fight. In contrast, Combat as Sport is about having fun fights, so a fight that gets trivialized is boring. As far as I understand, that’s more or less in line with how those terms are commonly used.
Yeah, heck accomplishment exp that has nothing to do with milestones is just a core rule in this game.
It's all a lot to process, but your example really helps for the campaign I'm thinking about-- one weird option I might vaguely consider, is to allow the level of some areas to become 'player-known' or 'player-discoverable' somehow, though that might feel gamist and might discourage exploration off the rails.
In my case, the concept my players were interested in was a pirate-hexcrawl, where a large swath of ocean allows players to sail around, finding points of interests on specific islands, facing off against other crews and such, searching for treasure and lore. One advantage is that since much of the crawl would be ocean hexes, I can probably not worry about keying every hex, but instead focus on 'points of interest' focusing on the crawl aspect to help me with travel time and such.
Then, the ocean hexes might be subject to a very broad structure for having random encounters (of all kinds, not just combat) come up. E.g. the Kraken that roves the isles, doesn't have to always show up in the same square.
Some things could almost be initially random 'shipwrecks' and such, but then marked such that they've now become canon and are just as the static as the preplanned locations.
One minor grace, is that while it could be cool with an open table like concept, I could stick with a pretty steady group of six for a regular campaign, and not have to worry about mixed levels. Though I know the exploration, sharing information, and regeneration of the map as a living world is part of the charm.
It's all a lot to process, but your example really helps for the campaign I'm thinking about
Glad it was helpful. :)
one weird option I might vaguely consider, is to allow the level of some areas to become 'player-known' or 'player-discoverable' somehow, though that might feel gamist and might discourage exploration off the rails.
Having player-known structures is not necessarily harmful. It really depends on what your intent is for how the payers interact with the game. One possibility is to use the same language the CRB uses for encounter building to convey the danger. For example, an area my be extremely dangerous. This can be understood that you’re likely to encounter extreme threats, which has a good chance of wiping out the party. Additionally, by not committing to a number, you can’t be held to a number (“You said this area had level+3 creatures, so what’s with the zombies?” GM steeples fingers and grins as the zombie horde somehow gets the drop on the party).
In my case, the concept my players were interested in was a pirate-hexcrawl, where a large swath of ocean allows players to sail around, finding points of interests on specific islands, facing off against other crews and such, searching for treasure and lore. One advantage is that since much of the crawl would be ocean hexes, I can probably not worry about keying every hex, but instead focus on 'points of interest' focusing on the crawl aspect to help me with travel time and such.
Then, the ocean hexes might be subject to a very broad structure for having random encounters (of all kinds, not just combat) come up. E.g. the Kraken that roves the isles, doesn't have to always show up in the same square.
Some things could almost be initially random 'shipwrecks' and such, but then marked such that they've now become canon and are just as the static as the preplanned locations.
What you’re describing sounds a lot like a pathcrawl. I haven’t run one, but Justin talks a bit about them in his series on wilderness travel. I think your approach sounds good. You don’t want to key every single hex. Keying just the places that get traffic makes sense. If the PCs do want to travel in some random direction, then you can have a super dangerous random encounter table for what happens when they do that.
One minor grace, is that while it could be cool with an open table like concept, I could stick with a pretty steady group of six for a regular campaign, and not have to worry about mixed levels. Though I know the exploration, sharing information, and regeneration of the map as a living world is part of the charm.
Yep. I’m not running an open table, but we have a rotating cast of characters to give players opportunities to try something different and to let us continue to play even when everyone can’t be there. In the latter case, we just pick up some of the other characters and send them out to explore. It’s neat how sometimes the various groups’ activities affect each other.
It's all a lot to process, but your example really helps for the campaign I'm thinking aboutGlad it was helpful. :)
one weird option I might vaguely consider, is to allow the level of some areas to become 'player-known' or 'player-discoverable' somehow, though that might feel gamist and might discourage exploration off the rails.Having player-known structures is not necessarily harmful. It really depends on what your intent is for how the payers interact with the game. One possibility is to use the same language the CRB uses for encounter building to convey the danger. For example, an area my be extremely dangerous. This can be understood that you’re likely to encounter extreme threats, which has a good chance of wiping out the party. Additionally, by not committing to a number, you can’t be held to a number (“You said this area had level+3 creatures, so what’s with the zombies?” GM steeples fingers and grins as the zombie horde somehow gets the drop on the party).
