Hexcrawl Hazzards: a helpful post on thinking about how to incorporate traps, terrain hazards and tricks into your hex map.
Simple Hexcrawl Horizons Table: a table which shows how far a character can see given their survey height (assumes a 6-Mile Hex scale).
In Praise of the 6-Mile Hex: a convincing argument for the advantages of a 6-mile hex scale over rival hex scales (it convinced me at any rate).
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RPG Now: has a smattering of free battle maps, inn maps, continent maps, dungeon maps etc as well as hoards more available for purchase.
He also has loads of dungeon and town maps available for purchase.
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Paratime Design: Tim Hartin has created several free to download dungeon map packs.
Dragonsfoot Maps: there are a host of entries here ranging from campaign maps, to dungeons to the floor plans of building.
Incidentally, this is also the best place to go if you seek to learn how to create your own maps.
The Cartographers Guild: there are loads of talented cartographers who make their work freely available via a Creative Commons licenses at the Guild.
WOTC Map-A-Week Archives: WOTC still has a slew of great free maps perfect for dropping into a Hex available in their Archives.
RPG Now: has loads of free adventures for download, as well as even more available for purchase.
Michael Prescott has done some really impressive one page adventures over at his blog.
Prescott’s One Page Adventures – A recent find for me.
Dyson’s Dodecahedron: Dyson has several free short dungeon delve adventures free to download at his blog.
One Page Dungeon Contest: since 2009 this contest has produced hundreds of creative dungeons that are perfectly suited for dropping in a hex crawl.
Dragonsfoot Modules: several free modules written by members of the Dragonsfoot community are available at their site.
I haven’t actually played any of them though so I cannot vouch for the quality.
D&D Adventures: has links to several free adventures.
However if you search the archives for “FREE Original Adventure” you can still find them. These were listed on a single page but they’ve since taken it down.
WOTC Archives: years ago WOTC released a slew of short free modules for Third edition.
Wildgen: is an online random Hex-Map generator.
DrawHexGrid: is a simple intuitive program that allows you to create a hex grid in various styles which can then be imported into your graphics program of choice.
Inkscape Hexgrid: is an extension for Inskscape (an open source vector graphics program similar to Illustrator) that allows you to create a hexgrid in Inkscape.
hexGIMP: is a script for GIMP (an open source raster graphics program similar to Photoshop) which comes with custom brushes and allows you to create and edit hex maps using GIMP.
It is a Java-based program in which you “stamp” symbols onto hexes.
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Hexographer: is far and away the most popular software for creating hex maps.
The Hex Crawl: a nice quick write-up on how to design and integrate the points of interest in a hex map.
Hex Mapping: another insightful and comprehensive treatment on the topic of creating and keying a hex map.
Hex-Based Campaign Design: offers a very useful method for quickly and simply creating and keying a hex map from the “Bottom-Up”.
How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox: a comprehensive treatment of the process of creating a keying a hex map using a “Top-Down” approach.
Hex Crawling: a useful thread over at the Steve Jackson Games forum on the mechanics behind a hexcrawl.
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Hexcrawl: a very useful series of posts by Justin Alexander on his philosophy behind designing the mechanics of a Hexcrawl.
The model provided in these session reports is, I believe, in large part responsible for the revival of the hexcrawl with the OSR community.
The West Marches: this is the campaign that launched a thousand Hex maps.
Feel free to let me know of any resources on the topic you find helpful as well. I’ll likely be adding to it as I discover more helpful information. In the meantime, here are a list of resources that I found helpful when thinking about how to design my own hexcrawl. I am midway through keying my Thild Island Map for my upcoming campaign and will be posting more on this in the near future.