OSR community hexcrawl procedures are overcooked

I've been looking into the question of hex crawls recently. Yochai from Between two Cairns has repeatedly pointed out how inconsistent they are adventure to adventure, and I think he's right on that. Although I don't really get why he keeps asking why everyone wants hexcrawl maps. To me that's pretty obvious: people like the idea of a universal, modular system that lets them plug different adventure's hexes into whatever they're running. It's an attractive and relatively simple proposition.

Thinking a bit further though, I think it's worth asking why hexcrawls are so all over the place in terms of dimensions and procedures.

I won't claim to have the one true answer (unlike every single blog on hexcrawling), but here's my POV:

1) Almost nobody reads the source material 

2) We call it hexcrawling, rather than wilderness exploration (which as far as I can tell is the term used in D&D rulebooks)

3) Every blogger and author wants to "sell" their unique spin on hexcrawling 

Almost nobody reads the source material 

I recently read a post where someone was asking for material that covers the rules for hex crawls in AD&D. There was a laundry-list of OSR suggestions, but nobody suggested reading the actual AD&D rules. People have an aversion to reading source material. I get it, it's often denser and weirder than the summaries. But I just think DMs and players need clarity around whether they're trying to play the game-as-written, or whether they're looking for a hacked, secret sauce version of the game. Because the rules are all there for anyone to read.

Personally, I like the B/X rules and I read them via the OSE summaries. What I found is that the rules for for overland wilderness exploration are actually incredibly simple:

You ask for detail on how the party is traveling

You look at how far the party can travel

Then you check to see if they get lost

Check to see if there's any encounters along the way

If all goes smoothly you take the party as far as they can go that day.

That's my own "off the top" summary. I'd encourage people to just go and read the rules. 

We call it hexcrawling, rather than wilderness exploration

This might seem pedantic but I think it's an actual issue. If you're new and looking for an explanation of how to do this you're probably searching "hexcrawl", and missing the straightforward content around "wilderness exploration" which sticks pretty closely to D&D rules-as-written. Instead they run into the deluge of *opinions* and *house rules* on how to "hexcrawl" - a concept which stretches across all editions of D&D and sometimes even into other RPG systems. It's incredibly confusing.

Imo the best description of B/X RAW Wilderness Exploration are in this Bandit's Keep video  . He really does cover it very well and points out his one small house rule (around getting lost) while also explaining what the RAW rule is.

And look, in a way these rules are sort of boring. Or as the Bandit's Keep video says "board gamey". I've encountered this a lot in hobby communities. Some people read rules and go on a diatribe about how shit the rules are and how they'd fix them... except they've never actually tried the rules as written, so they're really just speculating, and wasting everyone's time. Go try them first. Often you'll find that the RAW is pretty good and more thought out than your critique of it. 

In the case of Wilderness Exploration, the slightly "board gamey" aspect of the system is fine and fun. It allows players to map and, in the process, puzzle out some easily solvable riddles (where's that thing on the map? What's next to it? How does it all fit together). I know a lot of game designers think they're too smart for that stuff, but I often find it's more about lacking the attention span. Puzzles are fun and enjoyed by millions for a reason. It's fun to map out a fantasy hex grid through exploration, roll a few dice, and tick off your ration on your way to actual dungeon. Why make it more complicated? 

One thing I'd add is that at its core, the Wilderness Exploration system expects you to keep quite a tight record of what's going on - particularly the DM. I think a lot of people just don't like (or think they won't like) doing that. Hence why there's "innovations" such as "hexpoints" where you spend a point to move through a hex rather than just sayiong "okay this hex is 6 miles long, based on your party's speed you can move through this many 6 mile hexes in one day". The math really isn't hard. Like it's division. In terms of that mentality around record keeping, I actually think GFC's DND video  is pretty good. I still think the Bandit's Keep video is a truer explanation of the actual rules though.

At the same time, there's absolutely nothing wrong with house ruling. I just hate it when everyone thinks they somehow have the silver bullet house rule that is somehow cannon. It creates confusion and makes it harder to plug and play stuff. Which brings me to ...

Every blogger and author wants to "sell" their unique spin on hexcrawling

Sometimes they're trying to mentally sell you on it, sometimes they're literally trying to sell it to you for money. In both cases they almost all come at it with this absolute certainty that they have the best way of doing it. And they usually don't even bother to mention that there already are rules for it, or which particular system their homebrew is for. I know that some of these people are profesional game designers, etc. I even buy that some of their systems might be better (or better suit certain peoples' needs) but really for the sake of this post I think it's important to emphasize that all of these systems they've cooked up are ultimately just homebrew spins on the actual rules.

I'll take the Alexandrian's post on hexcrawls as an example. There's nothing wrong with how he does Hexcrawling. It's fine. It's probably way too involved and overcomplicated for my personal liking but I get it. Some people like crunch and want guard rails. Here's what I think you have to keep in mind... The Alexandrian actually takes the time at the beginning of his post to explain to you what his design parameter were:

"Before we get to the actual hexcrawling, however, I want to take a moment to clarify what my design goals were (and are) for this project.

First, I wanted a structure which would hide the hexes from the players. (...)

Second, building on that, the structure is explicitly designed for exploration. The structure, therefore, includes a lot of rules for navigation, getting lost, and finding your way again."

I feel like a lot of people might just blast past this context. But it's worth asking yourself whether you agree with those design parameters before spending an hour digesting his system. Personally I don't! Especially not with the first part.

As I said, I reckon the "board gamey" element of hexcrawling is actually where the fun lies. It's fun for some players to get out a piece of empty hexgrid paper and slowly populate it as they traverse the landscape. The Alexandrian as a first matter of order is basically eliminating that part from play. And actually he's not really eliminating it - he's keeping it there but placing it behind the DM screen. If you think it's important for immersion to do that, then knock yourself out. But it's straight away adding more overhead for the DM and imo actually eliminating some of the fun for the players. It's also not actually how any oldschool iteration of D&D envisions the hexcrawl! 

The second part is "the structure is explicitly designed for exploration." I think the original B/X rules for hexcrawling/Wilderness Exploration are also designed for exploration. It's just that by eliminating the whole puzzle process in the first step, you've also kind of eliminated B/X's take on exploration. Whether or not what The Alexandrian replaces it with is better/worse/different/more desirable will come down to what you think of the *house rules* he's cooked up. Personally I think they're fine but too complex. I think Bandit's Keep's house rule on what to do when you get lost is better. He makes the process shorter and less painful! But again that's just my opinion. This isn't about shredding anyone's rules. I'm just pointing out why house rules on Wilderness Exploration confuse people when they're presented as the be-all-and-end-all.

What do I do?

The way I figured out my approach is I took the B/X rules plus the Bandit's Keep houserule for getting lost and had a crack at solo-play with them. I walked around on the map with a pre-gen party and ran the procedure to see how it felt (including running them through the combat encounters etc.) That's the cool thing about B/X: It's so simple that you can quite easily give it a spin on your own. And what I found was that I basically love the B/X RAW and am hapy running my hexcrawls using that approach. Others might prefer something else but as I said I'd recommend going to the source and trying the game RAW before setting out into the wild west of hexcrawl house rules!