Movement & Travel

by

Finley Vorden

For large-scale overland travel between regions and across the vast wilderness of Ilhdeinia, this game employs a hexcrawl system. This approach transforms long journeys from simple narrative transitions into meaningful gameplay experiences where navigation, resource management, and discovery become central elements of your adventures.

What is a Hexcrawl?

A hexcrawl allows for exploration and discovery across a vast wilderness. The game world is divided into hexagonal sections (called hexes) on a map, with each hex representing a specific area that players can explore.

While the overarching story of Ilhdeinia continues to unfold in the forefront, hexcrawl exploration lets you discover what lies between the established locations and major plot points. Instead of skipping travel with montages and time jumps that truncate roleplaying opportunities, you’ll be charting your own path through the wilderness one hex at a time.

A hex might contain anything: a forgotten temple, a bandit camp, a friendly village, or simply empty wilderness. Your choices about where to travel, how to prepare, and when to take risks drive the story forward.

Travel itself becomes part of the adventure as you navigate the wilds. Getting lost is a real possibility, and running out of food or water can be just as dangerous as facing monsters.

For our purposes, each hex on the map is six miles across. On a normal day, you can travel up to four hexes before setting camp. Each hex you move through costs a certain amount of your daily limit. Roads make travel easier by cutting those costs in half. To see how much ground you can cover, compare your route to the terrain chart below:

Terrain Type	Movement Cost per Hex	On Roads (Half Cost)
Plains/Grassland	1 hex	½ hex
Hills/Light Forest	2 hexes	1 hex
Mountains/Dense Forest	3 hexes	1½ hexes
Swamp/Desert	4 hexes	2 hexes
Coastal/ Scrubland	1½ hexes	¾ hex
Jungle	4 hexes	2 hexes
Tundra	2 hexes	1 hex

If you’re following a road through rough terrain, figure out the normal cost first, then halve it.

Travel Condition	Movement Modifier	Notes
Good Weather	Normal	Clear skies, mild temperature
Poor Weather	×0.75	Rain, wind, extreme temperature
Severe Weather	×0.5	Storms, blizzards, hurricanes
Night Travel	×0.5	N/A
Lost	×0.5	Until navigation succeeds

Navigating & Getting Lost

At the start of each new day, choose one person to roll Awareness or Survival to navigate. If they succeed, you stay on course. If they fail, you’ll end up in the wrong hex. You’ll need to make another navigation roll after arriving in the wrong hex to get back on track. Bad visibility from weather, night travel, or tricky terrain may incur penalties to rolls.

At the end of the day, wherever you end up is where you make camp.

Supplies and Survival

To stay healthy on the road, you need one day’s worth of food and one day’s worth of water, which a ration and full waterskin provide.

You may attempt to gather food and water while traveling by rolling Survival once per hex. For every 6 rolled, you find enough food or water for one person for that day. The Wayfinder may increase the successes needed to find food and water based on the terrain within your current hex.

Should you finish a day without enough food or water, you must roll Endurance. The penalty for this roll becomes more severe with each passing day.

Days Without Supplies	Endurance Penalty
1 Day	None
2 Days	Roll with one fewer die
3 Days	Roll with two fewer dice
4+ Days	Roll with half dice (rounded down)

If you fail this roll, you gain the Tired Tribulation. Failing a second roll the following day will render you Unconscious, and you begin dying if you do not receive aid.