Point crawl: There is a set distance between two points, which means a set number of wandering monster checks.
Hex crawl: Players can move in one of six directions from their starting point. PCs can get lost and meander around, without reaching their goal directly. Wandering monster checks are determined by time spent traveling.
They also contribute to different styles of gameplay: an important observation. With a point crawl, in order to support wandering or alternative routes (shortcuts and scenic routes, so to speak) it becomes the burden of the referee to produce either a yarn-ball subway map of points and distances or to, on the fly, improvise the closest estimate; likewise, with point crawl, "getting lost" becomes nebulous - is it simply a time tax? How do they get back on track? These become concerns. That's not to say one is better than the other, but that point crawls are more suited for games *not* centered around exploration: bearing in mind that point crawls are more adept at illustrating roads and predetermined routes than tracing the same in a hex situation may be.
ReplyDeleteTL;DR - point crawls lend towards points of interest (cities, lairs, etc); whereas hex crawls lend towards goals (exploration followed by taming the wilds, for a Domain goal; treading unknown wilds to find an enchanted flower, for a Quest or Geas style goal).
Honestly it seems that hex crawls have more depth, at the cost of greater bookkeeping and possibly boredom.
ReplyDeletePointcrawls are more convenient when just getting from place to place, but kind of kill the exploration aspect.