I’m at a waypoint on this journey.

We’re already a week into Hex-A-Day 2026 and I haven’t filled in a single entry. Honestly, I’m not planning to. That’s to say Hex-A-Day is a fine product/concept. Here’s my Affiliate Link on DriveThruRPG for the Hex-A-Day 2025 Workbook if you want to check it out. I think Third Kingdom is working on Bree-YARC right now so they may not have done a 2026 workbook. The idea still exists, regardless.

I feel sort of obliged to mention that Third Kingdom games puts out Populated Hexes Monthly and they have a really good grasp on old school gaming. Someone within that company must have grown up on B/X Dungeons & Dragons because they really know their stuff. They also put out a really nice hex crawl of their own if anyone ever needs an example of how to make an open sandbox world with plenty of adventures.

Which brings us to today’s main topic…

I’m not sure if this series is proving as beneficial as I would like it to be. There are literally hundreds of books on worldbuilding out there. I used to think, once upon a time, quite foolishly, that the only people who really worked on this topic were TTRPG enthusiasts. Turns out there are tons of fantasy and science fiction writers who do the same. I could sit here all day naming websites and books on the topic.

It just happens that we as fantasy/sci-fi gamers have an acute and slightly more detailed take on the niche. If you ask around with the Game Masters at any given convention, you’ll find that there are probably as many world ideas out there are there are GMs. Heck, I have as many setting ideas as I have campaigns. The first thing I do when I get my hands on a new TTRPG of any kind, especially fantasy, is ask, “How can I make a world that is uniquely mine.”

It’s the reason why my most recent Dragonbane campaign world was set on a Jovian Planet.

I wanted to build a hex crawl on a world so big players and GMs could literally explore forever and never run out of monsters, places, and situations to explore. I wanted to build that sort of OG Saturday morning cartoon world like you might see in Herculoids, Thundarr the Barbarian, or ThunderCats. I wanted a world where you can run into anything from the very primitive burgeoning civilizations to modern post-apocalyptic areas, and even high tech sci-fi environments without ever having to leave the planet.

That way if players want to poke around in some modern-looking ruins, they can. If they want to crawl around in vast underground megadungeons, they can. There are also hordes of flesh eating zombies and kaiju running around. Literally anything is possible. The only thing I didn’t have an abundance of, as I suspect a lot of hex crawls don’t have at first, are a lot of complicated kingdoms and feudal politics.

I think building up multiple feuding kingdoms over the span of multiple hexes in every direction requires a level of planning above and beyond just generating one hex at a time and then sandwiching it all together. Politics, weather, and any kind of road/travel system is a sort of overlay on top of what Hex-A-Day lays out initially.

Infinite possibilities afforded by the imagination.

There are also as many books on the subject covering literally every facet of creating a world I can think of. If I wanted to, I could just pull one off my shelf and talk about a passage out of it every week. But is that going to help anybody?

Hex-A-Day last year was why I started this series. Since then, that campaign has taken on a life of its own. The party that I had solo hexcrawling the map went off the hexes I had already mapped out. Seems like a reasonable facsimile of what real live players would do. I’m so using those characters again, too. Assuming they ever manage to leave the as-yet-unnamed hex crawl world.

My workflow is a bit different now.

I’m doing some superhero gaming stuff, which is a different animal than fantasy worldbuilding. Yes, every time I get a new supers rulebook I try to sandwich my own characters into it somehow. Earth 515 for Marvel Multiverse RPG took on a life of its own, though. I have a feeling that the same will ring true for Outgunned Superheroes and the OG GM’s Superheroes for Shadowdark just because the backstory for the worlds is a little more street level and grittier.

I’ve already had a couple of ideas for Twilight Sword campaigns I’d like to build that don’t take place on Radia. One such idea has been in my notes for about three decades now. So far, I like the idea behind Twilight Sword’s use of their own Hope and Despair mechanics. Despite the name it looks nothing like Daggerheart. I like the idea that the Champions bring Hope to regions affected by the shadows and their actions make a noticeable difference on a grand scale. It’s similar to the way things open up on certain video games after you complete a specific quest chain or kill a boss somewhere.

I’m also tinkering around with a modern Outgunned campaign that’s set on regular, modern-day Earth. How much worldbuilding can I really include into that? Superhero games naturally tread in that water. But a game with private mercenary contractors shooting it out with some corporate black budget contractors doesn’t really require a whole heap of thought in terms of worldbuilding.

Plus, there are other things we can do on Wednesdays.

I think I’m starting to understand why good old Bob Worldbuilder moved onto different pastures with his YouTube channel now. Because we can keep churning out what is essentially the same advice every week. Conceptually we’ve been discussing this world creation stuff since before the TTRPG hobby came around.

I say it every year, but I think 2026 bears repeating it. This year I intend to write more, read more, and discuss cool TTRPGs as well as supplements. Most of all, let’s just have more fun. Let’s explore. Let’s save the kingdom from the evil warlord. Let’s discuss all the fun stuff in gaming that we love.

With the world in the state it finds itself in today, please be kind. Please be considerate to one another even if we don’t agree. Lastly, please pursue the thing that brings you the most joy without harm to others. Thank you!