Mixing hexcrawl encounter tables

Regional encounter table crossover

Something I found myself wanting in hexcrawls is encounters driving a more dynamic feeling to the environment.

Regional encounter tables for hexmaps aren’t new, but I wanted to take it further and get regions interacting with each other. This works with pointcrawls and dungeons too.

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Crossover encounters

Image Credit: moi

In this example I’m using a hexflower with three regions. The way you do encounter checks doesn’t really matter, you can fit this to your approach. Go here for how I do encounter checks. In short, I roll a d20: low = encounters, high = ‘nothing’.

Each region has local encounters in entries 1-3, ones related to the factions and ecology of the region. This means you can roll on these as a ‘sub-table’ using a d3.

Only three actual encounters in the table!? Yes, this means I write 3 really good encounters per region. When one is ‘spent’ I replace it with something new.

Then we have 4 ‘crossover’ encounters. This is where we take encounters from other regions and smash them together with a local one to get the environment feeling alive and changeable. Those forest goblins are now mixed in with a bunch of mountain sprites. This creates interesting movement of factions and ecology: why are the sprites here when they are normally in the mountains?

These complete our table.

4: Double local. Roll twice on the d3 subtable for that region and combine.

5 and 6: Region 1 + region 2, or region 1 + region 3. Roll on the d3 subtable for the two regions and combine.

7: All regions. Roll on the d3 subtable for all three regions and combine.

When you roll a crossover encounter, you can use a reaction table (I use my reaction table overhaul) to give an idea of what the crossover encounter looks like. I also use my tools for distance and surprise to get more detail (like who is aware of who).

By the way, if you like running hexcrawls you should grab one of our hexbooks:

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Pointcrawls and Dungeons

This works for pointcrawls and dungeons too. For pointcrawls, just split your point map into regions and make tables for them. For dungeons, make tables for levels (so you have interaction between the levels) or regions of levels.

~fin~

Don’t forget to grab a hexbook.

If you are lacking dice to roll on encounter tables, I’ve used these and this dice tray for years. I draw hexmaps irl with Faber-Castell Pitt Pens.

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