Problem

 After perhaps flying too close to the Nintendo Registered Sun, a beloved pocket monster enjoyer once again calls for a blogwagon. Across the blogosphere, he challenged everyone in the scene to make blogs about mapping.

Making a pointcrawl map is easy as dropping dice on paper. However, they work best for exploring structures and games prioritizing destinations rather then the journey.

Conversely, a hexcrawl works best for exploring vast and/or unknown regions, but still functions as a point crawl connecting (up to) 6 other points. Additionally, most players will usually prefer to travel between emergent/intentional paths whenever possible.

Additionally, there's the niche option: the Flux Crawl. Whilst there's been some interesting ideas, a potential sticking point is how do you handle travel time/costs?

If only there was some way to keep the simplicity of a pointcrawl without needing to map out every path between them.

(A) Solution

 Ditch the paths. You can just imagine a line between 2 points, and use some basic heuristics to ballpark an estimated travel time.

Terrified that you'll somehow "get it wrong" or ruin the verisimilitude? Then outsource the map creation to the table. You can still add your secret POIs later.

Freeform Pointcrawls 

Procedure

Prep

Landmarks and Scales 

• Determine the Mapped Region's (Time) Scale- the average travel time between 2 POIs via expected transportation.

• 2-3 Watches by foot in a Cairn Region, a couple days of Travel between Stars via Warp Drive 1, 1 Week of Sailing between islands, etc.

• Go around the table and ask what are the major Landmarks known to the area. Examples include:

• Structures/Features visible from anywhere in the local area

• Capitals/Major Holdings w/ Massive influence

• Areas where something important happened to a character

• Place additional Landmarks as needed

Biomes and Tags

• Draw terrain and paths as you would w/ any other map.
  • I.e. mountains, hills, roads, swamps, deserts, etc.
  • For Space Games, paths are your standard hyperlane/warp gates, and difficult terrain equivalents are asteroids, ion fields, black holes, etc.
•  Label POIs and Terrain w/ the following tags as needed. 
  
  
  • Impassible: A route can't pass through here via standard means. Either plot a detour, or use a method of transportation superseding this roadblock
  
  • Shortcut: Travel between specified points without any travel time. Especially useful for impassible terrain 
   
  
  • Nested Region: Area represents an explorable sub region.
    • Dungeons, Citycrawls, a smaller Freeform Point Crawl
    • Bottleneck: A Nested Region that you must go through in order to progress

Encounter Tables

• Make a d6 encounter list for each type of local threat to the area
• Ex: Cannibal Reavers, Sickly Wildlife, "The Blighted," Time Distortions, Petty Knights, etc.
• Tip: The 1 and 6 results will be relatively near a POI, and all other results are likely far away from a PO
• Place the Source for each of these threats somewhere on the map.

Play

Plotting Routes

• Draw a line between the party's current location and their destination.
• Detours: You can chain together a series of routes as needed. The travel cost for each route is calculated separately. 
• Take the Region's Time Scale, and multiply the travel time by 2:
  • for each Difficult terrain passed through.
  • for each POI passed through (even if hidden)
  • if you're using a slower mode of transportation then expected
• Take the Region's Time Scale, and divide the travel time by 2:
  • if there's a Path between the journey and destination
  • if you're using a faster mode of transportation then expected
   
  
  

Encounters and Discovery

• Roll a d6 after plotting a route. If the result is less then the total travel time, use the result on the closest Source's encounter table.
  • Need to know where the encounter happens? 1: 25% Progress, 2-5: 50%, 6: 75%
  • Multiple Sources nearby? Tiebreaker: Use the result for all of the tables as a mega encounter.
• If the route is close to an undiscovered POI, narrate what they see and let them decide what to do next.

Updating the Map

 Periodically:

• Add discovered POIs to the Map.
• Add new Tags when relevant; e.g. players finding a shortcut through the mountains.
• Update Encounter Tables/Sources as needed.

New Regions 

At some point, the players will want to leave the local Region and travel the greater world. To leave the map, they must either:

1. Travel to the edge of the current Region
2. Go through a designated Bottleneck
   Once they leave the Region, you can model nearby Regions via another map at a larger Scale. Then, when entering a new Region, they go back to that Region's scale.

Notes

Pros

• The time cost for searching around an area is inherently modeled.
• Plotting a Route is literally straightforward.
• Players can literally add to the map as desired without need specific software.

Cons 

• System works fine for static maps, but adding/discovering new POIs to a map technically increases the average travel time
• Travel Costs inadvertently reveal Hidden POIs to players, while ignoring them for the initial travel cost leads to the above problem.
• Some travel mechanics become lost in translation, e.g. getting lost