How to Add & Edit Hex Crawl Details
How to Add a Hex Crawl Note to the Map
To have Worldographer (as of version 1.46) randomly add a hex crawl point of interest to your map:
- Right click the map and see a pop-up menu.
- Pick the “Generate Random Hex Crawl Details” from the pop-up, then select major, medium, or minor.
- A note dialog will pop-up with some randomly generated details and usually a feature is added to the map. These are fully editable.
The faint yellow box on the map shows that the location has a note associated with it. You can turn them off by unchecking the “show” checkbox next to the Notes section of the bottom tool bar.
How to Edit the Hex Crawl Options
To edit the hex crawl encounter options available, go to the Configure menu, pick “Configure World & Name Data” then select the Encounters tab. Select or add terrain & select a level. The system tries to match the terrain as best it can to generate a note. If a better terrain match exists for a type, it will use that. Then edit/add the options.
If you want a feature to appear with the note and for the automated feature information generator for that feature type to be used to generate the note, make the description field just “Feature”. (This information is edited on the “Feature Information” tab of this same dialog.)
If you want a feature to appear but there is no feature info configured for that feature type (or you don’t want to use it) you can add two colons after feature, then type out the possible details. If you want there to be multiple main options, separate each by semi-colons. For more variety, place square brackets around several options and then separate each thing in the brackets by commas:
Symbol Monolith: Feature::An 8′ tall by 4′ wide by 1′ deep black door or pillar stands here. [It hums occasionally.,It is ice cold even when just near it.]
How Worldographer Decide Which Note Template To Use
Worldographer looks at the terrain the user clicked on and uses that terrain name to find the best possible matching keys. A key with a terrain type of “AnyTerrain” as the terrain type is always a possible match. But if a more specific terrain match is available it will use the more specific option for that encounter type.
For example if Any Terrain, Forest, & Deciduous Forest are Terrain keys that each have Minor features of “Symbol Monster Lair”. And the user clicked on Deciduous Forest, then the monster lair options available that are associated with Deciduous Forest are used–not the monster lair options of Forest or AnyTerrain. But if the user clicked a new terrain type called Strange Forest and there is no minor encounter details set up for Symbol Monster Lair for Strange Forest, then Forest’s Symbol Monster Lair would be an option when the user right-clicked that type. And if they click some other Terrain without encounter info set up for that terrain, then the AnyTerrain Symbol Monster Lair info would be used.
So to generate a Hex Crawl detail, Worldographer looks at each Encounter Key for a terrain type & level (Symbol Monster Lair and Symbol Oasis for Minor Desert encounters in the screenshot here) and will combine that with any other Minor AnyTerrain encounters that don’t have the same Symbol Monster Lair and Symbol Oasis keys. For example Building Cottage, Building Shrine, Military Fort, etc. Then it randomly picks one and processes it: If it is separated by semicolons if picks one section. If it has a section of square brackets with several options separated by commas it picks one of those.