Dungeon World hex crawl

#1

So I had this idea of running the Tomb of Annihilation D&D 5e campaign using Dungeon World. Minor spoilers about the campaign ahead.

The campaign is about a Death Curse that prevents anyone from being resurrected and those that have been resurrected in the past to slowly decay and eventually die. The only thing we know is that the source is something called Soulmonger and that this Soulmonger thing is located somewhere in the uncharted jungle.

The campaign is split into few parts:

  1. It begins in a city-port at the edges of a jungle. Some time might or might not be spent there.
  2. A hex crawl in the jungle searching for clues about the location of the Soulmonger and then finding the way to that location.
  3. A city crawl of an ancient ruined city.
  4. Finally, a good ol’ dungeon crawl.

Now I’ve only run a couple of one-shots of DW but I’m pretty confident about points 1, 3, and 4, My doubts are about point 2, the hex crawl, and I would appreciate any input. Would you run it as a series of Undertake A Perilous Journey moves? Would you skip the crawl and just move from landmark to landmark? Both of these? Something else? Am I overthinking it? :sweat_smile:

EDIT: I messed up the numbers! The jungle hex crawl is the one I need help with :confounded:

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#3

Depends on how collaboratively you want to handle the city-crawl, vs. how much you want it to be an exploration of a concrete or randomly-generated place.

If you’re in for full-fledged collaboration, with players creating a bunch of the details, then I’d use some variation of the Jason Cordova’s Labyrinth move. https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonWorld/comments/4zwbl7/variant_of_jason_cordovas_custom_labyrinth_move/

If you want something to randomly generate the content, I’d use the “Plumb the Depths” procedure from The Perilous Wilds.

Alternately, check out Yoon-Suin, and the procedures for exploring the Old City. https://noisms-games.squarespace.com/creations/yoon-suin-the-purple-land

If you want a more concrete city, somewhat mapped out in advance with key landmarks/points of interest, then using something along the lines of “flux space” is a good idea. http://www.paperspencils.com/2017/07/09/flux-space-in-dungeons/

There’s a discussion here of how that flux space approach might apply to exploring a big-old dungeon. It’d work equally well, I think, for a sprawling ruined city.

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#4

So yeah I made a nice numbered list and then used the wrong number. It’s the big jungle hex crawl that I’m trying to figure out. Sorry for the confusion. I think @darren got that subconsciously.

The adventure as written has the jungle as a randomly generated place with some set points of interest. This is going to be used primarily as a lure for people that have only played D&D 5e to try something else so I want it to be fairly collaborative but I’ll also be prepared to fall back to a more concrete set in case there’s a lot of pushback.

Creating a custom move is one of my thoughts and I like Darren’s one. I’ll also definitely check The Perilous Wilds and the rest.

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