The hexcrawl is a much maligned style of play, seen as a relic of TTRPGs past when we were still learning how to make our games. The most common complaint I have heard about the style is that it slows down the game. This is a sentiment I can certainly understand having played through a few different campaigns, as well as run one, that did get bogged down when we began exploring. But, as with most things in our hobby, simply because it can be done badly doesn’t mean we should throw out the whole idea. If we can streamline the process and reduce the frustrations that players feel when their characters do nothing but walk and camp everywhere, while still keeping the core concept of exploration then we will have a hexcrawl worth playing. And an easy way to do that is to create a “city crawl”.

In a city crawl, rather than having players explore a wilderness area, they are instead tasked with exploring an urban area. This urban area is divided into hexes just like a wilderness map, with each hex representing a significant part of the city. What constitutes a significant part of a city can be as large as a neighbourhood or district, or as small as a single street or even building. 

But then, I hear you ask, what makes a city crawl any different from a regular hexcrawl? It is the restriction of size. By focusing down from an entire region we can craft a more immersive and dynamic experience. Players can interact with the city on a more personal level, and their actions can have a significant impact on the world around them. 

The NPCs they otherwise would have walked past in the wilderness are now their neighbours, hidden secrets and discoveries directly affect the characters they most often interact with, and the characters they do meet can be more fleshed out since it is far more likely that you’ll run into that person again.

Aside from just NPCs though, by reducing the map’s scale the level of detail each area can get during your planning is expanded. Now you can give multiple full encounters at each location. For example, one of the hexes contains the city’s temple district. In this district you can find a temple infiltrated by cultists that is hypnotising visitors into joining, a gang of wererats is setting up a crime ring in the sewers, and a group of guards that are extorting an outrageous fee for anyone that tries travelling into the district. We can have the players organically come across these encounters by drawing their attention towards where they are happening or just have one of them occur each time they pass through the area.

The city crawl style of play can provide a unique and engaging experience for players. It allows you to craft a more personal and complex environment, while baking in a logical reason for almost any variety of different obstacles and enemies. A city crawl can also provide endless opportunities for roleplaying and social encounters, all while allowing you to flesh out the history and culture of your game world’s people. It also allows some of those more social skills, spells, and abilities that players have taken to really shine through. This means that, unlike a traditional hexcrawl, players are encouraged to think creatively about encounters since a city environment innately holds a lot more opportunities to uses these resources.

And finally, by changing the map size down to one that a group of characters could cross in under a few hours or even minutes it solves the classic hexcrawl problem of the single combat day. Where every encounter allows PCs to just use up every resource because they’re all but guaranteed to get a chance to sleep before the next encounter.

Constructing a City Crawl

Creating a city crawl is very fast and can be made as large or as small as you’d like. All you need is a hex map the size you’re looking for. What this size is will usually depend on how many sessions of play you’re looking to create. A map that that is 1 hex out from the centre, such as the one below, is perfect for a single session with each additional hex out cumulatingly increasing the games duration (2 = 3 sessions, 3 = 5 sessions, 4 = 9 sessions).

Notice how minimalistic this hex grid design is. In a city crawl style game, since all areas of the map usually fall into the same type of biome, a map like this is all players truly need. It also means they can be reused to represent an infinite number of locations which can save on prep time if you want to print it out. For example, the above hex map could represent anything from a bustling metropolis, the inside of a vast library, or a collection of houses.

We can also add extra detail to it though by including certain barriers or icons. For example, in the map below the thicker lines across the map indicate barriers or paths that cannot be taken. I don’t suggest you completely block off these paths though. In our example below, these barriers could represent walls or impassable shelves in a great library. So if a player has means of bypassing them, such as the spell passwall, then you should consider allowing them to circumvent the barrier.

Now we just have to flesh out the different areas of the map. Since we have 7 hexes that means we’ll need at least 7 events, one for each hex. Beyond that though, since we are working on such a small area we can follow a 3×3 design principle. 3 events per hex, with 3 important details per event. Each time the PCs travel through or search a hex they encounter one of these events.

Here’s an example of area 1 if it was a magical library.

1. The Grand Foyer: Entering the library is easily done through this main entrance. 

“As you step into the foyer for the Library of Amen-Yawr, the air around you seems to change. The musty scent of old books and parchment fills your nostrils, as if the knowledge held within the library’s walls has seeped into the very air you breathe. The room is cavernous, with high vaulted ceilings adorned with intricate carvings of ancient symbols and mystical creatures. The walls are lined with towering shelves, each one filled to the brim with leather-bound tomes and dusty scrolls. A single desk sits at the centre of the cavernous space.”

Events

1. The librarian Timit-Sul is sitting at the desk cataloguing and comparing a collection of maps for the nearby mountains. He demands a fee of 5 gold pieces for each creature that enters the library and also attempts to block the entrance of any animals or other creatures that appear to be pets. He can direct players to any section of the library but does not leave his desk. He holds a keyring which has keys for both the blind scribe’s quarters and the forbidden section.
   The PCs can convince him to waive the cost with either a DC 15 Charisma (deception or persuasion) check if they are avoiding paying or Intelligence (religion) check to figure out that it is heretical for his religious order to charge for library use.
   Timit-Sul has the statistics of a human priest.
2. A lost looking halfling named Filroc Berrytoe is looking through the shelves for a catalogue of where religious texts might be found in the library and asks the PCs for help. He claims to be a cleric of a good aligned god but is actually a worshipper of a trickster god and plans to replace some of the library’s texts with apocryphal forgeries.  PCs can assist him with a DC 14 Intelligence (history) check, or get a sense that he isn’t being honest with a DC 16 Wisdom (insight) check.
   Filroc Berrytoe has the statistics of a halfling cultist, but keeps a pair of flying swords at his belt which he releases if combat breaks out.

3. A group of students from the local university is sitting around one of the foyer’s many desks arguing in a whisper over an ancient tome. If they see they PCs they indicate for them to come over and help, saying that the book has been encoded and they cannot figure it out, offering a reward for assistance.
   If the PCs read the book it just appears to be a list of numbers, except for the reference section in the back. A DC 17 Wisdom (perception or insight) check will recognise the pattern and discern the code while a DC 15 Intelligence (arcana or history) check will figure out that the code is a simple book cipher, using the titles within the reference section. Characters that understand thieves cant have advantage on these checks.
   If the PCs are able to assist the students they will offer a wand of secrets they had been gifted as a reward. 

And after repeating this process for the all 7 locations we’re finished, though obviously you don’t need so much detail for each event, when a single sentence will usually do. We now have an entire sessions worth of play sorted out in a manner that can be completed in under 20 minutes.

So if you’re looking to shake up your campaign, why not try a city crawl?