What you’re describing sounds a lot like a pathcrawl. I haven’t run one, but Justin talks a...In my case, the concept my players were interested in was a pirate-hexcrawl, where a large swath of ocean allows players to sail around, finding points of interests on specific islands, facing off against other crews and such, searching for treasure and lore. One advantage is that since much of the crawl would be ocean hexes, I can probably not worry about keying every hex, but instead focus on 'points of interest' focusing on the crawl aspect to help me with travel time and such.
Then, the ocean hexes might be subject to a very broad structure for having random encounters (of all kinds, not just combat) come up. E.g. the Kraken that roves the isles, doesn't have to always show up in the same square.
Some things could almost be initially random 'shipwrecks' and such, but then marked such that they've now become canon and are just as the static as the preplanned locations.
A Pathcrawl isn't entirely inaccurate, though really I think it would be more like a Pointcrawl, but where hexes are still used as a standard unit of measuring distance for the space between Points. That would probably be best because it can let me do all sorts of things- like have ships pursue one another over great distances, let the players chart a course that avoids certain areas, and so forth.
The idea of large open table games excite me like nothing else, but our previous try in 5e suffered from a lot of flaws, and while switching to a more conventional west marches (where the world isn't being curated) would have probably solved some of it-- a big issue was just my players. They're very much the type of people that need a firm hand if any event is ever going to take place, which means the scheduling dynamics were a big problem, and people would play for a bit and then basically vanish completely, with very little interest in actually scheduling.
"Every Saturday" for a specific group of six has worked much better.
Explain to the reader that, no, you don't suggest that "The base XP rules work pretty well" at all.
Zapp, this is Kenada’s thread and Kenada can Kenada wants to say. As negatively as you react when people engage in your threads in ways that run counter to your statements and desires, you should be just as willing to let someone else have the same freedom in their thread than you expect in yours.
For the sandbox I am starting today, we are using regular level to proficiency and accomplishment xp. The way I am planning on handling the party existing in a world where high level challenges exist all around them is by establishing a pulp adventure tone early, where creatures like to talk, boast, and revel in their superiority, often trying to take captives and present opportunities for the PCs to negotiate around a lower stakes encounter vs a higher level creature, run an escape chase encounter, or try to fight it, likely fail, get captured and wake up in a new environment they have to get out of.
I also established that making sure the party is keeping up with expected wealth by level is actually my job and not theirs. As in the way they play their treasure hunting will change how much treasure will be present and what they can do with it. If they want to use wealth regularly on consumables, bribes, and gifting/building things in communities they encounter to build good will, the rewards will keep flowing to make sure that they are keeping within a level’s distance of the expected wealth by level — same as if they hoard every copper, sell every consumable and plan on crafting all of their major items making extensive use of downtime.
We’ll see how that affects their play style, but is my hope that the two together push more narrative engagement, curiosity and willingness to explore, without having to tone down the difficulty of individual encounters and allow for a broader use of random encounter charts.
For example, the low level party, traveling in the jungle might stumble upon the lair of a black dragon. They can move on and return later, knowing it’s there, they could attempt to investigate the lair and encounter a dragon who has recently fed and wants to be entertained, who demands they do some absurd and terrible task, and if they refuse, the creature will attack non lethally to knock them all out and place them in a new challenging and more lethal but more level appropriate environment. Also, if the bribe it with some nice piece of gear and try to negotiate with the creature it might bring the DCs low enough for them to get a piece of information that will lead to even greater treasures.
I am not arguing with Kenada.
Yes, you are. In as much as you are using your usual argumentative tone to assert that your interpretation of the topic is the most important one and should be catered to. It was off kilter enough that the OP referred to it coming across as patronizing and antagonistic.
Believe it or not, but that is something I feel a guide to sandbox hexcrawls need to address.
This is not an overarching guide to hexcrawls. This is a forum post about a users experience running one. Their post does not have to address your concerns. They don’t need to agree with your core assertions about the rules and the XP system.
In fact you’re the king of telling people who don’t agree with your core assertions to stop engaging because the thread should only be allowed to speak to your views. Now doing the exact opposite and trying to turn this post into the guide you want it to be and challenging the OP into adjusting their core assumptions to match yours?
