Build an unforgettable campaign setting! These decks offer inspiration through imaginative art, lists of evocative ideas, and simple sandbox/hex crawl guidelines. Plus Hex Minimap Tiles to build a map!
Hexploration Decks brim with ideas to create unique locations for your next tabletop role-playing game setting! The ideas are system neutral, but medieval fantasy focused. There will be four decks, each with 54 poker-sized cards:
Settled Lands - Focuses on cities, towns, villages, castles, and other settled locations of a fantasy world.
Into the Wilderness - Features strange paths, spooky wilderness, isolated shrines, a hermit's hut, and so on.
The Underrealms - Has ideas for locations in intriguing underground kingdoms.
Otherworldly Domains - Spins fantasy locations like a city on the Plane of Fire, magical floating islands, and improbable architecture to list just a few.
We may do a bonus stretch goal deck--at no extra cost to youif you back for the original four decks! This stretch goal deck will be focused on sea and ocean locations.
Each deck has three card types:
Location cards provide a picture on one side, and a series of options on the other. Use your own creativity to customize and expand the result to fit your setting. About 40 cards in each deck are Location cards.
Trait cards can modify your locations to make them even more distinctive and interesting. You may have a haunted graveyard... but now it also hosts a criminal element–or maybe it is a base for a warrior tradition. Each trait has multiple prompts to ensure more flavor for your sites. 10 cards in each deck have Traits.
Reference cards provide distilled guidelines and advice for how to get the most out of creating and exploring your map. About four cards are Reference cards.
We've also created hex minimap tiles that are just plain fun to play with! And we've got Dungeons & Dragons cartographer and long-time Inkwell Ideas collaborator Dyson Logos creating them!
Sturdy Material: Printed on thick cardstock then laminated to give a thickness and feel similar to a driver's license.
Customize Them: The lamination makes them water resistant and re-markable! Sketch in coasts, rivers, and roads. Re-use the tiles by using a dry-erase marker. Or even mark towns, villages, and dungeon entrances, but--
Stickers! All the towers, towns, and other special features will be stickers in the pre-printed versions of these tiles. We'll have 2 50-sticker packs included with the full set. If you're careful when peeling them off lamination, you should be able to reuse them. But the digital files will include these icons so you can print more. Combined with a glue stick you'll never run out!
Stretch Goals: Initially, we'll have 64 72 double-sided tiles. Stretch goals will increase the count! (One stretch goal has already added 8 tiles from our original 64 tile set to make 72!)
Make More: Print more! If you want to customize them or create even larger maps, you'll get the digital versions--whether you're backing for the digital version or the pre-printed tiles. Or order more than one set!
Color or B&W: Due to print volume requirements, our professionally pre-printed tiles will only be available in color. But the digital versions you can print yourself will be in color or black & white.
Useful Size: Each tile will have a sub-hex grid three hexes across (seven full sub-hexes, plus six partial hexes). Each individual sub-hex is 1", making it them useful for other games or scales.
Save Them: Use the tiles to lay out your map area--take a picture of them in case you want the map later.
Double Sided: One side of each will have a minimap with art by Dyson Logos. The other side will be a mix of additional cartography by Dyson as well as some with just a grid to make your own design and some that are just a grid but a faint blue color for sea/oceans.
Initially, the sets will have 64 minimaps in each set. We hope to increase the number of custom designs through stretch goals--at no extra cost to you! The print versions will be the colored tiles. But you'll get the digital versions in both color & black & white.
Region map using our 25 sample colored hex minimap tiles.
Note some of the above are mock-ups and have the towers/towns/etc. included on the designs. Dyson is working up new art now!
Our Hexplorer's Kit starts as a tuck box that will contain all four card decks and have room for the minimap tiles. Stretch goals will upgrade the box & components.
