Hexplorer

Hex-based exploration: paint regions on your map, hide it under a fog that players reveal as they travel, and let Hexplorer advance time, show region banners and roll encounters on the way.

Getting Started

Scene Config

1. Open the scene configuration and, in the Basics tab, check Enable Hexplorer
2. In the Grid tab, set the grid distance and units (for example 6 mi): they are used to calculate travel time
3. Open the configuration of the token that leads the party and, at the bottom of the Identity tab, check Is Hexplorer?

Token Config

• Reveal Radius: how many cells around the token are revealed while it moves. 0 reveals only the cells it walks on
• Speed: scene units per hour, for example 3 mi/h. Leave it at 0 to not advance time

4. Click the compass button in the scene controls to open the Hexplorer window and paint your map

Painting the Map

Painting

While the Hexplorer window is open, the GM sees the color of every cell.

• Click a brush to select it, click it again to deselect it
• Click and drag on the canvas to paint. Right click while dragging cancels the stroke
• Brush Radius: how many cells around the cursor are painted

Hexplorer Window

Every scene has three brushes:

• Reveal: reveals cells to the players
• Hide: hides them again
• Clear: resets cells to the default configuration

Your own brushes are created from a cell, with Save as Brush in the cell configuration. Each one has two buttons:

• ✓ Apply: updates every cell with the same region name or the same color. Useful after editing a brush
• 🗑 Delete

Options

• Display Cell Colors in Revealed cells: players see the region colors on revealed cells, and get a toggle in the Token controls to hide them
• Always Show Region Banner: show the region banner every time a token enters a region, not only the first time
• Reset Revealed Cells: hide the whole map again
• Reset Discovered Regions: banners show again for every region

Configuring a Cell

With no brush selected, click a cell to configure it.

Cell Basic Tab

Basic

• Reveal Radius: cells revealed around this cell when a token passes, instead of the token's radius. -1 uses the token's radius. A high value works well for hills and towers
• Color and Region: the region name is shown in a banner when a token enters it
• Speed Multiplier: multiplies the token speed in this cell. 0.5 makes swamps and mountains take twice as long
• Tooltip: a journal page shown when hovering the cell. Hide Unrevealed Tooltip hides it from players until the cell is revealed
• Journal Entry: a journal page players open with Shift + Click on the cell. Cells with a journal are marked with a dot

Tooltip

Players only see tooltips and journals they have Observer permission on. The activities below can give it to them.

Reveal Activities

Reveal Activities

Run when the cell is revealed for the first time, even if no token walks in it.

• Revealed: the cell is visible to players
• Reveal Cells: other cells to reveal with this one, like a landmark seen from afar. Shift + Click cells on the canvas to add them
• Remove Hidden: unhide tokens, tiles, lights, sounds...
• Macros: macros to run
• Reveal Tooltip, Reveal Journal Entry, Reveal Map Notes: give players Observer permission on the cell's pages and on the map notes inside the cell

Explore Activities

Explore Activities

Run when a hexplorer token passes through the cell or ends its movement there.

• Explored: a hexplorer token already walked in this cell
• Remove Hidden, Reveal Journal Entry, Reveal Tooltip, Reveal Map Notes: as above
• Roll Tables: tables to roll, for random encounters
• Macros: macros to run

Check First Time Only to roll the tables or run the macros only the first time the cell is explored.

Buttons

• Save as Brush: saves this configuration as a brush, to paint it on other cells
• Trigger Explore Action: runs the Explore Activities now, with the selected hexplorer token (or the first one in the scene)

Exploring

Exploring

1. Move the hexplorer token as usual, waypoints included. It doesn't move yet
2. The GM receives a Hexplorer Request in chat, with every cell on the path and the total travel time
3. The GM clicks Accept and the token travels cell by cell

Hexplorer Request

For every cell the token enters, Hexplorer:

• Shows the region name, and a banner the first time the region is discovered
• Advances the world time: grid distance ÷ (speed × speed multiplier) hours
• Runs the Explore Activities
• Reveals the cells within the reveal radius, running their Reveal Activities

What Players See

Player View

• Unrevealed cells are covered in the scene's Unexplored Color (Visibility tab)
• Tokens on unrevealed cells are hidden. This needs libWrapper (opens in a new tab)
• When a player moves the hexplorer token, the request goes to the GM

Fog of War Image

Hexplorer has no image of its own for unrevealed cells, but it works with the Foundry fog of war: the revealed cells become the explored area.

In the scene configuration:

• Visibility tab: enable Token Vision, set an Unexplored Image, set Exploration Mode to None and disable Global Illumination
• Grid tab: set Padding to 0, or the image won't line up

On the hexplorer token, enable Vision with a range of 0.

Settings

• Movement Animation: milliseconds the token takes to move one cell after the GM accepts a request. Default 3000

Macros and API

Macros run by a cell get two variables:

• cell: the cell offset (i, j) and its whole configuration (region, color...)
• token: the hexplorer token document

// Reveal a cell and the ring of cells around it
canvas.hexplorer.fog.reveal([{ i: 5, j: 17 }], 1);
 
// Hide it again
canvas.hexplorer.fog.hide([{ i: 5, j: 17 }], 1);
 
// Show a banner to everyone
canvas.hexplorer.showBannerText("Ember Ruins", { subtitle: "The brazier still burns", duration: 5000 });

Cells are written as i-j (row-column) in the Reveal Cells field and in the title of the cell configuration.