You cannot have it both ways.
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I don’t think my views on dungeon design are germane. One could populate the dungeons in the hexcrawl with nothing but their favorite dungeons from all the APs that Paizo has ever published, and that would be totally fine. Even if I think Combat as War is likely to be the more appropriate approach, especially if players are risk-adverse (by choosing only easy fights instead of hard ones to maximize their XP reducing risk) you can still do Combat as Sport. I think going into those things would be a distraction, especially for those who know what those terms mean and have strong opinions on them.
And sorry, you meant changing the reward structure. I don’t think that needs changed. If the PCs want to pursue only easy challenges, that’s fine. Maybe that is something I need to point out? That sometimes in a sandbox PCs will decide on a course you may not like, or you think they’re playing it wrong (preferring easy challenges, etc)? I’ll add something below to emphasize that the point of running a sandbox is to let them drive.
There’s nothing particularly special about the way Pathfinder 2e handles XP. It’s similar to what 3e did (but less clunky) by having the XP rewards be relative to the PCs’ levels. That Justin wrote his series of articles with 3e in mind and saw fit not to comment on the XP progression tells me he likely didn’t see it as a problem either. Again, this goes back to player agency and not trying to encourage them to take a certain path because you think they should be playing a certain way.
Needless to say, I don’t think XP for monsters and hazards needs to be changed. However, I’ll add an update that includes how I handle XP for treasure. That could potentially provide a counter-incentive in your hypothetical (depending on how valuable the troll’s treasure is), and it provides a reward for avoiding fights but still getting the loot.
But they sure are the assumption of the official APs that pretty much set the tone as to how Paizo intends the rules to be used, don't you think?
No, I think you’ve got it backwards. You’re assuming that because APs are written a certain way, then then rules are intended to be used that way. I expect it’s much more likely that Paizo saw problems with Pathfinder 1e and revised the rules to eliminate those problems. While I think that Paizo assumes that people will be running published material, I don’t think it follows consequently that they intend the system to be used how they use it. Based on what I’ve seen and the interactions I’ve had with them, I think Paizo wants PF2 to work across a spectrum of games.
To be fair, I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong for making the inference you did. If you look at the way adventures have evolved over the last several decades, they’ve tended to embrace a certain style. That style is one where PCs can generally expect to win the fights they encounter. That didn’t used to be the way. Did you ever play or run The Forge of Fury? It had an encounter with a roper even though the module was intended for much lower levels. You weren’t expected to fight it, but that was apparently a very controversial thing. Justin has an article on that too.
I’m not going to address this specifically in my follow-up, but I’ll keep it in mind. The reason why I’m not going to address it is that past experiences bringing it up in a Pathfinder-friendly venue (not this forum) have not been entirely positive. If someone is so set in their view that encounters should be balanced a certain way, but they want to run a sandbox hexcrawl, then I don’t want to put them off just because I think things don’t have to be done that way.
Actions and Consequences
When you’re running a sandbox, the PCs are the drivers of the campaign. When the players adopt the persona of their characters, they’ll be making as if they were their characters. It’s possible that what they decide to do is different from what you expected. Maybe you wanted them to go after a troll’s pot of gold but instead they decide to attack a group of raiders for their ill-gotten loot. That’s okay. Even if they are risk-adverse and opt never to go after challenging foes, that’s still okay. In a sandbox, the point isn’t necessarily to fight for the sake of fighting. However, if that’s what the PCs want to do, that’s also okay.
Whatever the PCs do, you should always keep in mind that actions have consequences. If through being risk-adverse an NPC’s kidnapped loved-one is killed by marauders, then that NPC is likely to be upset with the PCs, and if that NPC has friends, they’re likely to tell their friends. If the PCs choose to act like murderhobos, then they’re going to be seen as the bad guys. Playing through these consequences is where sandbox play really shines. It gives you an opportunity to explore the relationship between the PCs and the world around them that a story-based game might not otherwise afford.
If you want to take this to the extreme, you can even have consequences for leaving the dungeon. If the PCs leave, then creatures might shift around to fortify their defenses. Other creatures might find the dungeon and adopt it as their home, or ones from deeper dungeon might come closer to the entrance now that the PCs have cleared the monsters out for them. You can even have the monsters react to what the PCs are doing in the dungeon. If you want to do this, I highly recommend giving the following articles a read: (Re-)Running the Megadungeon and The Art of the Key - Part 4: Adversary Rosters.
