Verdant Hexcrawling

Verdant is a system for running a gritty survival hexcrawl that has characters contributing to the safety of the journey.

Uses cards and a journey sheet to help visualize tasks, terrain, and the passage of time. The rules are simplified to fit an A4 brochure.

Advanced rules available at verdant.ibir.cc

Design Intent

• Compact. Combine time spent and travelled distance into simplified journey rounds.
• Cooperation. Enable characters to explicitly contribute to the success or failure or a journey.
• Dread. Expose the danger level to create tension in each round.
• Physicality. Be able to use miniatures and cards to commit to tasks.
• Component-Based. Facilitate homebrewing new tasks, terrain types, and others.
• System-Adaptable. Created for Shadowdark, but made generic and adaptable.

Assumptions

• 6-mile Hexes. Compatible with many existing RPG systems and published material.
• Packed Maps. Works best if maps have interesting things to explore every few hexes.
• Gritty Survival. You want to reinforces the danger of being in the wilderness. Compared to narrating away a journey, this system increases the time your group will spend outdoors.

Credits

Design and illustrations by Vince Pinton.
Found a typo or weird text? Let me know through this form!

Verdant © 2026 Ibir Publishing. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
View a copy of the license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

For list of inspiration, font credits and others, check verdant.ibir.cc

This system is an independent product published under the Shadowdark RPG Third-Party License and is not affiliated with The Arcane Library, LLC. Shadowdark RPG © 2023 The Arcane Library, LLC.