Top pick
Forbidden Lands
Choose Forbidden Lands when travel actions, mishaps, strongholds, survival, and a large hex map create a complete campaign engine.
Best Hexcrawl TTRPGs
Best Hexcrawl TTRPGs collect games where player-directed travel across a keyed or procedurally populated hex map is a supported recurring loop. The label is useful only when it predicts what the table repeatedly does, not when it describes a passing scene, optional supplement, or superficial aesthetic.
Hexcrawl is a specific exploration structure, not a synonym for any open world or a map that happens to use hexes during combat. The reviewed launch set contains 13 current games, and membership is intentionally narrower than every title that could imitate the idea with enough facilitator work.
Compare travel procedure, encounter density, resource tracking, settlement play, and how much material the referee must prepare. Use the featured choices below as contrasting starting points, then compare rules weight, facilitator role, session length, campaign support, and content guidance on each game profile.
21 gamesAll categories
Top picks
Best games in this category
Quick starting points if you want the clearest expressions of what Hexcrawl games do well.
Top pick
Dolmenwood
Choose Dolmenwood when dense keyed terrain, factions, settlements, and fairy-tale dangers reward sustained player-directed travel.
Top pick
Ultraviolet Grasslands
Choose Ultraviolet Grasslands when a caravan crossing turns routes, supplies, strange locations, and trade into psychedelic campaign momentum.
Top pick
Twilight: 2000
Choose Twilight: 2000 when a grounded regional hex map makes fuel, vehicles, encounters, bases, and local alliances matter after collapse.
More to compare
More Hexcrawl TTRPGs to compare
Knave RPG
Knave is Ben Milton's classless OSR fantasy TTRPG, and its current second edition pairs fast character creation with a stronger GM toolkit for dungeons, hexcrawls, downtime, and module-driven campaigns. It is a strong fit for groups that want dangerous expeditions and meaningful gear choices without a heavy character-build game.
Odyssey of the Giant
Odyssey of the Giant earns Hexcrawl because the route is built hex by hex, with varied terrain, encounters, day-night pressure, and a destination that lets one player scale the journey's length.
Mausritter
A rules-light, classless fantasy TTRPG about brave mice surviving in a huge, hostile world. Mausritter makes inventory, conditions, and treasure recovery central, so every torch, spell, and scrap of gear matters.
Adventurer Conqueror King System
ACKS supports hex-based wilderness campaigns, with expedition, terrain-encounter and lair rules and an Auran Empire map gridded in hexes.
Broken Shores
Broken Shores is Blackoath Entertainment's dark fantasy survival RPG: play Drifters exploring a randomly generated drowned world, scavenging derelicts, crafting gear from slain monsters and upgrading a raft. Classless d100 skills, brutal grid combat with wounds and Trauma, and volatile magic. Play solo, co-op without a GM, or GM-led. A new, incompatible Second Edition was funded on Kickstarter in October 2026.
Cairn 2e
A classless fantasy adventure game in the Into the Odd lineage, Cairn 2e pairs dangerous exploration with fast d20 saves, inventory pressure, and unusually usable Warden support.
Cloud Empress
Cloud Empress is a standalone ecological science-fantasy TTRPG by watt that evolves Mothership-style panic, wounds, and fragile travelers into a war-scarred world of giant magical cicadas, strange relics, hexcrawl exploration, and pastoral danger.
Delving Deeper
Delving Deeper includes wilderness exploration on hex maps, with overland travel, wilderness encounter tables, evasion and pursuit, and settlements and strongholds to find.
Dolmenwood
Dolmenwood belongs in this category because dense keyed terrain, factions, settlements, and fairy-tale dangers reward sustained player-directed travel.
Errant
Errant runs wilderness travel in four-hour travel turns, with pace, navigation checks, getting lost, weather, foraging, camping and an event die for encounters as the company crosses the map.
Fearsome Wilderness
Fearsome Wilderness maps its forest planet in hex sectors, with 12 location scenarios and a random sector generator.
Forbidden Lands
Forbidden Lands belongs in this category because travel actions, mishaps, strongholds, survival, and a large hex map create a complete campaign engine.
Hyperborea
HYPERBOREA is Jeffrey Talanian's old-school sword-and-sorcery TTRPG from North Wind Adventures, inspired by Howard, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. The 2022 third edition splits the AD&D-style rules into a Player's Manual and Referee's Manual, with four classes, 22 subclasses, a dying-sun science-fantasy setting and ongoing module support. Best for long, lethal OSR campaigns.
In the Light of a Ghost Star
In the Light of a Ghost Star includes Earth Expedition One, a small hex crawl on a printable map, moving about a hex a day.
Land of Eem
Land of Eem is Ben Costa and James Parks's lighthearted fantasy TTRPG of d12-driven exploration, creative problem-solving, crafting, parley, and colorful hex-crawl adventure in a strange post-collapse world.
Mutant: Year Zero
A post-apocalyptic science-fiction TTRPG where mutant survivors explore the Zone, manage scarcity, and decide what kind of community their Ark becomes.
Outcast Silver Raiders
The Mythic North gives Outcast Silver Raiders a keyed regional hex map, travel decisions, settlements, and connected encounters. Route choices help determine which dangers and factions the group meets.
Primal Quest - Essentials
Primal Quest – Essentials includes Mother's Vale, a twelve-hex starting area with problems, secrets, dangers and random encounters, plus rules for travel and getting lost.
The Hero's Journey
The Hero's Journey includes wilderness exploration and hex-crawling rules, with rough terrain, blessed and blighted lands, camping, and a 1-in-6 chance per hex away from civilisation of hazards, monsters or travellers.
Twilight: 2000
Twilight: 2000 belongs in this category because a grounded regional hex map makes fuel, vehicles, encounters, bases, and local alliances matter after collapse.
Ultraviolet Grasslands
Ultraviolet Grasslands belongs in this category because a caravan crossing turns routes, supplies, strange locations, and trade into psychedelic campaign momentum.
Compare
How to choose the right Hexcrawl TTRPG
Start with the table experience, not the label. These four picks show different ways the category can work.
- Forbidden Lands: Choose this when travel actions, mishaps, strongholds, survival, and a large hex map create a complete campaign engine.
- Dolmenwood: Choose this when dense keyed terrain, factions, settlements, and fairy-tale dangers reward sustained player-directed travel.
- Ultraviolet Grasslands: Choose this when a caravan crossing turns routes, supplies, strange locations, and trade into psychedelic campaign momentum.
- Twilight: 2000: Choose this when a grounded regional hex map makes fuel, vehicles, encounters, bases, and local alliances matter after collapse.
Check the practical fit. A shared category does not guarantee the same learning curve, preparation load, group size, emotional intensity, or campaign length. Read the individual profiles before committing a group.
FAQ
Questions players ask
What qualifies for Best Hexcrawl TTRPGs?
A game qualifies when player-directed travel across a keyed or procedurally populated hex map is a supported recurring loop. Membership is based on supported recurring play, not a passing motif.
How were these Best Hexcrawl TTRPGs selected?
The catalog was reviewed against one stable inclusion rule. Games that can merely emulate the idea through optional material were excluded.
Which Best Hexcrawl TTRPGs should I start with?
Start with the featured game's description that best matches your desired rules weight, facilitator structure, session shape, and emotional tone, then confirm the full profile fits your group.
What should a group discuss before playing?
Compare travel procedure, encounter density, resource tracking, settlement play, and how much material the referee must prepare.