I use both of these approaches in my game, and they make dungeons dynamic and dangerous, but I understand that approach may not be for everyone. If you want to run your favorite dungeons from every AP that’s ever been published, then do it. If you want your PCs to clear the dungeon, so they can move on to the next, then go for it. It’s more important that the PCs actions in the setting have consequences (since if they were free to terrorize the town, and that was the optimal way to play, some players would do just that) than it is for dungeons to be living things themselves (even if I think the latter is also pretty cool).
XP for Treasure
One option you may want to consider is awarding XP for treasure. This helps provide a reward for finding treasure without having to fight for it. You still award XP for defeating enemies, but if the PCs find treasure you’ve placed, they receive XP for finding it. The following is the house rule I currently use, but feel free to come up with your own method if you don’t like it.
1. Record the value of the treasure the PCs find during the session. If they got it from a creature that was using it, consider excluding it from this total, since they already will receive XP for defeating the creature.
2. At the end of the session, consult the treasure by encounter table in the GMG.
3. Subtract the largest amount by encounter type (low, moderate, severe, extreme) for the party’s level from the total and record that as an encounter.
4. Repeat step 3 until you can no longer subtract the whole value from the total.
5. Award XP equal to the encounters you recorded divided by 5. If you want to really emphasize treasure, you can opt not to divide by five and award the whole amount.
For example, if a 3rd level party finds 150 gp worth of treasure during the session, then that would give them XP equal to a moderate encounter and an extreme encounter divided by 5 (40 XP).
Why not just use accomplishment XP for finding treasure? Is it about granularity or removing subjectivity from judging the relative wealth of a find, or something different?
I will only address a single point:
One alternative approach to XP for Gold (or treasure) is to simply replace the core rule about XP needed per level with a classical exponential XP curve.
Specifically, one that matches the average wealth per level.
This lets you hand out 1 XP for every GP, which your players might feel is much easier to remember and use.
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Yep, I had your method in mind when I wrote that. If I understand correctly, what you’re proposing positions golds as essentially the primary way to get XP. Like I said before, XP is a way to emphasize what’s important, so the best approach will be the one that emphasizes the right things to the right extent.
Why not just use accomplishment XP for finding treasure? Is it about granularity or removing subjectivity from judging the relative wealth of a find, or something different?
I did that initially, but the way I handle accomplishment XP is through group consensus. At the end of the session, players nominate things they think are accomplishments. I have a set of prompts to help facilitate this. We then go through each one, and the group decides by consensus whether they are minor, moderate, or major accomplishments (or possibly not even an accomplishment at all). Beyond facilitation, I have no input in this process.
What I found is my players pretty consistently minimized the accomplishment of finding treasure. It’s something that I think is important, especially as a motivating factor in this kind of game, so I decided to make it work more like XP for defeating monsters and overcoming hazards. I tried a few ad hoc approaches before finally settling on the one I posted here.
I have also used the consensus-based system in the past for even monster XP (in the 5e version I ran before this one). Players would pick from a set of goals for the session that they wanted to accomplishment, and they would get XP for each one they completed during the session. “Defeat a notorious monster” was one of the goals. When we switched back to PF2, I turned those into prompts (for accomplishments) and decided to lean on the standard approach (XP) for monsters and hazards.
Removing XP for Monsters and Hazards
If you want to deemphasize defeating monsters and overcoming hazards in your game, remove the XP awards from doing these things. However, you should still hand out accomplishment XP for particularly memorable fight or derring-do, but don’t provide any of XP that you calculated when building the encounter. Of course, and to be clear, you should still feel free to use the tools PF2 provides for determining encounter difficulty when planning an encounter. Just don’t award the XP from that.
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I have noticed that you are obnoxiously often trying to derail a thread to become about me.
I guess I could see how it might look like that. Except, the way it tends to happen is this. You post a thread about Topic A. Other people reply about Topic A and you criticize them for threadjacking you or derailing because their engagement on the topic didn't match your narrowly defined portion of the topic.