The ideas are inspiring, fresh, and fun! Other resources will give you charts for the age, owner, number of troops and so on about a typical medieval tower. But Hexploration Decks will have a card for "The Deep Tower" with art of a magic tower with floating crystals in a giant cavern. The card back has charts titled Crystal Function, Tower Location, Why Is It So Purple?, and Why Do People Seek It Out? With options like ghost prison (for crystal function), half a step off prime (for location), normal light dampens its magic (for purple), and the soul collector rents out interviewees (for why people seek it). Even when a chart's topic is normal (like the tower's location) the options are intriguing!
Stylistic, full color art for each location card (over 2/3 of each deck) also sets Hexploration Decks apart!
Furthermore, we've written a sample setting/scenariothat shows what you can make with the cards & tiles and explains how it was created.
We love having stretch goals to give you more value as the project does well! Please share or re-post links to the project. As the funding goes up, we add more cards to the decks and minimap tiles! At no extra cost to you.
$16,000 - 8 Extra Hexploration Cards At this first stretch goal, we add two cards to each Hexploration Deck to make them 56 cards each.
$24,000 - Extra 8 Hex Minimap Tiles Our Map Tile sets will have 72 different tiles instead of the original 64. We'd love to do this stretch goal a few times to make the set even more tiles!
$32,000 - Extra 8 Hex Minimap Tiles And based on our early Stretch Goal poll results, we'll do this a second time as the next goal. So we'll get to 80 Hex minimap tiles.
$To Be Determined - Switch Minimap Stickers to Vinyl Clings The poll results vastly preferred Vinyl Clings to stickers. So if we hit this stretch goal we'll switch to clings. (This will likely be our next stretch goal, but we're waiting on samples before we can set the amount.)
We'll set the amounts and order of the goals below once we see the mix of pledges (how many people are pledging for decks vs. tiles) and the continuing results of our Stretch Goal Poll.
$To Be Determined - 4 One-Page Campaign Setups At this stretch goal, we write 4 one page hex crawl/campaign sandbox scenarios. These will be digital only (PDF), and included for everyone getting the Hexplorer's Kit (all 4 Decks & Hex Minimaps Set).
$To Be Determined - Extra 8 Hex Minimap Tiles We'll do this a third time time as another goal. So we'll get to 88 Hex minimap tiles.
$To Be Determined - Extra 25 Stickers Our full set of Hex Minimap Tiles gets an extra 25 Stickers!
$To Be Determined - Sturdier Hexplorer's Kit Box If we make this goal, our Box for everything (all 4--maybe 5--decks and the minimap tiles and stickers) gets upgraded to a thicker 2-piece box (box & lid) instead of originally planned simple tuck box.
$To Be Determined - Extra Hexploration High Seas Deck At this stretch goal, we create an entirely new Hexploration Deck! Everyone who backs for the other 4 Hexploration Decks (PDF or printed) gets it at no extra cost. If we unlock this goal and you're not getting all four other decks or PDFs, you'll be able to pick this extra deck just like you can pick any of the four decks listed above. (But we hope you'll want them all!)
No AI is used in the creation of our products. We are creative folks, as you likely are if you're a tabletop RPG GM or player, and we want to support other creatives.
Just as importantly, AI largely is limited to the data it has "read". It can re-combine what it has read in different and sometimes interesting ways, but human writers & artists are better at creating fresh, unique ideas. Check our sample cards above to see what we mean!
Over three decks are already written, so we'll be editing and completing the art as the project funds. (We'll be able to assign the remaining art even before pledging completes if we fund early.) You can expect PDFs in April and printed decks at the end of May.
Shipping is easy & flat (even if you get extras for friends, it is the same rate): US: $6 Canada: $12 Rest of the World: $18 Note: We will need to charge VAT (about 20%, varying by country) for those in the EU & UK. But we do ship to those countries with VAT paid so you won't be asked to pay VAT & an admin fee on delivery.
We will charge shipping as we get closer to fulfillment of the printed decks.
PDFs & Print-on-Demand Codes will be sent/fulfilled by DriveThruRPG!