I comment in the hopes that you'll recognize what I'm saying and realize that you're being a tad overbearing. The desired result would be that you take a step back, and have a rational conversation rather than belittling people for engaging but not engaging exactly how you want them to.
In this I'm taking the opportunity to point out that you are doing in this thread what you accuse others of doing in threads you post.
I guess I could choose to be flattered. But I choose to ask you to stop.
I guess I could offer criticism, but I'm choosing to ask you to be mindful of the openness of this forum and try to be less standoffish in both your threads and other peoples threads.
If you have strong feelings about my feedback start a thread called "my weird hangups with Zapp's style of postings" or something and we'll see where that gets ya. Now let's get back on topic. I won't bicker with you in this thread.
I suspect it would be a well trafficked thread based on the number of people you engage with in this way...
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Can you talk about how its worked from the player side -- ie given that you have a player-unknown hexmap, I assume the players have some blank (likely ungrided/unhexed) map they've been building up over time (or do you provide one occasionally).
I've tried a number of approaches for dealing with this, and none of them have been satisfactory for me so far.
I've tried giving them a completely blank map, with no lines An empty hex map. A black & white version of the master map with major features removed (but mountains/rivers/forests remaining), etc. Can't find the system that feels like exploration, but doesn't feel like 'work' maintaining the player/gm map differences, especially when the PCs have gotten lost.
Having the player-unknown structure seems to make it a bit worse, since you'll use completely different terminology to refer to areas. (The worst I had was when the player (not an in-character thing) flipped east and west on his map for two sessions). Took quite a while to figure that out.
Can you talk about how its worked from the player side -- ie given that you have a player-unknown hexmap, I assume the players have some blank (likely ungrided/unhexed) map they've been building up over time (or do you provide one occasionally).
Sure. One of my players likes mapping, so I provide him with a blank hex map (more below).
I've tried a number of approaches for dealing with this, and none of them have been satisfactory for me so far.
I've tried giving them a completely blank map, with no lines An empty hex map. A black & white version of the master map with major features removed (but mountains/rivers/forests remaining), etc. Can't find the system that feels like exploration, but doesn't feel like 'work' maintaining the player/gm map differences, especially when the PCs have gotten lost.
Having the player-unknown structure seems to make it a bit worse, since you'll use completely different terminology to refer to areas. (The worst I had was when the player (not an in-character thing) flipped east and west on his map for two sessions). Took quite a while to figure that out.
The way it works in practice is I tell them how fast they’re going and approximately how long they’ve been traveling. The player who does mapping can interpolate from that and fill in his hex map. He mostly just documents landmarks, which is what is important because that is how they will actually find anything. I know for a fact their map is inaccurate. Where they are now is several hexes south of where it is on my map, but that doesn’t matter. The relationship between landmarks is still right, so they can eventually find their way when they need to get somewhere.
For example, last session, my party wanted to return to their base camp from the megadungeon they’ve been exploring. When they said wanted to do that, I didn’t just check off the hexes. I asked their characters how they were planning to do that. This prompted a discussion between the players, and they decided they would follow their compass west to the coast and then follow the coast back to their camp. That worked because they knew their camp was along the coast, and they had done that before. Additionally, because it’s almost impossible to fail your navigation checks while following a compass during the day, there was no possibility they’d get lost, so they knew it would work.
From my perspective, I consider keeping our maps in sync a non-goal. Because the hex structure is player-unknown, the players need to take whatever notes (including maps) that allow them to successfully navigate the wilderness. It’s very like exploring a dungeon where don’t have a battle mat to see the details exactly. When you’re running hexes this way, it’s critical that you provide good details and especially landmarks, so the PCs can navigate their environment successfully. Justin has a good write-up of what this looks like in practice.
Going back to my example, when the PCs headed west, I described as they left the savannah around Orctown and came upon the Scarred Plains. This is an area that’s like a swamp where the pooled water is actually a spectral fog that can turn into things (and attack you, naturally). I also described the Dragon Shrine in the distance as the PCs circumnavigated the area. We had a new player that session, so the talked about what they’d experienced there. One of the PCs was the only survivor of the TPK (the player had been away that session, so she had stayed back guarding their camp) and several of the others had been on the rescue party. While they were explaining to the new PC, I continued adding details as they reached the coast and turned north towards their base camp. All in all, it’s very similar to how one might narrate moving through a dungeon.